Murder Mystery Gone Wild - Payson, Utah

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This week in Payson, Utah, a horrifying and bloody scene at a local house leads detectives to suspect two people who say they were tied up and spared by the murderers for a very strange reason.

Is it the truth?

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 Petragallo.

I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on an absolutely insane edition of Small Town Murder.

This is crazy today.

The twists and turns in this story, it's a wild mystery, and it's just crazy.

You'll never expect what happens to happen.

So tune in for that.

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Time for the disclaimer.

Hey, everybody, it's a comedy show.

First and foremost, but everything is real.

Nothing is made up for comedic effect.

And we try to do the most meticulous of research better than a, you know, better than date line or something and also have jokes.

So that's what we're working on here.

So you get that and you go, well, how do you do that?

How is murder funny?

Well, it's very easy.

You can make it funny.

Sometimes people go, hey, I think I can get away with murder.

And you go, I'm going to make fun of that guy.

That's a dumb idea.

Just as simple as that.

But what we don't do, what we go out of our way not to do, is we never make fun of the victims or the victims' families.

Why, James?

Because we're assholes.

But we're not scumbags.

See how that works there?

It's very easy to do.

So if you think that

if you think true crime and comedy should never, ever go together, you might not like the show, but you might like the show.

Either way, check it out.

No complaining later.

That said, I think it's time, everybody.

Let's sit back.

Let's all clear the lungs here.

Arms to the sky.

Let's all shout.

Shut up.

Give me

murder.

Let's do this, everybody.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

We shall.

Heading to Utah this week.

This is Payson, Utah, P-A-Y-S-O-N, just like in Arizona.

Same thing.

What do you mean, what is it?

It's a town in Utah.

Yeah.

I mean,

I don't know.

Why is it so important?

No,

there's a few.

This, I'm not sure exactly, but there's a family named Pace.

We'll get into it with the history.

This is in north central Utah.

It's about 20 minutes to Provo, about an hour to Salt Lake City.

Way up north.

Yeah, up north there, but not too far from things.

It's about three hours and 50 minutes to Lucen, Utah, which was our last episode here, Murder Selfies, where the guy was, yeah, there was pictures involved and not a smart, not a smart guy with the murder there.

So this is in Utah County.

They really put their heads together to think about that one.

Utah County, area code 801,

and they don't really have a motto, but it says everywhere all over the town, home to the Onion Days Festival.

Gross.

The Onion Days, Days of Onions sounds like too many onions.

A little bit of history of this joint here.

The Mormons found this place as a lot of Utah.

Sure.

They were the first ones to kind of settle here.

They came.

Edward Pace Jr.

was the first person to settle here.

Now, I'm not sure if Pace Payson, but it's P-A-C-E, so I'm not sure how that came about.

That's all I can think of here.

So, yeah, they showed up in 1850.

with his family and the families of a couple other people, 16 people in all arrived at the petite, whoa, Petite Neat creek petite neat petite neat creek a lot of ease in there one two three for five ease in petite neat a lot of ease yeah um the settlement was originally named petite neat creek

after

which uh chief petite neat was named oh and uh yeah so they started doing that in eight in january 1853 the territorial governor brigham young you know

Steve Young's great-great-grandfather or whatever,

he submitted a bill to the second Utah Territorial Legislature to incorporate Payson as a city, and they passed that act.

And it had some stuff going on here for a while.

They had an opera house in 1883.

Really?

An opera house.

Yeah, that's kind of like highfalutin for like some western, small western town full of Mormons.

Those opera houses oftentimes just did plays and shit, too.

I suppose, but I mean, they built it as an opera house.

So you assume they would be thinking about opera, which I didn't know.

I didn't even know opera opera was allowed in Utah.

I wasn't positive.

Seems like the right place for it, really.

No,

it's a bunch of passionate Italians.

It's the least, the last place they would be.

That's what an opera is.

Yeah.

A bunch of shit they can't understand, too.

Emotion and yeah, they don't know what the hell they're saying there.

In the late 1800s, a factory making horse collars operated in Payson.

Oh, exciting.

Wow.

The Strawberry Valley Reclamation Project was completed in 1912, and then the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company decided to place a sugar beet processing factory in the area

so that sugar beets became the big deal.

Then in 1897, the beet leaf hopper, which is an insect,

ate all of the sugar beets, basically, and

destroyed everything.

Yep.

So they ended up reducing the sugar beets and just planting other shit because they were done.

It was over with.

Wow.

So the beets can't or the bugs can't get them.

And i think the sp the spot of that now is a fertilizer factory now really they were processing this stuff uh reviews of this town here's five stars i've lived in and near pays in my whole life it is my home the people are fun and the surrounding areas make it a great place to raise a family and be with friends yeah and your typical five star review of a place sure sure i love it it's nice i grew up here uh here's three stars city struggles to keep up on street repair.

I mean, it's cold there, so yeah, shit cracks.

Gets cold, gets warm, streets break, happens.

Go to Michigan and then complain.

Right.

Can't be aware.

I want to hear it.

Not enough traffic lights versus the amount of people.

Businesses struggle to stay here.

The planning is poor.

So in one breath.

Not enough traffic lights.

I want to stop more?

What are you talking about?

Apparently, it makes chaos.

I don't know what the hell they're talking about.

but they're saying there's so many people, but then businesses struggle to stay open.

So

I don't understand it.

How is there so many people at the businesses?

I don't get it.

It has to be.

Here's two stars.

The attitude around the city is: we have been a crappy little town forever.

There is no reason to get better in anything we do.

It's history now.

It's history.

It's our legacy.

It's really our heritage, and we embrace it.

We're going to just run with that.

People in this town, 21,093.

So not a big place, not a small place.

And it's been growing a lot in the last 20 years.

So it was a much smaller place a while back.

A few more males than females, which is kind of not the norm.

Almost, it's about 51.5% men, which is weird.

Median age here, much lower than normal, which is common for high LDS areas because if you have eight kids and two parents, the median age of that family goes way down.

You know what I mean?

So the median age here is 26.7.

which is very low.

It's usually 38.5 in the rest of the country.

So that tells you something.

In this town here, 56% married, which is above the average.

We have a lower than average divorce rate.

53.2% of the people here are married with children, which is very high.

Yeah.

Very, very high here.

Race in this town, 84.1% white, 0.1% black, 0.3% Asian, and let's see, 13.5% Hispanic.

So that's how it breaks down in this town.

Now, normally 50-50 is normal for religion, average for the rest of the country.

And we've seen it in the 80s and went, wow, that's pretty high.

95.7% of the people here are religious.

I'm going to repeat that.

Yeah.

95.7% of people anywhere shouldn't agree on anything, first of all.

They shouldn't agree on that, you know, water keeps you hydrated.

Like, you can't get 96% of people to agree.

Do anything.

Put anything on the internet and see what happens.

Put I like, just post I like puppies and see the response.

Well, I like cats.

There'll be people fighting about this and that, and the puppies suck, and puppies are great.

Actually, there's a I like snakes girl.

Yeah, you don't want her.

You don't want the I like snakes one.

And that's a good chunk of our audience, by the way.

Sorry.

Sorry, snake girls.

We get it.

We're scared of you, though.

We understand you're fine and you're normal.

You love it.

We're a little frightened.

That's all we're saying.

It's more on us as men.

We're a little frightened.

It frightens us a bit.

Yeah.

It's embarrassing.

It's not about you.

It's about our problems.

93.3% of

people in this town are Mormon.

It is heavy.

That's

93.3% are one religion.

That's crazy.

This is Brigham Young's Zion.

You don't get that in Saudi Arabia, for fuck's sake.

That's insane.

Wow.

Low unemployment here.

Median household income slightly above the national average, $75,682.

Yeah, they do well.

Slightly above.

Yeah, that's good.

Anyway, if you're going to have a bunch of kids, you better make some money.

So the cost of living here, $100 is average in the rest of the country.

Here it is $117,000.

It's a little expensive.

And housing is the expensive part.

Median home cost here, $425,000.

Wow.

Which is a little pricey if you're making $75,000 a year and have five kids.

That's that's a lot.

So that's, I don't know how they work that out, but we'll find out because maybe you have thought about, you've gotten a knock at your door recently and you said, you know what, I'm going to hear these young men out.

And

maybe you have a move planned.

We have for you the Pays in Utah Real Estate Report.

All right.

Your average two-bedroom rental here goes for $1,130, which is actually below the national average.

Because, and I'm not trying to make fun, but of think about who lives here.

It's a bunch of

families with a lot of kids.

A two-bedroom apartment is doing them no good.

No.

No, there is young people, though, and there's a college in Provo, and some of the kids live here because it's cheaper, apparently.

Here is a two-bedroom, two-bath, I mean, mobile home with here.

Look, I'll show you with corrugated shit around the you know.

Actual, yeah, that's a trailer.

Oh, boy, that is a 10-foot-wide

single-wide trailer, 910 square feet.

Um,

not looking great, it's yellow and brown.

That tells you a lot, too.

Two bad colors together, yeah.

It's Tony Gwynn lives here.

Other than that, there's no excuse, unless you're a Padre, great.

This is $110,000 for that,

which seems steep.

I'm going to be honest here.

And you got to pay a lot fee, probably.

Unless you get the land.

If you get the land, then that's probably what it is.

It does not say land, like amount of land.

So I think you're just buying a trailer.

Here is a,

what is this one?

A

three-bedroom, two-bath.

Looks like about

1,250 square feet here.

Check this thing out.

Just your average.

A lot of like weird.

It's a manufactured home, right?

It's a manufactured home with a lot of awning.

There's just a lot of awning.

Every window has awning over it.

And a garage that's like way in the back.

Way back there.

Yeah, it's weird.

It looks like a little restaurant with all these awnings, though.

It's real strange shit.

The kitchen is all HG TV'd white cabinets and all that crap.

So you got that $312,000 for that thing, though.

You have to be shitting me.

No, that does not look worth.

No.

That's crazy.

That is crazy.

And then finally, a nine-bedroom, seven-bath.

Okay.

There we go.

Jesus.

8,504 square foot

thing.

Look at this.

It's just a big old compound, basically.

Yeah, that thing is giant.

Big flagstone walkway and all that.

It's pretty nice.

All your wives.

All of everybody, all the kids, everything.

So it's a pretty nice, nice manicured, a lot of landscaping.

It's going to cost you to keep that up.

It's going to be expensive every every month.

$2,999,900.

So, yeah, it's a little much, I would say.

A little much, probably.

$3 million.

$3 million for that.

Now, things to do here,

the aforementioned Payson City Golden Onion Days.

Yeah.

So you're going to be the yellow onions, I guess?

I suppose so.

They don't say the worst onions, the yellow onions.

The most useless.

Whites have their taste.

White onions have the nice flavor.

Red onions are great.

I love them.

County guy, so I love a red onion and everything, but not

on a pizza.

Those yellow onions.

Those yellow onions are garbage.

Poor people onions.

They're disgusting.

Those are like,

when I lived in that apartment, the guys below me, remember every night they would sweat down onions?

You had to close all the windows and everything.

They were yellow onions.

You could smell them.

I don't know what they were doing down there, but they were sweating down

a 30-gallon pot of onions every night, those people.

They bought those from a grocery store that has flies on the produce.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, they were like extra onions that they didn't need anymore.

So, this celebration was held first in 1929 as an opportunity for residents and former residents to renew old friendships and make new ones.

If you don't live there anymore, what the hell do you care?

That's weird.

You gotta make new friendships, Jeff.

New friends with new people.

Originally known as the Onion Harvest and Homecoming, the event honored Payson's status as an agricultural district and outstanding producer of onions.

Yeah, outstanding.

Yeah, they renamed it Payson City Golden Onion Days, and that's what it is now.

It's held every year, Labor Day weekend.

There's concerts that they don't tell you who's going to be there, which doesn't help.

There's a carnival.

There's a car show, 5K, 10K, parade, fireworks, a baby contest.

Doesn't say a baby beauty contest.

It's just

who's the most baby out of this.

That one looks like a baby.

Hold on, let me smell its breath.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a baby.

I smell this breath.

It's formula on there.

Nipple nipple breath.

It's nipple breath.

I smell it.

That's definitely a baby.

So there's that.

Now, in 2024, they said from an article leading up to the 2024

show, I almost said, festival.

They said there's been a lot of excitement around the city of Payson in recent months from a successful push to bring actor Kevin Bacon back to the city and its high school for the 40th anniversary of the movie Foot Loose to the revamping.

I believe so.

So, this is the town you're not allowed to dance in.

You know what I'm saying?

Well, I can, I know why now.

But, like, when they were making this movie, they said, we need a place to film that looks like you're not allowed to dance in the future.

Looks like it's no fun.

And they said, Pays.

Boom.

Nailed it.

So that's where we're at.

Wow.

There's also the Payson Scottish Festival.

Okay.

Okay.

I didn't know there was Scottish Mormons, but let's find out what they do there.

They have, let's see, there's a two-day festival.

That kind of kills the whole point of being Scottish, doesn't it?

You don't even drink.

That's so weird.

Yeah, well, imagine a Scottish guy getting 3.2 beer.

They'd be so pissed.

So mad.

A mouthwash.

I've had 14 of these.

I can't feel a thing.

You're right.

I still feel everything.

Jesus Christ.

They have a strongman competition at 4 o'clock.

Then there's a piping area.

Yeah.

Piping.

This is where you hang out and pipe.

This is where you do your piping.

There is a bagpiping solo competition.

Yeah.

How much do you want to bet somebody every year does like Sweet Child of Mine

solo on a bagpipe, though?

Is that

a multi-instrument?

You know what I mean?

Can you lead bagpipe and rhythm bagpipe?

Is there oh, yeah, yeah.

There's a whole there's there's groups of pipers, man.

There's a whole band of pipers.

I feel like the pipes, they're all on the same frequency, though.

They just do the same thing.

That's correct.

There's not a bass piper.

Somebody play low, you play high.

I'm not sure how that works here.

That's weird.

But there's a solo competition.

Then the band's playing.

We have

5.30 p.m., Benson plays.

B-E-N-S-U-N, Ben's son.

Yeah.

We'll be there.

At 6:30, the Payson High School Pipe Band plays.

That's what I want to see.

High schoolers do bagpipes.

That sounds great.

They only get a 15-minute set,

the pipe band.

Yeah, I mean, how much bagpipe can you listen to?

There's a solo competition, so probably a lot.

That's probably.

It seems like at a funeral, like an Hours Funeral or any Boston cop funeral, the bagpipes are so fucking long.

They're long and they're loud.

Then at

6.45, the Bonnie Knees Contest.

Knees, K-N-E-E-S,

Knees.

And it says anyone in a kilt can enter.

Who has the most attractive knees?

I'm not sure.

At 7 p.m.,

Dragon Keel Teach Irish Dancers.

Okay.

7.50, the men of worth will be performing.

Yeah.

Oh, boy, got to have them.

8.35, the

useless ones.

Yeah.

The men of little value, follow them.

The AML trio after that.

On Saturday, they have a drum major competition.

From 8 a.m.

to 4.30 p.m.

on the field, they say Scottish Heavy Athletics.

That's all they say.

He's throwing shit.

I was going to say that includes like a bar fighting competition, and there's many different ones.

Somebody getting glassed.

Oh, my God.

They have the men of worth.

They're back.

They have two sets that day.

Fiddlers Rally.

Well, three sets.

Men of Worth play at 12, 2, and 5.

God dang, these guys.

Just

too much.

And then there's a dance.

Dance competitions in the elementary school auditorium.

So everyone wants to show up for that.

Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in.

Now, you'd figure these nice, God-fearing Mormon people, there'd be no crime at all.

Well, property crime, right about average in the United States.

So I don't know what the hell's going on here, but something's happening.

Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault.

The Mount Rushmore of crime is less than half.

It's under half the average.

So, pretty, pretty, not even half.

So, safe as far as violence goes, but the property crime, it's pretty high.

That said, let's talk about some real weird murder here.

Let's talk about some vicious shit that, wow, is this a messed up story?

Okay,

let's start out with a man we'll talk about here, a really interesting, eccentric guy.

Okay,

Interesting guy.

Dr.

K.

Mortensen, M-O-R-T-E-N-S-E-N, Mortensen.

K-A-Y?

K-A-Y.

He's a man.

Really?

K.

Sherman Mortensen.

And Kay's his whole first name, too.

Really?

Family name.

Oh, you know.

That is a very common thing in the Mormon religion to just give like the name J, or like...

J, and they'd spell it J-A-Y.

Like, that's your middle name.

Okay, so they do that, and it's almost like.

E-M.

I don't know.

So then after that, if a Mormon joined Heaven's Gate, he'd be Coyote after that.

So it makes it easier to

much easier to remember their name.

Easy transition to the ship.

Totally.

It's way

just a hop, skip, and a jump.

Yeah, it's very similar.

They're both getting ships.

So I'm planets.

Dr.

K.

Sherman Mortensen, he's born July 6th, 1939 in

Ephraim, Utah.

How do you say that?

Is it A-I-N?

No, A-E-P-H-R-A-I-M.

Ephraim.

Ephraim.

I think it's Ephraim.

Ephraim?

One of those.

It doesn't matter.

It's the only time it's going to be mentioned because he's born there.

So

good for you for being

moving along.

Moving along.

His parents were Sherman, which is where I'm sure he got the middle name from, and Roxy Mortensen.

I like that name.

A lot of old-timey Mormon lady's name Roxy,

but she was.

That's so strange.

So, yeah, he was born there.

He's the oldest in his family.

He's got some siblings here.

He's got, let's see, one, two, three, four siblings, including his sister, Fern, who they keep kind of close over the years here.

He grew up on a farm.

I mean,

grew up on a farm in Utah, basically spent his childhood helping his father raise sheep and

hunting and all that kind of thing.

Really loves farming and farm equipment and livestock and all that kind of thing.

And throughout his whole life, he'll raise cows and crops and he always has something going on.

But

he's also extremely interested in like academic pursuits and scholarly shit, as we'll talk about.

Like, he's not just like, well, I'm a farmer.

He wants to know engineering and mechanics, and he's an interesting guy.

He finds a wife pretty early on named

Hermona Anderson.

Hermona.

Hermona.

Yes.

Hermona.

Like, that's Hermona, not my Mona.

Yeah.

They end up having four children together.

They have Roger Kay.

He's the firstborn.

He's born in about 1962.

Then they have Julie, Janet, and then Paul is the youngest.

So that's how that goes.

They have four kids.

And, yeah, they're raising them in

a Mormon church and all that kind of thing.

They're doing it.

Now, Kay, though, like I said, very interested in academics.

He graduates from Snow College

and then Utah State University.

And then he ends up

graduating also from the University of Utah.

Sick.

So he graduated from three colleges.

That's a busy kid.

Imagine that.

Neither of us went to one college.

He graduated from three of them.

That's incredible.

I'm impressed, man.

Yeah.

I'm impressed.

He got a Ph.D.

in metallurgy.

What is that?

It's a science, right?

Yeah, science of how metals are made and all.

Metal, yeah.

Yeah.

I guess that's the root word, so I should have known

dummy.

Well, that's because you didn't graduate from three colleges.

That's why we're stupid and this guy's smart.

So he got a PhD, so he's doctor.

Doctor Metalman, yeah.

Dr.

Metalman.

That sounds like a fucking rock-on title right there.

That's somebody's guitar player in the 80s.

Hey, what's up?

I'm Chuck.

This is Steve, and this is Dr.

Metal, the Shredder Man.

We are the Metal Man.

We are the Metal Man.

So he graduates from all these different places.

He works a few years as a metallurgy person, metallurgist.

I don't know.

Then he became a faculty member at BYU,

where he will teach courses in manufacturing design, engineering, technology, and mechanical engineering.

Wow.

So very smart guy, real smart guy, and known as a really smart guy, like very well respected amongst the other professors and scholars as like, that's a smart guy.

You know, we all know that.

He's going to end up teaching for more than 30 years at BYU.

God damn.

Yep.

He also does mentoring programs where he mentors undergraduate and graduate students.

He does these lecture series.

He's extremely bright guy.

Hey, everybody.

Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you where to get amazing cereal, Magic Spoon.

MagicSpoon.com.

Oh, you know it.

I love cereal.

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And he's like kind of known around the area.

Like here is a 1972 newspaper article from basically the society page, you could say, type of thing.

And it says, Dr.

K.

Mortensen of BYU and two students, their name is unimportant, are presently in Detroit, Michigan, attending a national competition of clean air vehicles.

Oh.

The purpose of the competition is to encourage the invention and development of non-polluting transport vehicles.

It's before that was controversial or like political at all.

It was just like, hey, that sounds like a good idea.

Roger

Four is anything.

It was just divisive line.

It was just new science.

Yeah, it was just, let's look for new science shit.

Roger Billings invented, that's one of the students, and designed the hydrogen engine, which they will enter in the competition.

The engine was adapted to two automobiles, a Volkswagen and a Mazda, which were donated by auto dealerships.

Gasoline was also donated for the competition.

Let's see.

The engine developed by Mr.

Billings actually cleans the air rather than polluting it.

It like takes in air and then puts it out better.

Oh.

As part of the

intake cleans the air and filters it.

Weird.

Yeah, real weird.

I mean, it sounds like a good idea, but

I don't know.

So they also say in this article, Mrs.

K.

Mortensen, his wife, Harmona there, and three children

and her sister are in Spanish Fork spending a few days at the home of Kay's parents.

So there we go.

1984, he's doing more smart but boring shit.

Listen to this.

Okay, December 13th, 1984, the Herald newspaper Provo Utah.

The headline is, all consumers would suffer if Geneva Steel Fails.

Okay.

I'm just going to read you the first paragraph because it's boring.

It isn't just Utah County steel workers who will suffer if U.S.

Steel's Aram Geneva work shuts down.

It's the consumer on all levels.

That's the opinion of Dr.

Kay Mortensen, a Brigham Young University professor of technology who participated in a panel discussion of problems in the steel industry at BYU Tuesday.

He said this is a very complex issue.

He said Geneva employees have the highest level of education of any steel worker in the nation.

The innovative ability of Geneva employees may be its major asset.

So this is the kind of boring shit he's doing.

Like he's being sat down on a panel to discuss the ramifications of a steel plant closing.

Very interesting.

But he's just to show you that I just was showing you that to tell you kind of how respected he is

among his peers.

Yeah, yeah, scientific community.

Yeah.

He said, my philosophy is that American industry is in the business to make a dollar.

It doesn't bother me if U.S.

steel decides to optimize its plants.

It does bother me if we use the capacity to produce steel in this country.

Okay.

Now,

his kids here, as time goes on, he and Hermona are going to end up getting divorced at some point.

Okay.

They are going to split up and he'll find a new wife later.

But let's kind of catch up on what their kids are up to over the years here.

Janet, the second child,

died in a car accident in Salt Lake City in 1988.

Not up to much at all.

No, I found her obituary and she apparently got in a very bad car accident and was killed pretty hard.

In 88?

In 88, yeah.

So who knows?

It could have been one of those little CR, those little Honda hatchbacks, those little fucking Civics, little CRXs, yeah.

I rolled over in one of those.

It was tough.

You rolled in a CRX?

Fuck yeah, when I was eight.

God.

Me and my mom rolled over.

That was the car she was driving?

Yeah, we rolled like five times and landed on the roof.

And they had to pull her out with all the glass.

It was bad.

I was like eight years old.

I remember all my teachers talking about it.

And like, they brought me in front of the class to be like,

he's a hero.

And I was like, what?

I don't even know what was going on.

It was really weird, dude.

It was strange.

Real weird shit.

So

anyway, he dies.

She dies in 1988.

The two youngest kids move away and kind of just gone doing their own thing with their own families.

And then there's Roger.

Uh-oh.

Roger's the oldest.

Roger has some issues.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Number one, in 1994,

before this, he was in the Navy.

Yeah.

So he was fine in the Navy,

had some success.

He worked for the state of Utah for a while after the Navy, had a state job.

And then in 1994, everything changed.

He was in an ATV accident and had a brain injury.

Yikes.

In an ATV accident, messed his brain up.

And after that, he was a different guy.

Couldn't hold a job down,

not the same personality,

unreliable.

He started doing drugs out of nowhere.

Never his whole life he was doing drugs.

I don't know where he was doing drugs and stuff like that.

And just basically would be combative with people for no reason.

And a brain injury

was kind of messed up.

And after that, all of a sudden, now criminal things follow.

Really?

Yeah, he was in his 30s and never had a problem.

And then that just snapped everything into place place for him here.

He does, in 1996, he was driving in American Fork Canyon on a four-wheeler.

You'd think he would have maybe stopped doing that, but

he was passed, or he passed a car full of Boy Scouts.

Okay.

Now, car full of Boy Scouts on the way to a trip thing that they were doing.

He passed them.

No one knows why.

We don't know if one of the kids, you know, kids, when they're in the car together, they make a face out the window.

They make a face.

One of the kids moons or, you know, does something stupid.

They give them the finger, stick their tongue out.

Whatever it is,

something pissed him off bad.

What did he do?

Real bad.

He became, quote, very upset,

stopped in front of them so they couldn't go.

He got a bus and

pulled out a, no, like a station wagon, I think.

And pulled out a handgun.

At a boy.

At a car full of Boy Scouts.

Yeah.

I'm going to give you your bleeding to death badge right now.

How's that?

This is

wow.

One of you is going to get a triage badge.

Yeah.

You have to think about what's going on.

Like

you almost wish you could pause time for someone and go, step back for a second.

You're holding a gun on a fucking car full of Boy Scouts.

What the hell is wrong with you, dude?

Like, chill out.

Yeah, he needs Eminem and Dre to talk.

He needs somebody to talk him through it.

Absolutely.

So he's doing that, holding the gun on.

He began yelling and pointing the gun at the driver's head at that point.

Oh, my.

Yeah.

So then he ended up, you know, getting back on his ATV and driving away.

But the driver reported that to the cops because that's crazy and he's a lunatic.

Illegal, yeah.

They tracked him down and found him with the gun, just as described by the driver, and he had a weed pipe, too.

He had his ball on him.

Okay.

Okay.

So in Utah, that's bad.

That's yeah, in Utah, especially, you know, in 1990, whatever the hell, 96.

So he then pleaded, Roger pleads no contest to reduce charges of theft and exhibiting a dangerous weapon and was given probation.

The theft was from another thing that he had pending.

So they dropped the weed pipe and all that.

Then next year, 1997,

fuck man,

he is

charged with theft for helping his roommate steal a bunch of tools from a hardware store in Orem,

which I don't understand.

This is where Mortensen worked as a cashier.

Smart.

So he had his friend help rob him, which

we've all heard of that before.

I have a story to tell on that, but I'm not sure about the statute of limitations on it, so I'm not going to tell it.

I'm not going to tell it.

I think it might be up, but still,

it was like a serious crime that these people committed that I knew about.

Products or money money yeah not good money like a staged a staged robbery thing yeah i'm not gonna talk about that but it was i didn't do it don't get me wrong it was just my new and it depends on the state too because in arizona i know a friend of mine had recently told me that they know who robbed the peter piver pizza uh and i was like well fucking tell me and he's like i can't i don't know he may have been looking for attention you know i mean i can't do that statue

that's a that's a i don't want to be part dude the statute of limitations up fucking 10 years ago you should have put one of your guns on him and went, this is what it felt like.

You're going to tell me now, motherfucker.

I'm going to tie you up and put you around a bunch of dough, you fucking idiot.

This is how I felt while it was happening.

Now you're going to talk.

Talk.

Bladder feel a little weak.

Oh, I'm telling you, man.

Scary, isn't it?

It is, right?

Now you're going to tell me.

Well, I guess you're not going to tell anyone about this then since you're so fucking tight-lipped.

So I'm not real worried about it, huh?

Feel that adrenaline?

That's what I'm saying.

You shake.

That's how it works, huh?

So now a jury found him in the hardware robbery.

No.

The jury found him guilty, but mentally ill.

Oh.

Yeah.

Oh, because he has that brain injury.

He has a brain injury and he's just not right.

They looked at his history where he had nothing wrong up until 1994, then brain injury, then a bunch of crazy shit.

And they went, okay, we think that's the reason why.

Then in 1999, he was in jail for some reason

and received a pretty good beating in the jail.

We don't know if it's from staff or inmates.

Probably,

but I mean, yeah, he got a pretty good beat.

So he was beaten pretty badly in jail in 1999, which, like we said, his brain injury, I don't think that's the best thing for it, probably to get jostled around a little bit more.

In 2000,

he is again arrested for violating a protective order by making harassing or allegedly making harassing phone calls to his ex-wife in which he threatened to kill his stepson.

Oh, boy.

I will kill your child.

Yeah.

A judge ordered him to take an anger management class.

Really?

I think his brain is fucked up.

I don't think it's a matter of knowledge.

I think it's a matter of lack of self-control, impulse control.

I don't think any courses are going to

stop this.

They're not going to fix frontal lobe damage, I don't think.

That's not going to happen.

In 2002, his stepson that he was threatened to kill the year before assaulted him with a baseball bat.

Oh.

Beat him in the head with a baseball bat, Roger.

Wow.

So badly that Roger had to have metal plates put in his head.

Is that right?

His brain has been through it, man.

No kidding.

Wow.

That is scary.

I mean, think about it.

It's like a thick candy shell.

Yeah, that's good for it, probably.

Now it's a big bean on M ⁇ M.

But that is like,

man, that's a lot, dude.

That's dangerous, That's too much.

It's a lot of brain injuries.

Then, okay, in 2003,

same stepson, by the way.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

He is charged with assault, Roger is, in Spanish Fork, after police say that he and his stepson split a bottle of tequila,

which is a bad start already, and you know where this is going.

And then he attacked his stepson after half a bottle of tequila.

Yeah.

Charge was dismissed because he entered a plea in abeyance for providing alcohol to a minor instead.

This was a child, by the way.

Good luck.

A minor who beat his brains in with a baseball bat and who he splits bottles of tequila with.

So Roger's decision-making is

questionable at best.

At best, questionable.

Scattered is more like it, and dangerous is also like it.

Inconsistent,

precarious.

Lots of things like that.

Not good.

Yeah.

Not good.

So he ends up getting remarried because obviously that relationship isn't going to work out there.

That'll sour.

Protection orders and baseball bat beatings.

And it's, you know, that's basically like being in a relationship with the Gambino family with that whole thing.

It's crazy.

So he gets a new wife named Pamela Ann.

She goes by Pam.

She's about 13 years younger than him, by the way, than Roger.

So

now she is known for her cooking.

Pam's a hell of a cook, especially her pecan pies.

Sure.

Those are, I guess, K, dad, that's his favorite dessert is Pam's pecan pie.

Triple P, baby.

She should start a stand.

So

Pam's pecan pie stand.

Now,

Kay, back to his career a little bit here,

university spokesman said he worked at the school from 1968 to 2005.

And when he left BYU, he was a member of the mechanical engineering department at that time where he'd been teaching.

And

he's amassed, apparently, Kay, in addition to his

abilities in mechanical things and that sort of thing, he's really, really smart with money.

Oh, he's a really good investor and has invested money extremely well over the years.

Great.

I don't know if he inherited anything from his parents to Kickstarter because I know they had a farm and all that, but whatever it is, he's worth millions

by the early 2000s.

Good for him.

He's worth millions.

It's all just his,

he's really methodical about the way he invests.

He like tracks and makes charts.

He's a math guy.

I mean,

that's what he does.

And he finds a new wife as well.

Oh,

one with a name that's a little better than Hermona.

Oh, yeah.

Kay, or I'm sorry, Kay.

That's his wife's name.

They're both Kay.

He married Darla, is her name.

Darla Pectel,

P-E-C-T-O-L, Pectel, Darla Pectel Jones.

Okay, so Darla is a little younger than him and a lot different than him.

She's like bright and cheery, and he's not.

He's got some interesting things that he does that we'll get into here.

So Darla, this is a neighbor, described them as, quote, boy, he sure seemed like a nice fella when he's around here because they lived behind them in another home they they owned in Washington City.

They owned another home, and he says he was a part-timer for now.

I guess he was going to retire here eventually to Washington City.

Um,

Kay is also, and this is where his kind of idiosyncrasies come into play.

Yeah, he's a big-time, I guess you could call him a prepper, a doomsday guy.

Yeah,

big time.

We're talking uh-oh, yeah, um,

real, real strange.

He's got he's a total survivalist,

overwhelming distrust of society.

Really?

Societal collapse is imminent.

A nuclear war is even more imminent.

And

we got to

gird our loins here.

Yeah, he's one of these guys.

Big time.

He was convinced that...

There was many catastrophic events coming.

Nuclear war, which will lead to a civil war, which will lead to pandemics and economic collapse and all of that.

So he didn't want to be involved in any of that.

So

basically, he decides to make himself a fortress in Basin, and that's what he does.

Okay.

He has fuckloads of guns, first of all.

Really?

Like a hundred of them.

Really?

Conservatively, yeah.

Like a hundred guns.

He keeps them not in one place, not as a collection, not in safety.

all

over the house.

He knows where all those are?

We're talking in strategic locations all over that.

If I'm on the couch and I'm reaching for my drink, I can pull a gun out of the coffee table.

If I'm going over here, let's say I'm in the kitchen getting some eggs out of the egg holder here.

Okay, well, somebody comes up, boom, pull a gun out of the butter department.

There you go.

Right here in the mayonnaise jar.

That's it.

Pull it right out of a pickle can.

That's no problem.

Oh, boy.

Pickle can?

I don't think pickles come in cans, do they?

Yeah, jar is what I'm going for there.

Pickle can, I just said.

Yeah,

that's how you eat pickles.

Canned pickles.

You'd think there would be canned pickles, but they're not.

You want to see them in there, I think, is why.

So that's what he's got going on.

They're everywhere.

And he's got his, what he calls his everyday weapons.

Oh, what are those?

The ones he wants to shoot, actually, if someone comes in, you got a little nine millimeter here or something there.

Then he has his valuable collector.

pieces that are expensive collector guns that are you know more for to look at than to fuck with kind of a thing.

And a lot of them are worth thousands of dollars.

As you know, guns can be very expensive.

Man.

Extremely.

Now, the valuable guns, the collector's pieces, are kept separately

from the rest of the guns.

And there's a lot of rare ones and things like that.

He knows everything about guns, too.

He's a guy that, if he's interested in something, he'll find out everything there is.

All of it, yeah.

Learn it all.

So he had his own underground bunker.

Yeah.

He had a bunker, man.

He made a bunker.

Nice.

To live in or to whatever, like a

blast from the past bunker.

No, he made a bunker separately of the basement.

Dug a hole.

Yeah, a big one, too.

An underground bunker stocked, and it's stocked not only with weapons and ammo, but canned goods and water supplies.

And it's prepper shit.

I mean, he's ready to go.

It was accessible through the house and contained

what he considered his everyday firearms.

That's where he put those because, you know, to fend off the hordes that'll be

coming to his bunker.

In addition to that, he's a black belt in karate as well.

How?

He's so

paranoid.

I will beat you and kick you, and if that doesn't work, then I can shoot you.

It's just on

how he has so much time.

Just pick one.

Pick the defense mechanism.

Either you're

going to kick somebody or shoot them, but not both.

Bruce Lee never pulled out out a gun and shot somebody it was you know what I mean Chuck Norris was a he'd kick you I think he'd shoot you too but Bruce did later on

he shot yeah he shot yeah no no I'm talking he never shot others yeah I know I know maybe he should have known how Bruce Lee died

how would karate have have uh kept him out of that one no no maybe he should have had a gun is my point Bruce Lee yeah I don't think he needed it I think he was good he got shot didn't he Brandon Lee got shot I think they they both did.

But it was an accident.

It wasn't.

Yeah.

He couldn't have defended himself against an accident.

That's my point.

That's a good point, I guess.

He wasn't like

robbed at a 7-Eleven or something.

That would have been one thing.

Was it on a movie, Seth?

I think it was.

I think his son died the same way as him, I'm pretty sure.

Wasn't it?

Yeah, I think so.

It would be sad if just Bruce Lee just had cancer.

We messed it all up.

So,

anyway,

that's how this is going.

He's a black belt and karate and a firearms guy and guns in all the rooms of the house.

Even his cars are full of guns, everything.

Fully stocked bunker, you name it, even like magazines, books, things like that.

Just like it was stocked down there.

This is where we're going to live.

And

yeah, Darla, he'd tell Darla, this is where you and I are going to end up because there's going to be a nuclear war.

And, you know, I'd say I don't want to live if everybody else is dying, but, you know, he was.

He did want to live here.

And she also said he was a true patriot, and he worried about things, and he wanted to be prepared for the civil war that was going to erupt.

Oh, boy.

So, yeah, nuclear war followed by civil war was his plan of how the whole thing was going to happen here.

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um so this guy between the karate and the guns he and the prepping he's ready to kill you to defend his water supply essentially yeah yeah

so yeah um they and fern his sister, once asked him, what would happen if I'm not prepared and I'm hungry or my kids are hungry?

Can we come to the house?

And he said, no, I'll probably just shoot you.

Don't have enough for everybody.

Get out of here.

Yeah.

No good.

So how does Darla feel about this, his new wife?

She's cool with all this?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, everybody said that she kind of softened him up a little bit because she's not like this at all.

So not as far as the prepping and all that shit goes, but in terms of his harder edges, she kind of smoothed him a drop here.

Not so much, not so terrified of the world.

She is.

She accepted it because she said, well, that's him, you know, whatever, but it doesn't affect me that much.

So she said, I think we both felt like we were back being teenagers again because we both, you know, hadn't really had love for quite a few years.

And she had kids of her own as well.

Kay has adult children.

She's got adult children.

There's, you know, all sorts of, you know, they both have had lives before this, and now they're going to come in and, you know, live their golden years together, essentially, here.

And she was into her own shit, too.

She was into like, you know, like normal shit people do when they go when they retire to golf and things like that.

She liked vintage cars,

which is cool.

I'd much rather have a bunch of vintage cars than a basement and a bunker and a fucking

gun.

Sell the guns, buy a car.

Kill me in my 68 Camaro or whatever.

That's fine.

Just

annihilate me in a nuclear fashion while I'm driving my 71 Cooter or whatever the fuck.

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't care.

It's better.

So

they were happy, but

he'd say, you know, we're good.

Let's just be happy.

He told Darla that, you know, what else do we need to do?

We're retired.

We have plenty of money.

Let's just have fun.

Yeah.

Which sounds great.

Darla also said that that he made most of his money buying gold at $250 an ounce,

which apparently went up significantly after that.

And she said he just had the foresight.

He's always said, you know, the dollars bill isn't going to be worth anything, so you need it to grow.

He put his money into a trust so that Roger and his other children would inherit everything when he was gone as well.

Everybody said he wasn't spending it.

He's very frugal, worth millions, extremely frugal, except when it comes to

guns and

doomsday preparations.

That

sky's the limit, but everything else, very frugal.

Darla said, very frugal.

And I just, I used to say to him, I said, is it, when is it you're going to spend your money?

You know, what are you waiting for?

What are you doing here?

Yeah.

So that prompted him to finally promise Darla that, fine, I'm going to travel with you and we'll see the world.

Let's do that.

I'll get out of my bunker.

But, you know, he's still in the bunker for now.

And like I said, Darla has her own grandchildren and children.

Everybody kind of blends together pretty seamlessly, though.

Because I mean, they're all adults.

You meet them at Thanksgiving.

Hey, how you doing?

You know, it's not like you have to live with these people, so who gives a shit?

Yeah, very little effort.

She's a lot more social than Kay is.

She's the one who like maintains kind of the family connections.

And she talks to the kids, his kids more than he does, and that sort of thing, too.

Now, Kay becomes more isolated.

He's involved with the LDS church as well.

People said he's dedicated, eccentric, and that he took his religious obligations very seriously.

Now,

it really, really does that.

Kay's

kind of neighbors knew that he was well prepared, and some said if the apocalypse came, Kay's house would be the safest place to be.

So all of his neighbors kind of know him as a pious guy who's very focused, focused, and that's his thing.

And everybody knows.

Which I think, if you're prepping, the fact that everyone knows what you have defeats the purpose of doing it.

Yeah.

If you've prepped and everyone comes to your house because they think you're prepared, you're no longer prepared anymore.

So, it's pointless.

Now, you're overwhelmed.

Now, you're overwhelmed.

Yeah.

Now, you have to shoot your neighbors, which is, I don't know if that's what you're up for right now.

Is that what you're looking for?

So, Kay spends a lot of time with Roger.

He's kind of the only person he really hangs out with besides Darla.

They're very close,

best friends, people say.

They do everything together.

They're nothing alike, by the way.

Oh.

But they're, especially after the brain injury, they're not much alike, but they are always hanging out together.

By this point, Roger cannot work.

He lives on disability.

Oh, no.

His brain just doesn't connect things very well sometimes.

And they lived less than a mile away from each other because they liked spending time together.

So yeah, I mean,

Roger later said, if I ever needed help, he was, he'd be there in a minute to help me.

And,

you know, he said that wasn't, that was great.

You know what I mean?

It was Roger's dad was, called him, called him kind of just a very strong guy, his way or the highway.

So everybody said that Roger learned to shy away from confrontation with his father.

He knew better.

If his dad was adamant about something, he just, whoop, he just skirted it.

Didn't want to deal with it.

Roger.

He figured that out early.

Now, Darla will go right at him and say, what are you doing?

You know what I mean?

She's a different story, and he's okay with it.

So, whatever.

So, like I said, these two guys, they spend a lot of time together.

They go camping together and play games.

Roger would often help Kay with projects around the property.

And so they're always together.

He knows, Roger knows the home.

He knows all about the prepping and the guns and where everything is and all that kind of shit.

Roger knew about the bunker.

You know, he knows all of this stuff.

So by 2009, you know, Kay is a retired professor and a church member and a

survivalist with an arsenal at the same time.

He's waiting, just literally waiting for society to collapse any minute now.

Wow.

Like any fucking minute.

In early November 2009, he gets out from doing an 18-month missionary stint.

I just said that like jail.

I said it like he was released from jail.

He and Darla,

he just did a, yeah, he did a couple of fucking,

a little bit here.

He was released from serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Provo Mission where he was doing that shit, missionary work.

So they did 18 months of that.

That's early November.

Now,

November 16th, 2009,

Darla was in Salt Lake County.

She was with her daughter who was having a baby.

Oh.

So granddaughter coming.

Now,

YK didn't go with for that.

Weird, but he stayed home.

He's prepping the bunker.

He's his things to do.

Step-grandfather, I guess, in that situation?

Yeah, you go with your wife.

Yeah, I suppose.

Yeah, that's a family event.

You make her go by herself.

Plus, it's like a drive.

Go with her.

What are you doing?

You're retired.

It's a ride out, yeah.

Yeah, who gives a shit guys stop for lunch on the way you know have a good time so uh she was delayed that day getting back and was coming home later than expected so she was supposed to be home kind of early evening and now it's you know pushing nine o'clock and she's still not home yet all right then at 8 52 p.m a 911 call comes in uh oh okay this is a 911 call made by roger oh and pam is there as well and they'll pass the phone kind of back and forth to each other as the events progress here.

It's Roger on the line.

His voice sounds a little shaky.

And he's saying,

he says that there's these guys in here, and they came in, and we were tied up, and he's really mumbling and stumbling.

So he said there was a guy with a gun, and there's guys, and they had guns, and we were tied up, and I don't know what's going on.

But not like a real concise A to B linear explanation

of what's going on.

He's stumbling over details.

He's having a hard time expressing himself, which also brain injury doesn't help for that either.

So that's

another thing like that.

So that's what he's doing.

Now, they said they asked him, quote, the guy that had the gun, what did he look like?

Was he a white guy, a black guy?

Basic details.

You've said it's a guy.

Let's get a color, then maybe a height, and then, you know, we'll go from there.

What was he saying?

Shit like that.

Yeah, he said, I don't know.

And they're like, okay, how many were there?

How many guys were there?

Okay, that's what he says to them.

He asked them how many guys were there?

He said, I don't know.

How many were there?

How many guys were there?

That's what he says.

Like, is that your question you're asking me?

Like, obviously, that's the question.

Yeah.

So the dispatcher says, white, black, Hispanic,

you know, let's get some more info.

He says, uh,

three white males

came out, two white males.

That's his response.

Okay.

Three white males came out, two white males.

Okay.

Okay.

I don't know what that means.

So the

then they're saying, we think something happened to my dad.

Okay.

We think there's something wrong with him.

We think there's something wrong.

We're calling him.

He's not answering.

Okay.

so they say to him the dispatcher asks Pamela who now is on the phone I have help on the way but I just need some information is he dead the other guy in the house is Kay dead Pam responds quote um I don't know

and then says my husband went upstairs looked around or went to look I don't know if he is or not

If you're the dispatcher, this is a very frustrating call.

Yeah, because you got to get the right people to the scene.

You'd love to get them police and fire and ambulance and all this different shit, but they're not helping with like vital information at all here.

So

then Roger gets on the phone again after he comes down, and they said, You

sure your dad's

cold to the touch?

Yeah, that's an easier way than saying dead.

If you say dead, then they might fall apart, and then you got somebody on the phone.

So then Roger says he's leaned over face forward in the bathtub with his throat sliced all the way up.

Okay.

So the dispatcher says they sliced his throat and he said sliced his throat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's what's going on here.

That's the scene that we're arriving to.

These two

just saying we don't know who, how many, what they are.

There's a lot of people.

There's a throat slit.

There's a lot happening.

Somewhere between two and three people.

Yeah.

Maybe white.

We're not sure.

Who knows?

Because then he'll say they're black, so we have no idea what's going on here.

So the police arrived, and the house shows some signs of disturbance here.

There's furniture moved, there's items scattered everywhere.

Shit looks like there's been scattered and struggles and whatever the hell.

There's been a scene.

There's certainly been a scene.

They go upstairs to find that Kay's body is indeed in the bathroom, hanging over the edge of the tub with his throat slashed.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now, he's also stabbed multiple times in the back of the neck as well.

Oh, boy.

In the back of the neck.

In the neck?

Yeah, like they had him over the side.

I don't know if they're trying to loosen him.

Maybe he was tightening up so he couldn't get at his throat.

So they were stabbing him.

So I don't understand what that was.

But according to later on medical examiner findings, he suffered at least five slashing wounds to his neck and a single stab wound to the back of the neck.

The positioning, forcing him to kneel over the bathtub, basically said that this was a, like you would kill an animal and collect its blood in a fucking, and it's a slaughter.

Yeah, they put him over the tub to slaughter him.

So this is horrifying.

They say that these injuries, by the way, wouldn't have killed him immediately.

Oh, and

he would have remained conscious and aware for one to five minutes as he bled to death.

Horrifying.

Yeah.

As he watched himself bleed out.

Terrifying.

I don't even know what to say about that.

That's horrifying.

So the medical examiner, wow, man, that's crazy.

That's what they say.

So

they

look around and they've heard a lot just on the way over here and just from basic neighbors and shit that he has a shitload of guns.

Okay.

And they say that there's guns missing from their usual locations all over the house.

Yeah, guns missing all over the fucking house.

So one of the first responders, a Lieutenant Mike Brower of the Sheriff's Department, said that the house was largely undisturbed.

There were areas of shit scattered, but not the whole house.

He said there were drawers and gun lockers left untouched.

None of the doors showed anything to suggest a forced entry.

And the thing that was most interesting, they found there was meat on the countertop, on a countertop grill in the kitchen.

Not cooking, uncooked, but seasoned.

Yeah.

Oh, but seasoned.

So

this was, he was in the process of cooking.

Right.

For sure.

So he was in the middle of preparing dinner.

The guy,

the lieutenant said the home did not appear to have been ransacked.

So that's a little bit odd, but there's a lot of blood.

Yeah.

And they're saying that in a home invasion,

what's being claimed here, that there's usually more

shit disturbed.

Okay.

Because if someone bum rushes into the house and does stuff, they're going to tear the house apart looking for shit.

That's why they're in there.

Yeah, you don't usually just, unless you're interrupted, but you don't usually just stop.

Yeah.

So they're like that, the fact that it doesn't seem to have been ransacked seems like more of like

more of like a calculated direct thievery of where to steal things.

They're looking for something specific.

Yeah, that doesn't strike people as just a straight-up home invasion type of deal.

So it's very interesting.

They said also the home is super secure.

This is not, he doesn't just have like a screen door open for anybody to come in and out of.

Multiple locks, security measures, weapons placed strategically everywhere.

They said that it's almost impossible to imagine people being able to break into the house and then bum rush him before he can get to a gun.

It's just not a thing that is possible, probably.

So they're like, that seems completely unlikely.

They would have had to have broken, snuck up on him or something, but there's no forced entry anywhere.

So how's that work?

That's the problem.

Now, many of the guns are missing.

Specific, some of the specific firearms are interesting here.

The thieves had somehow known to go directly to the underground bunker.

Yeah, where he kept his everyday weapons.

They hadn't touched some of his more valuable collector pieces, though.

So they're wondering if that was because they were interrupted or they just weren't professional thieves that didn't know the value of shit, basically.

Sometimes that collector gun is ugly as fuck, doesn't look menacing, it's just old and stupid.

They might think it's nothing, exactly, whereas that's the gun that's worth three grand.

Or shit.

Or more, yeah, who knows?

It's Aaron Burr's gun.

Yeah, no shit.

It's better than fucking having the other gun that didn't work, apparently.

So he said that the,

you know, they seem to have

they seem to have had some specific knowledge about his collection, and some weapons seem to be deliberately chosen while some are overlooked.

Okay.

So like it's very interesting.

So the people they really want to talk to are Roger and Pamp because they made the 911 call.

So they might be able to put together some of this mystery and maybe have a little more of their shit together off of 911 because they weren't good.

So they said that the couple appeared really composed for people who had just survived what they're going to describe that they that they describe here.

Okay.

They said that they expected to see more obvious signs of trauma, but they seemed calm as they recounted the story.

At one point, Roger said, I came back downstairs and my wife was talking at the time to 911 Dispatch, and I said he's dead.

Calm as can be.

So here's their story.

Okay.

They showed up with a pecan pie for Kay, because it's his favorite, remember?

Yeah.

So they showed up just neighborly pie delivery time.

Okay.

They said they knocked on the door, Roger and Pam.

When they did, they saw there was an unfamiliar car in the driveway.

Yeah.

But they said, you know, who the hell knows what dad's doing?

They said, Kay, he had visitors occasionally, and he also knew that he and Darla were planning to leave town the next day.

So he said, I don't know if that maybe he rented a car to go out of town.

I have no idea what he's fucking doing, or maybe he's got a friend over.

I don't know.

Sure.

So then

they said that a person they didn't recognize opened the door when they knocked, not Kay.

Pam said that she assumed that these people were contractors and maybe working on the internet or looking at some new carpet

because Kay and Darla had discussed some home improvement projects recently.

So she thought maybe they're just like contractors who are over at, you know, 8.45 at night or whatever, which is the time of day.

Yeah.

It's too super normal for people to be giving you a carpet.

Carpet swatches at 9 p.m.

Yeah, so it's real weird.

So Pam said that, you know, she just thought nothing of it.

She said they did not have ski masks on.

They did not look like anybody scary.

They looked like regular people.

I was not scared, nor did I think anything of it.

Yeah.

So she said that a man opened the door and told them that Kay was upstairs and said, you know, come on in, basically.

So Pam then started toward the stairs, and that's when one of the, she said there was two men, and one of them told her, come back.

At this point, they're saying three men.

So they're saying,

one of the men told her, come back, and that's when she noticed he was holding a gun.

Oh,

that's her story.

So she said, once inside, that's when they showed their weapons, and they bound Roger and Pam with zip ties, just like they'd done to Kay because Kay was bound with zip ties as well.

So now they're part of this whole thing.

They're getting robbed too.

They're involved in this too.

So they said they were zip tied at the wrists and ankles,

just completely helpless,

you know,

sitting here.

So

they said they thought they were about to die.

And so at that point, because they figured they were getting shot, that Roger said he began to pray.

Oh.

He said that Rogers told the police that he started praying out loud,

you know, preparing to die,

but

instead of the burglars or killers or home invaders telling him to shut the fuck up, they

instead stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads respectfully and waited for Roger to finish his prayer.

Okay, so they're going to participate and be in the prayer as well.

They're going to be in the circle.

Yeah, they want to be a part of it.

So they said that when Roger told the cops that when he concluded his prayer,

the killers opened their eyes and looked up and announced that they had changed their minds.

This prayer.

What a powerful prayer.

Had just put a whole new sense into them of what's right and what's wrong.

And yeah, they said, you know what, we were going to kill you,

obviously, but we're not going to kill you now.

We're going to let you live.

But

under one condition.

Caveat.

All right.

So, I mean, at that point, I think any condition is fine.

You're like, great, unzip it.

Let's go.

I don't care.

Whatever.

Sure, I'll suck it.

Let's go.

So they said, here's the catch.

I want you to tell a very specific story to the police.

Yeah.

And this is the story they tell it first, and then they go back and change it to this story.

Okay.

Okay.

They said that you are to report that three men broke into the house, not two men,

and all three were black.

Now, now they're black.

Yes, that's we want you to say three black guys broke in here instead of two white guys.

That's what's going on here.

So they said, and this is what Pam said later: quote, before the men left,

she said

they told her and her husband to tell police that three black men had been inside the home.

They said that her husband's identification and their addresses, they took his ID.

They took Roger's ID and did like Jimmy Conway and Goodfellows.

You may know who we are, but we know who you are shit with the truck driver.

Yeah.

He said, so they took the ID and said, I see your address and read it off and said, I'll come to your home and kill you if you say anything to the cops other than what we're telling you to say.

Right.

So, yeah, they took his driver's license, too, by the way.

His breakfast will never taste better.

Never.

So

Pam said, we were told that we were doing this, that they were doing this for their families, that they were desperate for money.

They weren't greedy.

They were just really desperate people, and their families were hurting, and they needed the money.

So then Roger and Pam said they managed to free themselves from the zip ties somehow,

which go ahead and try that

people.

That's the only way.

You need a bunch of people.

Good luck getting yourself out of zip ties.

Yeah.

Enjoy.

I mean, that's a tough one.

It's more difficult.

And they said they immediately went upstairs to check on Kay, and that's when they found the body and the throat slashed and blood everywhere.

And they called 911 and then their cops are all here and they're like, and now we're talking to you.

Yeah.

So now, when they do this initial interview, though, they say three black guys broke in the house and tell the rest of the story.

They stopped, they let us pray, they did all that.

But then later on, they go, okay, it's really two white guys, but they told us to say three black guys.

So we said three black black guys.

Okay.

Which is very confusing.

And maybe the worst story,

maybe the worst story of like, we didn't do it that I've ever heard in my life, possibly.

So you were tied up with zip ties that you miraculously extricated yourself from, which are impossible to get out of, but you did it.

You figured it out.

You're unbelievable.

Yeah.

You were going to be murdered, just about to be murdered, but on the birch.

Yeah.

They decided to like do a prayer with you, and then they had a change of heart.

After brutally slashing this old man to death upstairs,

now it's a change of heart.

And then they told you, look, we'll let you live if you just tell the right story.

Like, this does not sound believable.

It's a very powerful prayer, James.

It's so powerful.

So the investigation, the law office, law enforcement is not releasing a whole lot to the public, just a few details.

And they are saying that they are searching for two men and a blue hatchback vehicle.

That's all they'll say.

Now, a neighbor at the time here, this is Kent Carroll, a longtime neighbor here,

says that the Mortensen's family was planning to gather at the house the next day to play board games.

That included Roger and Pam, who were, or that night, I'm sorry, who they said they were tied up.

This neighbor says, I really think they're lucky to be alive.

I do too.

Oh, man, super lucky.

That prayer saved him.

So the neighbor said he was late getting home with his wife from a doctor's appointment in Pleasant Grove, or he believes he would have been at the scene during the home invasion because he was going to come over for game night.

That's why they were there with a pie.

He said it was common for him to take care of the Mortensen property when they were out of town.

And, you know, he thought they were going to be out of town because they were going to drive.

So he would drive his four-wheeler over and

look for suspicious shit.

He said, it's probably a good thing I wasn't home.

Had we not stopped at the store, I might have come home and actually seen the guys coming out of the driveway.

So

he said that when he tried to drive up the canyon, he found the roads blocked by sheriff's deputies.

So he called Darla, who was at the time getting off the freeway at Payson to see if she knew what was happening.

And she said, I had no idea there's sheriffs blocking the road and I don't know what's happening.

So she met.

this neighbor at the police command post in a church and said that he, you know, he said he left before the officers had told everybody what happened, the neighbor said.

He described Kay as a survivalist type person who had a bunker and all that kind of shit, so everybody knew about it.

And he also said, I suspect that maybe he let his guard down thinking that people he knew were coming over because he was expecting people.

He was expecting Roger and Pam, and he was expecting the kids and the wife and everybody.

So he said, he probably just thought somebody he knew was at the door.

And he said, if that happened, I suspect he was facing a gun and they got the drop on him.

The drop on him in this duel.

Knowing Kay, he was a fairly cautious guy.

So what does the internet have to say about this the next day?

Tell me all of it.

Okay.

Here is November 19th, 2009, 1.08 p.m.

So it was like the day after it's released to the public or the day of.

Quote, is this the same Kay Sherman Mortensen that shot his neighbor's dog down in front of them?

What happened to that case?

Shooting in city limits, animal cruelty.

Okay.

Now,

next person says, something's rotten in Denmark, or Payson.

This incident reeks of plotting.

Was this break in revenge?

Someone out there know about this and isn't telling.

Contact the police right away.

Then another comment, a bad guy for shooting the neighbor's dog after repeatedly informing him of numerous negative issues.

You kill a bad dog.

Exclamation point.

You don't paint the property owner as bad for protecting himself and family and property.

I'll take a fine anytime rather than

teeth marks.

So this guy's defending shooting the neighbor's dog.

Right.

Then, Dr.

Mortensen was one of my favorite

professors while I was at BYU.

His depth of knowledge was immense, and his real-world engineering experience was key to how he taught his courses.

What a tragic event.

I'm truly heartbroken.

Then, um,

okay.

This neighbor is supposed to be a good friend, but for some reason, he can't seem to keep his mouth shut, which may hinder the case.

There's a reason the police are not releasing information.

He should be respectful of that and keep quiet until they release the info.

I'm sure Mr.

Mortensen's family are not real thrilled with his running his mouth.

Okay,

then another one.

For a man who was cautious like him, he had to have known the perpetrators.

No man leaves his guard down in the face of a stranger.

Plus,

he was being constantly watch.

I don't know what that means.

What a shame.

When we trust the world and the world just stabs us in the face.

In the face.

In the face.

I don't think that's how that goes, but okay.

In the back, but all right.

Usually.

And we will always believe that we live in a safe zone.

Okay.

So the comments are scattered is what I'm getting at.

People have, they're mad at him.

Some people like him.

Like I said, you can't get 96% of people to agree on anything.

You can't get 96% of people to agree that an old man

butchered in his tub is bad.

That we can't even get that to.

We can't even get that.

Sometimes you call back all the bad deeds in their life and you've justified the act.

But 96% of us can agree Joseph Smith pulled some shit out of the ground and everything's fine.

Like, what are we talking about here?

Shot and

magic underwear he saved his life.

So Roger's acting real weird, too.

Yeah.

During the investigation, he's not real cooperative with the camps at all, which is kind of strange here.

There's also inconsistencies in he and Pam's account of what happened.

So even during the original 911 call, he contradicted himself about the number of attackers, their descriptions.

And as they conducted more detailed interviews, then with Roger and Pam, these inconsistencies just piled up and piled up.

More and more and more start happening.

In one interview, Pam described the attackers as wearing blue, fuzzy gloves that looked like women's winter driving gloves.

And in another interview, she described them as purple gloves that weren't fuzzy.

Purple eye stoners.

Very different.

Now, blue and purple to me look the same because I got a

fucked up thing that whatever, but I know fuzzy and not fuzzy.

I can tell you whether it was that or not.

Now, when asked about the possibility of family involvement, Pam's answers were also weird.

She was just seemed evasive and well, I don't know, and a lot of Heming and Han.

Then the investigator just said, Is your husband capable of killing somebody?

Oh, let's just ask, Is Roger capable of this?

Pam's response.

Now, I would hope if you asked Sarah that, she'd go, Fuck no, probably not, probably not.

She said,

I need to get a drink.

Huh?

Pardon?

I got a pee

anything.

She's, wow, I need to get a drink.

And then said, I wouldn't hope.

I mean, I wouldn't think he is.

I wouldn't think he's capable of killing his father.

Oh, boy.

Real weird answer.

So I wouldn't think he's capable rather than, no, of course not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was real strange.

So, and Roger's descriptions kept changing.

At first, he said that Pam and he knocked on the door, or when they got there, Pam knocked on the door.

Then later on, he said that she rang the doorbell, and then later on he said that she knocked again.

So, but not, she didn't like knock, ring the doorbell, then knock.

These are three different things that she said.

Three different first actions that he did.

Exactly.

So it's real weird.

One detective at one point just confronts him and says, this story sounds too rehearsed.

Yeah.

Sounds like something you practice, but you keep mixing up the details, basically.

Sounds like you practiced it, but you didn't know, put your brain injury into the equation and all of that.

So another thing, they claim to have been bound with zip ties for nearly an hour.

Now, to get out of zip ties, imagine you'd be all scraped and cut and ripped the skin off.

That'll fuck your arms up.

Yeah, that's so, but they said they showed no physical signs of restraints, no marks on their wrists or ankles, no chafing or bruising that would be expected from struggling against plastic restraints.

Yeah, yeah.

For your life, for Christ's sake, not just a little bit.

I mean, struggling to flee yourself.

So that right away looks terrible.

Inconsistent stories, zip ties.

Now they dig into Roger and Pam's background a little bit and discover that they are in a shitload of debt.

Debt.

So much debt.

Shitloads.

They have unpaid bills, financial pressures.

They're looking at losing their house.

They have

credit card bills coming out of their ass.

So much debt and so much financial hardship.

So they said that

they had a lot of unpaid bills when searched by the police here.

And, you know, Kay is worth millions and they are in line to inherit a third of it.

So

they'll get you out of debt.

And one investigator said, you're in debt, your father has millions, and suddenly he's dead, and you're the one that found him.

How does that look?

Yeah.

How does that look to you?

He said, that's wild.

Yeah.

Come on.

He said that to Roger.

How does that look to you?

Yeah.

And Roger said, quote, I get a big share of my dad's millions, too.

I know we're in a lot of debt, but I personally would not have killed my father for his money.

Wouldn't have killed him for his money.

Maybe another reason, but not for that.

Not for his money.

I personally would not have killed my father for his money.

Like, I mean, other people to each his own is what I'm getting at.

Not me, though.

I'm not the guy.

Then they start looking into the family dynamics and scrutinizing them and they learn there had been some tension between darla and roger and pam in the past few months darla later also mentioned to the to the police a falling out that occurred but didn't really have much details there's just a general falling out amongst the four of them sure here now roger's best friend defends him

He has known Roger for six years and he doesn't want to be identified publicly, which is always very reliable information.

He says that Roger's someone who's extremely cautious about the people he associates with.

He said, even if he meets someone that he doesn't know that looks like a shady character or something like that, he just won't even deal with them.

Just judging books by their covers, man.

I mean, that's...

That's his forte.

It's not down.

It's not really a compliment.

So far, he's been real good at it, batting a thousand.

He just says, you're a scumbag.

I see it.

I see it in you, and I'm not going to deal with you.

No, I don't give chances

based on the content of your character.

Get the hell out of here.

I don't like the look of you.

So the neighbor said he's like, you know, I don't need that in my life.

And that's exactly how he is.

You know, if he can't tell right away off the bat that you're a good person, then he doesn't want nothing to do with you.

Right.

They also,

he mentions that, quote, Roger Mortensen suffered brain injuries in an off-roading accident and has no short-term memory.

He says that that might prevent him from accurately remembering what the suspects looked like that evening.

Sure.

Yeah.

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Pam's brain is fine, though, and they were right next to it about him the whole time.

So what are we talking about?

He also said about Roger, he's a stand-up guy.

I mean, he's, in the five or six years I've known him, he's been more of a dad to me than my own dad has been in the 26 years that I've been alive.

Wow.

He's over 20 years older than this guy.

So it would be more of a father figure.

He said, Roger Mortensen sustained brain injuries in the off-roading accident, and he has no short-term memory.

So, I mean, you got to keep looking at that.

November 25th, 2009, a $25,000 reward is offered by the family

here, I believe.

Yes, Mortensen's family offers this reward for anything leading to the arrest and conviction.

They said we plead with anyone with information to come forward.

They said they've been interviewing a lot of people in this case, and the reward is going to make more tips come in, and they'll be interviewing more people.

But they said, we're willing to sift through all those concerns to hopefully get some decent information out of somebody.

And that's what you do.

When you put up a reward, you're saying 99 out of 100 of the next calls are going to be bullshit.

Bullshit.

Yeah.

Just try it.

That have nothing to do with anything.

January 25th, 2010.

So almost, it's more than two months have gone by.

It's been a while.

Yeah.

The police publicly name Roger and Pam as persons of interest in the case.

Oh.

Publicly.

They're described by investigators as uncooperative.

They said, We have two persons of interest that were identified.

We've tried to work through attorneys to have them come in and give us more information about what's been obtained in the investigation, and that has not been done.

So they obtained a lot more evidence, and then they were going to them, going, We'd like to talk to you again, and they're saying, We're done talking to you, Roger and Pam.

That's not great.

That does not look good here, obviously.

They said in early March, then, the police released a list of firearms stolen from Kay, and it results in many leads, but nothing that leads to anything.

They say a lot of tips have come in related to the stolen firearms.

We've followed through with those leads and made several arrests, but the weapons do not come back to the Mortons and murder.

They've gotten a bunch of other stolen guns off the streets, but not the ones they're looking for.

So they said that, you know, it's dragging on because they need to have a case solid before they make an arrest here.

They said the case is still very active and will continue to do so until we resolve it.

We're confident in the information we have.

Now, Pam and Roger have an attorney.

Oh.

And he said, my clients were not involved in this murder.

They are happy to help the police with the investigation, but detectives have only shown interest in talking to them if they're willing to confess to the crime.

It's inappropriate to say they're not willing to cooperate.

But in this case, cooperating means coming in and talking to them, and they won't do that anymore.

So it's it's kind of hard to say they are cooperating, too.

So that can go either way.

Now, there is no DNA evidence, fingerprints, or any of that on the murder weapon because they find a knife eventually, but there's nothing to help them with it at all.

Sure.

So no witnesses, obviously, other than these two.

So what do you do?

So the missing guns,

they say that they're basically...

They're not looking for the guns specifically, but any calls that come in about stolen guns, they're checking.

But

they're not on the hunt for guns.

They said that

they were whatever.

They said that one guy from the U.S.

Marshals said that two weeks ago a Marshals vehicle was broken into and two guns were stolen.

The task force was actively looking for those guns.

In the process of doing that, we really pushed our informants, and as a result, we came up with over 40 guns.

Nice.

About half of those were from a burglary in Idaho, while the rest were taken from people pulled over, mostly felons who had guns, but nothing connected to Kay Mortensen at all.

So they're like, shit, that's what they really thought they could do that.

So

but they couldn't.

So anyway, the police are focused on Roger and Pam.

That is

one, two, three, four, and five suspects here.

Tips come in about suspicious vehicles seen in the area, but you know, it's a bunch of different vehicles and a bunch of different tips and nothing really pans out.

Potential witnesses reported seeing unfamiliar cars or strangers,

but they said that they're, you know, the cops kind of just dismissed them and didn't really, didn't really look into it very much.

It's because they think they got it.

Now, they get Roger and Pam to agree to take polygraphs.

Okay.

Let's get the whole thing over with.

And they tell him, you pass these, we'll leave you alone, basically.

And they both failed the polygraph.

What the fuck?

Not good.

Not good.

Not good at all.

So, yeah, during one session here, they go back to Pam about the glove thing and all that kind of shit.

Finally, during

one of these interrogations,

Pam mentioned, they were talking about the gloves.

They were talking about all that.

And one of the cops just said, you know what?

Quite frankly, I think the story is a bunch of crap.

I think the story is a bunch of crap that you and Roger have come up with.

It sounds too rehearsed.

You're messing up the details.

Basically, you tried and you fucked it up.

So just give it up now.

Tell us the truth.

Tell us the goddamn truth.

This went on for hours and hours, but she never would confess.

So they said now Roger and Pam, not only are the police looking for them, but the whole society has ostracized them.

Yeah.

Around there.

They're the church, everybody.

Nobody wants anything to do with them.

So their kids are bullied at school.

Basically, they're reading and classmates are telling the kids, oh, your parents killed their dad and blah, blah, blah.

Your mom and dad killed killed grandpa.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Like they're just talking shit to the bullying the kids about what they're seeing in the newspapers and on the internet and everything.

So,

yeah, it's really tough.

The family gatherings are weird because half the people think Roger and Pam killed Kay and half the people don't.

So they argue about it.

So it's a mess.

It's all gone to shit.

July of 2010, rather than just charging him, they charging Roger and Pam, they go to a grand jury

with it.

And the grand jury can issue findings and indictments.

they said that uh the reason they did that and if you don't know what a grand jury is if you're not from this country or something like that a group of people citizens who review the evidence and determine whether criminal charges should be filed that's what they do so they're usually done in secret with only and the thing that's weird is only prosecutors present present evidence

There is no defense in a grand jury.

No, no, no.

This is what we believe.

This is what we believe to be true.

Yeah, like you could say, like they could say okay they're indicting me for a robbery and they're going over the facts of the case and they're saying witnesses described him as five foot three 111 pounds and of filipino descent blah blah blah

my lawyer would not be able to say he's six foot four and italian that's not a good description like he wouldn't be able to do that that would have to be done at trial they would have to wow so you can yeah basically that's why there's the old expression you can indict a ham sandwich because you can

if you see someone go to a grand jury and not get an indictment, they had nothing.

They had nothing.

They had absolutely nothing.

Less than fucking nothing.

So,

yeah, this is how all this is going.

And the county attorney, who is a prosecutor here,

said that the jurors, you know, they hear the prosecution's version of the events, a daughter and son-in-law who are in debt up to their ass.

They kill a wealthy father for inheritance.

They fabricate this story.

Here's all their inconsistencies.

Blah, blah, blah.

I mean, they make up a story about home invaders and all of that kind of thing.

And in the grand jury, you can bring up failed polygraph tests as well.

At trial, it's not okay before the grand jury again.

So the weird, also the timing.

They got there in the middle of a home invasion.

Fascinating timing.

With a pie.

Yeah.

I mean, what a ridiculous.

Here's our pie.

Oh, no.

Did they ask him?

Did they take the pie too?

Right.

Where was that?

Yeah.

Where's the pie?

So,

yeah, the grand jury is going to absolutely indict them, and arrests are made.

They arrest Roger and Pam.

They cite all the inconsistencies and basically the evidence.

Roger Mortensen, when they go to arrest him, he's found near his home in a car with another guy.

His wife was inside the home.

Everybody was arrested here without incident, they said here.

They said that when they found him,

the police said, we've invited all the family to participate, and he has chosen to never ever talk to us, participate, or help.

At no time does he have any help with any information that would assist us.

They also said that they refused to make a composite sketch of the suspects as well.

So all of these things adding, why would you refuse to?

Yeah, why won't you help?

Unless they're like, shit, we didn't talk about exactly what they look like.

Damn it.

We didn't do that.

Yeah.

Shit.

So their attorney says their clients are innocent.

He said, my

clients didn't commit this homicide.

They weren't involved in it.

They didn't commit it.

They didn't participate in it.

He said, it's bullshit.

It's all bullshit.

He said, they've always felt that our clients were involved.

And because of that, they haven't, in our opinion, investigated the case outside of just our clients.

And a big part of that is, when we've talked about this before, when there's a murder, any kind of investigation, they don't look at it as a whole.

They're not like, okay, let's look at the planet and check people off and all that.

They go on leads and basically they take each lead and choke the life out of it until it either yields something or doesn't, and then they move on to the next lead.

Or gives possibilities of things that could have happened.

Yeah.

At least some sort of information.

If they have five people, they don't go, okay, we're going to look at all five people equally and figure out which one did it.

If they go, who do we think is the most guilty?

They attack that one first.

If that turns out that it doesn't work, then they go to number two, then they go to number three.

It's just the only way in terms of time and manpower that you could possibly conduct investigations.

So that's what they're saying they did, which is probably what they did.

Now, Rogers also booked for investigation of possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, and possession of a firearm by a restricted person.

So they said when they arrested him, he and another guy were smoking a bowl, basically, in the car.

When cops searched the house, they found a man-made hidden compartment under the furnace

with six guns in it, which is where you want to keep your guns, right by the furnace.

Right by the fire.

It's the best place for them, I hear, right?

That's where you want to keep them.

You want to keep them good and warm.

I hear ammunition.

You're supposed to keep it real hot and crispy.

I hear.

I don't know.

Could be wrong.

Inside this compartment, there are six firearms, including an AK-47 and a 12-gauge 12-gauge shotgun.

Also, several thousand rounds of ammunition in and around the hidden compartment.

Also, a.22-caliber revolver found in a safe in the garage.

Uh-oh.

So, not good.

They are charged with murder, a first-degree felony, and obstruction of justice, a third-degree felony.

Now, were other people involved?

Great question.

The cops are saying they're still looking into the fact of the possibility that other people may be involved in the case.

They're still looking for several guns discovered missing from the house.

And they said the guns may have been part of the motive because they're very valuable and there's still 30 guns missing.

So many guns.

They said, we know there's some guns missing, so we know that other people have information that would help us in this case.

Anything's possible, basically.

So they were

asking, you know, is there more people involved?

And they said, anything's possible.

The fuck do we know?

Now,

Pam's attorney

describes the ordeal as this.

Their children faced bullying at school with classmates repeating things they'd heard their parents discussing about the case.

Family gatherings became tense affairs with relatives divided between those who believed in their innocence and those who wondered if the police are right.

Yeah.

It's not good.

Pam is offered a plea deal.

Here we go.

Because, I mean, it's not her dad.

So she is offered a deal that would reduce her charges in exchange for testifying against Roger.

and she said, no,

not taking it.

We're going to trial together.

I love Roger.

Okay.

All right.

So they are all set for a January 2011 trial.

Yeah.

Ready to fucking rock and roll.

And then in early December 2010, they get an anonymous tip.

Well, not anonymous for long, but at the time it's anonymous.

An anonymous tip comes in to

investigators,

and they end up,

a tip comes in that helps them obtain a search warrant for a residence in Vernal, Vernal.

After searching the home, they find weapons that belong to Kay Mortensen.

Oh.

Which would make sense because whoever would steal the guns would probably sell them.

Yeah, that's why.

That's why you stole them to begin with.

Yeah.

Now, the

home belongs to, or

one of the residents at the time is a 23-year-old named Martin Bond, B-O-N-D.

He knows the Mortensen family very well.

In fact, he's the son of a very close friend of Kay Mortensen.

Oh,

yeah.

So Kay had known Martin since he was born, always knew him, and, you know, watched him grow up, was close with him, you know, all that kind of thing.

So they,

yeah, they said that, you know, that this guy, they think the tip that came in basically said this Martin Bond is the guy who did it and he has the guns.

Okay.

So they said, okay, I mean, that would make sense because he knew him very well.

Maybe Kay would let him in.

Maybe he would have let him in without holding a gun on him if he knew him very well.

And this guy could have surprised him.

Martin's been at his house before.

Martin's father and Kay were very close friends, and maybe he got into the house that way.

Sure.

That brings us to Benjamin Reggett, R-E-G-G-I-T, who's also 23.

He's also arrested here.

And he's another one that

he doesn't, he has no connection to Kay, but he knows Martin Bond.

And neither of these guys have a criminal history, by the way, Martin or Benjamin.

And so they're kind of...

They're kind of weighing whether they think this tip is actually correct or not.

Sure.

And the DA says, I've prosecuted a number of homicides, homicides, and just in my experience, I've never seen it where you have no criminal history at all, and then they go right to homicide.

Yeah.

It happens.

It happens, but it's rare.

It's more likely from a guy with a history of violence and a brain injury

and a shitload of debt.

Yeah.

But the guns they found, they said that

Martin Bond and Ben Reggitt, between the two of them, had 20 of Mortensen's stolen guns.

20.

They said about a dozen weapons still missing.

So,

okay, now Bond here, Martin Bond, will have several stories we'll talk about.

He admitted that, yes, I was at the Mortensen's home that night.

Oh, I was.

He said,

yes, I did.

zip tie the hands of two people who arrived at the residence that night holding a pie.

Okay.

And held them against their will.

Now, he doesn't tell the cops that.

He told his ex-wife that, who told the cops that.

That's where the tip came from.

Why did he do that?

His ex-wife, Rachel.

That's why I don't think conspiracies, that people think conspiracies are a big deal.

Someone's going to get divorced, and then that person's going to tell.

Someone's going to tell.

They don't last.

They don't hold up.

Somebody's told.

Conspiracies like that.

Yeah.

So, according to her, she said Martin told her, and we don't know if this is true or just some lady trying to get back at her ex-husband, too.

She said that the plan was specifically about the gun collection, that Martin had described to Ben Reddig the extensive firearms that Kay kept and saying they were worth like 30 grand.

Yeah.

So they, you know, they targeted him to steal the guns.

Okay.

She tells the cops that they told, Benjamin and Martin told her they'd driven to Kay's house on November 16th with a plan.

They had a.40 caliber handgun, zip ties, and latex gloves.

All right.

Which is a bad kit to have.

When they arrived, Kay welcomed them in and offered them coffee

and was talking to them.

And that's when they produced weapons and zip ties and restrained him and demanded to be taken to his gun collection.

And Kay took them to the cheap guns.

Oh.

He said, oh, yeah, sure, they're down here in the bunker.

I got these nothing guns.

Those are the cheap guns.

Didn't tell him where the expensive guns were.

Hid those.

So they took between 20 and 32 weapons and loaded them into the vehicle.

And that's what this ex-wife says that

he told him

that he told her.

Now, that could be just shit gleaned from information that's out there.

And then you just put your husband in it, and that could work too.

So where did Roger and Pam line up in all this shit?

So

according to this ex-wife, it was just that they showed up at the wrong time.

That's it.

They literally showed up at the wrong time.

They said they were literally

had all their shit and were ready to walk out the door with the stolen weapons and they heard a knock at the door and were like, fuck, what do we do?

Imagine being them.

You just murdered a man.

You have all this loot, this fucking, you know, bags with fucking money signs on them.

And now there's a knock at the door and you go, ah.

They're telling the truth?

They know their cars in the driveway.

Yeah.

Well, according to this ex-wife,

this is what they said.

So they said that, yeah, they were preparing to leave, but they came in and they said, now what the fuck do we do?

These are going to be witnesses

who I can identify them.

So,

but Martin knew them.

He knew Roger.

Remember?

From all that shit.

So he knew Roger and Pam.

He'd been at Kay's house days earlier and met Kay's family members and recognized Roger and Pam.

So he was like, shit, I know these people fucking know me.

So they said rather than flee and hope Roger and Pam didn't see them, they said they just kill them, I guess,

at that point.

But

this is the part that's fucked up.

Oh, boy.

The ex-wife then says,

Martin told me that they were going to kill them, but then they said a prayer.

Uh-huh.

Think about that.

And change their mind?

How would she know that?

Uh-huh.

You know what I'm saying?

Said that she was being, they started saying a prayer, and they had nothing to do with religion or anything like that.

They just said while the prayer was going on, they had a minute to think about it and were like, are we going to make it even a bigger bloodbath?

This is crazy.

We're going to get blood all over us.

Let's just leave and make these people tell a story that we want to tell.

That's what she says.

So they said that they told them to repeat a very specific script when talking to the police.

They were to report that three men broke in, black men, and not us, basically.

Okay.

So Pam later said that they told us about the people who broke in.

We were told they were doing this for their families.

And that they, you know, and the ex-wife also said that they took Rogers' driver's license to try to make sure that they told the right story.

Okay.

Then during the investigation, Martin Bond admits that he has buried weapons he took from Kay Mortensen.

Oh.

He showed the detectives the site of the buried weapons, and when investigators dug at that site, they discovered 14 guns, including shotguns, rifles, and handguns.

They found weapons in his possession with scratched-out serial numbers and others in a septic tank at Vernal Park.

Oh, you can't even use that.

Oh, where are you going to get that?

How are you going to go back and get those?

That's terrible.

I think he was just throwing it.

He just gave them up.

Yeah.

I'm not dealing with these.

Yep.

So while in Vernal, they also contacted the authorities, contact Ben Redig,

who fully admits to being involved in the burglary and robbery.

Wow.

He confirms this lady's story 100 fucking percent.

He even had Rogers' driver's license.

Uh-oh.

Everything they said was true, Jimmy.

So their crazy story was 100%

true.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, they did not do it.

Imagine telling a story that's true and nobody believes you.

They're sitting in jail.

Yeah.

On murder charges.

Because their story's fucking crazy.

Because it's crazy.

And Roger can't remember details because he's got a fucking brain injury.

Right.

And so he says details that don't match up to Pam and it looks like their details are inconsistent.

So it's a mess.

Yeah.

Wow.

Bond tells the cops that

he says Reddick is the one that cut his throat and stabbed him.

Yeah.

And then said something about a gladiator when he did it.

He said he did that and said something about he's being a gladiator.

That's a story.

Reddig said Bond is the one that cut the throat and did the stabbing.

But they're pointing the fingers at each other, but nobody's pointing at Roger.

They're only pointing at each other.

Holy fucking shit.

According to

Martin Bond, Reddig threatened Kay with the handgun, zip-tied his wrists, and demanded he tell him where the guns were.

And that then they showed him to the bunker in the backyard.

Wow, they let him in.

His ankles were zip-tied and he was forced to kneel over the bathtub.

One of the men went to the kitchen downstairs and retrieved a butcher's knife,

which they each claim each other used to stab and cut the throat on.

Then Reddig said, fucking they showed up.

Shit, what are we going to do, basically?

So they threatened to come after them.

They said, tell this story or we'll come after you.

I have your license.

Now, in early 2011, Reddig was arrested in Colorado on unrelated firearms charges, illegal possession of weapons that investigators soon find out included stolen guns from Kay's house.

But that wasn't put together at the time until after the ex-wife called and all that.

So they ran the serial numbers on the weapons through the database, and several were connected to that case.

So he was facing federal weapons charges and the possibility of being linked to this murder.

So he didn't know what to do.

So he just said, fuck it, I'll confess to everything.

And Reddick spills it.

It's detailed.

He admitted to participating in the robbery and murder here and implicated.

That's again, he's implicating Bond as the killer, according to his accounts.

Yeah, it's all Bond, Bond, Bond, and more Bond.

The confessions came with his own version of events that kind of were a little more advantageous to him.

He said that Martin Bond forced him to participate in the murder under threat of being killed himself.

He said, I was just a reluctant partner.

That's it.

Just a reluctant participant.

I just wanted to rob some shit.

I didn't want to do any of this stuff.

He said that Bond kept talking about going to Mortens' house to steal the guns.

According to his account, Martin had seen Kay's gun collection and knew where he could find weapons worth money.

And Redding claimed that Bond was the driving force behind the crime, with the one with the plan and the inside knowledge.

I just went along to get some free guns.

Unbelievable.

So the prosecutor said,

based on this, they now think these two are the murderers.

For sure, yeah, because they told a story that checks out.

Yeah, the prosecutor said this is a huge paradigm shift for us.

This came out of the blue.

Yeah, we didn't have any fucking idea.

No, so I mean, December 8th, 2010, they're in jail.

What do we go to?

The UK or go to Roger and Pam and go whoopsie?

Sorry about it.

Yeah.

I mean, dude, and think about if imagine this lady didn't come forward.

Oh, Jesus, they would have gotten convicted.

They're getting convicted.

They're absolutely getting convicted.

Fuck, yes, they're getting super convicted.

They're done.

Their story looks terrible.

They were definitely there.

It makes no sense.

They're going to prison forever

if that woman doesn't come forward.

They owe that lady their fucking life.

So

that's wild um

so uh a cop said this has been a year of intensive investigation on hundreds of leads and interviews and the collection of numerous stolen firearms from other cases so it's been a pretty intensive case that solved a lot of other cases they don't mention and the arrest of two innocent people and

jailing of not only innocent people fucking victims of violent crime yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah these people were dragged in the house at gunpoint zip while their father was murdered, told they were going to be killed and then let go and threatened under death.

And then arrested.

And then arrested and put in jail for five fucking months.

I mean, dude, you cannot have worse luck than that.

No.

It's one thing to just accuse innocent people, but victims, Jesus, that's horrifying.

So, yeah, then they find out the tip came from.

Martin's ex-wife.

See, that's why you don't want to be 23 and have an ex-wife already.

That's bad.

Yeah.

There's a reason why you don't, and that's why.

Rachel Bingham is her name.

And yeah, she gave it all up.

And

she said before she made the call, she'd been struggling with the decision for months.

She knew about this for months.

Months.

Months.

She watched those people get arrested.

Oh, Jesus.

And she said, fuck.

She said, not only did she know the details of the crime, she even helped him move some of the stolen guns.

Oh, no.

That's how she knew.

She said the turning point was

she had a relationship with a man named Peter Smith, and Smith later said that

she told him what happened

and he encouraged her to go to the police.

You got to go to the police.

There's two innocent people.

You know, never mind your ex-husband.

So Rachel said, he helped me see what was going on with the Mortensons and that they were being wrongly accused.

Just telling him I could see how bad everything really was and that

it needed to be told no matter how scared i was she said i just watched the news those people are going to jail for something they didn't do probably for life yeah and imagine how

perplexing it would have been for martin and ben

to do all this yeah they their their hope and their plan was for this investigation to get turned and be going toward or searching for three black guys instead they're watching the victims get arrested for the crime that they committed yeah they got to be going fuck what do we do here this is

yeah oh shit this is bad but they still kept driver's licenses and guns get rid of everything at that point you stupid jesus christ man

so um

anyway they rachel said that martin and ben confessed everything to the crime to her how they planned it everything.

So she described to the police how Kay was forced to kneel over the bathtub, how the killers positioned him, specific details about the weapons used, the sequence of events, and also the stolen weapons where she was found.

But yeah, I guess it was always robbery.

Rachel said, Bond said that him and his friend Ben drove up to Pays and to Ken Mortensen's, which he knew from childhood, and that he entered Kay's home and took his life and took Kay's guns.

Jesus.

And then,

like I said, Bond said it was Redding who killed, Redding said it was Bond who killed.

Now, they're executing a search warrant here, and that's when they find all of this shit here, and they said that they found firearms, a lot with the serial numbers removed, but at least a few of them that had serial numbers.

That's beautiful.

And they were kept with guns that fit the description minus the serial number of stolen guns.

So that makes a lot of fucking sense.

Other evidence here, there's blood analysis, forensic evidence, weapon recovery.

Everything is looking dead at Martin and Benjamin as the killers here.

Not good at all.

So Darla, the widow,

she says, we thought it was just if just one weapon would surface, it would make all the difference.

It would tell the story and we'd have answers.

We're going to get the answers now, and that's all I wanted to know.

I just wanted to know what happened that night.

So

now, did they act alone?

Do they have anybody helping them?

That's a good question.

The prosecutor said, we feel pretty confident that there was no one else.

else the individuals when they went into the house told roger and pam to tell a story and as part of that story to say that there were three individuals uh the prosecutors believe that there's evidence to support that and they know it so the prosecutor said roger and pam are going to be our witnesses now oh

be like you can suck my balls is where you can fucking keep

you at all yeah i'm not talking to you i'm not coming down to the station i'm not going to the courthouse.

You know what?

We'll do this by Zoom.

And the picture the whole time will be of my asshole as I spread my cheeks and show it to you the whole time.

No, no.

Puckered asshole is what you're going to all look at the entire fucking procedure.

Fuck you.

I'm going to come and help you people now.

Get me in jail for five months.

Now, Fern, Kay's younger sister, attended the hearing.

And following the hearing, she expressed relief that it wasn't Roger and Pam, basically.

Yeah, she's just thankful.

Yeah, she said, we're just so happy.

This is the best possible resolution other than finding Kay alive.

It's going to be a lot of healing.

I mean, obviously, if maybe Pam wasn't dead, that'd be better.

So the arrest announcement made huge headlines because the local media had been reporting this.

every detail for a year.

And then when they arrested Roger and Pam, it was like, oh, these big deal and all the comments.

You pieces of shit, killing your own father who's taking care of you for you.

I mean, you want to talk about getting excoriated.

Look at the comments on some of these fucking articles of them getting arrested.

It is wild.

I mean, there's every once in a while they're like, I know Roger and Pam.

I don't think they did this.

But every now and then.

But the rest of them are, these are the worst people alive

pieces of shit.

Let's put the gallows right in the courtroom.

I mean, literally, that's what it is.

I mean, let's just take them right there.

Rent a center credit.

Fuck that.

They don't even need it.

They don't even need a trial.

Like, I was wild, man.

It's like, this is why you need a trial or whatever.

So

it was a big deal.

And the prosecutor also says the murder charges against Roger and Pam Mortensen will be dismissed.

Oh.

Their attorney says, They said, how do you feel?

And they go, well, obviously very happy and relieved after hearing the news.

Pamela Mortensen can't recover six months of her life, but she does not fault the Utah County Attorney's Office for the incarceration.

She doesn't?

Really?

Who the fuck else's fault is it?

It's 100% their fault.

All their fault.

Period.

Wow.

I mean, I would be fuck them.

Fuck that guy.

I want like eight get out of jail free cards, and I'm going to be doing some shit around this town.

You see, like, a car drive like right through a Carl's Jr.

window?

That's me.

And I'm allowed to.

Fuck off.

It's happening right now.

So,

wow.

And then the guy even went on to praise the prosecution for continuing to investigate.

They didn't.

They got a fucking anonymous tip.

They thought it was over.

They were 100% all in on these two.

They got a tip.

If they didn't get that tip,

none of this happens.

They said the county attorney's office worked the case hard.

They changed what they had.

We told them they were wrong and we told them not to stop looking.

To their credit, they didn't.

So when will they release Roger and Pamel?

Because they're still in jail.

Why?

They have all four of them in jail.

Martin, Ben, and these two.

They're all

part of it either way, huh?

No, they just said they planned to drop charges against them.

They faced, obviously, murder charges.

They said they're supposed to be out of jail, but we can't find a judge to order it, their lawyer says.

Can we hurry up and figure out and find one?

The prosecutors didn't return calls to the press here about this, but the lawyer for Pam and Roger says, I don't fault them for filing a case that proved to be wrong.

I applaud them for admitting they did wrong and are doing the right thing.

We've always said that they were not involved in the homicide.

They were hostages in a home invasion.

They said they just walked into a crime in progress that's now been solved and they've had to sit in jail for that shit.

God damn it.

It's like a bad Ben Stiller movie.

It's so fucking bad.

They said, how's Pam feeling right now?

And he said, she's still very much upset right now.

She's in jail and has been there for four and a half months.

I think she just wants to be home.

Probably.

Oh, yeah.

I would be the biggest pain in the ass at that point.

I'm leaving today.

Right now.

There's going to be problems.

I'll be gone yesterday.

Yeah.

I am going to make shit happen so there's more charges against me because it's going to be wild in here.

I'm going to throw piss on guards in a minute.

Get me the fuck out of here.

You're going to have a reason to keep me in a second.

Absolutely.

So finally, the murder charges are dropped,

but the

officials say they're still listed as persons of interest in the case.

Really?

Which is wild.

Yeah, man.

So their attorney later would criticize the grand jury process,

saying, we're going to end up with more people like Roger Mortensen because of our poor grand jury system.

The grand jury only heard the prosecutor's side of the story, which that's all grand juries, yeah.

They They said that the prosecutors should have filed charges and let a judge decide if the trial was merited rather than using the grand jury process where attorneys can't present their side of the story.

That was the point, they were avoiding that.

They knew they could make it look bad enough for a grand jury to indict them.

If you go to a judge, it's a little different.

Then both lawyers can talk.

And, you know, I think they still would have got the indictment against these two.

Probably, yeah.

I think they would have got a fucking conviction against these two.

Their defense is crazy.

Yeah.

Their defense is ridiculous.

Imagine their case went to trial.

Imagine Pam getting up on the stand and saying, I came over with a pie.

And next thing I know, we're getting zip-tied, but not that tight.

Loose enough to where we can get a bunch of people.

I think that I can just slide it off.

Without even scratching ourselves or anything like that.

We said a prayer.

They lowered their heads and observed it with us.

Yeah.

And then we changed their minds.

Then said, fuck it, but say we're black and left.

Like, you're going to jail.

You're going to prison forever.

Just tell them we were both in green sweaters.

Oh, my God.

No, shit.

So, Roger, they release Pam very quickly.

Roger has to stay in because he's got a firearms charge as well on him.

So he has to stay in for an extra minute till they figure out what to do with that.

Then in March of 2011, Roger has another run-in with the law.

Unbelievable.

Why?

A snowmobiler got in an argument with Roger in Utah County because Roger's dogs were running wild.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Doesn't want to run over the dogs.

Yeah, I don't want to have to be dodging dogs out here.

The snowmobiler kicked one of Roger's dogs.

Oh, boy.

Which, yeah, we're going to war now.

Yeah, I'll probably pull guns over that.

And the man became enraged.

And he yelled, you had better be worried about your equipment when you leave, is what he yelled at Roger.

Roger then walked toward the snowmobiler with his fist clenched and said, I just got out of jail for murder.

I didn't even fucking kill you.

I didn't do it, but they had me in there.

I'm hard.

He just basically said, I'm hard, motherfucker.

Try me.

Which, so he gets arrested for that.

Can't do that.

June 23rd, 2011, Roger is in trouble again, still in trouble.

He's going to have to plead guilty to being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition.

So, yeah, they said that,

you know, the assistant U.S.

attorney had a request that he serve prison time because of his explosive temper.

Yeah.

So they're trying to put him in prison after they just serve.

I'd be like, motherfucker, how about the five and a half months I did?

How about that?

You want to see a temper?

Fuck you.

I got five and a half months credit right now.

I'm sorry.

I'm doing things

like

I charged too much on my credit card and then overpaid.

Yeah, I just got out of jail for murder.

I've got $5,000 of extra credit on my fucking Amex.

I'm going to buy some crazy things.

Yes.

Every once in a while, we'll like, for some reason, overpay our water bill and we get the one the next day, next month, and it's like negative $36.

Yeah, $36 worth of water next month.

That's where I'm at.

I got five months of free prison time that I get to punch people off of.

Do whatever I want.

I could punch you right in the face and I should go free.

So Roger admitted to possessing a Vector Arms Uzi 9mm machine gun.

He's got an Uzi.

Yeah.

Along with several other firearms that Utah authorities initially said were stolen from his father, but apparently they weren't.

Roger's attorney said that Roger took the weapons after Kay died, which he was allowed to do because they were his now.

He was inheriting them at that point.

And because the guns were part of his father's estate that he was due to inherit.

And you just don't leave guns in some empty house, so you take them.

So now Roger knew he couldn't possess the weapons because he was a convicted felon.

So they said, look, he just made a poor choice in trying to hide his father's guns in the garage in part because of his brain injury.

He's not all there.

I forgot he got them all there.

Yeah.

You forget he didn't even realize it.

So the judge says Mr.

Mortensen has had a difficult life.

Nevertheless, he was culpable in this case.

He knew what he was doing, and he involved a friend and said, you, sir, may fuck off 36 months of probation.

All right.

Gives him, I think he basically, that was, he said, we have.

He was making up for it, yeah.

I think so, too.

Which was a big deal.

Now, this, also, he has to stay under strict supervision and attend Veterans Court.

I continue to attend Veterans Court with U.S.

Magistrate Paul Warner.

The program is designed to rehabilitate veterans who have had brushes with the law, criminal veterans.

So that's what that is.

Roger must also continue to take medication for his mental illness.

Good.

I don't know what kind of medication you take for pudding brain, but maybe it kicked other things in there.

Otherwise, his brain's been smashed.

I don't know what kind of pills fix that.

What thickens up pudding?

Yeah, was there a little flour, maybe?

A little roux in there?

Starter roux.

So the maximum penalty he could have faced was 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

So instead, he just got three years probation.

Sentencing guidelines are based on likelihood to reoffend and all that kind of shit here.

By the way, the guidelines placed his recommended incarceration time at 21 to 27 months.

Okay.

So the judge 100% gave him a break because they kept him in jail and accused him of killing his dad.

There's no

probation?

Not bad.

36 months probation.

Three years.

Three years probation.

He could have got 20 months in jail, though.

He could have gotten

that.

Is it 20 years?

He could have gotten 10 years and then three years of supervised release.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they just cut off the jail part.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, there is a co-defendant, William Robert Lemieux,

Mario's little brother,

who was sentenced also.

He received 36 months of probation after pleading guilty to one count of possession of an unregistered machine gun and admitted to helping Roger handle his father's gun collection.

Now, over time, Martin's story is going to change a lot, Martin Bond.

All sorts of shit here.

He told his ex-wife that he held the handgun while Redig murdered Kay with the knife.

First, he initially involved any and denied any involvement.

Then he said that he had no weapons.

Then he said he had a gun and the the other guy killed him.

He went back and forth.

But in the end, the only thing that he's absolutely positive about is that Reddig was the one who stabbed and killed and cut the throat.

That's all he knows.

Then, while he's in prison or jail,

Martin Bond passes notes to another inmate in which he claimed that he killed Kay,

but that Benjamin Reddig forced him to do so by threatening him with the gun.

Now, these jail notes were handwritten and nice cursive and everything like that.

They were in his handwriting being passed between cells using shoelaces.

So they were fishing kites at this point with the shoelaces.

And yeah, in there, they were discovered as a 21-year-old inmate came forward with these notes who'd been housed near him.

He's later convicted of robbing a credit union, so a bank robber.

He testified about the note passing system and and his conversations.

He said, I and Bond, I and Bond, I and Bond

would write notes called kites and pass them using what the inmates refer to as phishing, tying the notes to a shoelace and tossing them between cells.

One night, the inmate wrote a note asking why Bond was blaming Redig.

for doing the cutting of the throat and stabbing him in the neck.

And Bond's response was this,

quote, well, Ben,

Well, Ben made the situation.

When Kay and I tried to talk to him, he freaked out more and a bunch of other stuff happened.

It came to the point where he was going to kill him, but made me instead.

It was that, or he said he'd shoot me so that no one could say anything.

That's why his throat was cut.

He wouldn't give me the gun.

I thought he was suffering, so that's why I stabbed him.

Okay.

So now he said he actually did it.

And so that's how that works.

Now, are these notes real or are these a credit union bank robber guy trying to get some time off his sentence?

A handwriting expert from the Salt Lake City County Police Department knows.

And

they do know.

He said he knows.

I'm like, I got a guy, actually.

They verify these notes.

I got a guy, if we want to know.

They were written by Martin Bond.

So he looks real guilty right now.

Not good.

Yeah.

They also get another staff member of the jail to testify at a hearing that Bond and another inmate had been housed in nearby cells, so they could have been passing notes.

Because sometimes we've had this before where people will come forward and they're on the other cell block.

So

he ends up using these notes very strategically and ends up getting a deal, a better plea deal in his robbery case,

as long as he testifies at the trial.

Redig said this.

These are in his own words here.

He said about Martin, quote, he came to me the night before that he wanted to meet this guy that had guns and he needed someone to drive.

Okay.

We went to Walmart when we first started into town there and got black hoodies and ski masks and some kind of like purple gloves.

She was fucking telling the truth.

Nailed it.

Everyone was telling the truth.

He says, as they entered the home, he gives me the gun and says, stay in the car.

I'm going to go up to the door.

He'll knock on it and Kay will answer because he knows him.

As soon as the door closes, I want you to come through the front door

to knock.

Don't knock, just be come through the front door.

The guy standing there and he's knocking what's going on because he knows, you know, he knows Marty, apparently.

He said that,

wow, right before the killing,

he said, he told me, you don't have to do this.

You don't have to do this.

I told him, oh, it's, we're just going to leave you up here we're just going to get the guns and we're going to leave so kay was telling them you don't have to do this and he was telling k oh yeah yeah don't worry we're not going to kill you we're just going to leave you up here just want the guns yeah um then he says about martin quote i thought he was just going uh to go there and knock him out we were just going to tie him to the fucking toilet or something it's not this butcher knife He said, and then he had him lean over the tub and he slashed his throat and stabbed the back of his neck.

Jesus.

So the detective says, who cut his throat?

And he said, it was Marty.

And he said, it was Marty, it was Marty.

And he said, yes, Marty, Marty who?

And he said, Marty, who?

It was Marty.

And he said, Marty, I swear to God, Marty Bond, who he's finding out very quickly does not have a license to kill this particular Bond.

That is the name that I think

James would name his son.

Martin.

Like the car.

Yeah.

Yeah, little Martin.

Yeah.

This is my Martin Bond.

Yeah.

he does not get the same licenses.

He said, I swear to God, Marty Bond, that was more,

he said, what did he say?

Oh, I could have stopped that, you know, but I just sat there and he said that he feels shame about himself.

Yeah.

Now, the sheriff acknowledged that this is the craziest fucking case that's ever existed.

I can't believe we were so wrong.

Yes.

We followed all the info, all the leads, and we got to the right spot, and it was all wrong.

We got the most ridiculous story in history, and it's all true.

100% right.

He said, this has been, this is the sheriff, this has been an unusual case from the start, and it will continue to be an unusual case until it's over.

This is fucking weird.

So Bond makes a little bit of a deal.

Okay, he's going to be charged with one count of aggravated murder, three counts of aggravated kidnapping, and one count of aggravated burglary, one count of aggravated robbery.

To avoid the possibility of the death penalty, he makes an agreement with the state that he would be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole if the jury convicted him of aggravated murder.

So, if he gets convicted, there's no doubt about what that sentence will be.

He can't argue for a release at some point.

That's it.

So, October 2011, Pam and Roger, guess what they do?

Got married.

File a fucking, they've been married.

They file a lawsuit.

No, it's lawsuit time now.

Yeah, against the county sheriff, the prosecutor,

everything, claiming they misrepresented evidence to the grand jury.

Okay.

Okay.

Because an honest mistake you can't sue over.

It has to be,

you know, malice involved of some kind.

You can't just be like, oh, really, we really look guilty and they arrested us.

Because if I'm the cops, I go, what would you have done?

Like.

You would have arrested you, too.

Your story doesn't make any sense.

No, it's stupid.

Reality is crazy.

You sound like idiots.

Yeah.

So So before the Bond trial, the Martin Bond trial, Ben Reddick pleads guilty to aggravated murder and aggravated kidnapping and agrees to testify against Martin in exchange for what he calls favorable sentencing.

Yeah.

So we'll find out what that is in a minute here.

Now the trial comes along, Martin Bond trial.

And the prosecutor said to the jury, under the guise of friendship,

Martin Bond got into the house.

The reason that Kay let this person into the house is because he knew him.

He knew Martin Bond.

Martin Bond had been to his house before.

Martin Bond's father and Kay were extremely good friends.

Under the guise of friendship, Martin Bond got into that house.

He said then he led his friend Ben into the house.

They threatened Mortensen with a gun, and he escorted them outside to a bunker where he kept some weapons.

And he said that Kay didn't put up a fight.

He just opened the door.

But before they took anything, they escorted him back to his home

into an upstairs bathroom where they had him kneel on the ground over a bathtub.

Then Martin Bond went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, returned to the bathroom, and repeatedly slashed Kay's throat and said, when you hear the facts of this case, it will almost sound like a crime novel at times, but it isn't fiction.

Yeah, we didn't make this shit up.

This sounds like we made it up.

So during the trial, a guy named Peter Smith testifies.

Remember, that's the guy who convinced the ex-wife to turn him in.

He said that he's had conversations with Bond that seem fucked up in hindsight.

He said, Martin liked to talk about guns, how to use those guns.

Those were the things we pretty much always talked about was guns and how to commit murders.

Jesus.

That's what we talked about?

That's a fun day.

Jimmy.

It's enough.

Shut up.

I'm going to ask you.

Stop telling me.

Stop trying to bring this conversation up so often, James.

Yeah, how many did?

That's all we do.

We had three five hours a week of this murder.

We spend plenty of time in cars going between cities for four hours and all this type of shit.

Do we ever talk about guns and how to commit murders?

Does that ever come up ever?

Never.

Never.

He would talk about slicing throats because that's how he would do it, he said.

Oh my God.

And in the most horrifying fashion of all time.

Just blood.

How much is the most blood I can get out of somebody?

Oh, I got an idea.

Go to the source and cut it.

Holy shit.

So the defense attorneys will question his credibility regarding his sobriety during these conversations.

Like people who haven't had three beers talk about slicing throats.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's a conversation that needs some lubrication, meaning alcoholic lubrication.

Anything.

Yeah, you don't just start talking about cutting throats while you're.

having Chick-fil-A at 2 o'clock in the afternoon or some shit.

That's just weird.

Smith said, I was drunk enough that I shouldn't have been driving, but not drunk enough that I wasn't coherent.

You know, drunk enough to talk about murders with your friend, basically.

That drunk.

They call Ben Reddig to the stand now.

Okay.

Okay.

Now, he's called to the stand.

He refuses to answer certain questions.

Oh.

Which is not part of the deal.

He's supposed to answer questions.

Yeah, they granted him immunity to testify.

He said that he has a fear of federal firearms prosecutions for the gun stuff.

But the state granted him immunity to testify, and the court permitted the prosecution to ask him leading questions in front of the jury regarding the crimes.

He answered some questions, but then repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

He admitted he planned to meet up with Martin Bond the day of the murder, but when the prosecutor asked what happened after they met, he said that he refused to answer the question or to testify any further,

which is not part of the deal.

So, outside the presence of the jury, the trial court told Ben Reddig that he had already waived his right against self-incrimination and was under subpoena to testify.

The court ordered him to testify.

Yeah.

And he said, no,

no, not going to do it.

And he was dismissed as a witness.

So just refuse.

Doesn't matter.

The Martin Bonds attorney declined to cross-examine him, insisting that the questioning him was not permissible given the invocation of privilege.

So he did his Fifth Amendment rights already.

Now, the next day, the prosecutor requested that Ben Reddig be called in again.

I feel like getting kicked in the nuts again.

Let's bring him back in here.

And saying the state will grant him immunity.

Defense counsel, as well as Ben Reddig's own attorney, they protested, arguing that immunity would not protect him from possible federal prosecution.

He said, you can only grant state immunity.

You can't grant federal immunity.

So his attorney informed the trial court that he intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination despite any promise of immunity.

So the court granted the prosecution's request to call him, but proceeded with initial questioning outside the presence of the jury.

On the stand, he ordered, again, answered some more questions.

He was was consistently answering, so the court brought the jury back in to allow them to watch the questioning.

And they also granted the prosecution,

basically, granted the prosecution leave to treat him as a hostile witness and pose leading questions.

You can't ask a leading question.

Okay.

You have to say, what happened that day?

You can't say.

Isn't that a leading question?

No, what happened that day?

Because that would be like, okay, it was this date.

Okay.

What happened that day?

That's fine.

But you can't say, like, what happened at 2:30 at the Piggly Wiggly when you saw that one guy?

That's a leading question.

You know what I'm saying?

So you can't have that.

But if you're treating someone as a hostile witness, you can lead, you can do that.

Total different court rules.

So he responded to a number of the initial questions, but when the detailed questions came about the crime,

he said, Fifth Amendment, bitches.

Oh, God.

That's right.

So Bond's attorney moves for a mistrial based on the state's calling of Ben Redding and forcing him to invoke the privilege before the jury.

The trial court said, fuck no, we're not having a mistrial.

We're getting through this shit.

We're getting through this shit.

The jury comes in and finds Martin Bond guilty of everything.

Yeah?

Guilty of everything.

And at sentencing, this is fucking insane.

At sentencing, they said, you got anything to say for yourself, Marty?

Here we go.

Sure do.

He said, if I really was the monster everyone thinks I am, then Roger and Pam wouldn't be sitting here today.

I was in a bad situation, and I did the best I could to save two lives.

In his version, he's actually a hero, really, if you think about it.

He's actually just a hero who's being totally boned right now.

The judge says, okay, well, that may be, but you, sir, may fuck off

life without the possibility of parole and additional decades on top of that for aggravated kidnapping, burglary, robbery, but they don't matter because he's never getting out.

Now, Benjamin Redding gets sentenced.

He didn't cooperate like he was supposed to, really, or anything like that, but they sentence him to Yusa may fuck off 25 to life in prison.

Oh, boy.

He was only 25 years old when they sentenced him.

He's getting out.

Oh, yeah.

And that's not good.

No, he's getting the fuck out of jail.

And he didn't even.

He didn't even.

I mean, yeah, I mean, 25.

I don't know if 25, two life, maybe he didn't deserve 25.

But he'll be 50.

Yeah.

I mean, that's.

You got plenty of killing left, in you.

Yeah, that's fine.

So the lawsuit.

Yeah.

The lawsuit.

Okay.

The Mortensen's attorney said there is no way you can ever repay the embarrassment and humiliation, the mortification, the pain of being accused of a vile and grisly murder of your own father.

How do you ever get past that?

Hard to argue that, I would say here.

In their lawsuit, they claim officers and prosecutors lied to them

about them to the grand jury.

That's what they said.

Now,

the court dismisses their lawsuit here,

which seems insane that they don't get anything for this.

Nothing at all.

Nothing.

Their lawyer said when we filed the case, it was a very good case.

It involved falsehoods told by several officers to the grand jury.

It left the grand jury with the false impression that these people

were flim flam hustlers.

Flim flam hustlers?

Wow.

I've never heard flim flam hustlers before.

It's a good one.

That was the clear impression left by the evidence, and most of it was false.

He said that he was confident they could have prevailed in this civil lawsuit if not for a just then U.S.

Supreme Court ruling that declared all witnesses, all witness statements given before a grand jury are immune to civil litigation, including those given by law enforcement.

Oh.

So you can

say

any fucking thing you want in a grand jury and no one can sue you.

That's the law.

That is a ridiculously stupid law.

It should have to be under threat of perjury or

it is, right?

I don't know.

Yeah, I'm sure there is.

I'm sure there's that, but it's immune to civil litigation.

So no one can sue you for what you say.

That's unbelievable.

So you can make up a whole giant story

getting someone indicted.

Yeah.

And they can't sue you at all.

Wow.

Which is wild.

Just fucking wild that they can do that.

So they said that was a big deal.

And the attorney said, what that left us with, whether we could find something in other than grand jury testimony, we couldn't find anything.

But he was adamant that the officers lied through their teeth, probably due to the pressure to solve the case.

He gets it.

But the attorney who represented the officers and prosecutors said the case was fatally flawed because there's always been immunity for witnesses who testify before grand juries, including police and prosecutors.

I think they should be the only ones who aren't immune, if anything.

Yeah.

If you say civilians or them, they should have to tell the truth because they're the only ones getting fucking paid to do that.

We're paying you money to do that.

If you don't do it, at least give us your fucking paycheck back.

How about that?

Like, what are we talking about?

All of it.

And your 401k, too.

Give me it all.

Yeah.

So

the defense or the Mortensen's attorney said the ruling upended 40 years of precedence.

The other side said it's merely reaffirmed the broad blanket immunities that prosecutors and officers have always had for good and sound reasons.

He said the law is quite clear that witnesses are always clothed with broad immunity.

We want people to participate in legal proceedings without fear or retribution.

That was a fundamental flaw with the complaint.

Well, guess what?

Cops have to do it anyway because it's their fucking job and they're subpoenaed.

Tell the truth and you don't have to worry about anything.

What are we talking about?

You're allowed to lie because you're a cop?

Like, that's the fucking stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Wow.

Roger and Pam, they must be pissed.

They released a statement saying, it's hard to understand that falsifying information to a grand jury, especially by law enforcement, could be tolerated.

In our situation, our right to have compensation for the injustices inflicted on us by detectives, sheriff's department, and public defender has been halted.

You would think they'd at least, there's got to be some kind of settlement, at least for the fact that they were for five months, they probably lost their houses, they probably lost things, jobs, like, you know.

Ruined their life pretty well, yeah.

Yeah, at least, you know, the bills they had piled up to pay them back for.

Obviously, anything else you can't, the mental anguish and everything of being in jail for that long.

Now, Martin Bond is going to appeal.

Okay.

based on ineffective assistance of counsel.

See, he says it's ineffective assistance because counsel did not move for a mistrial based on an alleged confrontational clause violation.

He contends that counsel's performance was deficient because there was no conceivable legitimate tactic or strategy for failing to move on this ground.

Also, he claims he was prejudiced because the trial court would have been compelled to grant the mistrial based on the confrontational clause violation.

Okay.

The Redding testimony is the big one here.

He challenges this, that the state called Benjamin Reddick to testify, knowing full well that Reddick intended to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

So they knew that.

So they said that he had pleaded guilty,

obviously Reddick did, and took the stand and proceeded to plead the fifth on most questions, stonewalling the prosecution.

Bond argued that this was prosecutorial misconduct, a deliberate ploy to put a witness before the jury who would refuse to speak, creating an aura of guilt by association because he's already pled guilty to this crime.

So,

yeah, that's interesting.

The prosecutor first asked Reddig these questions.

Question one, isn't it true that you've told the police that the reason you were meeting up with Mr.

Bond is because you and him had talked about going to a man's house and taking some guns the day before November 15th, 2009?

That's one of the,

is that true?

Question two, isn't it true that you told police that Mr.

Bond had actually approached you the day before and talked about going to some guy's house in Payson and stealing some guns?

Question three.

Okay, so the question is, isn't it true that

you told the police that you drove from Vernal to Payson, that you stopped at Walmart and bought some zip ties and latex gloves and some hoodies with Mr.

Bond?

Question four, isn't it true that you told the police that you went up to Kay Mortensen's house and Mr.

Bond told you to stay in the car while he went and knocked on the door?

And question five, isn't it true that you actually entered the house at the direction of Mr.

Bond with the gun and you helped zip-tie Kay Mortensen?

Isn't that true?

Isn't it true that you told the, isn't that the truth that you told the police?

Now, in this appeal, they claim that these questions imply that Martin Bond took the lead in the early stages of the robbery without Reddick even answering the questions of whether he did or not.

They suggest that Mr.

Bond originated the idea of robbing Mortensen, directing Mr.

Reddick to remain in the car when they arrived, knocking on the door, and then prompting Ben Reddig to come in the home.

But many of these factual assertions were established by other evidence already presented to the jury, the court says the appeals court.

For example, in a recorded interview with police, Mr.

Bond explained that he and Mr.

Reddig had planned to travel to the Mortensen home to steal the guns and that they met up for that purpose.

Sure.

So that's fine.

They said that Bond's ex-wife also testified and told her

and that Martin told her that he drove with Reddig to Payson to rob Mortensen.

So it was backed up on twofold.

Sure, sure.

That it was true.

Additionally, the state presented evidence that Mr.

Bond bought zip ties and latex gloves and brought them to Mortensen's home on the night of the murder.

So they've already established this shit here.

They said, more importantly, none of the first five questions directly contradicts or undermines Mr.

Bond's compulsion defense.

When the pair entered Mortensen's home, Mr.

Bond and Mr.

Reddig were carrying out a mutually agreed-upon plan to rob him of his guns.

According to Mr.

Bond's theory of the case, the plan went awry when Mr.

Redding forced him to kill Mr.

Mortensen at gunpoint.

And Mr.

Reddig,

alleged compulsion, did not occur until well after the pair exited the car and entered the home.

So you can't say he forced you if you both were there.

He certainly went, yeah.

Yeah, the forcing has to be at a different time.

They said, thus, any implication that Mr.

Bond took the lead in the early stages of the robbery did not foreclose the possibility that Mr.

Redig changed the course and later forced him at gunpoint to kill Mr.

Mortensen.

So, yeah, they said we therefore conclude these initial questions were unlikely to undermine Mr.

Bond's defense or affect the outcome of the trial.

Then there's two more questions that were more direct.

Question six is, isn't it true that you repeatedly told the police that Mr.

Bond is the one who stabbed and killed Kay Mortensen and that you were holding the gun upstairs in the bathroom?

Isn't that true?

They said this question was not harmful to Mr.

Bond's defense because it actually restates Mr.

Bond's own version of events.

The state had introduced notes that Mr.

Bond wrote and passed and all that kind of shit.

So, yeah.

Moreover, defense counsel argued the same version of events in closing on the basis of Mr.

Bond's compulsion defense.

Far from

prejudicing Mr.

Bond, this question actually paralleled his theory of the case.

And then the seventh question was the prosecutor asked, isn't it true that you didn't get any guns or anything or any, you didn't get paid or you didn't receive anything?

That's what you told the police, that you didn't receive anything at all.

Now, through the jail notes, the jury had already heard that Mr.

Reddig left all the stolen guns with Mr.

Bond after the murders.

And so that was was a moot point, too.

So they said there was substantial evidence already in the record to establish that Mr.

Reddick had not received any sort of financial or any other benefit from this event.

So therefore, the jury had already heard the evidence that he didn't receive the guns, so they conclude that the question would have little impact on the jury.

So they said for each of the seven questions, Mr.

Bond has failed to demonstrate prejudice resulting from the prosecutor's assertions that would undermine our confidence in the jury's verdict.

His second challenge involved the prosecutor's use of leading questions when questioning Reddig, which Bond claimed violated his rights under the Confrontation Clause.

The court's analysis ventured into the murky waters established by Douglas versus Alabama, where the Supreme Court held that even though prosecutors' questions weren't technically evidence, they, quote,

may well have been the equivalent in the jury's mind of testimony, and that the jury might improperly infer that the statement statement had been made and that that statement was true.

So anyway, fuck off, dismissed life in prison without parole.

Take that, dickhole.

Now,

in the media, this murder was the subject of a 2013 episode of On the Case with Paula Zahn

entitled Bound by Truth.

Also 2013, an episode of Dateline.

They seem to,

there's an episode of Dateline for everything

entitled Murder at Payson Canyon, which doesn't sound all that juicy, does it?

Murder at Payson Canyon.

Accidentally put two people in jail.

How about that?

Yeah.

Holy shit, this is fucked up.

That would have been a good date.

What's the daisy?

That's a good one.

Check this wild ass shit out.

So, more recently, it was covered in an episode of Trace of Evil titled The Perplexing Case of Kay Mortensen, which aired in 2021.

Now, Kay is buried at the Ephraim, or whatever it is, Ephraim State Cemetery, and that's in Utah, in San Pete County, Utah.

So you can find him.

He's in plot H365.

Okay.

Go take a look at Kay.

And there you go, everybody.

That is Pace in Utah.

That's insane.

Is it not insane?

I can't believe it.

It's wild.

Those people were fucked.

They were done, cooked, and then...

Going to prison forever.

Forever.

And

people are like, oh, you fucking heartless.

Just admit it, you heartless assholes.

Like, we swear.

Yeah.

I just have brain damage.

Don't remember so well.

And that was the other thing they talked about, too, in the papers, was that the

police never really took his brain damage into account as he would be a bad,

he'd be bad at recalling facts from what just happened because he has bad short-term memory yeah he just tried his best brain yeah he tried his best failed on some accounts and they went that's guilt not that's brain damage so there you go everybody if you like that show or really you like any of the shows that we make ever get on whatever app you're listening on and give us five stars it helps so much we don't know why yeah we wish we did but we don't know it does though so it helps drive us up the charts help us out if you want to help out the show also head over to shutupandgiveme murder.com yeah get your merchandise Get your tickets, baby.

Live shows.

Yes, they're coming.

This fall, Seattle and Philly and D.C.

have some tickets left.

And I think there might be a few left in San Diego, but check.

And everybody else, keep checking back because we have some, they give us some like holds and comps and stuff.

And we

eventually release those.

So anywhere where you're looking to go, at some point, a few tickets are going to pop up there.

So keep an eye out for those.

Keep going back to shutupandgivemeurder.com and getting

all the info on that shit.

So do that.

Definitely follow us on social media.

We are at small town murder on Instagram, at small townpod on Facebook.

Also, follow on Patreon.

Get yourself Patreon.

You deserve it, damn it.

Yeah, you do.

Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material.

Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get not only a gigantic back catalog of bonus stuff that you've never heard before immediately upon subscription to binge, but then you get new ones every other week, one crime and sports, one small-town murder, and you just get them all.

Take them.

This week, we're going to do some updates for crime and sports, especially BJ Penn, who is claiming that his family has been kidnapped and replaced with replicas.

It's crazy.

We'll talk about that.

Then for small-town murder, we're going to talk about that whole Amy Bradley situation, the woman who disappeared from the cruise ship over 25 years ago.

Is she still alive?

Did she fall off the cruise ship?

Did she jump off?

Is she still around?

We'll get into all that shit and more and more reasons to never go on a cruise.

We should just call the small-town murder Patreons reasons to not go on cruises or go to amusement parks.

Cruises are disgusting.

They are gross.

So we'll get into that and more.

And you get everything ad-free now as well.

All of our shows ad-free on Patreon.

Now, a little bit of an explanation because I've had messages where a couple of people are like, listen, I'm still getting ads on that.

This is complicated technical shit, but we have, and this is only for the next couple weeks, we have baked-in ads, which means when we upload it to our server, it has an ad in the actual file of the show.

Now, I make two versions: I make that version, I make an ad-free version with no ad in it.

Now, what we do is we upload it to our server.

The only way to make this work is then Patreon pulls that from that feed onto Patreon.

So that has has a baked-in ad on it now.

So what we have to do is immediately go into Patreon, pull that file, and replace it with the ad-free version of it.

Do you understand?

So if people have like automatic downloads on Patreon or if they go in the first 10, 15 minutes or something and listen, it has an ad on it still because it's still in the process of replacing the file.

I'm saying all this to say this is ending.

in the next couple weeks.

Right.

And they're

getting rid of the

Libsyn, our network is getting rid of the baked-in ads.

So they'll only be dynamically inserted ads, which means they will pull non-ad, they'll pull the ad-free version off this thing, and that's what you'll get immediately and always.

So sorry for a little confusion if you had to fast forward for like a minute and a half once.

Honestly, I mean, if you paid for it to not have to do that, we do apologize, but we're fixing it.

We're trying to get a thing going with a network and then a whole other system and trying to make them talk to each other.

And finger fuck, it takes a minute.

So, you know what I'm saying?

So definitely sign up for Patreon, get yourself that ad-free stuff, and let's hear about the people who have done that.

Jimmy, hit me with the list of the most wonderful goddamn people on the face of the earth who patiently will scroll through a minute, 30-second ad.

Hit me with them right fucking now.

This week's executive producer are Gary Howard, Terry Stuck on Dorock, a cheered up bitch, Jordan Weaver, Jonathan Boykin, Liz with no last name, and Aaron Brains.

Oh boy, oh boy.

All right.

Thank you all so much for what you guys do.

Other producers this week, Peyton Meadows, happy hour.

Checking in in Huntsville, Texas.

I didn't even know there was one near the prison.

Haven't they heard of it?

They have

Huntsville Prison.

Huntsville, yeah, that's where they do the executions.

In Texas?

Jesus Christ, right?

That's a big one.

Jesus.

And Janice, thank you all.

Truly, you guys are so great.

Other producers this week, Not Your Mama's Vegan Cafe,

Ashley Bailey, Jacqueline Gray, Brie Wade, Angie Pennington, Ducky4915, Beth with no last name, Isla Vanell, Johnny Tebow, Sandy Kelch, Andrew Colhane, Clay Grassman, Alana Klapek, Charlotte Beatty, Emily Anderson, Gus Stamps, Stump Humper, all right, Sidney with no last name, Pepper with no last name, Tracy Katz, Bobby Throckmorton, Erica Anderson, Allison Fernandez, Shamil Singh, Eric McMichael, Eric Michael Cowan.

God damn it, that looks like, never mind.

Carly Turchan, Turchan.

Ben Goodrick.

Do you know him, James?

John with no last name.

April Gonzalez, Peggy Johnson, Lindsey Drodis, Heather with no last name.

Adam Taylor, Paul DeMarco, Sean Carlin, Jessica Norker, Norcut, Northcut, Northker?

That can't be right.

Perby Reed.

Somebody.

Damn it.

Matt Funale.

What is that?

Funiole?

That's all the vowels.

He's got all of them.

Zaharia Oliver.

Olivero.

Karen C., TJ Cunningham, Allison Wagner, Aaron with no last name, Rebecca with no last name, Abra Franco, Justin Fox, Andy W., Maria Becera, Spencer Loomis, Amanda Shira, Joe with no last name, Chelsea Roach, Hillary with no last name, Hillary G, also, probably the same person.

Thank you, Hillary, or Hillary Zuck, Donnie Doni, Donnie Morin, Morin, Donnie, is it Doni?

It might be Donnie,

Mary Claire Grigson, Colin Jones,

Mercadante, my Christ, Kristen Woodruff, Danielle Ranke, MJ Androninko, Nico, Meredith Bracken, Jennifer Christensen, Angela Faulkner, Emily Myers, Christina Weisner, Lonnie, Loney, Lonnie Blair, Shane with no last name, Julie Calvitis, Calvitis,

Julie Colvitis?

I don't like that at all.

Wow.

Brina, Brinis.

I don't like your name at all.

You sound like a disease.

Thank you for your money.

Thank you.

Brianna, Becker, Louis Lopez, Valerie Hilton, Hilton, Joy with no last name, Justin with no last name.

I don't like that at all.

Andrew

Nagler.

Andrew Nagler.

Ben loves Holly in L-Town.

Good for you, Ben.

Good for you, Holly.

Atticus Banji.

He could be anywhere.

They could have done that in P-Town.

We don't know.

Jordan Kaiser, Liam Jones, Kathy Knudsen, Jen S., Andrew Blunt.

Nope, it's just Bunt.

Eric Foley, Terrence Howell.

Nope, that's Clark.

Why did I say Terrence Howell?

Who the fuck?

Shiv M., Jesse Barker, Esther with no last name.

Stacey Peterson, Jordan Bennett.

It's Jordan D.

Bennett.

I don't know if it's the same one.

It's the same in my life.

I hope you're enjoying England if it's fine.

If it's not, wherever you're at, okay,

Simon for us.

Mackenzie with no last name.

Katie Bumgartner.

Helen Locare.

Locker, maybe?

Dano.

Dano?

Dano Barney?

Is that real?

Dano?

Dano, right?

You don't call somebody Dano.

Dano.

Dano.

Dano.

Jacob B.

Jim Best, Dean Goldberry, Lee F, Donna Royale, or Royal, whatever.

Jesse L.

Reed,

ridiculous.

Jess Reed, 5380.

Morgan Halliday, Ashamo, Ashamo.

I don't know.

M, Scott with no last name.

William George, MX, the letter D, Josh Janewski, Cody Frampis, Teresa Foscolos, Jesus, Pamela Haved.

Haved?

Were you

Haved?

Haved?

Haved?

Is it Haved?

Havved.

Havved.

I was behaved.

The one angry elf, that one angry elf, Nicolette Alexander, Lady Cataluna, Patrice Dotareve.

What is it?

Dotreve?

Dotreve.

I know that's Dotrive because that is the name of a man on King of the Hill.

uh throat punch katia katia

katya katia katya uh kwavis brooke rice kim quinan quinon uh v ricks danny daney danny jack paul leposki marilyn bagan savannah jn510 suzanne papiuski uh tania tanya tanya

Lee, Leahy, what is that?

Lei,

holy, Leigh Hey, what is Lehigh?

Leigh?

I don't of fucking tanya your name's fucking confusing with your t-an t-a-n-i-a is that tanya there's a fucking why in that yeah you gotta figure that out you gotta

figure the

make it simpler for us

shmaya i don't know christy farina steph stafford uh rick d uh

like in the morning james uh diana chemo what kerno no that is chemo the cable god rob holt colleen rudolph uh angel Birdsong.

That's nice.

Shamorki, Shomorkey.

Greg Keller, Tanya.

There's another Tanya with no why.

What in the motherfuck?

David Poleam?

It's not how you spell it.

Gieber Gieber, Adam Heisner, Jacob Casper, Reverend Randy Franklin, Tyler Mack, Kitty Salmons, Simon, Samons.

Charlie Budle?

Butle.

All right, like that shit you used to.

Oh, I think

that's a good thing.

Alexis Guerra, Steph with an F, Rachel Brown, Lori R., Misty Carrier, Kathy Smith, Meg C., Marta.

This Duchy likes the stories, the twisted.

Oh, stories of the twisted.

I can't read my own writing.

Casey Fonisbeck, Sean.

I think I'll know what that is later.

Carl Winslow.

Probably not, but possibly so.

Rita Lambert, Amber Harris, Bill Hoyes, Hollywood, no last name.

Jamie Johnson, Taylor Freed, Mike Hunger, Carl Hungis, Melanie Miller, Aaron Easter, Kara Hodges, Sandra Hucks, Kendra Miller, Julie Roberts, not Julia,

Eliza, Elisa Corrigan,

what is this?

Hannah with no last name, We Will Survive, okay, Melissa Shonely, Mike Williams, Kevin Swift, Robin Rinaldi, Melissa with no last name, Jane Gigante.

Hey, look, I think you're a wonderful person.

Bella Holcomb and your entire family.

I'm not going to say a negative word.

Elon Ellie, Ellie Schmitke, Dory Cook, Amai Johnson.

Johnston, Justin Pike, Lori King Godwin.

Nope, that's Goodwin.

Zachary Murphy, Jonathan Bobb, Charlene Supa, Suppa, Jessica Dowding, Haley Thorndike, Brian Evans, Amber O'Daniels, like Pappy's kid, Patty Wilcox, Lauren with no last name, spelled just like Michaels, Brett Burns, Sarah Tersky, Alicia Seuss, Jocelyn Emerson, Alan Tripp, Aaron Hewlett, Kiki, Patty, Steph, and Rod Ellerstein, Todd with no last name, Gordon Baird, Amir Cooks, nope, Brooks, Coleman, Jana, Jaina, Kent, Deborah, Kokika, Kakika, Colby Burns, Daniel Frederick, Karen Goodwin, Mackenzie Pasteur, like Louie, Brian with no last name, Scott Keeha, Si-Ha, Chaha, Johnny Olieren,

Chad Saint, Mike Swint, I'm giving it one swing and moving along.

Mike Martin, no, it's Jenny,

Ashley Bradley, Steph with no last name, Amanda Lang, Josh Rosen, Ghost, 487, Sandra Bloom, Jessica Martin, Lori McLean, Joe Lynn, James, Pay the Man, 714, Rich Doloff, Wesley Morelli, Rebecca White, January with no last name, Tiffany with no last name, Shelley with no last name, Becky French Butler, Sage with no last name, Anna Perasquia, Celeshka Chizasenga, Trevor Fletcher, Kathy Casa, Mark Mathaeus, Mathis, Paula Burkmeier, Michael Clem, Jessica Cagnolatti,

Jessica Cannoli, Matt Moon, Sonia James, Tina Embry, sounds delicious, Matt with no last name, Heather Werthner, Snyder, Misha Milby, Chaco with no last name, and every one of our patrons.

You guys are the best.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, everybody.

You wonderful bastards.

We hope you're enjoying all the material and all the stuff.

We notice a lot of you have been going back and like listening from the beginning again.

Thank you so much for doing that.

Just everything you do for us.

If you want to follow us on social media, shut up and givememurder.com has drop-down menus that take you anywhere you could possibly want to be.

So keep coming back, doing that.

We'll keep coming back.

And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

Bye.

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