#587 - Confessions Of A Monster - Gastonia, North Carolina

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vary. This week in Gastonia, North Carolina, when bodies start being found in remote locations,

detectives must piece together the last brutal hours of these lives and all roads lead to one

very strange man who may have killed many more. Welcome to Small Town Murder.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.
Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo.
I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane edition of Small Town Murder. If you've been listening, you understand that it's been crazy lately, and it continues this week, and it'll never stop.
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Then you definitely, first of all, want to listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports, where we have a very long Evil Knievel series going on right now, so you definitely don have to like sports and then also small town or this is small time or your stupid opinions is what you want to listen to which is uh reviews from all over the internet where we make fun of them and it's a lot of fun but then you want to get patreon patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of the bonus material yeah and it is ton. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get a giant back catalog of hundreds of episodes you've never heard before.
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This week, what you're going to get for crime in sports, we're going to talk about fraternity hazing. Okay.
Some of the craziest incidents of it. And it goes back to the 1700s this has been going on for.
Is that right? Yeah, we're going to talk about that then for Small Town Murder. We're going to talk about the upcoming Karen Reed retrial, which is the woman who is accused of murdering her police officer boyfriend in Boston, and she says it's a conspiracy with the whole police force against her, and she actually had a mistrial the first time, so it it's very interesting we'll talk about all of that and more get you ready for that and that is patreon.com slash crime in sports and you get a shout out at the end of the show as well where jimmy will mess your name all up that said i think it's time for the disclaimer look this is a comedy show everybody we are comedians uh the stories are a thousand percent real.
Nothing's made up. There's nothing, you know, embellished for comedic effect or anything like that.
No, no, no. We tell the stories straight and there's plenty of jokes to be made in there.
You might go, well, where does that happen? There's a lot of places where that happens. People go, I think I can get away with murder.
I'm going to make fun of that person right away. You know what I mean? But what we don't do, what we never do, is we never make fun of the victims or the victims' families.
Why, James? Because we're assholes. But.
But we're not scumbags. You know what that goes? There you go.
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Either way, no complaining later. That said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody.
Let's all clear the lungs here. Arms to the sky.
Let's all shout, Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.
Let's go on a on a trip, shall we? Yeah. Let's do it.
We are going to North Carolina this week. Gastonia, North Carolina.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, baby.
Have you heard of Gastonia, North Carolina before? No, I've heard of Estonia. That's the country, isn't it? The country, isn't that? Where Brendan Fraser was from and Encino Man, I believe.
So, that's funny. That's a real country, but that's our only reference of it.
A guy who wasn't even from there. He was from a cave.
Yeah, fake guy. Guy that dug out of a pool.
So this is in south-central North Carolina, down near the border of South Carolina over there. It is about 30 minutes to Charlotte.
So it's kind of a suburb of Charlotte, really. So it's grown a lot in the last 30 years.
And it's about two hours and 50 minutes to carry North Carolina. Our last North Carolina episode, which was Google Map My Murder, which was pretty funny because we just had this guy's entire.
That's what we say. Where are there jokes to be made? I don't know.
When your entire murder plot can be just tracked and shown on a map that you've done yourself. That seems dumb.
County here is Gaston County. So Gastonia, Gaston County.
Gaston. Gaston.
Area code is 704 here. And they have several nicknames for this place.
A nickname and a motto, we'll say. So the motto is Spindle City.
Okay. I don't know.
I don't know. Charlotte's the queen city.
They're the spindle city. I don't know.
And then the other one, the motto is great place, great people, great promise. All the same.
Yeah, that's just alliteration. So there you go.
History of this town. We'll do a little bit because we got a lot of story for you today.
It is named for William Gaston, who was a congressman from North Carolina. So they named the town after him and the county after him.
I guess they had railroads that came through here. And where the two railroads crossed was kind of the beginning of the textile industry.
They started building factories and stuff around there. So that brought jobs and all that kind of thing and more people started coming over here.
The initial population of the town was only about 200 people and the land area was less than a square mile. So that was the original and it grew from there.
So here here are some reviews of this town, because we've never been there. We don't know anything.
And I have to say beforehand, because I've gotten several messages lately with people angry at me personally for other people's reviews of the town. These aren't our reviews of the town.
We're not saying this. This is what other people have posted on the Internet.
We're just reading you it's please don't get mad at us for it that's crazy think about that for a minute um here's one five stars this town has helped me recover from my many problems in the in my past the town did that the whole town started i don't know the water department i'm moving to gastonia i got so many fucking problems. People who pick up the garbage helped out.
It was wild. I look forward to spending the entirety of my teenage here, my teenage here, and find myself quite endorsed by the beauty of the community.
Engrossed, maybe? Is this person 11? I think this person is, yeah, a teenager, I believe. And the beauty of the community and nature around me in day-to-day life.
You're endorsed by that. I don't know what that means.
How many problems could you have had? You're 11. What happened? What was going on up till then? Jesus.
Here's four stars. Gastonia is a small town right outside of Charlotte.
It offers a safer and less hectic atmosphere that is still close

to a big city. There's not much to do

in terms of entertainment, but the city is growing.

And Charlotte's a half hour away, and they

got tons of shit going on. New developers

are looking to make Gastonia the

next Charlotte within the next few years.

The next Charlotte.

Right next to Charlotte. Charlotte's right there.

You already have a Charlotte.

Now is a great time to move in before everyone else catches on to this small town's great potential. Are you a real estate agent? What are you talking about? This is a sales pitch.
What do you want to bet nobody catches on? Man, the population's grown a lot in the last 20 years or so. It's because it's a suburb.
They can thank Charlotte for that. It's just things were shittier in Charlotte, so they went here.
here's one star grew up in Gastonia and could not wait

to leave Charlotte for that. It's just things were shittier in Charlotte, so they went here.

Here's one star.

Grew up in Gastonia and could not wait to leave.

Small, nasty, boring town.

It's nasty.

Nasty.

I would never recommend anyone to live there.

Never and anyone is very strong.

And then finally, one star.

Gastonia is terrible.

It is unsafe. People will get shot right in front of your house in broad daylight.
What? All the time, apparently. It's just happening constantly.
It's dirty, more so than your normal overpopulated city. The last person said it's a small, nasty, boring town.
Now it's an overpopulated city. Which one is it? If you care about your family,'t move here jesus did you just threaten my family i think so they're definitely going to be murdered on your front yard and broad daylight move here i'll kill your whole fucking family i'll kill them i think that's what they just said somebody will i'll make sure of it as a matter of fact in broad daylight now people of this town population here is about 79 000 right now it was about 50 000 when our whole thing started here so yeah uh so it was a smaller town at the time and it's still from what i can gather has a small townness to it because it's you know not a big city it's a suburb so uh way more women than men here it is 52.2 percent women so i don't know what's going on here with that.
Median age is right at the national average, about 38. Family here, it's about 46% married.
A lot of people single with children. 25% are single with children, which normal it's 10%.
So race of this town, 58.2% white, 27.1% black, 2% Asian, 9.7% Hispanic, which North Carolina, whenever we go there, everybody's mixed up in the cities. You know what I mean? I don't know about out in the rural parts.
Yeah, I don't know how it is in the rural area. Fucking Marlboro.
Yeah, we know Charlotte and Raleigh because we play there. You know what I mean? So 58.1% of the people here are religious, and the number one religion here with a bullet by far is Baptist.
It's 31% Baptist here. My word.
By far. Baptist, as we know, are the Catholics of the South.
Because in the Northeast, it's all Catholic. Down here, it's all Baptist.
If you haven't heard that explanation in a while, it might sound crazy. So yeah, not a lot of anything else here going on.
It's mainly just Baptist. The unemployment rate here, 5.9%, which is a little above the national average, but not terrible.
Median household income could be better, though. The average in the rest of the country, $69,000.
Here it is $52,990. Wow.
That's not great there, almost $ almost $20,000 I don't know because maybe it's cheaper so maybe cheaper than Charlotte so you move there I don't know it's right there the cost of living here 100 is average and regular across the country here it's 89 it's a little bit the housing, median home cost here, $272,700.

It's a bit steep, isn't it?

For making 50 grand a year, that's rough.

Yeah, that's tough.

So maybe you're going to pull it off, though, and you're going to find a place, and you're going to get in here before everyone else hears about it, like that reviewer said. If so, we have for you the Gastonia, North Carolina Real Estate Report.

The average two-bedroom rental here goes for about $1,090,

so not two cents under the national average.

Not low enough.

Not super low.

Here is a two-bedroom, one-bath, 480-square-foot pile of shit is the best way to describe it. It's nothing.
The side of it looks like it's falling apart before your eyes. Like if you touched it.
You know, like old tape that's been in the sun. If you touch it, it'll explode.
A little brittle. That's what the siding looks like on this house.
It looks brittle. That's a good way to put it.
It's really fucking bad. The ceilings and floors are intact, at least.
It's not falling in like some of the houses, but it's not great. And it says the only, this is the entire listing text, quote, property sold as is, where is.
What? I think it's like a manufactured home. I don't think you're moving it, though.
It'll crumble to pieces if you try to pick it up. But where is what i think it's like a manufactured home i don't think you're moving it though it'll crumble to pieces if you try to where is sold as is where is i put that in there because i've never seen that before in a real estate listing and we've done this a lot so here that house is 44 500 bucks okay and uh comes with like a quarter of an acre too so there's that yeah but there's but there's no house.
There's no house there. Here's a four-bedroom, three-bath, 2,544 square foot.
It's like a nice, good-sized family home here. It's on 0.79 acres.
So not bad, almost an acre there, four-fifths of an acre. It's a nice porch and nice deck.
It's not bad. It's okay.
There's some weird... It's painted a little weird inside in a couple of places, but it's not terrible.
$499,000 for that. It seems a little high.
And then here's a four-bedroom, three-bath, 4,028-square-foot house on 1.59 acres. And it's a beautiful house.
It looks like a mini plantation house. It has those columns and shit.
That's what it looks like. It has in the yard this long walkway up to it.
It's very pretty. It's a really nice house.
The inside could be fucked with a little bit, but it's not bad. Amazing garden.
1.59 acres. A little bit of land, really nice garden.
899,000 bucks for that.

Holy.

So steep, though. It's a little steep.

Things to do here. Okay.
The Gaston

All-American Fair. There we

go. That's one of them here.
The Gaston

All-American Fair brings rides, games,

and more to where,

Jimmy, you may ask? Where? The Eastridge

Mall, of course, obviously.

There we go.

It's free to get in.

And rides and games will have a fee, though.

You can walk around for free.

Armbands are $25 and will allow the wearer to ride unlimited rides for that day.

Sure.

$25, all you want.

And for some reason, I don't know what they had last year, but it says, there will be no contests this year. They don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
There will be no, not be contests, which always makes me think, when I hear something like that, it makes me think of Slums of Beverly Hills. Miss Ball is issuing no treats this year.
Have you ever seen that movie? I don't think so. It's fucking great.
You should to me alan arkin alan arkin alan arkin and tasha leone uh um what's her name no no no uh natasha leone yeah her um marissa tomei's in it uh how old is this 98 ish oh it's fucking great it's like how fucking old was natasha leone that she that? 17-something. She plays like a 16-year-old in the movie.
So it's set in the 70s. It's really funny.
Is she my age? I think so, yeah. She's about our age.
She's in the ballpark of our age. There's also Gym Fest.
J-I-M Fest. That's for us.
Oh, what?

Finally.

Let's go.

A festival for us, damn it.

Gym Fest Out West, a festival for unsigned artists.

Oh.

Never mind.

I don't want to go anymore.

I thought it was just gyms.

No, no, no.

Not guys named Jim.

Here is the bands.

Heart Sick.

Heart would be sick if they heard you, in other words.

Yeah, but they would, yeah.

Blackwater Drowning.

What?

Ew.

They're like an upbeat, an upbeat like a Spanish group, obviously.

God dang.

They're not death metal, I'm sure.

Death of Uriah.

Okay.

Forever May Fall. Donny Brook, North Carolina.
Donny Brook. That's a fight.
That's a fight. Yeah.
Yeah. So I guess they're going to brawl on stage.
Dunharhu. I don't know.
Mechanical Band. Wither the Fallacy.
Two Stroke Smoke. Oh, yeah.
You got to have that. Two Strokes Smoke.
Yeah, it smells nice and toxic. And Saving Darkness.
Let's pick who's going to make it out of these bands. Who's going to make it? I hope it's Two Strokes Smoke.
They sound awesome. That sounds fun.
I doubt it, though, just by their name. I don't think they've got a broad appeal broad appeal let's just say here i'm going with uh forever may fall sounds like the name of a band doesn't it yeah they make like like chick like evanescence or something like chick music there's a band called into the darkness and then one called saving able if those are two maybe they're that saving i don't understand saving darkness i don't get the saving i don't understand any of this shit saving saving darkness i don't know yeah they're setting the clock back their whole point is to abolish daylight savings that's what all their songs are about it's always midnight always crime rate in this town what we are interested in here is honestly shocking um the property crime is about double the national average.
Wow. Which seems like a lot.
Yeah, that run reviewer was not bullshitting. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault.
The Mount Rushmore of crime is about a third above the national average. It's dangerous.
What's happening over here, man? What's going on? I think it's more dangerous than Charlotte, honestly. I really do.
I think Charlotte's crime rate's a lot lower than that. And I don't know.
I've walked around Charlotte. It doesn't seem scary to me.
I've never felt in danger in Charlotte, ever. Or Durham.
When we were in Durham, I didn't feel... They're fine.
So that said, let's talk about some murder. Here we go.
Oh, boy. We're going to come in hot here.
Okay. Okay.
October, 2009. Let's go back to here.
All right. Now, on this day, police are called to what they call a country gravel and dirt road.
this is in this is in york county south carolina which is not far from here but over the border

obviously into south carolina it's near clver, South Carolina. That's the closest town to this area.
They are here to investigate. Somebody had called in and said they think they saw a dead body down this road.
Yeah. Pretty sure I found a dead body.
So they come up and they find the body of a female human being here. That is the best way to put it definitely found a dead body there's definitely a body and it's a woman here uh she'd been dumped on an obscure road where nobody would really notice her it's just a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere outside of a small town um this is in york county like we said Now, she's dressed in a sweatshirt and socks, and that's it.
Nothing else. They said there was a striped sock on her toe and her naked calf protruding from a bush.
That's what someone saw. They just saw a foot and a calf, and then They called the cops and the cops came in.
So they said the body was white.

She's a white woman with blue veins visible beneath the skin she had a long deep gash in her side but they didn't know it looked like it could possibly be from an animal's claw of some kind possibly a claw maybe not a an actual you know cutting there. So once and they don't know how long she's been out here.
So out in the middle of a rural, you know, nowhere, you're going to get clawed up by something. There's a lot of animals out there.
There were more scratches along her body. They looks like these scratches are from dragging, like she was dragged from a car or something out into the location where she is right now.
So she's naked from the waist down. She has on a hoodie, but it's pulled up above her breasts and socks, and that's all she's got on.
So, yeah, this is, I guess, just beyond a small concrete bridge. They said, yeah, it was horrifying.

A cop yelled, you know, they were looking after that because they said, well, where is the rest of her clothes, number one?

And are there any other clues?

So, you know, if you find a body, you then spread out in a circular area to search for it.

So at one point, they are near a small concrete bridge in Gaston County, North Carolina.

So they've created a small concrete bridge in Gaston County, North Carolina.

So they've crossed the line there.

And they said they saw something red

with smudges of mud

that was half on the edge of the roadway

and half in the brush.

And so the one said,

I think it's a red shirt.

So they look into the woods here and they see something sparkling in the sun too down near the red shirt. So they go down the hill and it's a short embankment where the shirt is located.
And then one of the cops saw a pair of blue jeans with a diamond studded or rhinestone studded belt on it. And the jeans and belt were farther down near the actual creek that the road as it was named for here so they then discover that inside the jeans stuffed in there are a red bra and a black pair of women's underwear oh so what she was wearing a core you know seemingly stuffed inside there the jeans had the belt inserted the loop, so it wasn't like ripped off or anything.
It was still around the waist. So they look at where the clothing is recovered.
The shirt is at the top of a ridge near the bridge. The jeans and bra and panties were down by the creek.
They said it appeared somebody might have tossed them out of a car window while pulled over or even flung them out of a moving vehicle and that's where they fluttered to basically they said or maybe this is where this happened and then the body was moved perhaps yeah we don't know it might have happened there stripped her down and threw the clothes out or the opposite so they're they're trying that the person that did this was also here yeah there's two places that where this are part of this crime scene now so the items matched with the size of the women woman that they found too so they're pretty shorts and it's all the stuff she's missing is here right she's missing bra underwear jeans here's bra underwear jeans yeah here they are so um that's interesting now they didn't touch the clothing they had forensics come out and do all that kind of stuff. So in addition to that, near her clothing, they find a crack pipe also, like a used crack pipe.
So now they don't know, is that her crack pipe, or is that somebody who dumped all this? Were they smoking crack? This seems like something a crack smoker might do. Somebody was smoking crack.
Somebody was smoking crack. Now, they're going to initially call the cause of death undetermined.
It's a homicide, but what killed her is undetermined. They don't know that at that point.
They do find out after doing some canvassing about the area here that two suspicious vehicles had been spotted on the road during the time that this body could have been dumped. So they learned that one was a Ford F-150, a red Ford F-150 pickup.
And, you know, they put that out there and they said it had tinted windows and a flatbed liner cover. So one of the covers on the back there.
It had been seen in the area of Robinson-Yelton Road between noon and 1 o'clock on October 27th. That's just two days earlier.
The second vehicle is a two-tone Chevy S10 pickup with a blue top and tan bottom, possibly an 87 to 90 model. Yeah.
And this is in 2009, so. It's an old truck to be driving around.
Yeah. The thing is, though, in the country, everybody's got an old pickup truck.
Yeah. Like, you're saying, anybody around here got an old pickup truck? It's everybody.
Right. Because you need to haul things and, you know.
Yeah. They got a new pickup truck that they drive to town for dinner.
That's, yeah.

Take out a lady.

But they got the old one. They got an old one to do the work.
That's for the dirt roads and shit, for banging around. Yeah.
Picking crap up from the, taking shit to the dump and stuff like that. So they said that vehicle, the S10 pickup, had been seen in the area on October 25th and 26th between 9 and 10 p.m.
So at night. So they were like, okay, they think maybe that one of these vehicles belongs to the murderer, obviously.
So they get an identification on this young lady. And we find out is a young woman named Heather Marie Catterton, C-A-T-T-E-R-T-O-N.
She's 17 years old. Oh 17 years old oh my god yeah that's crazy so they were like whoa they thought she was older initially initially they had her with the veins and such they had her at 25 to 35 was what they that when they were released the press release out said a woman's body was found a white woman between 25 and 35 blah blah, blah.
So people that knew Heather weren't real worried because she's 17, not 25 to 35. Yeah.
So they're trying to figure out how the hell she would end up here. They find out that she's had a crazy home life.
It's been rough for her. She had a rough relationship with her father.
Her father's name is Nick, and she often ran away for days to a week at a time to just get out of the house. So now they also find out that she has a criminal record at 17.
She was recently charged with possession of cocaine and marijuana with intent to distribute. Oh, yeah, the charges were pending, and she, I guess, only weeks earlier had gotten out of jail.
Really? Yeah. So that's before that.
She's so young. So young.
That's what I mean. There's got to be something going on here.
She's from Gastonia, North Carolina. She was not enrolled in school, even though she's 17.
They said that they found out

she frequently would just stay with friends

for long periods of time

just to get her out of her house. She'd been

in and out of the foster care system

for years as well.

Even though she has parents, they're not

the best parents, it seems like.

The Department of Social Services

took over the custody

of Heather when she was 15.

Her father explained it this way.

Now, imagine they came and took your kid and someone asked you what happened.

Would this be your answer?

Quote, they would say activity has gone on.

Could you be a little, could you be more vague, sir?

That is really nothing close. It was illegal, obviously.
It's bad for kids either way. Not appropriate for a child, right? Dangerous.
So they said one night in their previous home, which was in Grover, North Carolina, a shot was fired by someone in the house. Yeah.
And Heather was placed in care of the Department of Social Services over child endangerment concerns. You know, because there's shots being bucked off in the living room.
It was an indoor shot? Yeah, no, in the house. A shot went off.
So they were like, let's get the kid out of here maybe. That'll probably be good.
If you're gonna be having fucking gunfights in here. So you're gonna have duels in the living room.
I'll take the kid. So social services finally released her from its custody when she was 16.
And this is why Nick said they did this. Quote, they couldn't control her running away from these homes.
Generally. This is gunplay, man.
No, no. Meaning the foster homes.
She was running away from those. Yeah.
Now, generally, they won't release you because you're kind of a pain in the ass.

Your custody will get tighter.

That's how it works usually.

So a little back story.

Nick and Heather's mom, Stella, never got married.

They were never married.

Stella had a four-year-old boy that she brought to their relationship.

She and Nick had begun dating in 1983. Hey, everybody.
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Now back to the show. They lived in South Carolina, just below the North Carolina border.
Stella got pregnant with Nicole, which is Heather's older sister who plays heavily into the story. And then had Heather after that.
Heather is, when she's a kid, known as like the most cheery person in the world. She's a real upbeat kind of a young lady here.
Nick worked as a plumber on new build construction projects. Nice.
That's what he did. Well, that's easy stuff, but all right.
Yeah, you don't have to fix anything. Right.
You don't have to cut drywall. The drywall's not up yet, so have at it, my friend.
Very easy. Yeah.
So he worked a lot, though. He'd leave the house at 6 in the morning, get home at 7 at night type of thing.
Yeah. Nick said, we started off in South Carolina and things were going great.
We were a family. So, yeah.
Then he packed everybody up. They moved down to St.
Augustine, Florida, where they lived for about five years. And so, yeah, they would take the kids to the beach and have family days and shit like that.
But once Heather was born, Nick said, we had to cut back after Heather came along. Quote, but they's was some really good, good times.
Oh, boy. That's an exact quote.
Yeah, these are like real country people, a lot of these people. A lot of their quotes are going to be real fucking southern.
Loosey-goosey with the English language. With the grammar and the English, yeah, which is fine.
I'm just warning you ahead of time. Laying loose and fast.
Laying loose and fast with the language, folks. So while she was in school after her family moved from Florida to Grover, North Carolina, where they would take her away for gunplay, Heather, I guess, is really good on computers and stuff like that.
And she would help the teacher out with shit and tell the other kids how to use stuff, use computers and stuff. In the 90s, not everybody knew how to use a computer.
So if someone knew how to use a computer, it was like a magic trick. Like,, Oh man, look at her.
She knows how to use a computer. Fucking crazy.
So, um, now they had been, Nick and Stella had a lot of problems over the years. And when they went back to North Carolina, things got worse.
When they broke up, Nick took the girls, Nicole and Heather, and moved to Gastonia and Stella and her son that was around beforehand went and went their own way. So she is around though, Stella, because we know that for a fact based on something later that is pretty disgusting that we'll talk about.
So Nick said drinking was his big issue. Yeah, there's out there's there's something in the mix here and it something.
It's alcoholism. There's got to be something.

So he said that he drank a 12-pack every day and a quesaday on the weekends.

So, yeah.

12-pack every day and a quesaday.

Okay, so he doubles it on stuff.

Doubles it up, yeah.

Well, he has time.

He's home all day then.

Yeah.

He's got to squeeze a 12-pack in from like 7 to 10 at night.

That's a tough one.

In the six-hour window, yeah.

Yeah, three-hour window.

Fuck, I can hammer another 12.

Oh, yeah.

I'm going to go to the next video. then yeah he's got to squeeze a 12 pack in from like seven to ten at night that's a tough one in the six hour window yeah yeah three hour hours fuck i can hammer i can have another 12 oh yeah you can chill so heather started to rebel junior high middle school era here um you know that's that's when she really started to do that she started to look more toward her friends and social stuff and, you know, thing here.
Her dad said, so she found a family that was homeschooling and she did that because she wasn't doing well in school. He said, and I was paying this lady who had four or five kids to homeschool her.
Now, that lasted until she was 13 when she didn't want to do any kind of school. And Nick's drunk all the time.
Her mom's gone. And that's when social services start stepping in because she kept running away is what happened.
Which means 90% that she's probably – the fact that she runs away and tries to stay away means Nick is probably beating the shit out of her.

Kids run away and stay away from physical abuse, usually, or sexual abuse or some kind of abuse situation. They're not just like, I'm going to go start my own life for no reason.

I'm just tired of things around here.

I just want to set up my own shot.

So she was reported missing at least five times in one year when she was a teenager. In one year? One year reported missing.
Every two months she's dipping out. To the police, yeah.
Oftentimes they would find her not too far from the home. She'd just be kind of away from there, though.
So, I mean, she doesn't know where to go. She just doesn't want to be there.
She, um you know she was having a hard time with the whole thing nick called her a daddy's girl and said she got into trouble because of her quote free spirited nature that's all this is it's just she's just a free spirit that's all it's not that i'm a drunk who fires gunshots off indiscriminately and beats the shit out of my kids she's's just a free spirit. My daughter's a troll.
Yeah, that's all it is. Free spirit.
I mean, and free spirit is, you know, getting arrested for drugs and being in the custody of the Department of Social Services and shit like that. That's pretty free.
She's a free bird. All right.
Yeah. So now her brother, this is Stella's son, said that she was a joyful person always, high-spirited, got along with everyone.
Everyone always liked her. She always had a smile on her face.
But she always has a smile, but she's running away. So it's really hard to figure out.
Nick said he lately had been encouraging Heather to study for her GED,

but her several drug arrests in Gaston County kind of kept that from happening.

And he blamed that on her friends.

He said she's a good girl, but people she hangs out with, they're bad.

Here's a picture of Heather, by the way.

Well, she looks sad.

She literally has a lip out pouting. So I it's a mug shot that's why but um it looks like she's a pretty young girl though she's you know nice she looks nice um she's nick said this uh she's always been a good girl she just got those teenage genes in her them teenage genes they don't develop till develop until she's about 13, and then they start to blossom and popping out of them kid genes.
He said, teenagers nowadays think they can do anything, and they're all grown up. That's different from the ones earlier.
Yeah. Teenage genes.
I've never heard that before. No.'s wild um she he said quote she wouldn't even tell me who she was with because she knew i would come right then and get her a father and mother can tell about their kids more than anyone else in the world parents know the signs a lot of time they don't believe the signs but the signs are there okay so what happened to? Why didn't you? What's going on? He said that she was self-aware and strong and that if someone attacked her, she would have definitely tried to fight off her attacker.
And that's what everybody says. She's not a meek child at all.
Yeah, think about what she's been going through. She's been running away.
She's been in foster care. She's fought.
You know what I mean? She knows what she's doing. He said she was a very smart girl.
She was street smart. That's what made me think that it couldn't be her when the body was found because at the first sign of trouble, as soon as the opportunity hit, she would have run like a rabbit.
She would have done something. So now that's fine, I'm sure.
But that means somebody tricked her probably or did something, whatever. So he said that he would have sacrificed his own life to protect her.
Nick said, I just won't stop drinking, though. That's one thing I can't do.
Sacrifice my whole liver for this. Let me put down my Miller Lite and we'll talk about it.
Now, he said, I would definitely trade places with her. Anybody would for their kid that they love.

It just breaks our hearts.

Whoever did this couldn't have been in their right state of mind.

They had to be some kind of monster, a maniac.

And then he said, please come forward and give peace of mind to everyone who loves her.

Whoever it is, they're going to catch you anyway.

That's happened before.

Yeah.

No one's ever gotten away with this.

Parents told me I should just give myself up.

Fuck it. I'm going to go ahead and do it.
He said they'd catch me anyway. So now they go back to when was the last time she was seen by people? And that is October 17th, 2009 is the last time she was seen, which is 12 days earlier.
Yeah. And she was last with her friends, Summer Hefner and her boyfriend, Michael Moore.
Okay. So that's who she was with.
That was the second time we've had a Michael Moore in a story. A lot of Michael Moores.
Yeah. Because one of the West Memphis Three kids was Michael Moore, wasn't he? That's what it is.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. we've had that.
So anyway, it's not Heather's boyfriend. It's Summer's boyfriend, Michael.
So they're a couple. They're hanging out with Heather.
This is the late in the day, October 17th, 2009. Now, they're going to spend time that day drinking and smoking crack.
Okay. That's what the group is, as you do on a Saturday.
Hey, you know what? It's my fucking weekend. Don't tell me what to do.
Smoke crack with me. I smoke crack? What do we do when we have a weekend off? Just smoke crack.
I mean, what else is there to do? Walk down to the creek and smoke crack. Smoke some crack.
Why not? So that part of the intro of the Andy Griffith show, I don't remember remember i remember them walking down at a fishing pole they were going in and andy didn't go not yet

opie you go ahead and drop it in your line in the water i'm gonna go look at something over here then andy dip behind a tree fucking start lighting up the crack bite'll see. So anyway, this is fucking crazy.
So they find out that they were also hanging out with another guy, too, at some point during that day. A guy named Danny Robbie Hembree Jr.
Danny Robbie. His legal name is Danny.
Danny Robbie. And his middle name is R-O-B-B-I-E.
Danny Robbie. Whoa.
And Hembree. So it's E-E-E all the way.
Junior, of course, obviously. There's another Danny Robbie? There's another Danny Robbie Hembree Jr.
As a matter of fact, there is another Danny Robbie Hembree, the third, because he has a son named Danny Robbie Hembree III. Oh, shit.
you know here um danny robbie wow that's that's one way to make sure you got a doctor in the family got a dr right there there he is dr jr right there dr jr oh i'll bet you that's never happened. Dr.
Junior. Really not.
So Danny here, Danny had been dating Nicole, Heather's older sister, for a few months and had been hanging around the house, Nick's house, and like staying over half the time and all that kind of shit for months now. So he knows the family.
He's in the mix here. He's also known as a guy who knows his way around the streets in this area, knows a lot of people, has a criminal record, and kind of has an into the underworld, and he might have heard something, basically.
So they go to talk to Danny at Jacob's Food Mart, where he works. He's working out there.
He's born in 1962, by the way. So way older than any of these people, which is another thing that's weird here.
He's been dating Nicole, like we said. He's got a lengthy arrest record, as we'll talk about here.
A little bit about Danny Robbie here. Number one, he had just been released from prison in January of 2009.
So that's number one. His parents are Danny Robbie Sr., obviously, and Jacqueline.
He's got a couple of siblings. He's got a sister and a brother, David and Kathy.
He's the oldest. I'm sorry, there's a third, but I don't know who the third sibling,

I don't know the name. So, he's the oldest

of four children. His mother

was 18 when he was born. His dad

is a strict military guy.

It's the opposite of Nick.

Danny Robbie's been to jail?

Or been to the service?

Danny Robbie Sr. was in the service

for a while. Danny Robbie Jr.

couldn't fucking, no. He couldn't handle a mcdonald's he couldn't handle anything he's got nothing here yeah so uh his stern father not only is he a stern military man but he's a stern vodka drinker as well oh really oh yeah and when he drank vodka he became super violent And the main lightning rod of his violence was Danny Robbie.
Obviously. Yeah.
So that's how that goes. I guess he's got a cousin here.
Danny Robbie does. And they were like brothers.
And Danny Robbie's cousin said they would party together all the time. And that Henry's father, Danny Robbie Sr., didn't react well when he learned his son wasn't behaving.
They don't call him Danny? They call him Danny Robbie. They call him Danny Boy.
Everybody calls him Danny Boy. Oh my God.
That's what everybody calls him but I'm calling him Danny Robbie because it's fucking hilarious to me. It just makes me laugh.
It just makes me giggle to call him Danny Robbie. I don't like Danny Boy.
I don't like that at all.

No, I don't either.

You're not Irish, are you?

You're in North Carolina.

Your Irishness is a moot point down there.

Danny Boy.

Move to Waltham or fucking Walpole or something if you want to fucking go by Danny Boy.

That's some Massachusetts suburbs shit there.

So apparently his cousin said that dad would, quote, beat the shit out of him all the time. He said he would use his hand, a belt, or any other thing that was close by to discipline both his sons.
Not the daughters, just the sons he would beat the shit out of. At least he had some level of where the line is is anyway he had a line um both the sons consequently suffer from mental illness shocking shocking as you do yeah you beat your kids mercilessly with weapons and odd that they'll be mentally ill from that strange right right weird um so uh they said that danny would often help caring for to care for his siblings and stuff like that.
His mom, Jacqueline, said, quote, you couldn't ask for a better child as far as loving and caring until he became a teenager and started having these problems. OK, his problems are a lot.
He he seemed to be a very nervous kid they said. He would like

chew the skin around his fingernails and

disrupt class and shit like that.

ADD type of shit.

Yeah, that's what I mean. I didn't want to sit there either.

His parents took him

to a pediatrician

where he was diagnosed with depression

at a young age.

How old do we know?

I'm not sure. Young age.

But I mean he's getting beat constantly. He's terrified in his own house.
Yeah, that'll do that. He attended Hunter Huss High School, but dropped out before he graduated.
He got married when he was 18 to a 16-year-old neighbor. That should be illegal, right? I mean, I don't know what the age of consent is in north carolina i'm not sure what the age of consent is in north carolina but i know her parents had to sign something for her to get fucking married i think at 16 so um and he was already in trouble by then his his ex-wife later on but his wife at the time said he was already addicted to drugs then at 18 when they got married um now he's not an idiot he dropped out of high school he did get his ged later while he's in jail as we'll talk about because he's gonna be in jail an awful lot the time in the world yeah he never failed any grades in school or anything like that he kept yeah he kept it up just dropped out they said he had an iq of about 90 which right it's not good um 80 to 90 is considered quote dullness oh yeah and then 90 to 110 is normal average intelligence and then okay over 110 120 is very intelligent so um an iq score of 90 is in the normal range it that's right at the borderline of normal and a little dull, but definitely not like, you know, medically Forrest Gump, you know what I'm saying? Not Gumpian or anything like that.
He can tie some shoes. He's a shoe tying some bitches.
Yeah, he's got plenty. He's got plenty going on.
Now at the age of 10 is when they thought he was bipolar and put him, or 12, I'm sorry, and they put him on lithium, which is really strong, really powerful shit. But we're talking early 70s.
So there is not a lot of these drugs that we have now really popped in the 90s and early 2000s and late 80s. By the 70s, it was we could drug you to where you sit there and drool or you can just go about your business.
Those are your options pretty much. And he's 12? Yes.
Getting lithium. I don't think that's good for your brain.
Probably not. I can't imagine it.
Fucks you up. That's a heavy one.
Depending on the dosage. I mean, I micro-dose mushrooms.
I'm not tripping by any stretch. No, no.
There are mushrooms coursing through my body, but you don't know it. I just dose them.
I want to say. I am tripping.
I love those fucking things. I love those things.
They're great. So, yeah, he's married for 15 years.
He's going to be married from 80 to 95. And I'm sure most of that is just because he was unavailable to get a divorce because he was in jail.
So I don't think that was 15 happy years of marriage. He has three kids, this fucking guy.
Goddamn. Three.
Two sons and a daughter, which is wild. His mental illness as a child made him cut and burn himself all the time.
Yeah. He overdosed on drugs and alcohol a few different times where they'd take him to the hospital.
He intentionally drove a car into a tree in a suicide attempt. That's a fun, aggressive way to do it.
Terrible way to die there. Not a fun way to do it.
Addicted to cocaine is his main lady. He really loves the blow there.
She's sexy from what oh boy so when from his teens that's what he's really into is that um and he struggled with this for years and years and years they said his demeanor would change depending on whether or not he was using cocaine they said under his wife at the time said under the influence he would turn into a different person and he would hit her and be mean to her and all that kind of shit which i don't know why you would do drugs to make you shittier it sounds like you're not having fun right that's that's what i don't understand i mean i don't make no sense you think he'd be hitting her and then he'd take any snort a line and go whoo i'm so sorry i don't know what i was thinking there you know i feel much better now fucked up. They hit people.
It's fucking weird, man. Really weird.
May 22nd, 1990. Let's catch up with old Danny Robbie here.
There's an article in the newspaper. The headline is two Clover men face charges in burglaries.
You notice that Clover, by the way, is where he lived. Clover, South Carolina, which is right outside the town.
That town is outside of where they found Heather.

The body was found, yeah.

So he and another man have been charged in connection with two burglaries in which a car was used to ram into the front doors of area businesses.

That's how they're going to do it.

Real sophisticated robbery plan.

Our key is a Buick.

Not exactly Ocean's 11 here.

You know, we're going to get all of this.

Well, you just drive it through the front window, and I'll jump out and get shit. That's what this is.
It's a totally different thing. So it's Danny Robbie and a guy named Billy Eugene Knight here.
And they were arrested and charged for third degree burglary. The front door of Ace Hardware at 4800 Old York Road in Newport was smashed in on May 15th, and two packs of beer were reported stolen.
From Ace Hardware? First of all, that's a great Ace Hardware. They sell beer, too, which they should.
That's smart. Probably need a 12-pack to put this drywall up.
We're going to build a deck. Hell, there's some Budweiser over there.
That's what I that's that's that's all they took they broke in at full access to the store didn't take expensive tools or you know power tools they could sell that's the most easily exchangeable commodity is power tools you can sell those anywhere on the side of the road for fucking cheap if you wanted to they stole two packs of beer but the door the damage to the door is 1500 So that's the beer, but the door, the damage to the door is $1,500.

So that's the main loss of the robbery is the damage to the door.

They stole like eight bucks worth of beer, maybe.

You know, at the time. So

minutes later, the front door was smashed

at North's grocery store

and nothing

was reported

stolen. Just broke the door.

Sounds like they're

just joy riding through fucking doors they just think it's fun to smash in the building was per damn fun let's do that again hell yeah now let's go to the groceries more doors they got good and drunk and forgot to steal shit from in there i think so that was fun oh boy so later on in 1993 in January of 1993, while he still lives in clover he is arrested again for uh breaking and entering and larceny as well now this seems to be his thing now it is and apparently burglaries this is not the only two times he was caught for this there was a whole bunch of other ones in there and And he ends up receiving an 11-year prison sentence. He got 11 years for this? 11 years for second degree burglary and criminal conspiracy.
I want to jot that down somewhere so I can always remember that because people serve way less time for way worse things. Oh, God.
People get out for fucking Bill Cosby's walking around right now. What are we talking about he's walking the fuck around right now 11 years and everything 11 years for fucking breaking through front doors of ace hardware is a lot so they get them good in 1997 though after serving three years he is paroled so that's not bad that's february of 1997 he is paroled uh but while paroled he's not you think he's going to be on the straight and narrow no he's charged with more crimes in gaston county including two counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon which is a step up from breaking through the door and stealing beer and uh also financial transaction card fraud driving while his license was revoked and reckless driving.
None of these things you're allowed to do on probation or on parole at all. They don't want you to have any.
Like if you get pulled over for having a taillight out, you have to go call your parole officer and tell them you had a contact with police so they don't violate you. Because I was doing something illegal.
What were you doing? I had a taillight out. Yeah, that's definitely illegal.
Anything higher than that? Come on, man. You know you can't get in trouble.
What are you doing this for? Now, while they get him back in there, first he was just a suspect. They rearrested him on a forgery case.
While in custody, he confessed to several armed robberies. Attaboy.
That they didn't even...

He's just too goddamn honest.

Too honest.

They didn't even have him thought of for those.

I just need you guys to close the books on these for me.

You know what?

I don't want anybody doing any unnecessary footwork is what it is, really.

It's tearing me apart that we're wasting tax resources on investigating this.

Just don't want to do it anymore.

You should just know.

And then he's chasing his tail. I mean, then what? So he said.
I made up with it. He said he confessed to the robberies because he wanted to go back to prison.
He said because he wanted to kick his drug addiction. And he said he was clean while he was in prison.
And that's the way he's going to do it. So he's like, I'm confessing because i want you to send me back to prison so i can kick my addiction and live a normal life you got it buddy

that's right he said he confessed to quote set the record straight is what he wanted to do

the confessions came while police interviewed him on charges that he passed two checks that

belonged to his father's account oh my god so he might not even got sent back and he was like oh i

want to get sent back he also talked to police he said I got another one you probably want to hear about. It's not.
It's a lot older, though. Oh, he said, yeah, this is all this stuff is from 93 to 97.
He said, or 97 on. He said, I got to talk to you about something that happened in 1980.
Oh, he said it's about a rape, beating, and kidnapping of a Bessemer City convenience store clerk in 1980. Yeah, we do got to talk about that one.
Yeah. He said that, well, here's the article, by the way, from the Charlotte Observer from September 11, 1980, when it happened.
So we can get an overview of the crime here. They said a 23-year-old Bessemer City convenience store clerk was kidnapped and raped early Wednesday morning by two men who robbed the store.

They said that the store was the pantry on North Carolina 274 just inside the eastern city limits.

It occurred just after 3 a.m.

The woman who had worked the night shift at the store for almost a year said that a man entered the store, pulled a knife on her, and said this is a robbery.

She said... Just after 3 a.m., the woman who had worked the night shift at the store for almost a year said that a man entered the store, pulled a knife on her, and said this is a robbery.

She said the man was in his early 20s, 5'8", with curly blonde hair and a beard, wore blue jeans and a T-shirt with a 99 on it.

I was a big Ricky Vaughn fan, but 1980, before that.

Now, that does not fit Danny Robby's description at all. He's about, he's six foot, a little bit over brown hair.
Doesn't, doesn't fit at all. After the man took, hates Ricky Vaughn, hates him.
After the man took an undetermined amount of money from the cash register, the woman told police that he told her to walk toward a light blue pickup truck parked near the store. She said the truck had no tailgate.
She told police a second man waited in the truck. She described him as young and slender with brown hair and wearing blue jeans but no shirt.
That sounds more like him. That's our guy, yeah.
She said she was ordered into the vehicle, driven to a secluded area near the old Lincoln Academy and the Grass Valley Golf Course near Crowder's Mountain and was raped by both

men. Fucking awful.

That is fucking horrifying.

The men then beat her,

cut her with a knife, and dumped her from

the truck. A fucking

couple of pieces of shit.

She was unconscious for a time

after the beating, but then awoke shortly

before 5 a.m. and ran through

the woods to a nearby house. Yeah, she went to this house, but the house had no telephone.
It was a rural area. Yeah, no telephone, so they had to, like, take her in their pickup truck to go get help.
She had to sit in the back because no one sits up front but my dog, obviously. What was that, planes, trains, and automobiles or whatever? yeah uh so they took her to the hospital um they said that routinely the police routinely check convenience stores during the third shift and an officer had been to the store minutes before this happened to just do a quick stop in here which unless you're going to sit there a stop-in is really pointless kind of pointless um so they said that they had no suspects and everything like that.
So the he's telling them all about this. The store, by the way, is now Jiggers Drive-In.
Don't like that. Jiggers.
Yeah. So he, Danny Robbie, gives police information about this and they had reopened the investigation.
He said, I have particular information about that crime. And, um, he said, I haven't had, I haven't said I had anything to do with it, but I sure can solve it for you.
Oh yeah. He also told police he knows about a 1981 robbery in Kings mountain and police are trying to find the victims there.

Now, the detective said, quote, it's very unusual. You usually don't have them come forward and start talking about stuff.
Right. Yeah.
You haven't even asked about. Yeah.
No. So they charged him with three armed robberies, one larceny and common law robbery, all dating back to 1993.
They also charged him with forgery. And, yeah, maximum sentences for robbery with a dangerous weapon were 40 years at the time of the crimes.
But he said that he hopes he can get out in less than 20 years. That's what he says at the time.
Fingers crossed. Wow.
He said, I wanted to make sure I either never got back out or got help with my addiction. That what he said so that's how strong addiction is man yeah I'll just sit in jail already anyway right I get out I'm gonna do it so he said that he could be incarcerated for the rest of his life but he said I believe if people see I genuinely want some help and I'm willing to put my life on the line to get this help somewhere along the line I'll I'll get help.
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That's AuraFr promo code small town murder support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply and now back to the show hey everybody just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you about audible let audible expand your life by listening explore over 1 million audiobooks and exclusive audible originals that'll inspire and motivate you all in one easy app tap into your well-being with advice and insight from leading professionals and experts on better health relationships career finance investing and more maybe you want to kick a bad habit or start a good one either way i love listening to these titles on Audible. Right now, what I'm checking out, number one, is Evil, E-V-E-L, about Evil Knievel, and The Red Ripper about Chikatilo, the famous Russian serial killer, and it is really detailed, really interesting.
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Now back to the show. He said, if I can't be helped, I might as well be locked down like an animal for the rest of my life.
He said, I knew with the check thing, I'd be back out. That's why he confessed.
Cause he said, they would have let me out pretty quick after that. That wasn't a big deal.
He said, he always used a BB gun and, um, to rob places. Never a real gun.

It doesn't matter legally.

In the eyes of the law, right.

But it matters sentencing-wise.

Tremendously.

Yes, to say that he couldn't have actually killed somebody.

He wasn't actually to that level.

He said, I never used a real weapon in any of my robberies. The only person that I ever could have got hurt in any of my robberies was me,

not to minimize or justify it.

So that's cards on the table.

I need help.

That's a good sign that he might be growing up a little bit finally.

So that was what you would imagine.

But we find out not so much because April 20th, 1998, he's back in prison.

Well, he was back in prison.

And then they detected him missing at 9.30 a.m. while they did count at the Manning Correctional Institution.
He escaped. He fucking escaped.
He did all of that and then escaped. He escaped.
This guy, unforced error all day long, this fucking guy. Man, talk about regret.
Oh, shit. I didn't want to do this.
I guess officials locked down the prison because they suspected an escape attempt was coming up. They heard something.
Somebody ratted him, sure. They said they don't know how he got out.
There was no break in the fence around the minimum medium security prison, they said. But because he was missing, they assumed he'd escaped.
Can't find him. So they said also he then stole a van from a convenience store on interstate 20 and us 21 on columbia's north side near the prison a white ford econoline van with mcec contractors on the side a big contractor van couldn't be a less fucking more conspicuous vehicle unless he stole a fire truck.
That's crazy. Cop car.
Yeah. Holy shit.
They said that although he doesn't have a violent past, they consider all escaped convicts to be dangerous. They said they did an inmate count and he wasn't there.
So who the fuck knows? They figured out later that he scaled a wall at about 830 a.m. and they didn't find it for an hour that he was gone.
And hours later, a York County Sheriff's deputy saw a man resembling Danny Robbie, but he couldn't stop him, couldn't get to him. So anyway, he had been transferred to this jail because Gaston's jail was full.
And, yeah, while working in this jail's kitchen, that's when he escaped wearing his kitchen white still so wearing a very obvious obvious prison outfit or he's a painter one or the other he's painting somewhere he well with the contractor van and a white outfit he's a painter at that point it's a guy done and done perfect so he's like either that or i gotta find an ice cream truck. One of the two.
Yeah.

Fuck it. So he's described as.
Good humor, man. Yeah.
All white. You know what I'm talking about.
Slinging ice cream. Why not? No one's going to suspect that.
No. That's the least conspicuous vehicle.
There was a mob hit man that did it, for Christ's sake. Mr.
Softy there. He killed people from the van like crazy.
He's white, 6 foot 2, 200 pounds with brown hair and hazel eyes. That's why I said that description didn't fit him earlier.
He's wearing a prison uniform that may have had a white apron because he's a cafeteria worker. April 21st here, they say they believe he's somewhere in his home county.
They say a York in South Carolina, a York County sheriff's deputy spotted him again near Clover. Right.
In a stolen van. The deputy had arrested him several years ago, so he recognized him.
Knew who he was, yeah. Watched him get into the van and take off, but then was unable to catch him and stop him.
Hey, get out and fuck why are you letting him get into the fucking why are you letting him re-steal this person's van how about that in with the whole fleet of the goddamn thing holy shit uh april 23rd couple days later he's captured he was only three days on the outside. He's pretty good, though.
Not bad.

He's charged with a resisting arrest, and he didn't want to go.

And escape.

And escape, yeah, from the arrest here.

They got him at about 12.45 a.m. at a convenience store in Gastonia.

That's that. So 1999, his brother dies in a car accident, it looks like here.

And then his father is going to die the next year.

Senior. Yeah, it's old robbie danny robbie senior now drugs are obviously a fucking problem clearly he can't shake them man no he really can't um when he gets out of prison in 2009 remember january 2009 he got out of prison for all this he founds a little bit of steady work in Charlotte at an apartment complex just to be like a maintenance guy, fixing shit here and there.

But this is who they're hiring to fix shit.

So when you just go, yeah, I'll just leave my door open for you.

This is who's coming into your apartment, everybody, to do maintenance or whatever.

So you want to be there when that's going on. So I would say he had trouble keeping a full time job because he said drug drug use kept on going and going.
Yeah. As soon as he got out.
He's a slave to it for Christ's sake. Yeah, he said at one point, he would do just about anything you could get high or drunk on.

That's what he would do.

He said, alcohol is my drug of choice, but crack cocaine, ecstasy, I mean anything, really. That's what he said.
But that's the hierarchy here, though. It's alcohol, crack cocaine, ecstasy is fun.
He claimed that through his life he'd been prescribed hundreds of prescriptions and had one time or another taken every psychiatric and narcotic drug ever made. He said during this time, 2009, when he got out of prison, he was supposed to be taking Neurontin and Ultram.
When prescribed with other drugs, Neurontin is used to treat seizures associated with epilepsy in adults. And Ultram is a narcotic-like pain reliever.

Okay, so he's got drugs.

Narcotic style?

Yeah, okay, so like oxys and shit.

Yeah.

What's it called?

Ultram.

Ultram.

Ultram.

Never heard of it.

Some fucking 2009 shit.

I'm sure it's been pulled off the market because people's hearts were exploding or something.

Who knows?

Or it caused fucking tumors in your eyes. Yeah, some fen-fen-like issue.
So he was prescribed, both of them, he said, for neuropathy in his feet and joint pain. So, that's who we're dealing with now.
Now, back to October 17th, the last time we saw Heather Marie Catterton and she was with Summer Hefner and Michael Moore. So they spent time with Danny Robbie that day.
In the late afternoon, I guess, Danny Robbie picked up Summer and her boyfriend outside of a store on Route 321 in Gastonia. They stopped at his mother's house, and we'll talk about all of this, and then they continued to the house where Heather lived with her father because he was dating Nicole, Danny Robbie.

So both Heather and Nicole, by the way, are known at this time to have sex for drugs.

Sure.

They will have sex for drugs, either one of them, apparently.

Now, some are allegedly, according to everybody. I everybody i mean i wasn't there i don't know um summer said that heather was a prostitute who would trade sex for drugs period that's it yeah it's men generally don't get that opportunity so no no they would if they could they said i'll suck your dick not yeah right yeah i'll let you suck my dick and give me drugs no that doesn't happen yeah so uh now she summer said that her and her boyfriend were at heather's house along with um heather and danny robbie and that danny robbie offered to buy some crack for the group understanding that he would get sex in return okay so wow When you buy a pizza, that's not the understand like i'll go get the pizza i got it you don't expect someone to blow you before the last pepperoni is eaten you know what i mean nice of you to go that sausage pepperoni that was great wow whip it out come on so eventually the four left heather's house drove in danny robbie's car to a store um they said for the first several of several times that evening a dealer would walk up to his car sell him crack through his window and they'd go they said initially they went into the trailer home of one of danny robbie's friends where they smoked all of his crack over the next several hours the four of them went from place to place purchasing and smoking more crack, drinking booze, having sex, and then looking for more money for more drugs and more alcohol.
That sounds amazing. That's a wild night, man.
Minus the crack, that's a fun night. I mean, looking for drugs.
You're still not doing drugs and getting blown blown off. That sounds great.
That sounds awesome. Sounds awesome.

So eventually here, we'll talk about it, but the boyfriend's going to end up getting left behind at a convenience store.

And they ended up buying more crack.

And then he ended up, Danny Robbie dropped later on, Summer off at her boyfriend's mother's house at about 1 a.m.

And Heather stayed with him. So that's what ended up happening here.
After they ended up at his house, Danny Robbie's house, where he lives with his mother. And after that is when he says he dropped Heather off at her house.
So the last time Summer saw Heather was when Summer and her boyfriend got dropped off. Okay.
Last time. Now, then she's found on October 29th, 2009, like we talked about, the autopsy now with Heather.
They conduct the autopsy. She tested positive for an amount of cocaine, which could have been lethal to a lot of people.

Jesus.

If you weren't, you know, tempered to it.

Yeah.

So they said that her skin had undergone serious changes in color, which would go along with decomposition. It's marbling pattern that forms on the skin from decomposition very early.
also a fairly prominent area of skin slippage or the top layer of skin kind of comes off. Sloughs off.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's a terrible word. When there's decomps in the heat, and they gotta roll them, they'll slough, and sometimes they'll pop, because they're swollen.
Yeah. So sometimes the body will pop pop and it will be horrifying for everyone involved, obviously.
I did not know about the sloughing. Yeah, the sloughing.
That homicide David Simon book, they go over crime scene stuff and it's like, oh man. Roll the body and it sloughs.
God. Jesus.
They were talking about finding somebody who was in a Baltimore attic in the summer, dead for like a week. So imagine how hot that is up there.
I mean, we're talking 130 degrees and just wish it was a skeleton. Yeah.
And it popped and everybody was bad for everybody. We'll put it that way.
So that happened. Also, this was around her neck.
This was going on. So they said this is not an easy autopsy because elements and insects and everything else had gotten to her.

She'd been outside.

It appeared that she'd been left on the side of the road for some time. They said that the,

her decomposition set in,

they said marbling left leg and flank spotty skin condition,

green discoloration,

um,

their skin slippage from the left side and back multiple additional additional foci, F-O-C-I, foci, of skin slippage, face, neck, abdomen, extremities, and a mild distension of the abdomen, which means she was starting to swell. Yeah, starting to blow.
Yeah. The first thing they did was they washed her body, and they said there was dirt and debris all over her.
They said, quote, so having this is the medical examiner. So having done that, it was apparent that she had a number of bruises and a number of scrapes to the skin.
She had what looked like bruising to the right side of her face and inside corner of the right eye. Some scrapes to the left side of her face.
She also had bruises to the thighs, to the bottom area. She had scrapes on her right side and a couple scratches in other places.
So the medical examiner said, I had a concern that perhaps there was a violent element to her death. And one possibility that I did not want to overlook was that perhaps she had been strangled or smothered or something to that effect.
So they said her pupils and cornea were cloudy and poorly visualized, which is another indication you've been, they've been dead for some time. That's why when you pick a, when you pick out fresh fish, you look for, you don't want cloudy eyes.
You want clear eyes. It means less time has passed there.
They're all gray. That's gross.
That's not good. Um, so they said that's one of the things here.
Um, they said the white part of her eye showed evidence of, and this type of trauma to the eyes is consistent with strangulation or asphyxiation. Okay, some blood in the whites? Yeah.
So they said that the medical examiner felt the discoloration around the neck, coupled with the trauma that her eyes showed, showed that that's what they're thinking here now after a while, after a real good autopsy, that she's probably strangled or asphyxiated in some way.

They also said there was no bruising or external trauma around her neck,

but that that finding didn't necessarily rule out anything, basically.

They said ultimately the final autopsy report indicated the cause of death was undetermined. But they're leaning to strangulation asphyxiation.
Now, Heather's funeral, Danny Robbie offered to be a pallbearer at the funeral. It's the sister's boyfriend and whatever.
He said he wanted to help out the family in any way he could. He felt bad.
he told nick how sorry he was for the loss of his

daughter repeatedly and nick was very appreciative of that said oh my older daughter's got a nice

guy here nice crackhead at the funeral danny robbie signed the guest book um then when it

came time to carry the casket he just took off he didn't do it well i mean they're heavy i mean

yeah wow you just that you okay if you say i'll be a pallbearer you gotta do that like that's

Thank you. He didn't do it.
Well, I mean, they're heavy. I mean, yeah.
Wow. You just, okay.
If you say, I'll be a pallbearer, you got to do that. Like, that's.
You got to stick around. You got to stick around, man.
You offered to carry a dead person. Like, that's a big commitment there.
There's six, right? Or is it? Yeah, it's six. Six, yeah.
Yeah. So, or depending on who you are.
One side's going to be heavier. Yeah.
I mean, I bet Ralphie Mae there was 12, but that's a different story. I would hope so.
I bet there was one and it was a crane. Yeah, probably.
And we love Ralphie. No offense to Ralphie Mae.
The greatest guy of a fucking shit, Ralphie. He would make fun of himself.
Yeah. That's, I would assume, a dead comic's biggest regret is that he's dead and can't make fun of the fact that he's dead.
It like that's the ultimate thing self-deprecating thing yeah as i'm dead can't make fun of himself and b can't can't uh make fun of the people that are making fun of him yeah it's like god damn it but that's that's how a comic would think though like oh man this is i can't even tell the story now i'm dying this sucks so that's how sick and diseased we are as people. That's what we think about.
So Summer said back on October 17th when this all started, she said she took a call from Heather. And Heather said, I just got out of jail and I'm at my dad's house.
Great. She had just gotten out of jail.
They said she sounded defeated and tired but you know happy to talk to summer um she said i need you to come over here now so summer said i'll be right over they often i guess summer and heather often met at um at a one of their friends houses here um using the house as a staging area to decide whether or not they were going to go where they're going to go party for the night, basically. So early afternoon, Summer is with her boyfriend, Michael Moore.
They had no way of getting over to see Heather, so they started walking from their friend's house. They walked down the road.
That's when Danny Robbie came up and picked him up off the side of the road. Hey, what are you guys doing here? hell so they hopped in he was driving down the road and um he had never met the boyfriend before michael moore so they said he hung his hand out the window and said hey i'm danny and you know said where y'all going and summer told him and uh and he said well that makes sense because heather sent me to pick you all up.
I just want to take you to see her.

Get on in.

Why'd you ask then?

You knew where they were going.

I'm here to get you.

Rather than saying I'm here to get you, he's lying.

That's what that is.

So Summer looked at her boyfriend.

They looked at each other, and they were like, all right, I guess.

So you don't have to walk.

So anyway, there's that.

Now Summer has always thought he was a little bit weird, this Danny Robbie here. She said he's always up to something, scheming, contemplating, doing that kind of shit.
He once explained how he had gone from – he explained that he used to go from dating. He had this one group, this one family where he dated the mother and then moved on to the daughter and he said oh yeah I also did that with these people with the Cattertons he said quote I had promised Stella some things that I was now giving to Nicole you know my dick yeah these balls so they pulled up to Danny Hembree's mother's house here.
Danny Robbie's mom. And a small house, red brick ranch-style house with black shutters and all that kind of thing.
Well-kept yard. Didn't look like a piece of shit or anything like that.
So that's fucking nice. Danny lived here with his mom.
He had a bedroom and a den area kind of to himself down the hall from his mother. So Danny told Summer and her boyfriend, wait in the car.
He said, I won't be long. I'm just running in to get some money and to see my daughter.
Okay. So they waited about 30 minutes and they talked about how weird he is.
And they were like, Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on here? And she later said, Summer said, you know how you can just tell when people are strange? That was Danny Hembree. Yeah, that was him.
He returned to the car, didn't say shit, and proceeded to go on to their friend's house. They said that they're all going to go, whatever, smoke crack or whatever.
This is going to Nick's house, which is Heather's house, Heather and Nicole's house. Nick's the dad.
So at the house, they get to the Catterton house. Danny, Michael Moore, Summer, they all get out of the car, walk in.
Danny here goes about his business of hanging out with Nicole because that's where his girlfriend lives. So he goes and hangs out with his girlfriend.
Summer's boyfriend sits in the living room. Summer went and found Heather.
Heather was taking a bath. So she said this is the first time that Summer had seen Heather since Heather had been released from jail.
So she's had a bunch of fucking things there. She said she put on a little bit of prison weight, but she's still very attractive and, you know, look like a kid.
A little different weight well you take off baby weight you put on prison weight that's what it is it's like baby weight minus the hope yeah this it'll never end it's a sadder weight so uh heather and summer hung out in the bathroom and chit-chatted here while heather finished a bath very comfortable with each other here. Summer said she had been clean for a while and hadn't been using drugs, but she was drinking that day.
She's not so clean. She's not that clean.
So they talked about what they were going to be doing to celebrate Heather's jail fucking release here. So as they're talking, Danny and Nicole walked in.
And Nicole, everyone's just hanging out with this naked 17-year-old. Can we let a 17-year-old bathe by herself, get fully dressed, and then chit-chat about what we're going to do? So Nicole asked, what are you guys up to tonight? You guys have plans? And Heather and Summer didn't really seem interested in hanging out with Nicoleicole and danny um so yeah and they all they didn't understand it too because nicole is like young and attractive and she's dating this guy who's twice her age and a fucking scumbag fucking ex-convict so um they said his skin was like yellow and shit he looked weird he looked like he had hepatitis drug addict yeah yeah that's what i mean they said he had had no job he'd get up in the morning and just start drinking beer they described him as waking up in the morning with a beer in his hand and going to bed with a crack pipe in his other hand so pretty nice day yeah they don't get it um so danny waited till nicole left nicole said all right whatever and she left the bathroom.
Then Danny kind of comes in conspiratorially. I don't know how much more conspiratorial you can be than being in a 17 year old's bathroom while she's bathing.
But that's a separate issue. Feels like a conspiracy.
That's just take that level of weirdness. And that's not even that's brushed over.
It's not even a big deal with this shit. So he said, y'all want to come off and get high is what he said to them y'all want to come off and get high he said come on i'll buy the dope okay so i mean we're talking it's a free sponsored evening now at this point so yeah um so he paused and heather didn't respond and he said i promise a good time if you want to come yeah and they were like okay and uh but they apparently that that this is what danny would say to girls i'll pay i'll buy the dope if you come and party with me in other words we'll fuck and i'll pay that's all it is i'm buying so you're sucking that's it yep so that's what he said.
And, you know heather he liked he seemed to be kind of interested in heather even though he's dating her sister and um so yeah he's like she's all clean from jail and everything hadn't been on drugs in a while heather said i ain't going anywhere without summer get your ass out of here that's what he what he told her. She told her.
So Heather's not taking shit.

She's not a meek 17 year old.

She's been in foster care,

jail,

everything else.

She's like,

fuck out of here with your fucking pervert ass.

So Danny looked at summer and took a look at summer and said,

I don't mind her going meaning summer.

And summer said,

I don't really know you.

I'd never go with you without my boyfriend.

So then Heather said, get out of here. Go, come on, get the fuck out of here.
I mean, I want to get out of the tub. I'm not doing it in front of you.
Summer and Summer said I don't really know you I'd never go with you without my boyfriend so then

Heather said get out of here go come on get the fuck out of here I mean I want to get out of the tub I'm not doing in front of you so he said all right and he walked away now earlier and through this the girls had heard Danny and Nicole arguing with each other which is they were always arguing with each other basically whenever he wanted to get away from Nicole to go do what he wanted to do. He'd start a fight so he could leave.

Danny later said

Nicole wanted me to buy her something I told her no and she got pissed that sounds made up so Summer later said Nicole talked about going out by herself that night to go hang out with people and doing shit so now Heather Summer Danny Robbie and, Michael Moore, all take off. They go to a local store, like we said.
They score some crack, like we talked about, like Summer said. Some guy came out and dumped it off in the driver's window.
From the store, they drove to a friend's house on Chapel Grove, which is a trailer park, and his buddy was home. But as soon as Summer, Heather, Danny, and Summer's boyfriend got there, Danny's pal took Danny's car and left.
All right, y'all take my trailer. And he got in the car and left.
And it was kind of like they said it seemed planned almost. It was weird.
Yeah, that is. Yeah.
So they arrive at the trailer and he knew that heather wanted to smoke crack that's what she's into so summer said they went off into a bedroom to go smoke crack him heather and danny robbie so they were gone for about 30 minutes um at one point summer walked in the bedroom to see what was up and make sure everything was okay because she said she didn't trust Danny and this is her quote Summer said quote they was just butt necking is that what you do when you smoke crack that's it you get yeah that's fucking yeah for sex I want you to burn your shirt take it off if you've ever seen dope sick love you know that's yeah they're just smoking crack and then the one couple there with a guy, you're burn your shirt. Take it off.
Oh, if you've ever seen Dope Sick Love, you know, that's. Yeah.
Yeah. They're smoking crack.
And then the one couple there, you know, with a guy. You're the best, Al.
That guy. That's what they do.
They'd smoke crack and they'd be like hitting the crack. Baby, I'm going to take you and fuck you and do all this shit.
I was like, what is going on? So she said they was just butt naked on the bed. Heather seemed fine.
So Michael Moore starts walking down there. But Summer stops him before he could go any further.
And he said, they're all naked, Michael. Let them be.
They're all naked right now. There's a youngster in there with her tits out.
Don't go in. Heather said, that's fine.
He can come in. Oh boy.
What's happening? So they said an afterward, this is summer's quote.

When they was done,

we all got high.

So after smoking that first round,

Heather and summer wanted more,

you know,

as crack goes,

they said,

it's not a long crack.

High is short.

It's not a long,

not a long thing.

Leaves you unsatisfied and wanting more.

That's what I'm saying.

So Danny told everyone that he wanted to go hang out, hang out inside another trailer nearby. It was an abandoned trailer.
Those are the cool ones. That's what you want.
They said it's a filthy mess. It's where, like, fucking teenagers and scumbags hang out.
Yeah. Beer bottles and empty crack vials and shit like that are all over the place.
There's blankets, bug-infested shit, broken glass, boarded-up windows, mold, no electricity. Piece of shit.
When they go there, when they get inside, Danny said he wanted Heather and Summer to have sex together so he could watch. In here.
In here. Amongst this.
Cocaine's a hell of a drug, as Rick James once said. Yeah.
Cocaine is such an incredibly powerful drug that as a gross old man you can tell two teenagers you'd like them to perform sex acts with each other in front of you and they'll go okay in a disgusting environment in a disgusting moldy shit covered trailer disgusting um so yeah he said that's what he wants he wants them to do that and um he said that if you want to smoke more crack, you'll get on with the show. Put on a show for me.
So Summer said, so Heather and me, we put on a show. Wow.
Jesus. When they finished this, Danny had a suggestion.
Quote, me and Heather by ourselves. We's going back to my mother's house so I can get some more cash to continue the party.

And y'all got a problem with that.

So Summer and Michael said, no, that's fine.

We'll wait in here in the scummy trailer.

We'll wait for the crack.

We'll wait for the crack.

So they did.

Danny and Heather went off to his mother's house in search of more cash.

Danny said something about two or three hundred dollars in cash his mother had stashed inside the house that's nice stealing mom's savings for your old mother's god damn it fucking that's emergency fund that is fucking gross i was about eight o'clock at night uh summer said it seemed like forever they were gone uh danny ended up with a giant jug of pennies that's what he ended up coming back with. He said that's all he had left to his name.
They hadn't located any cash back at the house there. So they decided let's go to one of those change into cash machines at a supermarket.
Yeah, a Coinstar. Coinstar and pay 10% to that shit.
So by 11, they had exchanged the change for cash at the supermarket,

and Danny bought more crack. Time to party again.
That is the last thing you have, man. Now you're going to start pawning shit.
That's it. Hopefully the night will run out before then maybe, and you'll be done.
So they ended up going back to Danny's mother's house where Danny lives, And the idea was for Danny and Summer's boyfriend to swap Danny, Summer, and Heather. They're going to trade.
Okay. Go back and forth.
Summer said that didn't work out so well because, you know, crack cocaine makes it to where men can't perform right. Right.
Yeah. Fuck your dick up.
Fuck dick, yeah. So instead they were like, fuck it and smoke more crack.
Oh, boy. So when the crack was gone, Danny revisited another idea.
He said, I know my mother has money hidden. He said, I know it, I know it, I know it.
So he said, look, there's $200 or $300 stashed somewhere in this house. We just need to find it.
So they all went out ransacking the house in a big treasure hunt. The whole four crackheads.
Robbing mom's home. Yeah.
They couldn't find any cash, and there came to a point here where Danny began to get violent with Michael Moore, Somerset. As she said, a switch had flipped in Danny.
He went from looking for money and willing to buy cocaine for everyone to a fucking maniac blaming everyone around him why they can't get more crack. Danny soon went after Michael, charging at him, saying, I'll shoot you, man.
I'll whip your ass. I'll stab you.
I'll cut you. I'll kill you.
Just all the different methods. I'll do it.
I'll overdose you. I'll do something.
He was just freaked out. So they were like, what the fuck is going on here? Danny then locked Michael Moore out of the house after accusing him of finding and stealing the money.
Okay, you have it. It's in your pocket somewhere.
It's in your pocket, yeah. So Summer said, please, Danny, what are you doing? And Heather said, I'm getting the fuck out of here.
This is getting too weird. You know what I mean? So, yeah.
Now, Michael Moore, who had found some booze earlier stashed, was shit-faced, drunk, and coming down from a crack high, sitting outside on the stoop. Yeah.
Next thing you know, Summer says, it's freezing cold out there, Danny, please. And she put on her shoes and said, I'm just going to walk home if you ain't going to let Michael back in.
So Danny approached the door and stood in front of it and then opened the door and motioned with his hand for Michael to come back in. He said, you sit on that couch to Michael.
That's where he's allowed to sit. Okay, that's interesting.
He says, you do not move and you do not leave this living room.

You fucking understand me.

Okay, sure.

I guess.

So Summer ran over, sat down next to Michael and didn't want him to say anything to Danny and make it worse.

So Heather and Danny, after he suggested it, started to search the house for the money.

You guys stay here. Me and Heather will search.
So he said, look, it has to be here somewhere. But then they didn't find it.
By after midnight, Danny said, let's just go. And Heather said, where are we going? And he said, alone, just you and me.
Oh, boy. She thought about it for a second, then turned to Summer and said, I'll be back.

I'm going with Danny.

And by the way, about the sex, Summer said he liked rough sex.

I noticed him pulling Heather's hair.

And he said, she said, I never, quote, I ain't never done seen him strangling her or anything like that.

I ain't never done seen him. I ain't never done seen him.
Ain't never done seen him strangling her or anything like that i ain't never done seen him ain't never done seen him yeah right so yeah i'm seeing so she's saying hold on ain't never ever yeah it's a double negative did she not see i'm not positive i gotta remember how that works if two negative numbers, negative two plus negative two is negative four, right?

But I think you have to divide that by how many teeth they have.

Or is it?

Yeah.

By that, the number of communicable childhood diseases that were preventable that they acquired.

Multiplied by amount of crack pipes in the pocket.

And the number of times you've had rickets, I believe, is how it works.

I think she's trying to say she's never seen him choke anybody but he is into rough sex that's what she's trying to say yeah yeah he likes it rough but not like too rough not like that that i saw anyway yeah that that i saw i witnessed nothing i ain't seen shit so i ain't witnessed nothing i ain't done witness nothing is what she said never know how never ain't witnessed nothing. I ain't seen shit.
I ain't witnessed nothing. I ain't witnessed nothing.
I ain't done witnessed nothing is what she said. Never know how.
Never ain't know how. So anyway, that is all to get back to the point to where Danny was talking to the investigators at the food mart.
This is all the information they've had is that Danny was there. Danny saw Heather that night.
Who knows where Heather went after that? So he talks to them at the food mart, and he said the last time he saw Heather, the 18th near 2 in the morning, which is exactly what Summer said. He said something about partying with Heather, a girl named Summer Hefner, and Summer's boyfriend.
He didn't want Nicole to find out that he was, you know, smoking crack and fucking his little sister, her little sister, probably.

He admitted to the cops he did have sex with Heather that night.

They said, how'd the night begin?

And he said, Nicole and me, we got into a fight.

She wanted something and wanted me to get it for her. And I told her I wouldn't.

They asked about the Catterton family in general.

And Danny then says this, quote, look, I've had sex with Heather, Nicole, and their mother, Stella. Oh, God.
I fucked everything with a vagina in that entire family. I'll fuck their grandmother if I could find her, but I think she's in a home somewhere.
Stella's sisters better watch the fuck. Better watch her.
Aunt fucking Diane better watch her shit. Oh, that's the crazy lady who killed people on the couch.
said had you seen heather meaning between the time she disappeared and wound up dead and he said lots of people been asking me about heather i've been asking around you know um and he said that um i couldn't find anyone who done seen her that's that no one done seen her so what do you want? So they said, do you have any ideas anywhere we could, any direction? Clues. Clues.
He said, hmm. He said, there was this one guy.
He'd been looking for Heather. They call him the Marlboro man.
Great. We'll track him down.
Don Johnson. Who were we looking for? Yeah.
Was it Don Johnson? Was he Harley Davidson or the Marlboro Man? I'm not sure which one he was. No positive.
They call him the Marlboro Man. Great.
So a male smoking. That's what we got at this point.
Looking for a cowboy in snakeskin boots that have duct tape all over the table. You know how it works.
what you're looking for he said quote he drives a red dodge i'd done seen him near the 17th he was looking for heather they call him the marlboro man because of that red dodge he he got he traded in his miles and that's what he got the back the tailgate's just a giant marlboro logo that's all it is it's why the truck's red it looks like a pack of cigarettes actually from the back custom jobber so the investigators are like okay that's actually good information because there was reports of a truck with that description in the neighborhood where she'd been found so yeah great so one of the you know pickup trucks anyway one of the investigators asked danny where he had been that week and he said he was working and when he got off work he'd go to his mother's house eat dinner then drive over to nicole's and he said he did that just about every day and nicole's family confirmed that danny's employer confirmed that he showed up for work and all that kind of shit so yeah they they're at a dead end dead end here so i don't know i ain't seen her so i ain't done seen her ain't done never so they said was there anything else about that night you can recall and tell us about and he said just that summer's boyfriend was an asshole and he couldn't do nothing meaning get an erection he said so i wound up with heather and summer i had to fuck them both that's how it worked that limp dick motherfucker made me fuck two women that night that's right now the summer though told police it was danny who couldn't get an erection that night so he's projecting he's projecting erect he's projecting his non-erecting is what he's doing He's projecting, not erecting. It's a non-erecting projecting.
Yeah.

Non-erecting is what he's doing. He's projecting, not erecting.
It's a non-erecting projecting. Non-erection projection is what that is.
So they, he said he dropped Heather off at the mighty dollar that night. I assume it's a dollar store.
He said, I went back home to my mama's and stayed till about 10 o'clock the next morning when my son came over. And then Stella's boyfriend and he said call.

Then Stella's boyfriend called and that's when he came up there.

So they said returning from home dropping Heather off.

He explained that he came home quote watch some porn and fell asleep.

Jerked off.

After he just said he had threesomes and twosomes and every other fucking kind of sum there is he's like i need to jerk it one more time i came home and watched porn i didn't jerk off i just i just wanted to get to the plot and get to the end and i got one it's got a real good story i mean it's just it's real interesting you actually fast forward through the fucking to see what happens in the plot which is is rare for a part. Yeah, see if she tips him after he delivers that pizza.
So by the end of the week here, they have no real leads, and they're just exhausted of dealing with all these crackheads. They just have a crazy, crazy story to deal with.
Crazy story and all this type of shit. They don't know what's going on, but they do know that they have a dead 17-year-old.
Okay. Now, on the night that Heather's identity is released to the public, a friend of hers sees the news broadcast.
Her name is Randy Saldana. Randy with an I.
She's 29 years old at the time, and she lives in Gastonia. She's sitting in her sister Shelly's living room watching tv and Heather's picture came up and she said I know her yeah and her sister said from where and she said fuck I don't know he said I know her I know her I know her I know her and then she said I got it jail that's right now we're from yeah she said I saw her in jail and um the sister said you mean you've talked to her and she said I talked to her.
She said, I've also seen her around town from time to time. She said, and you know, she would not have gone down like that without a fight.
She was a tough chick. Yeah.
So if someone who you just did jail time with says you're a tough chick, you're probably a tough chick. Yeah.
One thing for your dad to say it, but another for a fellow inmate to give you your props. I don't take shit off nobody.
Yeah. It hits different when it's fucking D-Lo.
I was in the pen with him. In the cell block.
Yeah. Someone says, I was in the joint with that guy.
You go, oh shit, yeah, he's probably a badass then. So now Randy, a little bit of background on Randy here.
She's got her sister. They're about a year apart, her sister Shelly.
They did everything together when they were kids. Shelly said, Randy and I both grew up in Gastonia.
We had good lives. We were raised for the majority of our lives by our grandmother.
We lived a very religious life. They attended the local Pentecostal Church of God every Wednesday and Sunday with their grandparents.
Never drugs or alcohol in the home ever. This is a teetotal and God-fearing home here.
Shelly said it was as straight a life as you could lead. Prayer, family dinners, more prayer, TV, lemonade, Bible talk.
That's what they did. They were whatever.
You couldn't raise your kid in a more kind of wholesome, wholesome, clean environment. Shelly said there were never anything that we could complain about growing up.
We had good schooling, a good home. She did say, though, Randy was never one to get out there and start trouble with people.
It just wasn't in her. But look, if someone brought trouble her way, she was never going to back down.
She would stand her ground. Still, Randy was brought up in a godly way.
She had more sympathy for people than anger or animosity. She never really wanted to be ugly to anyone.
That's her sister. Now, while in high school, she got pregnant.
Now, yeah. Okay.
Because that's one way or the other. That's the thing.
If you raise three kids like that, one of them is going to be a pastor. One of them is going to be a crackhead.
It's just you can't. Not all the time.
But, yeah, overly anything is bad. Overly loose, alcoholic, beating you with a belt, or this can lead to the same exact fucking place is the thing.
And that's the weird part, too, is you see families, they have three kids, you know, two of them are fine and one of them's a fucking disaster. And you're like, okay.
Is that the parent's fault? Whose fault is that? Is that just some people are a disaster, I guess. I don't know.
Not that she is. Oftentimes it's the youngest, but it just happens that way.
Sometimes it's the middle one. Who knows? This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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apply fees apply at out of network atms my pay eligibility requirements apply credit limit ranges 20 to 500 dollars two dollar fee applies to get funds instantly chime checking account required go to chime.com slash disclosures for details and now back to the show in high school she got pregnant and

she said that

basically the boyfriend started coming around and causing problems for her. And then some other guy.
It was a big mess. So she gave birth to a son here.
And that. And so that's how that goes.
So that's Randy Saldana, her friend. Now, November 15th, 2009.
This is a little over two weeks after Heather is found. This is on another dirt road in York County.
Two women are riding horses near the Kings Mountain National Military Park when Catherine Sturgill here says to her friend, quote, it seems like a burn spot on the ground.

Looks like somebody tried to set it,

set the woods on fire over there.

Look at that.

So Catherine gets off her horse and look,

goes over to the burn and she stood by what she described as a foot or the

foot.

I'm sorry,

of the patch of score,

the foot of a patch of scorched ground.

Yeah.

With Heather,

it's finding a foot.

This is the foot.

They said it was the foot of the patch of scorched ground. Yeah, with Heather, it's finding a foot.
This is the foot. They said the foot of the patch of scorched ground was just about a little bit larger than a human being's size.
They said there was something inside the ring of char, face up, the face is blackened by fire, and melted off. So they thought it was, they also saw what looked like a human arm sticking up in the air with black soot all over it.
So they said that black soot melted into it. They said the entire thing was draped over a rotted log.
And there was some kind of blanket or tart melted onto this thing itself, whatever this thing was. They thought it was a mannequin.
It looks like a burned mannequin. It looks like somebody burned a mannequin.
She said it's in the shape of a human being. It makes no sense.
Then they started seeing other areas that were unburned with skin exposed and she said she saw the vaginal area was visible and unburned and one breast was exposed. A leg was burned at the foot and thigh and the entire neck and shoulders and head were charred and red.
Jesus Christ. Some of it completely melted away.
So they said it wasn't clear if the mannequin's clothing had made the blackened melted shit or they didn't understand what it was. So they said it's really weird.
then notice the feet of the mannequin were bound with

a copper wire or cord with the look like the plastic outer coating of the wire had been burned away melting like a like a twisted up hanger no no more like a uh like a a cord like a oh solid solid wire cord yeah solid wire cord with a yeah i'm thinking like a plug yeah yeah yeah So she yelled up to her friends, someone set a mannequin on fire.

That's what it looks like. So then she walks up to the mannequin here, the torso section, which was red and burned but intact, and she touched it.
Why? Don't do that at all. A, why would you make sure by touching it? If you're not call somebody don't touch it well i don't want to make a phone call and make people come out here unnecessary like yep that seems like a waste of resources she poked it she said i wanted to make sure and she then screamed call 9-1-1 call 9-1-1 she said it felt soft she She said it was like dough.
Oh, Jesus. She's like, oh, God, Jesus, it's not a mannequin.
Call 911. It's a body.
It's a body. She said it felt like human flesh.
So that is fucking horrifying. She calls the cops.
They said this is a very rural area. There's only one residence on it that I know of.
It runs through the state park and the area. It's a pretty isolated area.
In other words, you could dump a body here pretty easily. So cops get out and the cops, when they get there, the initial cop turns to this captain and says, I think it might be a mannequin, Captain.
I don't think that's a real body. And the captain said, This is why you have to touch it, James.
The cops have to touch it, not you. No, you no no i mean yeah but she touched it and they still don't believe it didn't know they still don't believe it so you get in there and fucking touch it how about that with your goddamn job so the captain's like like somebody pulling a prank and they said yeah yeah yeah so they were like yeah that's what it seems like so they approached the body they got close enough to see the a ridge detail on the bottom of the foot and he said nope it's a person i see yeah that's not good uh mannequins don't have that they don't put shit on the bottom of feet and mannequins so they said that whoever placed this woman here had bound her legs together with a wire or a cord.

So they were like,

this is obviously a cover up of a violent murder here.

Yeah.

Clearly.

So then they realized,

everybody realized that this is the second body found.

This is less than seven miles from Heather's body.

This is found.

So the same fucking area.

They're like,

hold on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

These two,

they know each other.

They're from the same area.

We'll find out what happened here. Yeah.
It's pretty fucking crazy. And they said a second female having been burned.
They said that shows that especially that someone progressing and learning. The first body was found.
Just identified easily. Got back.
Now, maybe we dump it and burn it so it doesn't get found that easily. So DNA testing comes back that it is the body of Randy Saldana, the young lady who saw Heather on TV.

Yeah.

Her mother said, this is Randy's mother, said she told me she loved me.

She told me she'd be back the next day and I never saw her again.

And then two weeks later, they found her there.

And she said, my daughter didn't deserve to be burnt and thrown out like trash.

Nobody does.

I mean, apart from the obvious, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Being, what's the word?

When you're trash and they light you on fire and put you in a bag and give you your loved ones. Yeah, when you're cremated.
Yes. Yes.
I kept thinking incarcerated. Usually it's a professional does that and it's not done in a field usually.
Yeah, you can't just be tied up with a landscape. Side of a dirt road.
Yeah. So they go back and they talk to Danny Robbie again because, you know, he knows a lot and he knew a lot about the first one.
so they go back and they talk to Danny Robby again because you know he knows a lot and he knew a lot about the first one so they said what do you know about Randy Saldana and he said I've never had sex with Randy that's his first not I know her I've never had sex with her which is how if you ask me about any woman I go I've never had sex with her usually it happens all the time so I answer shit never had sex with her, usually. It happens all the time.

So I answer shit.

What do you know about Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen?

Never had sex with them.

Never had sex with them.

Okay, great.

Perfect.

So they said that he, then he sat there thinking and he said, Randy did rub up against my arm one night.

So I touched her, but I didn't have sex with her, she touched me close yeah yeah so they're swabbing him for dna at this point and so they said so there shouldn't be any of your dna sperm saliva nothing like that on randy at all and i said no no absolutely i mean she rubbed on me i mean i don't would whatever. But other than that, no.
So then police are searching different places and looking around and they find Randy's jewelry. Oh, when her body was found, her jewelry was missing.
They end up finding her jewelry from Nicole. Heather's sister has Randy's jewelry.
Why? That's what they'd like to know here. Yeah, so they said that her aunt, this is Nicole and Heather's aunt, said that the cops confiscated all of her jewelry too because some of it, or not all of her jewelry, all of Nicole's jewelry because some of it belonged to Randy.
They also said as Nicole went through items in the closet in front of the cops, the cops pointed something out, bent down and said, what the fuck is this?

And she said, that's not mine.

And it was a piece of cut electrical cord that was on the closet floor cut into a length, which how many of those do you have around your house?

Zero.

I have zero.

Yeah.

Zero cut electrical cords. Not a lot.
Yeah. They said, whose cord is this? And she said, that's Danny's.
Oh, Danny's got electrical cords. Yeah.
So then they search Danny's car as well here. They search his car, and nothing is found in the car.
Then they pop the trunk, and they find what he says is, quote, another piece of cut electrical wire in the trunk he says to the other guy look at this shit and the guy said that's similar to the piece of wire used on randy saldana's legs oh uh-oh so they don't like that so they go in before they don't arrest danny right now because it could be a coincidence who knows he could have been throwing out garbage and cutting up a thing you never know i mean that's tying hay bales we don't Who the fuck knows? He could have been throwing out garbage and cutting up a thing. You never know.
I mean, that's.

Tying hay bales. We don't know.
Who the fuck knows? Could have been. He could have been making a fucking a ball strangler with it.
He could have been making cock rings. We have no idea what this guy does.
He's nuts. We's legal.
We make cock rings. So they're conducting a thorough background check on Danny Robbie now.
and they learn that he was questioned in 2007 as the primary suspect in the 1992 murder of another local Gastonia girl. Yeah.
So they're like, oh, my God, they keep finding more and more shit to talk about with this guy. So they called him up on the phone on November 17th.
they said there was a feeling among investigators they had to either scratch him off the list or put him at the top of the list, one or the other. He's involved too many ways in all this shit.
Either all of it or none of it. None of it here.
He had alibis for both cases but was still open to talking to police. But they said who knows if he was telling us the truth.
So they call him up and the cop says, listen, Danny, how are you?

He says.

And Danny said, good, good.

What can I do for you?

And he said, I'd like you.

I'd like to know if you could come down to the sheriff's office and take a polygraph for me and clear some things up.

We just want to confirm some information here.

You know what I mean?

That's it.

So Danny tells him that I've been forthcoming, but he's starting to get a little pissed off.

And you know that because he says, quote, I'm getting pissed now, though. Y'all got me fired from my job.
Oh, yeah. So they've been putting some pressure on him and they've followed him around and asked around about him.
And they'd ask questions of his friends and his buddies and his work people and all that. You know, and they said, how so, Danny? And he said, y'all went up there to my work site and talked to my boss.
The guy tried to say something else, and Danny said, listen, my mom's thinking of kicking me out of the house too now. You guys are fucking me over.
So the guy said, come on, Danny. And Danny just said, y'all went to my mama's house, and you done told her I was smoking crack.
Oh. You done told my mama I was smoking crack.
That's the first time she found out yeah and they said he's they said we never went to your job site danny and we did not tell your mama anything that she didn't already know yeah and danny took a moment took a pause and then said fuck you don't call me again and hung up on the guy stop calling my mama decemberth, 2009, Danny Robbie's arrested in Gaston County on a series of armed robberies. He's still robbing, huh? He's still robbing.
The change jar's gone. He's got nothing left now, and he's fired.
So he was charged with robbing the Staybridge Suites on Forest Pine Drive, and police said that he's also a suspect in the robbery of another

motel and restaurant.

That seems like a bad place to rob.

Yeah, a motel.

In 2009?

That's all credit, right?

I would think, and all I could imagine is that late at night, there's probably one person

working there.

That's the only thing I could imagine, is they're looking for solo proprietors here.

The only place with cash is the Motel 6 by the airport in Austin. That's the only one.
They got a bunch of our cash. Our deposit and change.
That was in 2017 when we first started this. Hadn't made a dime off podcast yet, so we got invited to South by Southwest and oh boy did we scrimp and scrape money together to get there and stay there we had like no food listeners bought us a meal it's like we hadn't eaten and like we ate like jack in the box the night before and it was like 24 hours later we hadn't eaten food it was bad it was bad how much can we get a room for this and they're like we need a hundred dollars more I was like oh that's all I have that's it that's everything here you go that was bad we had change literally that was bad shit so um they end up sitting down with danny robbie now uh they give him his miranda and all that kind of shit and record the interviews and everything um first of all they picked him up and put him in the box when they put him in the box in the interrogation room they like to leave you in there for a while and see what you do yeah sweat it out yeah number one thing they like to see is if you do is fall asleep yeah because that's like homicide detective 101 is the one who falls asleep in the box is a fucking that's that's your murderer right there yeah innocent people are uncomfortable being in an interrogation room and they pace and they look around and they knock on the door and go where the fuck are you and they do all that shit so they return that 12 32 a.m they look in there and he's sleeping and so they tried to wake him up and he was having a hard time sleeping on top of his arms they're yelling at him danny danny danny fun they grab him by the arm and he slaps out of snaps out of it jesus christ so they asked Danny, can you wake up for everybody here? Maybe a little bit.
Yeah. They said, you want to talk and get all your eggs in one basket and let's get it over with, the guy says to him.
He said, you know, I don't want to sit there staring at you. So gave him the Miranda form, fills it out, all that good shit.
And he said, you know what we want to talk about? And he says, yup, them says yep them robberies and they said okay which one would you like to talk about first he leaned back in his chair danny robbie yeah takes a deep breath and he says y'all get them from york county up here and y'all get me something to eat and let's talk about those murders i'll tell you about them two girls get me a steak he said you get me some food and grab the other people from the other county and we'll chit chat. So this guy was like, huh? He sat down to talk to him about armed robberies that he'd been arrested for.
So he said, okay, sure. That last thing he expected to happen.
That's not why he was here at all. So he goes back to sleep and then wakes him up again here.
And he said that it would take some time to get that meal. And Hembree just blurts out, actually, York County, theys wasn't killed there.
Theys was just dumped there. Theys was killed in Gastonia.
So no need to get the York County guys. Actually, you can probably handle this.
So the guy, the detective said, okay, he's like the recording of it is, Oh, okay. He's like shocked.
So they leave him in there for a few hours. They get hold of York County and, uh, they all go to sit down with Danny here.
Uh, he got some sleep now. Let him sleep in the box for a few hours they get hold of york county and uh they all go to sit down with

danny here uh he got some sleep now they let him sleep in the box for a while and one of the investigators said well you requested york county we're here and he said quote them girls wasn't killed in no york county and as he's doing it he's like this with his fingertip on the table doing that.

Dave was not killed in York County.

And they said no, and he said nope.

I was just And as he's doing it, he's like this with his fingertip on the table. Okay.
Doing that. Dave is not killed in York County.
And they said no. And he said nope.
I just dumped him there. I did.
I did. And the way he used dumped, they said, was he said, I just dumped him there.
Like real. They were like.
Disrespectful. They said, where did this happen at? And he said, I killed them at Mama's.
Oh. That's nice.
He said, I killed Heather downstairs in the laundry room, and I killed Randy in my den. You'll find their blood all over the couch.
And they said, at your Mama's? And he said, yep. Okay.
They said, does your mom know? And he said, nope. They said, anybody else know? He said, nope.
She didn't even know I smoked crack. Yeah, you had to tell her that shit.
They said he talked about this as if he was just talking about going out to TGI Fridays the night before for some wings. Casual, detached.
Yeah. That's it.
He talked about killing Randy. And he said that if you go downstairs in his mother's house, you can find, quote, where she bled.

And I tried to clean up the blood.

And they said, was that blood from her nose?

And he said, yeah, I punched her in the nose after she was dead.

I didn't figure she'd bleed or nothing.

Why the fuck did you punch her in the nose after she was dead?

Why would you do that?

Why would you do that? Why would you fucking do that so um that's really weird um he remembered when he killed heather he said quote it was 4 30 on the 18th and i dumped her body that sunday so they said well what brought all this on and he said i killed heather because, I don't know, I just did. I just wanted to.
And I killed Randy for the same reason, just wanted to. Really? He said he used a bag on Heather.
Oh, Jesus. That's how he suffocated her.
A fucking Walmart bag. Oh, Christ.
That just makes it worse for some reason. I don't know why that makes it worse that it's a Walmart bag.
It's because there's a smiley face on it. You know what I mean? It just makes it just trashier for some reason.
If it was from like a decent grocery store, it wouldn't be as bad. But something about that just makes it way worse.
It's horrifying. He said, and it took a long time, too.
He really is digging himself. She struggled then? What is that? well that night me summer and heather had sex six or seven times and then he said quote heather was a whore and she wouldn't quit and she was just having to sell her body to the n words every now and then but he says it full full it's one of his favorite words honestly oh he says it constantly and i just uh released her from that that's what he said that's where he released her from he's a hero he's a yeah he's helping her he said i wasn't mad at her or nothing she just she's just better off now god she's 17 you could have maybe cleaned her up and had a whole other life.
In a drug prison at the moment. Yeah.
Man. So she wasn't knocked out? He just put it over her head and hung on to her? That's what I'm saying.
That's fucking, yeah, that's what's wild. Wow.
So he then said, then he sat there for a minute and said, quote, I was going to get her mama this week. Really? Was it kill Heather's mama too? Yeah.
They were like, okay. So he said, yeah.
He said, you know, I was at someone's apartment the night before his recent arrest here. And he said Shorty was supposed to come over there.
Shorty is apparently a local drug dealer. Yeah.
And a black guy too. Okay.
And I going to kill him, too. Heather hated Randy.
They fought over the same N-word, Shorty. He fucks all them young white girls, and he's 50-something.
He gave them crack. They should be fucking me.
I'm only 40-something. And you're doing the same thing he's doing? Yes, exactly.
So he then said about Randy, when she was around an N-word she tried to talk like an n-word okay we all do it that's well you talk around around everybody that you are talk to an english person for an hour and you'll start you'll start hitting it it's just what people do people yeah it's how you meld into situations it's how you are are. Yeah, if I spend a week in Arizona, I can tamp down my accent.
No, no, never. But I can tamp down my accent.
I come back to New York. It's everywhere.
It's hard. It's hard.
Why is James saying yeehaw? It's been in Arizona. I've never said yeehaw in my life.
Well, actually, I have, but it's only a sexual thing. That's the only time.
It's only when I, only sexual. It's only when I come.
It's only when I come. That's what I yell every time.
I can't even, I don't even know why I do it. I just do it.
It just happens. So he said that he just hated this about Randy and it disgusted him.
He said, so you're a racist, sir. That's your problem.
He's a huge racist. And I love a crackhead fucking judging others.
This guy has no place to stand and say he's quote better than anybody like by birth or what do you think? You're a piece of shit. What are you talking about he said after he murdered he put her in the closet for a while and he said quote then i went upstairs watched me some tv and made me something to eat yeah he's hungry afterwards you know he said they said well how what did you do you get back how did you get down to a bag like how did this happen he said they said, well, how the what did you do? You get back.

How did you get down to a bag?

Like, how did this happen?

He said, well, after they had sex, he said, hey, Heather, we've got us some lighters downstairs in a cabin and inside the watch the washroom.

Can you go and fetch me one?

They were their lighter died.

Yeah.

So Heather got up and walked down into the basement. All she had on was the Hollister hoodie that she was found in and toe socks, which she was found in as well.
Yeah. I don't know why she's wearing those.
Those are weird. Those are uncomfortable.
Yeah. She liked them apparently.
I guess the rest of her clothes were on the floor in his bedroom. His mother wasn't home.
She went away for a few days to visit relatives or something. When Heather was downstairs, Danny Robbie said he got up and without saying anything, approached her from behind.
She had a flashlight in her hand and was searching on a shelf in the basement looking for a lighter. He said, quote, with some kind of cord, he couldn't recall exactly which one, he walked up behind her without speaking, placed it around her neck and choked her.
She reacted by thrashing her arms and swinging the flashlight and smashing him in the head with it. And he said it wasn't hard enough to hurt, though.
So he said she tried pulling the cord with her hands as she struggled. He said he wrestled her down to the floor.
She stopped fighting but wasn't dead. She was unconscious but not dead.
So he said he let go of the cord and placed both his hands on her nose and mouth and pushed down tightly trying to suffocate her.

And he said that her legs kicked and her body convulsed.

And they said he described it so calm and like just like it was.

He said, yeah, he said that acted out.

He called it a process that wasn't easy. He said she just wouldn't die.
Yeah, she's 17, man. She's full of life.
Yeah. So it said it took over 10 to 15 minutes.
He said he even placed his foot on her neck at one point to hold her down, and she still wouldn't die. He said, I mean, I didn't want to hurt her or nothing.
I just wanted her to go to sleep. Okay.
Um, so that is, then he said it wouldn't work. So he grabbed a plastic Walmart bag nearby, placed it over her head, pulled it tightly as he held her down.
And he said it seemed to work better, but she still wouldn't die. He said that her arms and legs were still flailing.
So then he said he hauled

off and slammed the middle of her

chest with his fist.

Like, with the bottom of it. Like that.

Like, live, damn it, but

not. Die, damn it.
That's doing the opposite

motion of what you wanted to do, man.

And he said that stopped her heart.

Wow.

Gave her a heart punch, apparently.

So, yep.

He then walked upstairs, sat down, watched some TV,

and made himself a sandwich, which is insane.

He said that he did it.

He said he freed her from a life of prostitution.

He said, I released her for that.

I wasn't mad or nothing.

Now she's better off again.

It's like, this is what the fuck.

Doing God's work for you guys. Yeah, Jesus jesus christ man what are we talking about here um he said i didn't want to bruise her up or hurt her i just wanted her to go quick that's what he said wow okay um so no reason just wanted to he said it seemed like the best thing to do at the time i mean i wasn't mad at her we wasn't fussing we wasn't even fussing i mean what the fuck during this interview he says in the middle of this he goes by the way uh i also killed um two prostitutes in florida and by the way you know that randy saldana killed her too so yeah yeah killed her killed the women down so i Oh, wait, there's another one, too.
I'm gonna tell you about a little while. So they say he said it was about November 11th with Randy.
He said, I also killed Randy Saldana. I killed her because it was business.
I was killing two birds with one stone. he said he um wow that is wild he said i killed randy for drugs

stella and her uh and her sister and Shorty gave me an eight ball, and a couple of girls asked me to kill Randy. He said he did it like as a murder for hire for an eight ball, which is wild.
He said that when he and Nicole and Randy went over to the Catterton house that night, they got caught smoking crack in Nicole's bedroom.

And she said Stella acted like she got mad at Randy for not giving her something.

This was Stella's way to remove herself from the situation and put me and Randy alone so I could kill her later.

From Nick's, he said they drove to Shorty's where Randy and Nicole exchanged jewelry. He said the jewelry wasn't that.
They did it then they exchanged jewelry. It wasn't after he killed her or nothing.
He said that he and Randy staged that scene and Nicole got pissed and Randy left. He said, I never gave Nicole any of Randy's jewelry.
He said he drove up on Randy as she walked down the street away from Shorty's, and he said he didn't need to ask her to get in. She just got in, and they planned to go hang out and smoke some crack.
As they drove, Danny Robbie said he knew immediately he was going to kill Randy, but instead of taking her to his mother's house, because Mama was home, he said, he drove her out to that abandoned trailer. And he said she

walked into the trailer beside him.

He said that he loved

the feeling of power and craved it.

He knew it was going to happen.

So he said at one point, Randy had made

some statement about Heather's death, and that

pissed him off. That's all

he needed to do.

So all she needed to do.

So as soon as Randy turned her back and said something, he grabbed her by the neck with two hands and quote choked her out he said she was so scared she done pissed herself and said um what are you doing as this and then he choked her unconscious but she wasn't dead she came to and said why'd you do that and he said what you said about heather you disrespected me and she said i didn't mean it that way get me out of here i don't want to be trapped inside here with no killer and uh he said look everybody got me down as a suspect who done killed heather and she said i'm sorry i didn't mean it that way and um then he said look you want me to just take you back up the road or do you want to go over to Mama's house? She said, it's cold in here. And then said, take me to your Mama's.
And he said, OK. She said, can I shower when we get back there? And he said, yeah, but we got to wait till Mama goes to sleep so I can sneak you in.
He's 40. Sneaking girls into Mama's house.
When they got to his mother's house, he parked his car and told her to be quiet. He needed to sneak her in through a window on the side of the house.
They tip-throwed through the yard. He's shh and all that shit here.
Pushed open the window, helped her get up to the edge of the window pane, pushed her ass and pushed her into the room. He climbed in behind her.
Why does he have to climb in? He lives there. His mom knows he lives there.
You're sneaking in yourself. That's weird.
So he collected his thoughts here and then he said I climbed back out the window and went in through the door and told mama I was home. He said yeah why am I climbing in the window? What am I doing? I'm sneaking in my own shit.
He said he walked from his mother's room down the hallway into the den just outside her room where Randy was sitting on the couch. He turned on the TV.
Mama was reading in bed about 30 feet away. He said, Mama never comes down here because she know I like to watch porn and shit.
Gross. Why does Mama know that? Mama knows too much, man.
Poor Mama. Mama knows you.
Mama didn't even know you smoked crack. Mama mama said so this guy is the water boy is who he is so this is like the murderous water boy that's who we have here and mama knows he jerks off mama mama doesn't want to walk in and see it so after watching tv for about 10 minutes while sitting on the couch next to randy danny uh robbie presumed mama was asleep so without a word he said he just reached over and strangled randy down to the floor he said she went pretty fast a lot faster than heather did he didn't know if she was alive or dead though so he cocked his fist back and punched her as hard as he could right above her nose between the eyes He said that caused a lot of blood, which spilled all over the couch.
And he said, ah, shit. So he took a look for a comforter or a blanket, found one, placed it over her, went into his bedroom and rested for two or three hours until he was certain that Mama wasn't coming out.
So he said he went back for Randy, stripped off her clothes, rolled her up in a blanket, hoisted her over his shoulder, and walked through the house. And he said that he realized when he got to the kitchen that she was still bleeding and had left a trail of blood throughout the house.
Right. So he said, shit.
So then he put her down in the basement, and after cleaning up the, quote, damn mess she made, he said. She made.

She made.

He then stuffed her in the same closet that he had Heather in for a few days and left her there for several days.

Wow.

He said, Mama was in the kitchen reading as we was back in the den and I killed her on the couch.

Holy fucking shit.

He said, I left her in there for Randy stayed two or three days in there in the closet.

Thank you. holy fucking shit.
He said, I left her in there for, Randy stayed two or three days in there, in the closet. That is fucked.
And he said he just wanted to. That's it.
That's it. He said, if those girls would not have been with me that night, they would not be dead.
I did not intentionally kill those girls, and if I could bring them back, I would, but I can't. Not't not intentionally he was an accident he tried like six different ways to kill heather so not intentionally those are not intentionally i made a lot of accidents i was just experimenting yeah he said that both of them died of that later on the interview he said no they both tried of dugout died of drug overd, and I just disposed of their bodies.
Okay.

And then he said it didn't happen, so it freaking didn't happen, you know? They're like, you just detailed exactly what you did for hours. Hours.
Is he on crack now? It seems like he needs crack to think straight. So, wow.
A few weeks prior to this, that when they after they discovered Heather sold Randy's mom said that they are. I'm sorry.
They said that she she thinks she met her before. And she said that at the funeral is when this all happened at Heather's funeral is when he set his sights on Randy.
She said, I think that's when he feasted his evil eyes on her. I really do.
And she said, I went to the funeral. He was there.
So he said, Nicole left the gravesite with Danny. It's shocking.
Everyone walked up to the closed casket. I don't recall him walking up there.
That's what Randy's mother said. Now, so they arrest him for all the murders, obviously.
And Heather's dad, Nick, said,

this Nick is the most clueless man of all fucking time.

I know you don't make fun of victims' families,

but holy fuck, Nick, you know what?

You're half the cause of this, bro, number one.

He said, from what I've seen of him,

meeting Danny Robbie,

he has never hit or shown any aggressiveness toward anyone I know.

I don't get it. Except for Heather.
Except for my daughter and my other daughter who he. Oh, boy.
Wow. So, by the way, Randy Saldana's cause of death was very easy there.
They said the condition of her body. She had bruises on her neck and a fracture of the cartilage there, the hyoid bone that does that.
And that's right in line with the confession of what he said, manual strangulation. By the way, then he says, I got another one for you.
Deborah Denise Ratchford goes by Mickey. She was 30 years old.
That's the 1992 murder that he was a primary suspect for. He did it.
He did it.

He absolutely did it. Yep.
She was found August 4th, 1992 in a thicket of vines under a honeysuckle bush. Wow.
There are so many then. That is so far length of time between the two, between the three.
Yeah. There's got to be more.
Well, she was in jail for a while. Okay.
So that helps. But they said a man taking a shortcut through Oakland Park at about 745 discovered the body and obviously freaked out and called the cops and the cops came.
And, man, he noticed a pair of women's underwear and blue jeans scattered along the road and then spotted a trail of blood, followed the blood to find the body. Oh, don't do that.
Don't follow. Don't follow.
You just walk away. Yeah.
The guy said it didn't make her, someone she knew said it didn't make no sense. She didn't harm nobody.
So it's fucking, it's ridiculous. She was just found in a park and the park was considered a high or not considered a high crime area or anything.
So it was like maybe the occasional prostitution or something. It was right near a cemetery.
Not usually the biggest high crime area. So her mother said, I thought everybody coming up and down my street was a suspect after that.
I wanted to stand face to face with the person who did it and ask, why did you kill my child? She was a good person. This poor woman had to wait 20 years for this almost.
So, um, yeah, she was found there. That's 1992.
She had deep cuts to her chest and neck. That's how she died.
Gashed to death. Good Christ.
Yep. She said that her daughter was a lovely nonviolent person who got along with everybody.
Um, she grew up in Gastonia and, um, you know, was there. Her family lived there.
She worked at a textile mill and at a cafeteria, sometimes lived with her mom on and off. During a six-year period, though, she had been charged with larceny, assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting serious injury, driving while impaired, and assault on a law enforcement officer.
She got into drugs is what that means. So anyway, that's going on.
Now, the Florida women that he took claim to kill. So we have three that we know about now.
Those three. Now, the Florida, he said he killed two there.
He refused throughout the interviews to provide details, but eventually provided the information that they're both prostitutes, didn't recall their names, but he did bury their bodies on Merritt Island in Brevard County. However, these statements about the murders conflicted with other important details.
At one point, he said he committed the murders in 92. At another point, he said it happened in 2009.
It's a big difference. So they never figure that out.
that out they never find bodies on merit island they don't know well yeah it could have happened from 20 years ago he is charged with the murder of ratchford with deborah ratchford uh deborah ratchford and heather and randy ratchford is the one from 92 it was just found yeah mickey and um In addition, another, another man is arrested with him too for the Deborah Ratchford murder. That is James Arthur Swanson, a 41-year-old, who was charged, but then they arrested him.
He said, I'm not a hard fellow to find. I'm willing to go to any lengths to help you all find who done this to this lady, but I did not do this.
That man is telling a bare-faced lie.

That's not the, that's not the, yeah.

It's a bare-faced lie.

A lie on me, not about me, on me.

I'm innocent.

He's telling a bare-faced lie on me.

I'm innocent.

That's his exact quote.

Oh, man.

So.

The bastard's going to prison.

Nope, they dropped the charges two weeks later.

Oh, good, right.

When they couldn't find a shred of evidence linking him to the murder other than Danny Robbie saying he was involved. Why would he say that? He starts doing this to other people, too.
So four days later, he recants all his confessions and says, no, no, that didn't happen. There's confessions to the Ratchford murder, the 92 murder and the two Florida murders.
it's at this point also Nicole Catterton, Heather's sister, is arrested,

charged with failing to comply with a court order.

So, yeah, we don't know what that's about.

She didn't do it.

They didn't do it, yeah.

She was in cuffs.

They took her away.

They wouldn't say if it was related in any way to the murders or to Danny Robbie,

but she doesn't end up having anything with that.

So December 14th, 2009, he is indicted,

and they say, this is from the prosecutor,

quote, the first time he came into court,

he was acting like a rooster,

cussing the judge and screaming and hollering.

Is that what roosters do?

That's what Danny Robbie does.

Yeah, they scream and holler at you.

Yeah.

So, yeah, by the way, it was 522 north oakland street is where they found deborah ratchford there um so danny robbie here um now they have a profile of him because they're trying to figure out if he's done more so they got the fbi involved this is multi-state thing um so they say this is from a book that I'll give you a title of at the end here about this case. Profile of serial killers, psychotherapist, social worker, certified addiction specialist and fellow at the American College of Forensic Examiners.
John Kelly, who studied this case for this author and is my profiling guru for the investigation discovery series Dark Minds, said guys like Danny Hembree give themselves away in their behavior. They can't hide from who they are.
It always comes out. He said Mr.
Hembree is a power and control focused killer. The killer that likes to use drugs as payment is extending his pleasure by extending his time and length of power and control.

This is very difficult. This is very different than the killer that shows a victim a $20 bill, gets her in the car, drives to a location and kills her.
That's too fast for these guys. More time equals more power and more control, which in turn equals more pleasure.
That's what he's about. he said then also by the way before he recanted the Deborah Ratchford murder confession he took the cops to the location where her body was found I didn't do 17 years ago yeah and this guy says when Henry went out there to the Ratchford crime scene with officers he was very particular about where the murder murder took place, about this, about that.
It wasn't like he was saying over here and over there. He was very particular about the area and he was right on about all of it.
So he did it. He said another thing was his details.
If you're going to make something up and lie, you don't give as much detail as he did. He gave us details about, yeah, we picked her up.
I was irritated because I had to get out of the car

to let her get into the back seat.

We were like, why would he say this stuff if he wasn't reliving

it back in his head as he told us?

Which is also pleasure for him.

So, the state

tries to join the

Heather Catterton and Randy Saldana

murders together for the trial.

Make it a two-murder thing. The court denies

that motion.

They say no, one at a time. They said they're two in the same group, knew each other, similar lifestyle, around two weeks within each other.
Seems like a perfect match, but they said no. So the state elects to try the Heather Catterton murder first and tries to present evidence of the Randy Saldana and Deborah Ratchford murders under a 404 B, which is a rule of evidence prior bad act type of thing and relevant shit.
It's a very long story of what that is. So if you ever watch pre-trial shit on like court TV, they you'll hear a lot of 404 B shit as a big thing.
Okay. So the trial court conducted two hearings on this whole thing and they said the trial court found several similarities between Saldana and Catterton murders including that both were white females who engaged in prostitution.
Both had died in the same guy's house within a matter of weeks. Physical evidence was consistent to show both bodies were temporarily stored in the mother's basement closet.
Yikes. And that he had disposed of both of them within seven miles of each other.
So the court concluded that a lot of the evidence can be presented from the Saldana murder in this one because they were so similar, such a similar bad act. So, yeah, to show that he acted with a common plan scheme or design.
So there's that. Now, they also what evidence they're going to bring in in the Deborah Ratchford murder.

None of that. Now, they also, what evidence they're going to bring in in the Deborah Ratchford murder, none of that will be admitted into this because of the length of time that went by, different way they were killed.
Everything's different. So they said that can't be, that's a different thing completely.
So the murder trial for Heather Catterton. In the openings here, they give the openings the defense says here this is rick beam this defense attorney which his real name is richard which is dick beam which is pretty funny um he says that danny robbie fabricated the confession he made to police in order to cut himself a better deal in a string of armed robberies let's think about that logic for a a moment.
Yeah. I don't want to go to jail for 20.
So I killed a bunch of women. I want to break on that.
So I'll tell you about these murders. That's maybe the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
He said, it's very strange to normal people to tell police he killed somebody when he didn't. But everything in here in this case is abnormal.
robbie wouldn't tell them anything if it would would tell them anything if it benefit benefited him he understood the criminal justice system and manipulated it no we did he got himself arrested for worst crimes that's not manipulating shit and later on the prosecutor will answer that in closings here so uh they bring out witnesses talking about finding her body and the events leading up to her death and all the shit we already covered that we won't go over twice here because we're running out of time. So by the second day of trial, the state began to focus heavily on the evidence regarding the death of Randy Saldana.
On the second day of trial, a witness described, that's the finding her, and said it felt like human flesh. They bring in Heather's mom into this mess.
And she said that her daughter used crack cocaine and had a sexual relationship with Danny, even though he was dating Danny's sister. She knew about this because she's the one he said he was fucking her to the mom, Stella.
I don't know if that's true or not. That's what he said.
So sell Donna's comes up randy's sister and um they they asked her what kind of relationship you had and she said that was my sister um she was a very free spirit very charismatic had a heart of gold they tried to object to that but the judge allowed it and she said yeah randy was the type of person if you asked her for something and you needed it the way were raised, you gave it. You know, you gave it with good intentions.
She never really wanted to hurt anyone with the intentions of hurting anyone, you know. She was the type of person, if she felt that she had known that she hurt your feelings, she would come back and she would freely apologize and admit to her wrong in that, you know, for the most part.
So she says that.

She says she's a nice person, basically.

So anyway, the state argues that, you know,

no authority prevents us from presenting this.

You told us we could, so we do.

Danny Robbie has to testify

because they have him on video confessing to the whole thing.

So he has to get up there and say why he would do that oh boy so they're trying to discredit the confessions here so he takes the witness stand and he said i went he describes his whole life and how fucked up he was on drugs he said i went to beer i went to bed with a beer and woke up with a beer all the time so that's how he is he said that he um once summer left that one night the august 17th he and heather smoked crack and had sex at his mother's house he said they went to bed and when he woke up she was dead oh must have od'd or something just dead in the morning so that's what happened so he said i didn't i panicked so i just hid the body so he said randy saldana he said that he was performing oral sex on her while choking her at her own request yeah that's what that's how she got off he said long arms so that's what i mean he's got he's like he's or he's turned long reach i'm thinking he's i he's turned. Think about it.
Coming from the side there. He's got to really be creative when you're doing that.
He claimed that this was an accidental death, just trying to do erotic asphyxiation. That's what that did.
Yeah. He said, I just killed her, man.
Not trying. That's what he said.
Yeah. He said, self-preservation kicked in.
I was working the system by going to South Carolina with two jurisdictions. It kind of confuses the investigation.
That's why he dumped them afterwards. He said, yeah, it's just, you know, that's what happens.
He said he attempted to explain why he would falsely confess to multiple murders. He said he'd been arrested for a series of armed robberies.
And with his previous record, he could face a sentence of almost 100 years. So he claimed that he believed confessing to the other offenses would grant him leverage with prosecutors on the robbery charges.
Yeah, they won't even they'll dismiss those fucking things. Who cares about those? Now're in for murder and um but that he would not be convicted based on his false confessions once the police actually investigate so he's like i get him to drop the shit then they realize it wasn't even me that did it it was a false confession and then i'm scot-free right that's how that works he said the confession that the jurors watched was fabricated to serve his goal of manipulating the justice system.
And he said none of the Florida murders, none of that was true. He said, quote, I throwed it all in.
Threwed it, threw it, threw it. He said, I throwed it all in there.
The police were eating it up. The story got bigger and bigger as it went along.
And he said he was just trying to play the system. He also told the jury that he didn't mean to kill Randy, but he said, I was pissed off at Randy for dying.
Oh. Oh, interesting.
All right. He's mad at her.
So cross-examination, they said, so you manipulated the system is what you're saying. He said, well, I mean, I choose to call it working the system.
Manip the system manipulation you know is in the eye of the beholder no that's beauty that's but he's not that dumb though if you think about him saying that you know what i mean you can't be that dumb to say that that's i know dumb people and they wouldn't say that he said i don't know i just work the system i do whatever's best for me if you want to call it manipulation then that's fine i Yes. Okay.
Well, this isn't know. I just work the system.
I do whatever's best for me. If you want to call it manipulation, then that's fine, I guess.

Okay.

Well, this isn't a good story, man.

It's a terrible story.

I tried to cover up smaller crimes with much bigger ones.

It's a bad story.

It's insane.

So they do a jury field trip here where they go to the murder house.

They go to Mama's house.

Yeah.

Okay. Which is, this is, the defense wanted to do this, by the way, to allow the panel to inspect the small brick home where the mother was still present.
She's there. Oh, my God.
They said she was there during the tour. Oh, boy.
Wow. So at 10.20 a.m.
on a Thursday, sheriff's vans pulled up with the jurors and did it up. So, yep, they spent about 30 minutes touring the upstairs and basement.
And he was taken to both locations, too, because he gets to watch. He gets to see anything that goes on.
The defense also presented evidence to contradict his earlier claim that he'd killed two women in Florida. so he said the detective testifies that he relayed that information to authorities in Florida who came to Gastonia to speak with Danny Bobby, Danny Robbie.
Sorry. The Florida detective said, however, no bodies were ever found at that location and no unsolved murders matched the crimes that he described.
And they were unable to verify many of the details of the statement.

So they also bring in their own medical experts here.

One is a forensic toxicologist.

He testifies that he reviewed the toxicology reports of Heather Catterton and the concentrations of cocaine and cocaine metabolites in her blood

might have been but were not necessarily the cause of her death. So he could be telling the truth is what they're saying.
Another defense expert said that he reviewed the autopsy and he said that no significant bruises or wounds. He said that she did not have any trauma that would be consistent with that being the cause of death and his said the most probable cause of death that he says is cocaine toxicity.
Overdosed on coke. That's his conclusion.
Now, in the closing arguments here, they, you know, try to offer obviously completely opposite points of view. The prosecution emphasizes the substance of the confessions, the fact that forensic evidence did not rule out his claim that he had suffocated her with a plastic shopping bag and that his history of manipulating others, you know, two women have been killed.
What are we talking about? And this is the best. The prosecutor said, quote, confessing to two capital murders to get a deal on robbery charges.

That doesn't make any sense.

That's amazing.

He said he wasn't coerced.

He volunteered the information.

We literally didn't even ask him about it.

He just told us.

So he said that obviously he said it's consistent with what the evidence shows, his first conviction.

He said the autopsy shows no scientific cause of death.

But he said that's not unusual.

We don't have to prove that. We know how she died.
He suffocated her. We know that because he told us.
And he said that the defense brought in high-paid experts to put a spin on the evidence and put up a smoke screen. The prosecutor says this.
He has manipulated his attorneys. Don't let him manipulate you.
Don't let him work the system again. You heard video confessions of how he killed Heather Catterton and Randy Saldana.
And then the defense started. They started up putting up these smoke screens, started to try to confuse you.
At no point, no point in the last 18 months since this has been a pending trial, has he ever recanted killing Heather or Randy? Never. Not until two years later when he could look at everything and when he can study the evidence and we can get legal advice from his attorneys does he come up with this elaborate tale as to what took place.
He said two years later after he gives all these confessions to the police and says exactly how he killed Heather and Randy Saldana, that now, along with his two attorneys, they come together to try to create some kind of story. He said that the defense objected to this, and the trial judge offered no corrective instruction and told the jury that he would sustain the objection as to argument and odd comment.
But there's no, like, strike it, none of that. So he then continued, the prosecutor, think back tocember 5th of 2009 when he knew nothing when he had no legal advice consistently volunteered told the police everything and it was consistent with the evidence showed for hours you watched this man confess to killing heather and randy saldana and now after 18 months to two years the defense begins uh they try to put up a smoke screen to confuse you.
We've got two women dead and he killed them. I ask that you find him guilty of first-degree murder for killing Heather.
Thank you. Verdict here.
Five are seven men, five women on the jury. They come in less than two hours of deliberation.
It's fast. That's either great or terrible for you, one or the other.
They find him guilty of first-degree murder. He said he didn't.
He said he didn't. Sentencing comes around.
Randy's sister said, you're a monster. That's what she said to him from her thing, from the victim impact statement.
He presents mitigating evidence as well, saying that, according to this this his disorders are better controlled when he's incarcerated a psychiatrist said you don't need to kill him if you put him in prison he'll be great yeah that's what he's saying he said prison's actually a pretty good management system for peace of people with personality disorders that's not true at all that's the worst medication on the planet in there terrible for you yeah it's not good at all for people with personality disorders it's people with drug problems sometimes clean up in prison they have it's harder it's harder to get i mean you can get it but it's it's a pain in the ass and you gotta like oh some guy who's gonna fuck your face later so you know so they uh they said outside of constant care he engages in behavior. They also bring in his family.
They bring in Danny Robbie III making his first appearance. There he is.
He's 25 now. He's a restaurant manager, Danny Robbie in this case.
And he said, I love him, and I know he loves me. Nothing in this world could change how I feel about my father.

He recalled his father writing from prison, urging him to straighten out his life.

He said he begged me to learn from his mistakes.

He tried to be a good dad.

He taught me how to ride a dirt bike.

He was always good.

That's his one example of him being a good dad. He taught me how to ride a dirt bike.

Probably so he could go in and steal things and get away faster.

Talk to you. That's his one example of him being a good dad.
He taught me how to ride a dirt bike.

Probably so he could go in and steal things and get away faster.

My dad, he taught me.

Wow.

That sweet, sweet smell of two-stroke.

Oh, two-stroke.

We got it earlier.

What was it?

Two-stroke aroma?

Two-stroke smoke.

That's what it was.

So they also bring in his sister, and she says that her brother told her a few years ago that he'd been molested as a child by a relative sex sexually abused by a cousin when he was five years old okay and that dad whipped him with a belt okay so she said that her father whom she portrayed as a strict disciplinarian thought that he was doing the right thing by whipping on her brother but she told jur jurors that she thought the father was wrong. She said, I don't think getting a C in school warrants being beaten.
And also, I don't think... I don't think smoking crack means you get to murder that person.
Getting crack from a black guy means you can kill them either. So what are we talking, we're even on that one.
Jury here deliber here deliberates for 10 hours yeah during sentencing the jurors ask for evidence such as psychological exam of hembry and five folders of records but they were denied a request for the definitions of three personality disorders so they're really getting into this into the weeds here with him so um they found several mitigating factors they believe that Hembree suffered from abuse from his father when he was

young, had a family history of mental

illness, and engaged in self-destructive

behavior. They found

two aggravating circumstances and

14 mitigating circumstances.

Wow. Which is a lot.

So in the end, they decide, you

sir may fuck off

death penalty. Uh-oh.
Those two aggravators were bigger than 14 mitigators. But he taught a boy how to ride a dirt bike, James.
Come on. There's so many kids out there that don't know how to ride a dirt bike.
You're going to put me away? This is fucking ridiculous. Holy shit.
After being sentenced to death, he said this, and I'll see if you recognize what he's trying to do here. Quote, prison can be a living hell for me.
Prison, I hate every inch of you. What? This is Johnny Cash song he's trying to sing.
Is it right? San Quentin, you've been living hell to me. San Quentin, I hate every of you, is the lyrics.
Oh, for heaven's sake.

In separate verses.

But, yeah.

So he fucked up Johnny Cash.

That's good.

I'm just, let's say, ring of fire, man.

Yeah, try that one.

He also said he hoped that this could bring some closure

to the Catterton family as well.

I'm scared of Johnny Cash song.

I hope that settles everything.

Heather's family's got a fucking Johnny Cash song for him.

Yeah.

We'd like to set him on fire in a ring.

Also, I hope that needle stings.

Yeah.

So Nick, dad, said justice got served today

for this young lady.

That's what this was all about.

And Stella, Heather's mom, said it doesn't bring Heather back, but it took him down with her. Okay, so he's sent to death row.
Right. And in January of 2012, he writes a letter to the Gaston Gazette, a North Carolina newspaper, about death row.
Really? To taunt everybody. Oh, really? Quote, My name is Danny Hembree.
I was tried in Gaston County by 12 of its fine citizens. I was found guilty of first-degree capital murder and was sentenced to death on November 18, 2011.
The North Carolina Department of Corrections was ordered to carry out my murder. I always wonder, or I wonder if the public is aware, that the cost of my first trial was half a million dollars.
Are they aware that the state has in place a system that automatically delays my lawful murder for years so that pieces of the money pie can continue to be passed around? Also, we can hopefully figure out if we fucked up and don't kill innocent people. That helps.
We also understand that there are holes in this system. That's, yeah.
He said, is the public aware that the chances of my lawful murder taking place in the next 20 years, if ever, are very slim? Is the public aware that I am a gentleman of leisure watching color television in the air conditioning, reading, taking naps at will, eating three well-balanced hot meals a day? I'm housed in a building that connects to the new $155 million hospital with round-the-clock free medical care. There's a lot of good citizens who blogged on various websites stating their opinions about me and the punishment I deserve.
I laugh at you self-righteous clowns, and I spit in the face of your so-called justice system. Kill me if you can, suckers.
Ha, ha, ha.

Sincerely, Danny Embry.

They published that?

They published it in complete, in whole.

That's where I got it from.

Ha, ha, ha.

With an exclamation after each ha.

Okay.

Three separate ha's.

God will cut you down.

Holy shit.

Maybe he didn't throw in another Johnny Cash lyric. He could.
it right just do it rip this off man so the gaston county district attorney lock bell his name is lock the district attorney who locks you up his name is lock is it ck uh cke wow lock lock bell said that he received two distraught phone calls after the letter from nick from he Heather's father. He said, I got a call from the father of the 17-year-old that he murdered in tears.
He said that this is tearing the family to shreds. This is ripping the wound open.
The father said he murdered our daughter, got the death penalty, and now he's just sitting in jail laughing at us. Who? See? Why do you care? This, I don't care.
That's what I mean. That's one of those where you got to go.
Listen, that doesn't affect me. That my this.
Yeah. I would be most upset as this guy knows the address to the newspaper and sent a letter.
That's sick. And they printed it.
Yeah. He said there's a part of me that wants this is the prosecutor.
There's a part of me that wants everybody to read the letter because it tells a lot of truth about death row. He says that it's more likely that he'll die of natural causes than the death penalty.
He said his punishment does not fit his crime at all. All of a sudden, acting like prison's great.
That's not, no. Because he's got air conditioning and a TV? I don't know, man.
And he even, the prosecutor said, he's sitting down there looking at the law and laughing. He's been sentenced to death.
He shouldn't be watching color TV. We'll get him a black and white, and then it's fine.
Make him watch Andy Griffith. Make him watch Andy Griffith, and that'll just give him ideas of where to put bodies.
Never mind. Fuck it.
So they said his letters should be sent to legislators who support the Racial Justice Act. That's what the prosecutor said.
That'll show you. Yeah.
He said that the law, the 2009 law says a judge must reduce a death sentence to life in prison without parole if he determines race was a significant factor in the sentencing. How is that a bad law? At what point should race matter in your sentencing? Honestly, because that fucking that's pro or con.
You can't give somebody less because you feel bad for them because they're whatever. And you can't give somebody more because you don't like them people.
Either one. I don't think he was a victim of that.
That's the other thing. He's a white guy.
He's white as fuck. Didn't play into this, man.
No. An anti-death penalty guy named Stephen Deere, the executive director of the rally-based group People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, church people that don't like, you know, that actually read the Bible once or twice.
He said, he said, why would anyone be interested in the moral version of an unrepentant murderer, or moral vision of an unrepentant murderer? It's no surprise that someone who would murder others in cold blood would also say the things he said. He's getting the attention he wanted, fomenting the response and anger he seeks.
He wants to bring us all down to his level. That's what the death penalty does to us.
It brutalizes society. Sure.
He, so, I mean, it's just a lot. So his family says, don't listen to him.
He's crazy. Yeah, he's out of his mind.
He said's and they also said he's fabricating the living conditions he doesn't have color tv or air conditioning and blah blah blah they said it's it's just being full of shit his sister released a letter sent to her from her brother earlier in the month that contradicts everything this letter says quote i try to put on a nonchalant attitude for you guys, but it's overwhelming and depressing to look at these walls

and electric doors and bright lights

24-7 and digest

the fact that I'm never going to leave here until

they murder me or I just die. Either way,

I'm never leaving here alive.

He said, I'm bored

to death, no pun intended.

There's no TV and it's real hot.

Yeah, it's different. It's not what he said.

He's just fucking, he's a fucking piece of shit. That's the thing.
He's a piece of shit. Yeah.
His sister said, I'm so very sorry for any hurt or anger that was caused by my brother's letter to the Gazette. He's a very depressed man and is in hopelessness and he lashed out.
No person in their right mind thinks that living on death row is a life of leisure is what his son said. said there's no good explanation for why he wrote it except that he's mentally ill he also says he talks about the four walls closing in that the lights are always on and he can't sleep and that death row is a horrible place for anybody to be he's severely depressed he's told us he's depressed he feels like it's over for him feels like a suicide attempt to get them to kill him because he wants out yeah he's tired and then his sister said by the way he's also innocent oh ma'am she said in every one of those confessions on all those tapes he was coming off a three-day crack binge he hadn't slept he was drunk and highly intoxicated he could barely hold his head up he's not a killer he does not he did not kill those girls wow then crack makes you glean murder details that of murders you didn't participate in that's amazing crack makes you clairvoyant yeah by the way according to a 2008 study at the time keeping an inmate on death row costs 90 000 more per year than regular confinement per prisoner not 90 000 90 000 more per year yeah because they're housed in single rooms and they're staffed with like triple staff and everything else they said uh getting from north carolina if they stopped the death penalty it would cut 63 million dollars from the state budget every year that day yeah in north carolina that's 2008 money too now, who knows? But I'm just saying, that's just both sides of the whole thing.
So March 2012, he wants to die. Of course he does.
He said he told his attorney to stop his, he wants his mandated automatic appeals to stop. He said, I'm already dead.
My whole entire life's been a train wreck. Can't blame it on anybody but myself.
True. Yeah.
He said said i'd like to get death out of the way because i got to do it anyway he said this is death row in this prison's the last place anybody on earth would want to be to be honest with you i don't care one way or another about the death penalty as far as it pertains to me i feel trapped there's no anxiety i basically expected what's going on okay good well we have this paperwork to do. We have that.
March 2012, he's got, right I basically expected what's going on. Okay, good.
Well, we have this paperwork to do.

We have that.

March 2012, right after that, he's got to do the Saldana fucking trial. Oh, shit.
Yeah. So they give all the information we just gave you, obviously, and all of that.
And through this, because a superior court judge declares a mistrial here, because they declared the mistrial after Danny Robbie testified that a letter sent to attorneys that he had a sexual relationship. He testified that a letter sent to the attorneys said he had a sexual relationship with a prosecutor.
Also, that the sister, it was her name, Shelly, I think, Saldana's sister, yelled obscenities at him while the jury was present. So that's why they declared a mistrial on that.
So he just decides to plead guilty for Saldana. So he does.
yeah they said the, well, the prosecutor said now that he's been on death row for a year and a half, he appears to be more defeated. No more cussing.
No more acting out in court. No more bravado.
I think he realized that that only hurt his family. Yeah.
He also, in a hearing, said he has health issues, liver problems, and he says he has cancer. So who knows? You, sir, may fuck off 26 years in prison for killing Randy.
Okay. The Deborah Ratchford murder is dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
Okay, so we're going to not deal with it. Not deal with it.
No, just that poor she gets nothing. That's that family.
Yeah. The prosecutor said, I dismissed it because I wasn't going to prosecute it anyway.
Danny Hembree did not do that one. We investigated it and he didn't do it.
The person we think did it, I have been told is dead and I'm going to be checking into it to see if that fact is deceived. He took them to the site, pointed everything out.
He did it for sure, right? He fucking did it, yeah. I think they're just trying to get people not upset about that.
2015, he appeals the convictions for Heather here. This is the death penalty one.
One is that he says the sister was allowed to give way too much glowing testimony about her sister in court. There's that.
Also, several errors. They admitted the evidence of the Saldana murder.
Also, they said they violated 404B and Rule 403. And the North Carolina Supreme Court, in a 4-2 decision, vacates the conviction and death sentence.
What? Yep. They said that they allowed admission of excessive amount of the Saldana murder evidence by allowing Shelly, the sister, to testify about the good character and by allowing the prosecution to argue without basis to the jury that the defense counsel had suborned perjury.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
So an attorney for Danny Robbie said that he's pleased with the decision and she expects him to be moved from death row to another prison. And he'll have a contact visit with one of his grandchildren soon.
She said, I think the opinion makes it very clear that the prosecution was stretching to get a conviction on Heather Catterton's murder. We're just bullshit.
They didn't need any of that stuff. We're just the confession video is enough, period, done, convicted.
We're just very pleased that the justices understood that introducing all the evidence about Saldana was not appropriate. 2017, he wants a new lawyer.
Really? Yeah. He's like, this guy's terrible.
Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
At one point, the judge said to him, you've made accusations against everyone. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if you made accusations against me.
And Danny Robbie said, oh, I will. I got you coming.
Give me a minute. That is fucking crazy.
So they're talking about a new trial for him. And then he just ends up pleading guilty to second degree murder for that.
Okay. So he pleads guilty.
The prosecutor called it an early Christmas present that he just pled guilty and got it over with. He said the drugs that I provided to her and the amount of drugs I provided to her contributed to his death.
That's what he told. So he's like, I'll admit sort of, but not really what I did.
He said under the statute, as I understand it, that makes me guilty of second degree murder. I'm ready to just go ahead and take the plea uh put it to bed and just deal with it so he's sentenced to you sir they fuck off again 50 more years behind bars okay so yeah the prosecutors about yep uh nick catterton's dead by the way uh so he didn't get to see this at all.
He just knew that he got overturned

but then didn't get to see this.

2022 he does a prison

interview here.

He says

that, wow.

They talk about

how he seems to be in good shape.

He says that

he's still a character. No cancer.

No, they talk to him. They say he's still a character.

They said, do you want to go ahead and die now? He said, I'd like to get it out of the way because I've got to do it anyway. He said, I would describe myself as a person that's very remorseful for the wasted life that I've lived.
Yeah. He said, I just wanted to make it look like there was a monster running around, a serial killer.
That was not me. He said he was trying to confuse the investigators.
And they said that he has a pacemaker and liver problems, and he's going to be in prison for the rest of his life. And he said, I've earned it.
I've earned it. Yes, sir.
This is what I chose for myself, and this is what I've got to pay for. There is just not enough sorry in the world to apologize my way out of here.
I'm hoping maybe some kid will see this and say, I don't want to wind up like him. I don't want to wind up behind bars for the rest of my life.
He says he's ready to die and meet God, meet God. And he believes he'll be reincarnated and get another life and another chance to resolve the suffering.
Now, Shelley, Randy's sister, said, tell us what happened with Deborah Ratchford. Give that family peace.
They deserve that. And she says she's not buying his shit.
She said women that are in his presence become dead. That's not just by accident.
The book, by the way, that some of this came out of is called The Killing Kind by M. William Phelps.
Sorry. And you can get it everywhere.
It's an e-book. There's an audio version of it and everything like that.
So

it's fucking crazy. That is

in there forever. There you go.
That is

Gastonia, North Carolina.

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And you get a shout out right fucking now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never, ever, ever do any of this shit that happened this week to us.
Hit me with them right fucking now. This week's executive producers are Chrissy Such and the Such fam celebrating Mama Such.
It's her birthday. We are such grateful.
She donated, yeah, we're such grateful fellas. Chrissy got a Patreon and she went to PayPal.
So thank you so much, Chrissy. Oh, wow.
You are a wonderful person. Thank you.
And happy birthday, mama. Gary Howard is a history nerd, I've found out.
Gary. Marcellus Wallace and Boobs McGee.
Happy birthday, Thomas Smith. He's celebrating over there in England with the fella.
Have a jolly good time, my friend. Janice Hill, Melanie Keating.
I found out that they don't call it jolly old England over there, evidently. No.
We say it. We're mocking them.
That's the point. That's what we're doing.
Mellie Keating, Cody Leversy is having a baby. This kid's life has evolved tremendously.
We've followed him the whole time. I love it.
What a great thing. He's watching a nice woman, and they get married, and they're happy.
Now they're having a kid. Congratulations.
That's really nice to hear. What is this? Victoria Dizdar, with a K, Dizdar.
Whoa. Loves us.
Love you too, Victoria. I don't know where that K goes.
I don't know why. Victoria with a K.
Oh, Victoria. I thought Dizdar.
I'm like, where the fuck is there a K in there? How does that work? Dizdar with a K. I was like, huh? Anthony Annette and Mike Osborne in Yankton, James.
Down in Yankton. Oh, down in Yankton where all the smallpox vaccines are that we're sending out Dan Doherty to go grab on a horseback.
They're very healthy up there. Other producers this week.
Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows. Happy birthday, Andrew Wellmers.
26th birthday. Happy birthday to you.
We've had him around since the fucking- No shit. He was a teenager.
We're raising these people. Isn't that bizarre? Jessica, Melissa, Amanda Rowe, Haley with no last name, Karen Williams, Renata Brown, Kate Ryback, Catherine Paz Durka, Lisa with an E, Sherry with no last name, Nancy Campbell, Sarah Rupp, Jesse Aguilar, Paul with no last name, Shelby Cter jd keener uh john stole chrissy such see

there she is uh aaron roland amanda fletcher t8 i don't know if that's a gate at the airport or it's ti's brother yeah t8 t i's brother t8 All right.

Zach, cousin likely.

Zach with no last name.

Cora Hudson.

Sarah Maffay.

Jamie Eart. Megan Faulkner.
Pookie Z-Man. Justin with no last name.
Jay Engel. Drew Patterson.
Roman Paul Torn. Ivory Zvorsky.
Zvorsky. M and L.
The letters. M-L.
Kim Michael.

Vanilla Gorilla 73.

Remember that guy?

Yes, I do.

I certainly do.

I think he's dead.

He's dead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Comedian, we know.

Dead.

You don't need to know him.

He's dead.

He's fucking dead, and he never made anything of himself. never mind.
That was Vanilla Godzilla, wasn't he? Oh, I don't remember. Either way, dead open, Michael.
Vanilla Gorilla was what somebody called Jesse James. You're right.
Gross. Thank you.
Vile. All right.
We got it mixed up, but we got to the bottom of it. Vanilla Godzilla is dead.
And Mosley. He's a dead open, Mike.
Shio, one, two, three. Amy Hotchkiss.
Got that Hotchkiss money from the rear end of the Chevy. From the diseases that happened.
That Hotchkiss disease. I know, that's Hotchkiss.
Got that big disease money. Sherry would know last name.
Alfredo Sandoval. Luke Riddle.
Cody Freisner. Catherine Rowland.
Gary would know last name. Jessica Farrego.
Caroline. Oh, it's Catalina Nunez Pacheco.
That's what that is. It's very Espanoli.
Josh Campbell. Stephen Aug.
Frances writes a bit. I hope she does.
Alicia Crockett. Anthony Supa.
kel with no last name samantha jacquette jacchetta uh andrew r vaselina vaselina really vaselina that's somebody's first name vaselina yochiva is that a thing in russia they thought it was beautiful and started naming people maybe and oh either that or that or her mom was very permissive with the anal,

but they had some slippage and they called it Vaselina.

Incredibly dry.

Vaselina.

Morgan Dunlap.

Jeannie Kimbrell.

Carrie.

Sorry, Vaselina.

Thank you for your money.

Thank you.

It is a nice name, but also so is Diarrhea.

You know what I mean?

We don't name people that shit.

Vaselina?

Maybe she's the fucking heir to the whole fortune. She laughs at us because she's got shitloads of money.

With her well-lubricated holes.

Chris Puple.

Puple.

Puple. Carrie Isabrand.
Jaina. Jaina.
Hyena. Is that Hyena? Kent with the J? Jaina Kent probably.
Nikki Taylor. Brandon Johnson.
Ashley Perekka. Elena Prescott.
Cassandra Griffin. Mackenzie Shipman, Elle Merch, Hannah Cottrell, Roman Coxie, Whitney Kurtz, Joshua Reimers, Lisa S., Kel with no last name, Amy Villarreal, Kelly Hickman, Sherry Ronaldson, Emma Elbert, Kelly Cook, Courtney Hite.
I'm going to have to make the font bigger. This is fucking crazy.
Am I this? All right. Kristen Kay, Kelsey Tabak, Daniela, Danielle Kay, Brandi Dallas, James Greenouch, Greenwich, Greenouch, Greencotch.
What is this? Green crotch. Channing Span.
Katie Blevins. Duana Lyria.
Lyria? S. This show brought to you by the letter S.
Natalie Kloss, the drummer. Oh, it's Nate.
See? Nate turns into Natalie. I'm so sorry, Nate.
Joey would know last name. Telly McKay.
Anthea Callan? Callan. It It's Callan Samsonite Swanson That's fucking fantastic April Allen Danielle Chastain That's from Dumb and Dumber That's what Her name would have Swanson Swanson Slippy Samsonite Samsonite I was way off Caleb would know last name Jake Seaman Is that right Danielle Chastain Chastain.
I'm going to move along. Courtney Parker.
Nicole Dutera. Libby B.
Jeremy Cavender. Jason Barnett.
Kim Payne. Rachel Cardy.
Marsha Thomas. Justin would know last name.
Leslie would know last name. Orlando would know last name.
Audi, but it's probably Audi, would know last name. Jane Louise.
Victoria Albin. Camille Etheridge, really, Sarah's sister.
Melissa's sister. Gajarel, Gajarel Praben, Gajarel Praben.
Thomas James, Simon Hargood, Lee Ann, Amanda Jones, Amanda Nicholas, Big B, Amanda Hankey, Sierra Humphrey, Aaron Picard, Stephen with no last name, Sophia Cronkite, obviously. Carol Coral, Coral Abrams.
Oh, like the fucking bad guy. Rhea with no last name.
None you damn. All right, fine.
Leah Samowski. I need to know that.
Ben B., Robert Hoff, and all of our patrons. You guys are the best.
Thank you. Thank you, everybody, so much.
You goddamn wonderful bastards.

We appreciate everything you do for us.

And thank you for being here.

Thank you for hanging out with us week after week.

Thanks for Patreon.

Thanks for everything you want to follow us on social media.

Drop down, menu, shutupandgimmemurder.com.

That said, until next week, everybody.

It's been our pleasure.

Bye. If you like small town murder, you can listen early and ad free now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Bollin, the host of Mr.
Bollin's Medical Mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors.
So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show.
Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen early and ad-free

right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.