Serial Butcher Killer - Parkersburg, West Virginia

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This week, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, what at first appears to be a simple yet horrifying drug murder turns out to not be so simple, but ends up leading to to a serial killer with no remorse and a background in butchery who has killed many times before.

Welcome to Small Town Murder.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder.

Yay!

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.

Yay indeed.

My name is James Petrogallo.

I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wistman.

Thank you folks so much for joining us today.

We have a absolute wild show for you today.

This guy is a monster and just a

what some people kill for like, you know, a reason.

They want insurance money.

They want this person out of the way.

They want, you know, there's a lot of reasons.

This person really likes it.

He just loves it.

Bloodlust is a certain type of killer, and this guy is wild.

We'll talk about all that and more.

Definitely, before you do that, head over to shutupandgivemeurder.com to get your tickets.

Well, first of all, get all your merchandise and wear that merchandise and bring it to live shows

starting back up in the fall.

A lot of them are selling out right now.

The ones with tickets right now are Irvine, California, there outside LA at the Irvine Improv.

We have Seattle in November.

Portland sold out the night before.

And then we have D.C.

and Philly in December as well.

And there's some tickets left there too.

So get your tickets now if you want to go because they sell fast.

So thank you to everybody that's done that.

Shutup and GiveMemurder.com.

Also, listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports, which we are starting a long series on the I-5 killer, Randall Woodfield, who played, who was a football player for about five minutes and then a murderer for years and years.

So we'll talk all about that.

And also Your Stupid Opinions, where we go all over the internet and find people's opinions and reviews of things and trash their reviews.

So that's a lot of fun.

Do that and then get yourself Patreon.

Yeah.

Patreon.com/slash crime in sports, just like the name of our other show.

That will get you anybody $5 a month or above will get you everything.

Hundreds and hundreds of back episodes you're going to get immediately upon subscription and new ones every other week.

One crime in sports, one small towel burger, and you, my friends, will get it all.

This week, we're going to talk about for crime and sports, we're going to talk about the liver king.

That lunatic, this guy who said, if you eat liver, you can look like a 1980s professional wrestler without steroids or anything.

And turns out none of that's true.

And I can't believe he's alive.

I thought he was dead.

And then I found out that he's not.

Then for small-town murder, we are going to talk about some weird alien stuff.

Let's go down the alien rabbit hole and talk about what we thought in the 40s and 50s, what we're thinking now.

There's some conspiracy stuff about alien whistleblowers, UFO whistleblowers being murdered all over the country.

It's crazy stuff.

We'll get into all of it.

We're going to smoke a little weed and just go right down the rabbit hole with this.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of that and more.

And you get a shout out at the end of the show, too.

Jimmy will try to pronounce your name correctly, but names are hard.

Let's be realistic here.

You might not recognize your name, but damn it, he'll say it.

So there you go.

That said, disclaimer time, this is a comedy show, everybody.

We are comedians.

That does not mean that anything in the show is not real, though.

Everything is excruciatingly and horribly real.

We wish it wasn't.

If I could make up stories like this week after week, first of all, I wouldn't be doing this.

I'd be living next door to Stephen King, I'm sure, because that's the level of, you know, crazy you'd have to be to write that many stories.

So this is, everything is real.

Nothing is embellished for comedic effect.

Unfortunately, this is all just horrible, horrible reality.

And, you know, there's jokes to be made about that.

Right.

But here's what we do to make it palatable here.

We don't make fun of the victims

or the victims' families.

Why, James?

Because we're assholes.

But.

But we're not scumbags.

See how that works?

That's perfect.

So I think if

you think that true crime and comedy never go together, you might not like us.

But if you want to give it a shot and want to not complain about it later, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back.

Let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout.

Shut up

and give me murder.

Let's do this, everybody.

Okay.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

We have to.

We're going to West Virginia this week again.

Oh, we are back.

West Virginia never disappoints us.

We'll say that.

That is, it's kind of a.

It just can.

Well, we're disappointed in what happened, but

yeah.

But like, if you're a new listener, like, when it's West Virginia time, all the established listeners are real excited.

They're like, oh, it's a West Virginia.

Here we go again.

Because there's so much crazy there.

And this also, Ohio, you can take some credit to for this crazy this week.

We're going to.

I can't believe West Virginia has a song that everybody knows.

They all, yeah.

They don't deserve it.

That's a wild state, man.

Yeah.

It's whenever you look at like statistics of like, you know, one to 50 and something, they're always 49 or 50 and everything.

And that's, I feel bad for them.

They're not doing great.

No, it's a tough state to live in here.

It's pretty.

I've driven through it.

Hills are nice.

It's the ones that are.

I like green.

Fucking freeway speeds.

That's the thing.

Do it from 75 miles an hour.

It looks great.

Parkersburg, West Virginia, we're going to here.

It's in northwestern West Virginia, kind of on the side of the chicken.

It's like a chicken in West Virginia, if you look at it laid out.

It's kind of on the side of the chicken there.

It's about an hour and 50 minutes to Columbus, Ohio, where some of this is going to take place.

Wow.

About two hours and 50 minutes to Princeton, West Virginia, our last West Virginia episode, The Fugitive Temptress, which was a good one.

That was, again, West Virginia, always.

This is in Wood County, area code 304.

It has a lot of nicknames and

mottos and everything else here.

Here's the nicknames.

The Berg, which is Pittsburgh.

The Burg already has that, yeah.

The next one is P Burg, which again,

that's Pittsburgh.

Home of the world champion Steelers.

Is that next?

What you're going to put up there?

What are you talking about?

Do you guys also have a billboard of Lynn Swan welcoming you?

Yeah, is that at the airport?

Franco Harris thing?

Like Pittsburgh.

Statue of Frank O'Hara Harris.

That's what greets you.

Franco Harris.

I love it.

That's why I like Pittsburgh.

It's great.

The savings bond capital of America, which

that's exciting, right?

It can't be right.

The marble capital of the world.

I don't think that's exactly right.

I don't think that's probably right either.

I think that's Italy.

I think so.

And then the motto here is where West Virginia Began,

which it's

on the edge of the state.

So kind of, I guess, if you're coming from Ohio.

If you're coming from the east, it wouldn't be.

I don't know a lot of West Virginia history.

I'm going to say this.

I know zero of West Virginia history.

Yes.

Yeah.

But I don't think any of that is true.

That's a lot of.

No, and they're not the P-Burg either or any of that shit.

They're out of their mind.

None of that's real.

I don't know what they're trying to do here.

A little bit of history.

Settlers first named the city Newport when they settled here and then realized there's about 100 of those and usually have to touch water to be a Newport.

Yeah.

You know, that was right after the Revolutionary War, though.

A town section was laid out

on land granted to Alexander Parker for his exemplary Revolutionary War service.

Yeah.

And then Parkersburg.

So, Virginia made grants of land to veterans for their war service back then.

So, there was title conflicts between Parker and the city planners of Newport, and they settled that.

And then they renamed the town Parkersburg in 1810.

So, it became a major oil refining center in the late 1800s.

So, when we were first refining oil, I guess there were nearby oil fields

by here.

So, West Virginia, they will extract some shit from the earth.

Oil, coal.

Everything we got.

If it's in there, they just wish everything could, they could just turn the land upside down.

That would be perfect for them.

Can we flip West Virginia over?

Can we just do that?

Just get in our ass.

Flip this over with.

Yeah.

The Camden Consolidated Oil Company, which was founded in 1866, was the big refining business who was later, and it was later sold to Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company.

Oh.

Yeah.

Here's some.

Is that how Rockefeller got rich by turning West Virginia into a fucking underground fire mine?

That's how a lot of people got rich.

Really?

Yes, by sending people in terribly unsafe conditions to die in a mine for years.

Mr.

Rockefeller.

Oh, yeah.

That's a robber baron.

Why do you think they're called robber barons?

It's not a good one.

That's a good point.

You know what I mean?

That's a bad word.

Reviews of this town, five stars.

Here we go.

Parkersburg is a jewel of a town.

Jewel.

Wow.

Situated on the banks of the Ohio River.

It has the friendliest people and ranks very low in criminal activity.

Not according to every other goddamn review I've read, but that's fine.

Located less than half a day's drive from Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or Washington, D.C.

Yeah.

Makes Parkersburg the perfect place for a weekend trip or a great place to relocate.

No.

No.

I don't think so.

The weather allows.

I have not considered West Virginia.

I haven't said that.

What about the Peaberg?

What about that?

The weather allows you to enjoy all four seasons, but usually not brutally cold or hot conditions.

I've lived in nearby states and I wouldn't want to live anywhere but here

loves it.

Here's four stars.

I wish we had a bigger town with more options to do around here

and possibly fix the roads.

But other than that, the people are nice.

Other than the roads?

Other than there's nothing to do and you destroy your car trying to do them, but the people are nice.

People smile.

When you blow out a wheel or knock your axle off your car, someone will pull over and try to help you.

That's nice.

This happened to me last week.

Oh, don't worry about it.

Happens all the time.

I got zip ties.

Hold on.

Yep.

Put that muffler right back on.

Get your wheel going.

Here's one star.

This place is the worst of the worst.

Not the worst of the worst.

The worst of the worst.

Oh, the worst.

The worst.

How did you do that?

I don't know, but it hurt my brain and I had to read it four times.

How do you get one right and then fuck up the next one?

That made me go, am I wrong?

That was one of those right, is this my bad?

And then I was like, no, it's not.

That's a statement.

Thieves and addicts everywhere.

Needles all over the place, even at the parks.

It's ridiculous.

I can't wait to move.

Yeah.

So you can see people see things very differently through different prisms.

Here's another one.

Lots of rehab facilities here, plus several high-profile murder murder/slash missing persons cases involving young women are active in the area.

Just Google Gretchen Fleming for one.

Cindy Ball is another.

If I were a young single female, I would not relocate here.

So somebody.

What is going on?

Somebody responded to that review

with a review of that review.

Quote, you're being ridiculous.

Any missing person is too many, but Parkersburg is hardly unsafe for a single woman.

There are Gretchens and Cindy's everywhere.

Don't be so dramatic.

What's that?

What the hell is going on here?

People go missing all the time.

Shut up.

Calm down.

Who cares?

A missing person.

That's a dead lady, probably.

Somebody's heads missing.

It happens all the time.

This is crazy.

One star.

Parkersburg is the worst place to live.

I've been here 20 years.

No jobs unless it's fast food.

Nothing to do except bars.

Drugs are thick in most areas.

Thick.

Thick.

Thick drugs.

Never heard that term before.

Have you?

This is why West Virginia is so fascinating.

Thick drugs.

Seems like only people who grew up here and never lived anywhere else like it.

In fact, I'm moving in two months, not only out of Parkersburg, but out of the state.

Okay.

Godspeed, my friend.

Okay.

Don't write that and then disappear.

Yeah, that's the thing.

You're going to disappear.

Are you your name, Gretchen?

Cindy Browns.

Oh, no.

It's a review from Gretchen.

Uh-oh.

Not to mock that, but shit.

People in this town, 29,910.

So not a big town, not a small town.

Yeah, it's kind of, I mean, it's a small town.

It's not a big city, but it's not like a little tiny hamlet like some of the ones we've been doing lately.

Men and women, it's about even 50-50.

Female is 50.2.

Median age is a few years older.

It's 42 and 0.3, so a few years older than the average.

Less married people than usual.

It's usual 50-50 here.

It's about 43%.

A little higher divorce rate.

More people single with children here.

Racial breakdown in the town, 93.4% white, 2.1% black, 0.3% Asian, 0.2% Native American, 1.2% Hispanic.

So there's your breakdown.

We have religion, 45.6% religious, which is actually below the national average of 50%.

But the highest one, it's a horse race.

There's other Christian faith.

There's Methodists here, but Baptists are going to take it.

Sure.

Yeah.

So we know Baptists are the Catholics of the coal region, I guess.

I don't know.

Not sure.

Turner over.

You got not positive.

Unemployment, a little bit high, a little bit above the national average.

Median household income, definitely low.

In the rest of the country, it's a little, almost $70,000, basically.

Here it is $38,960.

It's doing okay.

That's a rich man in West Virginia.

Well, let's find out.

Cost of living in this town, $100 is regular average.

Here, it's 78.

That's not bad.

Not that low.

The housing is the low one.

Everything else is kind of high, actually.

Healthcare is like really high.

Median home cost here, $133,400,

which is not a lot here.

So if we've convinced you, you don't care.

I got a new motto for you.

Who cares?

Just move to Parkersburg.

We have for you the Parkersburg, West Virginia Real Estate Report.

The average two-bedroom rental here goes for about $830 a month, which is well below the national average.

Pretty affordable.

Yeah, here's house number one.

It's nothing spectacular.

I got a picture for you.

I'll move the screen so you can see it there.

Okay.

I mean, it's not awful.

Not awful.

Not great.

It's like my childhood home.

The curtains are West Virginia University blankets.

That's a

mountaineer blankets.

There's one up there and then one window has an actual curtain in it.

So that's a bad sign.

Sheets.

Or there's sheets.

One of the two.

Three bedroom, one bath.

It does not tell you the square footage.

It looks like about a 1,200 square foot house, I'm going to say.

Is that upstairs down?

Yeah, it's two stories, but it's a small little box there.

This house, I mean, it's not terrific.

I'll say that much, but you can live in it.

$45,000 for that.

Not bad.

I mean, if you need a place to live, and when have you seen a $45,000 actually livable home?

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not, like I said, it's not ideal.

You're not going to go on HGTV, but it's.

You can live there.

It's going to be a bridge between your settled place.

Yeah, there's a bathroom with a toilet and stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's say you just want to, you just want to get away from people and you don't give a shit and you don't even need a house.

You just need a tree to live under.

Here is 85.76 acres of it, looks like a whole Hollard all to yourself here.

Yeah.

This 85.76 acres, $100,000.

So that's only slightly over $1,000 an acre.

That is cheap, cheap.

They got me considering West Virginia now, Jake.

Wow.

And then here is a six-bedroom, six-bath T-bowl for each and every B-hole, 5,800 square foot house.

I assume

you have to be like the head coach of the football team of the college.

What the fuck?

It looks like like an English, it looks like something that

is that all brick?

Yes, it looks like something Prince Harry gave up to move to California.

That's what it looks like.

It's got to go live with a friend.

It looks like an old English crazy cottage.

It's a chateau.

It's wild.

It's only a third of an acre, but the house is crazy.

That's all the house.

The whole house.

All the land.

That's it.

And your little front yard.

That's it.

$675,000 for that.

It's a 6,000 square foot house.

Beautiful, too.

Inside, it's nice.

It's gorgeous.

It's classy.

It's built in 1939.

Anyway, things to do here.

Yeah.

All right.

Number one, the honey festival.

Right.

Oh, the West Virginia Honey Festival.

It's actually about honey, too.

It's not a euphemism for anything.

Bring in your gal.

No.

It's held inside the city park where we celebrate the many uses of honey, educate the public about the significance of the honey bee, and offer a diverse range of honey products.

That's the festival.

Is there more things to do with honey than ingest it?

I don't know.

I think you can, you know, apparently you can build a house with it.

You can

order some breakfast.

A lot of stuff to do with honey.

And then there's the Mid-Ohio Valley Multicultural Festival.

Multicultural Festival.

Is that multi?

Let's find out.

Their description is, where can you find a Chinese lion dancer, hula dancers, a Middle Eastern belly dancer, Italian dancers, and an African drummer all sharing the stage at the same time?

Well, in my nightmares, that's one.

Just because that sounds like an awful performance, I don't want to watch all those people doing all these disparate things at the same time.

It just looks like a mess.

One at a time, everybody, is what I'm saying.

Where will you find Latin, Celtic, Native American, blues, reggae, and roots musicians all performing at the same event?

Where can you eat traditional Polish pierogies, French grapes, Thai noodle bowl, Italian pizza?

That's exotic.

Probably

in Vegas, somewhere.

Yeah.

Any main street of any decent-sized town in America, basically.

You can go down and do that.

Kettle corn, southern pulled pork ribs, and brisket, old-fashioned ice cream, fresh squeezed lemonade, and an all-American hot dog within steps of one another.

It's only here at the multicultural festival.

Yeah, we have Master Sengao performing.

Kanai Yoshida.

Sure.

Sean Booker, damn Band.

Sean Booker Dammit.

Sean Booker Dammit Band.

That's literally the name of those guys.

High schools that rock.

And that's actually kids.

Harriet Tubman will be performing at 1205.

I don't know.

We raised Harriet Tubman from the dead, and now she's.

She's not.

The first thing she did when she came back from the dead was say, I really want to perform at a festival in West Virginia.

Mad Maudlin, Allegro, Josh Donaway,

Jensuya, and Folkloric are all.

Oh, also, Grupo Fuego.

I think we can say

fire group.

Steve Free, and some hula dancers.

So there you go.

Wow.

Oh, boy.

There's some kind of show there.

Crime rate in this town, we are interested in.

Property crime, almost double the national average.

Wow.

That five-star review was full of shit when it kind of said no crime anywhere because that is a lot of crime.

Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, and, of course, assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime, a little bit high, above the national average, but not like double or anything like that, but still a little high.

Seems like there's a lot of drug issues around here.

If you've ever seen the wild and wonderful whites of West Virginia,

boom county mate and call and your shits.

I've never seen a documentary on West Virginia that wasn't look how crazy amount of drugs they do.

Yeah,

it's a lot.

So that said, let's talk about some murder here.

Wow.

We got, we are going to, We're going to clog the pipes with murder this week.

There's a lot.

So let's go back in time to November 20th, 1979.

Oh.

So back a good ways here.

This is just for everybody.

This is barely cable.

Obviously, no internet.

No damn near.

No cell phones.

46 years ago.

Yeah, this is, I mean, if you had cable, you were hot shit in 1979.

If you had a beta recorder, beta mic.

Yeah.

You're like, that VHS is a fad.

That's going away.

I'm sticking with beta, man.

That's what this is.

So November 20th, 1979, let's talk about Charles Morgan Marsh is his name here.

Now, Charles Morgan Marsh.

He's born in 1946,

and apparently everybody calls him swampy.

Yeah.

Which doesn't sound complimentary.

Yeah, or West Virginian.

Well, he's not from there.

He's from South Carolina.

Okay, that's true.

I know there's swamps there, but if you are are a swampy person, I mean, that's like dank and moist and stinky, and there might be like

unknown bugs popping out of it to give you weird diseases and shit.

Anything could happen there.

So at this point, though, he is, what is he, 33 years old?

He is a Vietnam veteran.

He was in Nam, and he's from South Carolina.

He has been wandering for the last few years.

A lot.

Just wandering.

Where's he going?

Trying to figure it out.

He was one of those guys that came home from Vietnam and had no idea what the hell to do with himself and no idea how to settle or what to do.

It was a lot harder.

It feels like guys that left for Vietnam and then came home, society seemed a lot different when they got home than when they left and they didn't really know where they were.

Whereas like World War II, society was kind of, it wasn't from when they left and when they came home, it was kind of the same thing.

You know what I mean?

Except people are mad at them now.

Well, not in world war ii okay yeah yeah they came home everybody was thrilled and yeah on top of that it was kind of the same you know what i mean vietnam you come home and people hate you now yeah well world war ii the country was on pause you know what i mean like even like ted williams and joe di maggio were in world war ii so yep and nobody had anything we were sending everything to the war effort yeah there's rationing and all that whereas vietnam society kept going and there was also vietnam so it was hard for a lot of these guys so what he did was get into dealing drugs okay he got into dealing drugs.

He was like, well, that seems like a good idea.

A little Steve Earl song.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, walking down the road with a

stay away from Copperhead Road, James.

We're learned a few things from Charlie, don't you know?

Don't you know?

So November 20th, here we go.

He's got a girlfriend named Debbie Hanna, and they share a house together on Dry Run Road,

which is

a gravel road.

It's a country road just outside of Parkersburg.

Not in like a town.

It's just, just, you know, on the outskirts of Parkersburg, but up in the holler type of deal.

So on this day, November 20th, 1979, it's a weekday, and Debbie leaves the house around 9 a.m.

because she works part-time at the DMV.

So

we lead very different lives.

He sells drugs and does like a lot of...

They call it, they say he's like a mule, basically.

He goes back and forth between South Carolina and West Virginia and hauls large amounts of weed with him.

That's what he's doing.

And his girlfriend works at the DMV part-time.

Nice.

So about noon, she decided to go home for lunch, as she often did.

She came home for lunch and couldn't find Swampy.

Where's old Swampy?

Well, another day, she looked all around.

Swampy, Swampy, can't find him.

No Swampy.

No Swampy.

So she walks into the bedroom.

He's not in the living room.

He's not doing anything.

I can't find him.

And she finds him in the bedroom.

Uh-oh.

boy does she find him um yeah a lot of him oh different parts of him in different places as we'll talk about uh he is handcuffed he's on the bed

handcuffed uh-huh but he has no head what so he's handcuffed his head is off his body completely luckily for her though yeah The head is in a very convenient place.

It is right next to the bed on the nightstand next to a lamp.

They just left it there.

Yeah.

And like I have have a picture of the crime scene after they removed the head and it's just got like a blood puddle under it.

And

it's just on the nightstand, like where you'd have an alarm clock or where like nowadays you'd put your phone.

Like instead, he's just, there's his head sitting there.

And the fucked up part, his hair is perfectly combed and styled.

No.

Yes.

And she said he didn't do that in the house at all, ever, unless he was going to like a job interview or a fucking probation officer meeting or something.

He didn't comb his hair.

So whoever killed him, handcuffed him, sawed his fucking head off, and then combed his hair neatly.

That is crazy.

That's disturbing.

That's a bad person that's willing to hold a body part and

you hygiene to it.

Yeah.

That's staging.

That's that's you're telling somebody something.

They always say in Mindhunter there, you look at what are you saying?

Look at, you don't look, you want to find the artist, you look at the painting, and

they're painting a picture for you.

That's some brush strokes.

They're trying to tell you something here.

Then, speaking of of trying to tell everybody something, is there a letter?

She looks, you know, kind of, because I mean, imagine you walk in and you see this.

You're like, oh my God, there's blood.

You'd see that.

You'd see your boyfriend handcuffed.

Oh, my God.

Then you see a head sitting there.

So

things are moving quickly, I would imagine, in poor Debbie's mind at this point.

Then she looks up on the wall.

And

written on the wall is, quote, I came.

You weren't home.

I love you.

Whoa.

Yes.

So I.

That's yeah.

That's BTK letters.

What the fuck is that about?

Yeah, that is.

Is her name O After Midnight or whatever?

This is wow.

Remember, he wrote that letter to the old lady that he was in her house and she didn't appear or whatever the fuck?

Yeah, yeah.

Is this person looking for this lady and she cut this guy's head off instead?

I think maybe that's what the, you know, that's what the person wants her to think, possibly, or what they want the cops to think, or whatever the fuck is going on here.

Or maybe someone really loves her and she wasn't there and they were upset about it.

But

hey, everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you how to get the best night's sleep you're possibly going to get with Coop Sleep Goods.

CoopSleepGoods.com.

That's right, C-O-O-P.

This is it.

I'm a terrible sleeper.

We both have sleep problems in the show.

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Either way, Nightstalker also wrote shit on walls too.

Yeah.

To be gross.

And of course, Manson, but that was a whole other thing.

So she freaks the shit out, obviously.

I mean, imagine walking into your house and finding your significant other in this condition.

Imagine finding anybody.

Never mind.

You could find a stranger like this.

No, thanks.

You'd never get over it, probably.

So she runs out of the house.

Just runs.

There's nobody around.

There's no neighbors.

They live in the middle of nowhere.

They moved out here because he's got a little weed operation and there's no neighbors to be noticed.

He's watching.

Yeah.

So she has to run three miles.

She runs.

She doesn't have a car.

She just ran.

I don't know if she didn't have a car or what, but she ran out of the house screaming.

And I think once she got a half mile away, she probably said, well, fuck it.

I'm already going this direction.

She's gone.

Yeah.

So she ran all the way to a bar three miles from the house.

Wow.

First of all, you're like, line him up, and then this is what happened.

And then we'll talk.

I'm doing like four shots before I'm even starting to explain what's going on.

And I'll talk in a minute.

Like an old cowboy.

I'm just going to pick it up and like pull the cork out with my teeth and then just swing away from the bottle.

So, and she's screaming the whole time, and she bursts into this bar screaming, they've killed him.

They've cut his head off.

That's what these,

you know, at some sleepy little tavern, and they turn around to some lady going,

they've killed him.

They cut his head off.

So,

wow, that's a lot.

So, the police arrived, and they discover that the house has been ransacked, by the way.

She barely even noticed that.

But under the mattress that old Swampy was on, they find $30,000 in cash.

That he was laying on?

It was under his mattress, which

literally that's a cliche of hiding under your mattress.

That's the first place you would look for money, I would assume, would be under the mattress.

At least under it, if not in it.

Yeah.

And also they find cocaine on the premises, too, like a decent amount and some weed too and shit like that.

So he's definitely in some drug business that they're figuring out.

Nobody has that much cash and a bunch of Coke at the same time unless they're doing something, especially in 1979.

Coke was just starting to get really like available and a little bit less expensive and prohibitive.

Like regular people were just starting to do Coke at this time, but not really in West Virginia, I wouldn't think.

That's probably like

Miami, New York, L.A.,

Dallas or something.

There's probably people doing Coke a lot that were regular and a rock in their pocket.

Yeah.

Well, this was like regular people started doing it because it was starting to become affordable.

So this was like, you know, Corollas were doing it, professionals were doing it.

Yeah, just somebody who works at a dentist's office was doing some low on the weekends and shit.

So things started to change.

So

they ended up getting the Parkersburg PD,

the Wood County Sheriff's Office, and the West Virginia State Police are all

coming because this is crazy.

They probably just all want to see the head.

That's wild.

Yeah.

This is a scene you would tell people about for years.

What's the craziest thing you ever saw?

Well, let me tell you something.

It's this.

So they

have all of these agencies, so they have their best people, crime scene people, going over the crime scene.

They find zero fingerprints.

Not a one.

Zero signs of forced entry.

Zero clues.

They scour it.

They find nothing, no hair, no physical evidence of any sort.

It's like a ghost fucking walked through the wall, decapitated this man, combed his hair, and then left and wrote some of that.

Missed 30 grand and walked out.

Well, yeah, ghosts don't need money, so maybe that's the explanation.

Yeah.

So then they also find that his green pickup truck was missing as well from the house.

So that they did steal, but they find it in Williamstown, just over the Ohio River.

With not a fucking fingerprint on it.

Not a fingerprint on it.

And also parked neatly in a parking lot, not like, you know, a door open at the back of a parking lot, just parked like, you know, in a Walmart parking lot next to other people.

Like it blends right in.

That's a few days later.

So they have no evidence and no clue of what happened here.

There's no ring doorbell footage or any shit like that.

There's no

tired of this.

He was posting on Instagram an hour earlier.

We don't know what happened.

He's just

ghost beheading.

I'm tired of this shit.

Yep.

That's it.

So the case goes cold as fuck.

Yeah.

Tonight.

Yeah.

By the end of the day, they had nothing.

When they found the truck, they were like, ooh, maybe there's stuff in there.

Ooh gots nothing.

So really, really difficult.

Then

around 1983, so four years later, there's a woman named Lawana Joyce Norton.

She goes by Pixie.

Okay.

Oh.

That's what everyone calls her, Pixie.

Now, Pixie, as we'll talk about, she's born May 27th, 1947.

So, you know, she's in her 30s here too, mid-30s.

She's from Merced, California, but somehow ends up in Ohio

and West Virginia in that area.

She's got a friend named Debbie Dills.

D-I-L-L-S.

Debbie Dills, which is not a great name.

Don't name your kid Debbie if your last name's Dills.

Any kind of alliteration at all.

Well, Dills is like pickles, so there's dick jokes, and then she's Double D, so that's going to get her picked on.

Like, you can't do that to a girl.

It's a poor young lady.

She must have had a hard time in high school, man.

Just hillbillies fucking with her.

We had a friend named Lauren, and we just called her Double D, but it was because she had huge booths.

That's what I mean.

She could be flat-chested, and they're all calling her Double D, which at that point is an insult.

Or Double D.

Maybe she doesn't want that

attention when she's 15 or something.

You know what I mean?

Or she's just creeped out by it.

Who knows?

Yeah.

So,

yeah, so she is involved in this as well.

These two women.

Now,

I'm sure they're arrested for something else or something, but they end up talking to Columbus, Ohio detectives.

And they are interviewed during a federal drug investigation.

Okay.

Now, they're trying to, I'm sure, get out of whatever charges they have on them or otherwise they wouldn't be talking at all.

They just go, I don't know what you're talking about.

Fuck off.

So they end up saying, we know stuff about a murder.

Oh.

We know stuff about a murder.

We know stuff about Swampy Marsh's murder.

Yeah.

And they go, well, how do you know that?

And they said, well, we know it very well because the guy who killed him came to the house and said, he basically said that they drove him to the house, this man.

They drove him to Swampy's house, told them to wait in the car.

He was in there for a while, then came out covered in blood.

What?

So, I mean, that's a pretty good clue, I would say.

Yeah.

They said that, they said, well, who is this guy?

And they said, well, it's kind of a known drug associate of ours and a romantic partner of Pixie, of course, Pixie's boyfriend at the time.

It's a guy named William Dean Wickline Jr.,

W-I-C-K-L-I-N-E.

And of course, it's a drug.

He just arrested him.

Yeah.

Yeah, covered in blood.

Jr., he did it.

Yeah, he did it.

We know from Crime and Sports, if you've listened at all, there's just an inordinate amount of

junior action that happens here.

Now, William Dean Wickline Jr., he's born March 15th, 1952.

Let's find out a little bit about him.

He's been accused of murder here, so

that's a big deal.

Now, because you never know if that's true, though, because it is people in a federal drug investigation.

They're probably looking at 25 years for having some Coke on them or something.

So they're willing to talk, and a lot of those people are willing to make shit up, too.

So let's investigate this and see if it tracks.

What do you say, everybody?

Let's do this.

Okay.

William Dean Wickline Jr., born in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

He grew up in a blue-collar, stable financially, but not wealthy by any means type of deal.

His dad's a truck driver and a mechanic.

And, you know, his mom works as like a roadside diner waitress.

So they're not making a ton of money.

Blue-collar folks.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're not getting kicked out of their house or anything like that.

You know what I mean?

They're hardworking blue-collar folks here.

But this is, we're talking in the 50s, a truck driver, mechanic, you come home and you drink hard and you take a lot out on your family back then, apparently, because that's what this guy was doing here.

Yeah,

mom didn't make much money as a diner waitress either.

So, you know, they weren't wealthy, which doesn't help.

But William is the youngest of three brothers, apparently here.

Considered a weird kid in school.

Really?

A little weird.

Everyone said he's very direct and didn't smile a lot.

Just kind of

but would like stare at you

in a weird way that kind of creeped the kids out a little bit.

He's a weird, real weird guy.

Looks but doesn't talk.

Don't like that guy.

That's weird.

That's what I mean.

Stares but doesn't smile or talk is a strange guy.

A little uncomfortable.

No, and he's he's a big guy, too.

He'll grow up to be over 6'3, you know, 6'3 ⁇ , 200 pounds plus.

He's a big dude, too.

So in school, if someone's a big kid, too, and they're like that, that's even creepier.

He does some odd shit while in school, including he is caught

behind the school.

He had killed and was in the act of dissecting

a squirrel.

Yeah.

Not in science class, just in the back of the school.

Free range.

Just, yeah, pocket knife.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

So the teacher brought him inside and said, what are you doing, dude?

Like, what do you do that?

What are you trying to do?

And he said that he, quote, just wanted to see what was going on in there.

Oh, boy.

I've heard about that.

Just looking to, yeah.

It's like, I've done that when I'm on mushrooms.

You know, I want to, I just want to twist my head off and take a look inside and see what's happening.

But, you know, outside of that,

I don't.

need to know what's going on in there.

So he said he wanted to see what was going on in there.

He's very interested in anatomy.

Yeah.

Which means you could be a doctor or a psychopath, one of the two,

at this point.

So in junior high, he got in a shitload of fights, a lot of fights.

He was just always fighting.

He once beat, pummeled a smaller kid and younger kid with a sneaker.

Just beat him unmercifully with a sneaker.

Like a grandmother.

Because he didn't like the way the kid looked at him.

Oh.

So he pummeled him with a PF flyer, apparently, because that's what all the good kids wore back then, back then, put the kid in the hospital.

What do you do with a shoe?

With a shoe.

Just pummel him.

What kind of fucking shoe is this?

A steel toe?

I mean, I guess if you hit him with the heel enough times in the eyes and face, he could break his nose.

Cattle pillar went to the wardrobe.

Jesus.

That's wild.

So he got a three-day suspension for that, by the way, which doesn't seem like a lot.

And there's a reason.

At home, a lot of violence.

Dad's a heavy drinker.

Yeah.

And

there's a lot of

police activity going on at the house.

A retired officer from that area at the time in the 50s and 60s said that he was called out to that house, quote, more times than he could count.

Really?

Just always being called out to the house because dad was having a shit fit in one regard or another.

No one ever got arrested, though, back then.

They wouldn't arrest.

You'd go out to the hills in West Virginia where a man and a woman are fighting, and they'd just go, all right, sleep it off.

That was what they do.

Sober up and try again tomorrow.

You put ice on that and you sleep it off and, you know, see if y'all can't get along tomorrow.

And that's what they used to do back then.

It was just, it was wild.

So

one of his cousins said that his dad would beat William unmercifully and the family dog, too.

Those were the two that he really liked to beat was William and the family dog.

Oh boy.

Real into that.

Everyone said the dog would cower when he came in, and so would William.

He'd cower too, which is worse than a child's cowering.

I didn't hear an awe out of you from that.

You should probably awe that too.

Yeah, but I don't know.

It's a little.

Well, the dog will be dead in eight years, and he's going to go on to murder people.

So that's why it's much more important.

I get that it's cute to say that, oh, the dog's so much.

In reality, though,

you could put the dog to a huge body.

You could take a dog and pay someone to

murder it right now.

Say it, bit a kid, and they'll kill all your dogs.

That's terrible.

I love my dogs.

You can tell the kid why he's getting hit because I'm a monster.

That's why.

The dog still will never understand.

The dog won't affect society.

This guy will, is what I'm saying.

I'm going on a global.

I don't want him beating anybody, but the kid is at least as bad as beating the dog.

To pretend it's not, it's a little bit silly.

Seeing a dog coward.

Seeing a kid cower, I don't know.

Maybe, maybe he's just a.

From beatings?

He's just an well, we don't know that.

Kids don't cower from not beatings.

Do your kids ever cower from you?

There's a reason why they don't.

You don't beat them.

Start beating them.

They will.

They stand up to me, and I fucking hate it.

Yes.

Because you've instilled confidence in them, you dummy.

That's what happens.

I go, get out of my seat.

My daughter goes, there's no assigned seats.

I go, it's my seat.

She goes, no, it's not your seat.

I own this.

That's my seat.

And she wants to fight about it.

That's all.

I should have beat her more.

This is mine.

I should have knocked knocked you around when I had the chance, damn it.

So a friend said that if you weren't useful to William, he wanted nothing to do with you.

Yeah.

So that's what they taught him through that was, you know, people are transactional.

The friend said you were furniture to him if you didn't mean anything, if you couldn't help him.

For a while, he did pretty well in school.

He didn't like team sports, but he liked wrestling.

So he wrestled on the high school team a little bit, which is very individualized.

And

from what everybody said, he had the potential to go to college for wrestling, they said.

He had potential to be a very good wrestler, but

he didn't follow through on it.

Instead, he started failing classes, committing stupid petty crimes that we're talking about here, started using whatever drugs he could get his hands on at about 16, which is 1968 also.

So, I mean,

you know, think about the time you're in here.

He never lived up to his athletic promise, and his grades fell off, too.

So college kind of became a background, that ain't going to happen thing.

And student comes first and student athlete.

So it doesn't matter if you're good at whatever you're doing.

If you can't make the grades, you can't make the team.

Yeah, I mean, well, back then you could.

They didn't care as long as you.

Really?

Oh, shit.

Back then, they didn't start all those laws that you can't participate unless you have grades until like the 80s and 90s when you were kids.

Yeah, they were doing that.

We got fucked.

Yeah, we got fucked.

You could have been dumb as shit and get straight A's before that.

It was fantastic.

It feels like we got fucked a lot of different ways.

Yeah.

Well, when we were teenagers,

we were the scourge of the earth and everyone.

Yeah.

It was like a national thing to put teenagers in prison and fuck those kids.

Yeah.

No tolerance.

Laws made by a bunch of assholes that got to do a bunch of drugs and they told us no.

What the fuck?

That's what I mean.

Exactly.

The hippies came back to bite us, man.

Yeah.

So now public school officials remembered him having affectionate parents, but they didn't go home with him at the end of the day.

They said he wasn't a flagrant troublemaker, but he hung out with kids that were really,

you know, the troublemaker kids here.

There was some suspicion that he was involved in drugs in high school, but he was never charged.

But he does have some other problems in high school we'll talk about.

One of which, and this isn't really a police matter, but he was caught egging his high school principal's car, which is a

total kid prank.

Fuck the man.

What more of a kid prank is that?

We'll egg the old man's car.

Fuck the car.

That guy knew when he took that job, he was going to have to wash his car a lot.

He had to cut down all the trees in his front yard because otherwise they'd just be toilet paper holding it.

All the toilet paper holders, yeah.

And your car's an egg carton.

That's it.

You knew it.

Get a garage and cut the trees down, principal.

We're living in a different town.

But he and an accomplice ended up cleaning up the next car, the car the next day because he got caught.

So they cleaned up the car and they even waxed it, even though they didn't have to.

You have to.

Yeah, it wasn't like part of it.

He said, just clean it, but they waxed it and washed it.

So a friend who knew him said that he didn't become a criminal in high school, really.

He didn't have that.

One said a woman that he knew, a young lady at the time, said he was more like a flower child.

He had maybe two pairs of jeans and some t-shirts and hair down to the middle of his back.

He was anything but a charmer.

He's just a typical 1968 hippie kid.

Yeah.

Normal.

Then he gets into some shit, though, starting at about 69, 70, things start going wrong for him.

His juvenile crime records include shoplifting, theft, assault.

He was arrested for pulling a knife during a fight at a skating rink,

which is some weird, you know, some old-timey shit, too.

Sounds like it's out of grease or something.

The charges were eventually dropped there.

At one point, he's sent to juvenile hall briefly, where he thrived in the structure, but also thrived in like the criminality of

how to be a criminal in an institution type of thing.

He loved that shit.

Oh, yeah, he's one of those people.

It's an environment he can control and move people around.

It's weird.

A probation officer said, quote, Wickline displays dominant behavior over other youths, lacks remorse, and appears to enjoy inflicting inflicting fear.

Attempts to steer him onto a different path, vocational training, religious instruction, military recruitment, were short-lived.

So he wanted no part of anything structured or organized that could, you know, things that are considered in society the straight road.

He didn't want any part of that shit.

Sure.

They said he had

traits of antisocial personality disorder.

which is not great.

It's not good.

What they said worse about it was he's very calculating and careful and would never lash out in front of authorities or anything like that.

He's the type that would smile and say everything's okay here.

And then when the guard leaves.

Yes.

Then when the guard leaves, he'll turn around and beat the shit out of somebody because he wanted to kill them.

He's a dangerous man.

One of the bad kids schools he was at for a minute here,

a teacher there said, woof, Wickline is the kind of kid that would stab you with a pencil just to see you bleed.

Then he'd ask for another pencil.

That's how he's described.

That's not good, man.

No.

And this is, he's not even an adult yet.

No.

This is disturbing.

He's a bad kid.

This is disturbing.

Yeah.

Oh, boy, he's refining it.

And there's a few other things in January of 1969.

So he's, you know, 17.

He got caught out past curfew and drinking.

It's a minor in possession of alcohol.

They just released him to his parents.

In May of 1969, he's busted for drinking again, and he's released to his parents.

Then on September 22nd, 1969, he's arrested for breaking and entering.

That's different.

Him and a co-defendant allegedly broke into some cottages at Burr Oak, and they said enforcement withheld on that one.

So that's the, so we think maybe they gave him some kind of like, you know, you don't get in trouble for a year, some kind of deferred adjudication or whatever the fuck.

So he gets out of school and he has a few odd jobs here and there with Kwine.

He does some construction.

He does some mechanic work here and there.

He works a bit as a bouncer.

Just kind of a bunch of stuff, but nothing for long.

He does not like authority.

He doesn't like to be told what to do.

And the second you tell him what to do, he quits and goes somewhere else.

That's kind of how he works here.

He does find an activity, though, and a vocation to get into that doesn't require any of that stuff.

No boss.

Or an education.

and that's selling drugs.

It's great.

Be your own boss.

Be your own boss.

He's really good at it, too.

Yeah.

This is a work from home.

This is like a.

I found the product that sells itself.

Yeah, an old-timey, like a midday commercial.

Are you bored?

You need some extra income?

You just got to have it.

It'll move.

No shit.

Now, they said at this point, by the way, a psychological testing later on said there's no evidence of a thought disorder or a psychotic reaction.

They said psychological testing reveals that he's functioning in the superior range of general intelligence and has an IQ of 124.

Oh, which is pretty fucking good.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

He thinks shit through.

He's smart enough to come up with a smart

bad guy?

That is disturbing.

This is what movies are made of.

Movie bad guys are smart.

Luckily, in real life, most really bad people are stupid.

Most.

Yeah.

That's

selfish.

Yeah.

The number one indicator of violent behavior is stupidity.

That's

statistically, that's the most violent people are stupid.

But when you get the ones that aren't, that is dangerous.

Yeah.

Because they have the mental capacity and the intellectual ability to work the shit out and not go down that road, but they do anyway.

And then they put all their brain power into it.

And then the other ones figure out how to fucking do it and get away with it.

That's

worse.

That's scary.

So, yeah, 1971, he's 19.

He gets busted for gun possession, then burglary, then grand theft, then drug charges.

This is how his 70s are going to go here, the 1970s for him.

He's going to go on to serve time in prisons in six different states.

So he's going to get around doing shit.

Six.

All around this area here.

Everywhere he goes, he's bad.

Yes, he's arrested between

1971 and about 1982.

He's arrested at least nine times that we know of.

He's served time in

prisons in Columbus, Mansfield, Chillicothe, Orient, and London, and Ohio, and then other places too.

He would enter a guilty plea pretty much every time because he knew he would get less time if he entered a guilty plea.

So he'd enter a guilty plea and do his time, and that was that.

And he'd get out and do it again.

Didn't care.

One investigator remembered that Wickline didn't seem bothered by the prospect of going to prison when they were talking to him.

He's like, I don't care.

I'll just go to prison again.

Great, fine.

Send me to prison.

Good.

They said it gave him time to concentrate on his pastimes, such as lifting weights.

Because

when you're an intelligent psychopath and you're also six foot three, you want to be jacked too on top of it.

Yeah, wow, think about how scary that is.

It's a killing machine, is what he's making himself.

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At one time in in jail, he uh takes some college-level courses while in prison.

He said that he wanted to become a psychologist.

Oh, oof.

Anyway,

fucking analyze yourself first and then worry about it.

Help people?

I don't know.

See, a lot of people that are fucked up want to become psychologists so they can understand themselves, though.

That's very common in murderers.

murderers are real interested in psychology even remember the ice man he sat there with park beets because he said tell me what's going on what am i doing yeah why am i like this they want to know yeah and he reads it all to him and he sits back in his chair and goes huh all right

and that's something and you got me huh okay well wow damn she kind of nailed that

he didn't even ask is there anything that can be done he just like goes oh yeah huh oh he knew he just man he just wanted to know know what did this.

Was this all my fault or was this nature or nurture?

I think he was after.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

And Park Dietz told him, it's actually both with you, which is rare.

You have both.

You're dangerous.

The most dangerous.

And I think that's what we got here with this guy, too.

Yeah.

Similar thing.

Yeah, he's smart.

He's six foot three and jacked by the time he gets out of jail, thick-necked and

ready to do bad things here.

By this time, he's doing his specialty becomes drugstore burglaries because oh that's two birds right there yeah you get drugs you get the pen money and you roll out yeah and you roll out if you've ever seen drugstore cowboy with matt dillon and heather graham and kelly lynch and it's a real great movie but that's what it's about it's about people in the 70s in portland that drug addicts that would go around and they'd have heather graham fake a seizure on the floor and everybody go to her and then they'd jump behind the counter and steal whatever delauded they could fucking take or whatever and bounce and they did that all over the place That was a big deal back then.

So he'd do that.

He also got into pimping.

Okay.

You know, and

was running a narcotics house at one point.

So that's nice.

Just a drug house

he's running.

Very nice.

He's arrested for possession of a dangerous weapon in Newark, New Jersey in 1972,

which is interesting.

He stated that he was in possession of a 22 Derringer and that he was able to buy his way out of difficulty.

So that's what he tells later on investigators.

He said, Yeah, yeah, I had a 22, but I slipped the cops some cash and then I paid off the judge or whatever the fuck he said.

Later on, he admitted that he'd come to New York to buy heroin.

That's why he was there, obviously.

Then he has a breaking and entering in Columbus, Ohio.

He and a co-defendant are indicted on eight counts of breaking and entering, and

all occurring at apartment complexes.

So they were breaking into all different apartment complexes.

Then again, breaking and entering at a construction company where police were waiting for him when he came out.

They came out with shit and the cops are just outside waiting for him.

Hi, guys.

Turn around.

Drop your shit.

There you go.

Okay.

So

he is sent to prison at this point and given one to seven years.

Okay.

Consecutive with a half year to five year sentence for the other breaking and entering.

But that's in, okay, that's in that.

He ends up doing the plea in March of 1973, March 2nd, 1973.

Then in April, April 12th, 73, a month later, they give him what is called shock probation, which means I guess everyone's shocked that you gave that guy probation.

Can't believe it.

Right?

Hey, you shocked?

Huh?

Didn't expect that, did you?

All right.

More like panic.

Jesus.

That's fucking wild.

Then he gets right back to it.

October of 73, violating drug laws in Columbus, a search of his residence and

of him and another man named Peter Johnson and the auto of a man named Peter Johnson, which is two words for Dick, by the way.

Yeah.

You're Peter Johnson.

That's not good.

Revealed a large amount of narcotics, all stolen from drugstores.

Okay.

So you know what he's doing there.

That's not great.

He also, so he's going to get two to 15 years.

They're going to sentence him to there.

Okay.

I hate these like one and two and the minimum.

Large range.

No good.

We need to give a solid little range.

Yeah.

Well, he ends up, by the way,

they add another charge to that, too.

It was breaking and entering Columbus, Ohio, where he broke into the Allen pharmacy and was arrested at the scene.

And that's where they found all those drugs.

And so he goes to jail.

He's out by 76, though.

So he goes in at 74.

He got the two out of the 15.

And he's arrested again for giving false information.

And he gets a $50 fine for that.

He just has no real

desire to follow any sort of society norms.

He has no goals.

He has no goals whatsoever.

No, and he's a scary guy in prison, too.

They said that

he's known as a pro, as a burglar.

He would never carry a gun during a break-in, so then he couldn't be charged with armed robbery, which is a lot more serious than breaking and entering, which is smart.

Again, he knew the law.

So during a decade in prison, basically, he's in and out of prison all the time.

He became, this is from a newspaper article, he became more and more deeply involved with what one friend of his called the, quote, prison mainstream.

What is that?

They said those are groups of inmates who use fear and violence to control the illicit activities within the prison population.

Basically, the

people who run shit in jail.

Yeah, the people who sell the drugs, the people who, you know, fucking sell cigarettes and do all that kind of shit.

The one friend said, once you get in the mainstream, you don't get out.

Is that like the precursor to the Aryan Brotherhood in there or some shit?

That's what it sounds like.

Yeah.

I had a friend that robbed banks that didn't take guns, and that's why.

And then

I knew him after all that, and I only knew him because he didn't take a gun.

If he had taken a gun, he'd have gone longer, and I'd have never met the guy.

There you go.

Violated probation.

He's in prison for life now.

Well, there you go.

Even still.

But still.

He didn't have to.

That's the point.

He wasn't smart at the beginning.

He got real dead and desperate.

And banks, their policy is they don't need to be threatened into giving you money.

You just say it, and they do it, and then you get arrested.

That's

all insured.

Not hurting anybody.

So while in prison, he's lifting weights.

He's studying psychology and he's also studying something something else.

He's working in the prison slaughterhouse as well.

Oh, butcher.

Yes, the prisons, certain prisons had slaughterhouses.

So he is doing butchering of prisoners.

We are delivering live animals to prisons?

Yeah, well, they would have their own farms where they would raise them and butcher them out and then feed the people on them and sometimes sell them too.

Do I like that?

I don't think I do.

No, because it's prison labor used for outside industry.

They do.

You've got killers doing killing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you're teaching them how to slaughter things.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

I don't like that at all.

His supervisor at this prison slaughterhouse

said that his butchering work was exceptional.

He was amazing at it.

But he also said, quote, he's just a scary guy.

Now he's huge and gigantic and knows how to take, how to part you out.

So they said that his intelligence set him apart from the run-of-the-mill criminal.

A woman friend of his said, what makes him so dangerous is that he's so smart.

He had everything in the world going for him.

Right.

Well, everything if you want to be a drug dealer and a criminal in the real world.

He got beaten with the family dog.

He had nothing going on ever.

You and the dog cut that shit out, goddammit.

So another close friend said that she saw him change every time he got out of prison.

She said, each time he got more serious, meaning after he was released, he'd come out and be more and more angry and serious and mean, you know, as prison is.

Change as a person, not they saw him every time he cut out and never,

why does it matter if they've seen him naked?

What's the goddamn difference?

Who cares?

So in the early 70s, too, he was getting involved in the heroin trade by the mid-70s, and a lot of that was what he was stealing from drugstores and all that kind of shit.

It's believed during this time that he killed a rival drug dealer because a couple of informants came out and said that he told them about this rival drug dealer who did disappear around that time.

And he said he killed him and disappeared him.

And the body was never found of this person.

So it's a drug dealer too, though.

So they might have just gone to Cancun.

We have no fucking idea.

They might have just taken off because they were.

They retired to the south of France.

Totally.

He might have changed his name and moved to fucking Ottawa.

We have no idea.

His name's Jacques now, having a great time.

He's doing wonderfully.

Yeah.

Salute.

So

one prosecuting lawyer said it was practically impossible to offer any potential witnesses deals that were attractive enough to convince them to testify against Wickline.

People were so scared of him, no one would testify against him.

Wow.

Because they heard that he'll chop you up and disappear you and shit.

So they're terrified.

The prosecutor said, quote, they were terrified of him.

unquote.

There you go.

So he was really, for lack of a better term,

lack of a less gross term, carving a little niche for himself here.

Indeed, he's figuring it out.

So he didn't really care about, he didn't do like street-level drug dealing.

He's more into the enforcement, intimidation, murder end of the whole thing.

He likes that.

He likes taking people out and taking over their shit.

And you can just rob people.

It's quicker.

Easy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, he would, at first, he started enforcing debts, and he would be transporting shit for people and act as a muscle if somebody needed a couple of guys standing behind him while they go talk to somebody.

He looks pretty scary.

But they said that he wasn't a brawler.

He wasn't an emotional guy.

You couldn't get a rise out of him.

He'd just murder you later if he was upset with you.

Like a gangster.

I mean, like a mobster.

It's pretty wild.

So

he starts getting a little good underworld reputation.

as a guy you don't fuck with, essentially.

A badass kind of a guy,

someone who liked violence, even.

So, people were extra scared of him.

It's not like, oh, he'll, if he has to, he'll do some shit.

Right.

Don't give him an excuse because he wants to.

So, they said that, uh, they said that he would beat people and leave them barely alive.

Um, he would, like, just snap bones on people on purpose of where he wanted to snap them and shit like that.

They said that he had a, quote, detached professionalism that would unsettle even the worst criminals.

He just, it was so

to be that detached while doing shit like that is just creepy.

It's just weird.

One guy here described him as more pit bull than man.

Wow.

That's an associate.

An associate named Slim said that, by the way.

More pit bull.

More pit bull than man.

They said he never heard him raise his voice once.

Calculated, cool, and calm.

That's what he's like.

He's detached while breaking hands and arms.

That's how it is.

He's one of those guys, like fucking Paulie from Goodfellas or something.

Terrifying.

That's who

superstars should have as their bodyguard.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But not if they're ambitious and smart.

Yeah, right.

You need a dumb guy that has those qualities, but a smart guy will kill you and take us shit over.

You don't want that guy under you.

That's terrifying.

So they said that he was calculated.

One guy said he was worse than a regular criminal because he was calculated.

He didn't want to scare you.

He wanted to make sure that you never got back up.

That's what they said.

So they could not, even though he's kind of in the orbit of a lot of people who disappear and are beaten half to death, no one will testify against him.

No one will give a tip even, even an anonymous tip on this fucking guy.

No one wants to testify.

He's really, he has a love of knives, which if you're into butchering,

you like ask a chef about a knife.

They'll

find a chef and just go, tell me about your knife.

A A half hour later, when you're still hearing about how it cuts onions just perfectly at the butt, you're going to be fucking annoyed.

You know what I mean?

So he loves knives.

He collected knives.

He cleaned them obsessively.

It's a good quality.

Yeah, you got to clean them, man.

Girlfriend said he would stand in front of a full-length mirror and practice his slicing maneuvers, like knife fighting, like swinging his knife around.

Yeah, like the Nero in fucking taxi cab, you know, taxi driver, but with a fucking knife instead of a gun.

And he would talk about using them and how I'm going to cut people up with these.

On the street, he earned the nickname the mechanic.

That's what people said because he could take you apart like a car.

Tune you up.

Tune you up a little bit and fix problems as well.

So he's the mechanic.

Real weird.

He told an inmate when they were talking, because he was telling a fellow inmate that, yeah, if you kill somebody, you got to dismember them and get rid of them.

What are you stupid?

You know, leave them there, you get caught.

That's dumb.

No body, no crime, motherfucker, as we all know.

You know, as we know, isn't true, but people think is true.

He told a fellow inmate, quote, it's all plumbing, tubes and wires.

If you know where to cut, it all shuts down.

Oh.

So that's how he thinks of a human being as plumbing with tubes and wires.

Whoa.

That's think about how detached, think about what that says about a person, how detached that is from

everything.

Tubes and wires.

That's all that's in there.

If you cut him, then they don't work anymore.

Wow.

Yeah.

Just like

anything, a car.

If you cut that off, it doesn't work anymore.

It's weird.

So he also

is involved in what a lot of friends are saying did ritual animal sacrifices during this time, too.

Yeah.

Which is a really strange thing for a busy drug dealer guy.

One friend said he witnessed Wickline performing a mock sacrifice using another man's chest as a human altar.

Hmm.

So he put it up there, you know, like when people eat sushi off a hot chick.

It's like that, but

except creepy and gross and covered in blood.

What is that?

So another former friend said that sex, drugs, and some real weird shit and some occult stuff were all enmeshed in his lifestyle.

They said at times he was involved with a group that engaged in animal sacrifice rituals in which a male member of the group would use his chest as a human altar on which the animal was sacrificed.

I don't like any of this.

I don't like any of this.

Anything from sacrifice is all creepy.

When animals get involved and we're just opening shit and doing it with humans, opening it up.

No.

Then he's considered, by the way, he's got tons of women.

Yeah.

He's a big guy.

He's a

handsome guy, too.

People say they like him.

Like back in the 70s, handsome.

He's got some long hair.

He's got drugs.

Sure.

He's got confidence.

Like, he draws women to him like flies in the 70s, man.

It's crazy.

So he would, even to the fact that he would have relationships with several different women at the same time.

And even after the relationships were broken off, he'd still get them to do shit for him.

And like

he still had a spell over them, basically they'd still do whatever he asked and still you know

weird they'd bail him out of jail even though they haven't talked to him in a year he's a big bad man and i love him they like him yeah they love him so on uh in july of 1977 he is arrested for breaking into the ruser's pharmacy he was arrested at the scene on that one um and then he's given a one-half six months to five years in prison for that seems like that's what he does and we should probably give him a little more now, right?

Right, yeah.

It seems like he keeps doing this one thing where he likes to break into drugstores.

But then in 1978, a little over a year later,

he gets a sentence modification where they let him out.

Okay.

But he's declared a parole violator at large by March of 1980.

He just stops going to his parole officer and just does whatever he wants.

It's a violation.

Yeah.

Now, Pixie, remember Pixie?

Girlfriend, yeah.

Who started this whole thing and opened this William Wickline fucking door?

Right.

Well, Pixie says that everything started to happen.

He

got very violent during a temporary breakup in their relationship.

This was during about 1979 when he was getting out for that last thing.

Apparently,

she said that she was abducted by somebody,

which in the drug world, that happens.

She was abducted, but Wickline did not believe her and just insisted that she went willingly, and now she's lying to him.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Now, he's released from jail in November of 1979.

Wickline is.

And

Pixie said after that, he was never the same.

No.

And November 20th, 79, is when Charles Swampy Marsh gets.

Oh, Marsh is also kind of another word for Swamp.

That also.

Sure is, yeah.

So that he gets out right before the Charles Swampy

murder happens here.

And that happened, like we said, November 20th.

A little bit about Swampy here.

He's born in Georgetown County.

His parents are Edgar and Nell.

And

in his obituary, he's described as a wholesale antique dealer.

I don't know if the drugs were very old that he was selling, but he wasn't selling antiques.

That's a pawn shop.

Yeah,

he was selling drugs.

It sounds better to say, quote, he was a wholesale antique dealer and an Air Force veteran.

That sounds much nicer than

another drug dealer beheaded him and then combed his hair.

That sounds worse.

Wholesale antiques are pawned, right?

I think so, yeah.

Pretty much.

Or found at an estate sale or some shit.

So then he landed in Parkersburg somewhere along this way because he had gotten wandered all the fuck around.

A little little bit about him.

He attended Columbia High School in South Carolina.

Now, federal agents say he was involved in the drug business for about 10 years.

And during that time, he lived in several counties and in several other states.

He would hold odd jobs for different periods of time, and he always listed his occupation as salesman or construction worker whenever he would be arrested and forced to list an occupation.

He was identified as West Virginia by West Virginia authorities as a construction worker

and said he was a salesman during the when he got charged with a DUI in 1968.

He was also arrested in 1972

for

looks like a possession of marijuana in

1972.

Local agents said that he was a mule and he had the contacts to distribute large amounts of drugs.

They said he dealt mostly marijuana and cocaine and that his network extended

throughout most of the southeast, and that he had moved up the ladder of a drug organization, essentially.

All right.

A federal agent said Charlie was one of these people we'd have to consider the man, an importer to South Carolina.

Yeah.

So a bigger guy, basically.

After he moved to West Virginia, he was dealing from Parkersburg down the eastern seaboard all the way to Florida, a veteran DEA agent said.

Yeah.

So they had the house with Debbie.

She came home, found him, his hairs combed.

Holy shit.

So medical examiners determined that Swampy

had been,

he had his throat cut

and his head cut off, obviously.

They said that his head had been severed with, at the most, two cuts,

possibly one cut.

Wow.

Imagine how familiar you have to be with where vertebrae are and where shit is in the throat.

There's something soft enough to

get a slice to get through it.

That's wild.

And a very sharp knife.

Absolutely.

They said that

the medical examiner said based on the cut, it looks like whoever killed him might have been a skilled butcher.

They said that's how clean the cut was.

It was really clean.

So they said also that he may have still been alive when he was decapitated as well.

Ooh.

Yeah.

They said that I love the medical examiner trying to,

even the medical examiner is like, oh, listen, it's nothing that happens like this around here.

The medical examiner said this is, quote, not a typical homicide found in West Virginia.

He said it was an execution-style killing and said, quote, this is a big city type of homicide.

It's a real Minneapolis homicide.

It's a real Columbus, Cincinnati.

Big Toledo kind of homicide, if you know what I'm talking about.

He said a revenge-type homicide.

Somebody hated this guy

pretty bad and involves hatred and revenge,

which I don't think you're an FBI profiler, so I don't think you really, you're a medical exam.

Calm down.

Tell us that the guy knew butchery and move on.

Yeah.

Leave the behaviors to other people.

They said, but they thought it was definitely

before he died because there was a great deal of blood on the bed.

And they said that that if he had already been dead, there would have been way less blood because his heart would have stopped pumping.

So the way it and the direction it went and everything like that, they think his heart was pumping, might have been unconscious because they think he was strangled before his head was cut off.

So, wow, that's interesting.

The investigation led police to believe that the murder was a contract killing and the decapitation was a warning to the others in the drug trade who

might be considering expanding their territory as Swampy had tried to do.

It's a real Colombian necktie.

Yes, exactly.

But he just really likes cutting people's heads off, is what we're going to find out.

So, police also developed information from sources early in the investigation that the killer was someone who had been a meat cutter while in prison and had earned the nickname of, quote, the butcher.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

So, the police say right after this murder, about two weeks later in in the newspaper, the headline is decapitation weapon sought.

A fruitless search for the weapon used in the decapitation murder of a man suspected of trafficking drugs took scuba divers from Wood County into the muddy Ohio River on Sunday.

Oh.

Wow.

They said that deputies said they had seized several thousand dollars worth of uncut cocaine and about $30,000 in cash at the home where the body is found.

And

so that's, by the way, Debbie actually gave a shit about him because a crackhead would have said, I'm going to get the Coke and the money and then I'll go tell about this murder.

But I'm going to go hide that shit outside for later first.

So she's actually a decent person.

They said that they used a sharp knife, so they were searching the river for a knife.

1980, there's another theory in the swampy murder here, by the way.

Okay.

There's so much more murder coming.

This says, this is January 16th, 1980.

So just a couple months later.

The headline in the Columbia Record from South Carolina is Man's Death Tied to Seven State Probe.

Oh.

Listen to this.

You're going to get left-fielded here.

A Columbia man linked to a seven-state Coalfield crime investigation.

Coalfield, I said.

Seven States.

Coalfield crime investigation after his decapitated body was found in a West Virginia house was a local drug dealer suspected of organized crime involvement.

Police said Lexington County authorities were seeking Charles on a three-year-old warrant charging him with possession of 220 pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute.

So he was a fugitive.

Yeah.

That doesn't feel personal, you

holy no, that seems like a lot.

Even I don't have that much.

That seems like a lot.

So they said an official

of the Alabama Securities Commission named Tom Krebs said the killing figured in a seven-state investigation of crime in the nation's coal fields, but he wouldn't elaborate on the connection.

A West Virginia Securities Commissioner said that Marsh is suspected of being involved in investment hoaxes, but said that authorities believe that his death was not related to an illicit tax scheme.

Yeah, people don't kill over tax schemes normally.

Carper was reluctant to discuss the probe, but said Marsh had crossed paths with persons thought to be involved with bogus tax shelters and limited partnerships.

Again, they don't cut heads off and write shit on the walls in blood.

That's crazy.

Tax shelters?

I don't think so.

No, he said you'll get blood all over your white-collared shirt at that point.

You can't do that.

He said investigations are underway in West Virginia.

Other West Virginia investigators told local authorities that organized crime and coal worker unions have collaborated in the past.

They said they're concentrating their investigation on Marsh's drug network after seizing some of his records.

Though they cited no specific connections between Marsh and the coal industry, the investigators who were in the Columbia area just after the death said they knew of his involvement in drugs and organized crime in West Virginia.

They said Marsh and John Bynum Williams were charged in Lexington County after the October 14, 76 bust on Buff Street in West Columbia, where bricks of Mexican marijuana were seized.

Williams fled when he was released on bond and

was tried in his absence and a sealed sentence was handed down.

Marsh was not arrested.

Marsh had not been convicted, which means he told on somebody.

Marsh had not been convicted of any local drug charges, according to investigators.

In fact, his records show only a 1968 conviction for driving under the influence.

Yeah, he's informing on somebody, which is why his head is sitting next to him.

This has nothing to do with anything else but that, probably.

Now the next day they come out with decapitation and investigation are linked.

So they're saying now that it's definitely linked, they said, which is crazy.

The police, though, are saying that their investigation has been based on the assumption that the death is drug-related.

So they don't know, basically.

By the way, they think he was strangled with a length of cord that was cut from the lamp next to him and then placed on the, the head was placed there,

which is insane.

His feet were also bound there.

Now, the Alabama investigator, Krebs, said that a four-year-old probe primarily focuses on bogus tax shelters and shit like that.

He said fraud extends to the billions of dollars and cited one example of an equipment financing firm that was built out of $25 million.

In another case, an illicit partnership was established in Massachusetts to buy land that turned out to be federal property.

So scams.

They said this led to a huge amount of money allegedly flowing to the coal industry, but very little of it actually got there.

What does this have to do with a guy selling Coke in a fucking sticks in West Virginia?

But he's selling fake land.

That's crazy.

So weird.

They said the seven states primarily involved in the probe are Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia.

But the investigator said states from South Carolina to California also

assisted on the probe.

They called it a true interstate partnership.

Weird.

Now they said Marsh was, obviously they were looking for Marsh and they found him with no head.

But

anyway, so 1982,

Wickline is arrested again in jail for burglarizing a pharmacy.

While he's there, he starts telling some stories, boy.

What's he got?

Oh, he tells other inmates about torturing and decapitating a man in West Virginia and leaving his head on the nightstand and writing shit on the walls.

Did he say anything about a lamp cord?

I didn't say anything about that, but the details pretty matched up.

Pretty good here.

Yeah, it's not good.

Then there's a confidential informant also that says that he bragged about killing and disposing of bodies.

There's a guy basically facing a 15-year federal drug sentence that tells on him.

In exchange for leniency, he offered names, locations, and everything that Wickline confessed to.

He said that Wickline once told him, if you cut from the collarbone to the groin, the organs just slide out.

No mess, no noise.

You know, like a deer.

Yeah.

They, yeah, but they, they said they believed him, but he didn't have any corroborating evidence.

So, what are they supposed to do with this, basically?

Yeah.

But Pixie does have some.

So let's get back to Pixie and her story.

Okay.

She, by the way, had remained loyal to him well after this murder, even after coming out covered in blood and everything else.

She even tried to make bail for him after his last arrest, and

she even went to pick up his impounded car.

Really?

Yeah.

Another woman said that Wickline threatened her on at least two occasions, but that she still loved him, even though he's threatened to kill her multiple times.

She still loves him.

She said, quote, nobody ever says anything good about Bill.

So she's a fixer.

She felt bad.

She's so fucking codependent that she thinks...

She's offended because no one says anything nice about this drug-dealing fucking murderer.

Tired of it.

She feels bad.

Yeah.

Wow.

She maintained Wickline could do all sorts of drugs without losing control as well.

He could really hold his drugs, but quote, it was only when he was drinking scotch that he'd go crazy.

It's the only time he's a bad guy.

Isn't that weird that everybody has that one thing?

You know, I can drink this, I can drink that, but if I drink tequila, I'll fucking stab my mother.

You know what I mean?

Like, everyone has that thing that they have, and his is he can do heroin, he can do Coke, he can do fucking meth, but you give him some scotch.

Yeah.

Fucking what?

Get out of the way, man.

She also said that she has details about another murder that he committed.

Okay.

A gambler named Tori Gaynor,

basically, here.

I guess this was to retrieve some drug money.

This is Tori James Gaynor, who was born June 2nd, 1946.

He was from Parkersburg, West Virginia, and his occupation was he ran gambling places and small-time bookmaking, bookie shit.

And, you know, he'd have a couple of slot machines and take bets and that kind of crap.

He sells hope.

He sells hope, yes.

So he ran, it's an illicit underground gambling operation, basically, and catered to local clientele, including Wickline.

Oh, Wickline's a gambler.

He's a gambler, too.

But February 11th, 1980, Tori doesn't show up for a scheduled court hearing in federal court

concerning his gambling business.

So that's not good.

He's known to be heavily involved in all sorts of illegal gambling operations in southeastern Ohio and central Ohio.

Disappeared sometime in 78 or 79.

They're not sure.

They don't even know when.

Wow.

No missing persons report was ever filed, but they believe he was murdered.

Informants told police, several different informants told police that he was killed and dismembered, and his body parts were left in different landfills around Fairfield County.

Jesus.

Which, when we hear more about Wickline, tracks perfectly with what he does.

So

police considered Wickline a suspect here.

He was, they believe, dismembered and everything else.

By the way, his car was found just like Swampy's car.

Parked real nice?

Parked real nice at the Columbus airport.

And do you know how they fucking

how they know how it got there?

Because Pixie helped dump it.

with Wickline.

And Wickline said, yeah, killed this guy.

Got to leave his car at the airport now.

So that's, she's been present for two murders, essentially, at this point.

Now,

Marsh, basically, the connection,

how did Swampy get connected to Wickline?

He apparently owed someone some money, they believe.

And Wickline wanted the drugs that he thought he had.

So he thought, you know, and I guess.

Somehow this Tori Gaynor was involved in this as well.

Somehow he wanted a cut of this too.

I don't know if he was involved in the money that I don't know

if Wickline was sent to

take this guy's shit and give it to the other guy.

I'm not sure.

But investigators later theorized that Wickline tortured Marsh for hours trying to get information because he wanted the money.

And he wanted also to know where his girlfriend was, but Marsh wouldn't give it up.

So his girlfriend was at work, and luckily that this all got done before noon because if she walked in with a subway sandwich in her fucking hand in the middle of this it would have been ugly i think so then another but i mean who you can't trust can you just trust pixie

who can you trust maybe pixie's facing all sorts of charges on her own maybe and you can't trust her but what about if another woman comes forward and says the same shit

what if in a different in addition to debbie dills and uh and pixie we also get a woman named teresa joe kemp in this mix here teresa yeah while wickline is in prison, Teresa tells the cops some stories as well.

And they're separate of each other, Pixie and Teresa.

Don't know each other.

They know each other.

They all know each other, but they're not coming together

as one package here.

Teresa was his girlfriend, but was also a friend of his common-law wife at the time.

But Pixie was also his girlfriend.

He's a pimp, so he's got...

Yeah, there's a bunch of gals in his organization.

Yeah, sure.

As we'll hear later on, what they think he was doing as well.

It's interesting.

So Teresa says, I have a story to tell you about this wick line guy that you're going to be very interested in.

Okay.

On August 12th, 1982, we'll talk about, this is in Blendon Township, Ohio, just outside of Columbus.

Okay.

This is Chris and Peggy Ann Lurch, L-E-R-C-H.

Chris is 28.

Peggy Ann is, Peggy's 25.

They're a married couple.

And

yeah.

Now, they're also involved in the drug trade here.

Chris Lurch had been convicted of drug trafficking in 1977

and is kind of always in the mix of all this shit, basically.

Now, on August 25th, 1982, a missing persons report was filed by Chris's parents concerning Chris and Peggy.

They were last heard from on August 12th, 1982.

And Teresa Joe Kemp has an explanation for that, basically.

Now, when the cops showed up to look for them on August 25th, they found their house completely empty, their car is in the garage, and a half-drank glass of iced tea sitting near a lawn chair out front, like on the porch.

So someone was just like lounging out there and

took a break after they moved.

They vanished, essentially.

They left their car, yeah.

Left their car.

So first, Teresa Joe Kemp denied having any knowledge of any killings committed by Wickline, but later on she cracked and told police the lurches were murdered on August 14th by him.

Oh.

No one had seen him since the 12th, and there was a good reason for that.

That's because they had spent the whole weekend partying together with the lurches, Peggy and Chris, and Wickline and Teresa Kemp.

They spent two days drinking, snorting Coke, and having sex things going on here, whatever they're doing here.

Party time over here.

I've never had one of those parties.

Fuck, that sounds wild.

I'm too old for it now.

Both of us are too old for it.

We can't do it.

It's a window, but that's fucking crazy.

Our hearts can't take two days of that at this point.

Oh, booze and sex?

Jesus.

I can only take one of the three.

At 22, that would have been wonderful, but not so much now.

So you can only take one of the three.

Which one?

You can't combine any of them.

Roll the dice and see whichever one.

So they were heavily involved in drug trafficking here.

Apparently, there was an argument with Wickline over a $6,000 drug debt.

Oh.

But they've probably done that much Coke over this whole weekend.

So what difference does it make?

Six grand doesn't seem like that much in comparison when you're doing a whole weekend of it.

No, so it's apparently they spent hours and hours taking drugs, drinking heavily.

The argument didn't start over money until after the four of them had partied all night at the Lurch's residence.

Think about this.

This is when arguments break out.

You've been up for two fucking days drinking and doing Coke.

So nobody's brain is working

anywhere near at fucking top capacity here.

Possibly.

At one time, I guess,

the argument doesn't start, though, till after they partied all night at the Lurch's residence.

Like I said, then the next day they went to Wickline's apartment to party.

Let's move this bitch over to our house.

We need new scenery in this party.

Let's do it.

Yeah, it makes it more fun.

At one point during the argument, apparently, Chris Lurch was handcuffed to the kitchen table and being beaten in the head, which that doesn't sound like an argument at that point.

No, that's a fight.

If one of the persons handcuffed to something and being beaten, that's just a beating, I think, at that point.

So shortly before the,

before, while after while all this is going on, Chris apparently taunted Wickline, which doesn't seem wise, by saying, oh, yeah, well, I fucked Teresa Kemp, too.

How about that?

Oh, boy.

Okay.

Now,

that's

apparently after all that, everything settles down.

I don't know if everybody does a little more coke and cheers up or what, but

everything calms down after the argument.

I guess he's uncuffed and everything, and Wickline asks Chris to come upstairs.

Wickline's upstairs, and he asks, Can you come up to this bathroom, man?

My fucking,

my drain is clogged.

I need your help with this.

Okay.

So

apparently, Chris runs upstairs to help out and

he leans over and looks into the tub in the drain.

He goes, look in the fucking drain.

Can you see anything in there?

So Chris leans himself over the tub and when he does, Wicklines cuts his throat.

Wow.

Which is very convenient for disposal.

Yeah, that's why he did it.

Put the neck over the drain.

He basically had somebody dig their own hole, then stand next to it, and you shoot them in the head and they fall into it.

That's basically what he did.

So

he then apparently turns to Teresa and says, well, we can't leave Peggy now.

He's dead, so we can't leave him.

She's going to be a witness.

So apparently they went downstairs while she was sleeping.

Peggy's sleeping at this point.

She passed out.

He makes Teresa hold down her legs, Peggy's legs, while Wickline strangles her.

Jesus.

Okay,

that's what he does.

So she helps, she holds down the legs while this happened.

Well, a giant man strangles a sleeping woman.

He needs someone to help him, which is pretty shitty.

He apparently then, according to Teresa, cuts up the bodies in the bathtub,

dismembers them, which is exactly mob style.

They have like, I read this book about,

we did a bonus episode about that guy.

Remember him?

They called him the butcher.

And he was.

He would basically,

what's his name?

Tommy, fuck, Tommy Patera.

Tommy Patera.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He would, he had a whole routine and he'd show other guys how to do it.

This is what you do.

He talked in a high voice.

He'd say, you bring him in, you strip down naked, you get him in the tub, you cut them up here, here, here, and there.

That way you can clean everything off.

And he had a whole routine that he did.

Some people who kill people a lot know to do this.

This is not a new thing.

So apparently he decapitated them first and then cut them all up, places their parts in trash bags, and then

him with another guy who we'll talk about later calls another guy to help him dispose of these trash bags.

And they drive all over the county disposing of them in various dumpsters,

which again is a smart way to do it.

Very common thing to do for people that are thinking it through.

And they said, while we're doing that, he told Teresa Kemp to stay here and clean all the blood.

Is that a better idea?

Move them around?

Because that gives more places to be found.

More places to be found, but they'll never be found altogether.

If you found a bag of an arm, that doesn't do shit for you in 1979 or 1982.

But if you found the head, that would help you.

If you only find a piece, that means there's a fucking crazy person on the lose.

Yeah.

That would be, yeah, that's wild.

So

she said that, you know, this, by the way, Teresa lived with him, so this was their apartment.

So she's like, I guess I'm cleaning now.

So that's a lot, man.

She said she was,

you know, horrified by all this.

She said that he came downstairs after killing Chris and said, I took him out.

She said, I don't understand what you mean.

So he took her upstairs and showed him, showed her, this is what I mean.

This is what I did.

Yeah.

Then made her hold the legs.

She said that Wickline later held up,

oh, God, held up Peggy's severed head and said, look what I've done.

Check it out.

Yeah.

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Look at that.

Isn't that neat?

She said that he then cut the bodies into small pieces and put them into garbage bags, telling her he was going to put them in trash bins throughout the city.

She said he loved knives, and they believe that he used a 15-inch-long folding knife with a serrated blade to dismember the lurches.

That's a big folder.

That's a big folding knife, and we'll find out why they know that later on.

Yeah,

that's a lot, man.

All around Franklin County, left in dumpsters.

Now, there's no body, there's very little physical evidence, but

she does have something.

She has a storage unit where she keeps some of his shit that he, that Wickline told her to keep, Teresa.

Yeah.

And in that,

because all they have to go on is there's some human blood in the caulk from the tub in their apartment.

That's all they have, which isn't good.

Some dried human tissue.

But she scores them bloody handcuffs,

dried human tissue

and blood on a folding serrated 15-inch blade knife

and Peggy's wedding ring.

Okay.

For good measure.

Arrest Teresa now.

No, Teresa is not going to get a single thing for this.

She's going to get completely off on all of this.

100% immunity.

100% immunity to this shit, which is probably the only way they could get her to say this shit about him.

So they probably had to guarantee he will be going to prison.

You can't, you know, whatever.

So that is between the time that the lurches disappeared and the time the police began their investigation.

That's when he's incarcerated on another unrelated offense, Wickline is.

So while he's in jail, Teresa just marries another guy and has a baby.

Oh, Teresa.

But while she's doing this, she continues to visit him in prison and do things for him.

That's what I mean.

He's got several women that he's not with anymore visiting him in prison and like putting money on his books and doing all that kind of shit.

So at the direction of him, of Wickline, Teresa took care of his personal belongings.

She placed some items in storage, placed jewelry in a safe deposit box, and led the police to the belongings, which served as all the evidence she needed.

He described his relationship with Kemp as one that had gone sour.

That's Wickline was telling someone.

She's just being, she's just upset because the relationship's over.

She said she came to visit while I was in prison all the time, even though she's married with a kid.

And eventually, he told his friends that I told Teresa that our relationship's over.

You know, you're married now and everything.

So our

think about what kind of weird world we're living in.

When someone gets married, you go, well, she got married?

Well, I'm breaking up with her then.

That's it.

Yeah.

Gosh, I think she broke up with you.

But he said when he got out of prison, he's going to be trying to make it on his own.

Doesn't need her.

I'll find five other fucking women to do shit for me.

Now, the police, by the way, have fucked up most of these crime scenes royally.

As they tend to be doing, goddammit.

Apparently, all over the place.

This is the whole Karen Reed thing just ended today, so it's like, yeah, if there's red solo cups involved in your police investigation, you've done it wrong.

Anybody got a Piggly Wiggly bag?

Anybody?

Yes,

I'm going to put this hand I found in it.

Yeah, I'm just going to.

No, I'll tie the top up.

I'll tie it off.

Don't worry.

I'm throwing the hands out.

Oh,

fucking Christ.

Crime scenes here had been compromised.

Yeah.

Just contaminated.

Reports were misfiled in wrong places and couldn't be found.

A critical fingerprint card from a suspected murder weapon was inexplicably lost.

Oh.

Can't, that's not helpful.

It's lost.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A retired detective from this area said, we weren't ready for someone like him.

Sounds like you weren't ready for any crime at all.

Just anything.

You're not ready for a DUI DUI investigation.

This is ridiculous.

You're not ready for

kids fucking TPing their principal's tree.

You're not ready for anything.

You're not ready for a cat in a tree, motherfucker.

Nothing, no.

He said, we weren't ready for someone like him.

He played by rules we didn't know existed.

You should know, since you're the detectives.

These are your rules.

But they said eventually...

through all the work with federal agencies about the drug, because everybody in here is involved in drugs, so that means they're all up for huge mandatory federal sentences,

which means they're all willing to tell on everybody.

So that's how this whole ball gets rolling.

They also said they couldn't tell if maybe he was getting sloppy doing this shit in front of people.

Yeah.

Wickline is sloppy.

Maybe he's overconfident or maybe he just doesn't give a fuck anymore.

He doesn't care.

Bloodlust.

Speaking of bloodlust, October 17th, 1983.

He is out of jail at this point.

A young man named John Anthony Muncie, M-U-N-C-Y,

some sources have it as IE, and that

you'll not be able to find shit if you look for that.

Trust me, because it took me a long time.

So John

Anthony Muncie goes by Tony.

So using a shortened middle name there.

He's 15 years old, Tony Muncie.

He's in the ninth grade.

He had withdrawn from Ridge, Walnut Ridge High School to attend

a parochial school called Rosemont.

And apparently his mother phoned the Delaware County Sheriff's Department after she had heard that a body had been found.

She said her son had been missing since 1 p.m.

on Saturday when he went to visit a friend and never showed up.

So she wants to see if that's her son.

They found a body.

This is horrifying.

An area resident was driving along South Galena Road at about 8 a.m.

when he saw garbage bags bags littering the embankment between Alexander and Golf Course Roads.

How many times have we said this?

It's never something good.

Never.

It's always something bad.

It's either leaves or something terrible.

One of the two.

Or Arizona, the chain gang left all their shit there and so

later.

Either way, it's just trash or a body.

One of the two.

It's never going to be that piece that fell off the armored car truck, that bag that fell out that they didn't get back at any time.

They don't put that in glad bags.

No, they don't uh so he stops to investigate this whole thing he was going to a local grocery store to buy milk this guy and he was looking for deer on the way home that's why he was looking off to the side of the road and then he saw the bags he said quote i thought i saw an elbow sticking out so we stopped what you did what why

why would you do that

Go home and call the cops if you think it's an elbow.

You guys look at it.

I'm not fucking investigating this.

I thought it was an elbow

so we stopped and it turned out it was a leg so we called the sheriff if it was an elbow we wouldn't have called yeah if it was an elbow we would have let it go but we said oh a leg we got to call the sheriff turns out to be the nude and dismembered body of 15 year old tony muncie yeah uh yeah he was stuffed in three plastic garbage bags yeah this is sounding very familiar yeah along the side of south galena road the body was first spotted by Richard Pestel, was the guy's name.

And yeah, he said the boy's arms

were severed at the shoulders and put in one bag.

His mutilated torso was found wrapped in a separate bag and his clothing in another.

His body was found wrapped in several garbage bags all wrapped up, too.

That is horrifying.

And his torso was mutilated with a knife or other sharp object.

I think we know it's a knife here by now.

This is

wild.

So they said that

they go crazy investigating this.

It's a teenage boy found fucking dismembered and dude.

Taken apart, yeah.

Yeah, and they said the first few days they were uncovering all sorts of leads, but nothing panned out.

Wow.

There was nothing at all.

His mother said, Tony's mother said she thought her son was staying with a friend, but became concerned when he didn't come home Sunday morning.

And then he heard that she heard a body was found of what looked like a teenage boy.

That's why she called the cops.

She thought he was at his friends the whole time, but it turns out he never arrived at his friend's house, didn't get there.

She said, if this can happen to Tony, it can happen to anyone.

I am fearful for my other children.

Yeah.

As you should be.

They just find out that, wow, he died from stab wounds, and

some were just to mutilate.

They weren't even

just to kill.

They were also to mutilate.

They did find out that he had not been sexually molested, though.

Okay.

So that's, I guess.

That's just straight up murder.

That's positive.

That's positive, I suppose.

Well, it also fits into Wickline's M.O.

Yeah.

They first thought it was drug-related

because his autopsy showed traces of marijuana.

It's drug-related because a 15-year-old smoked a joint with three other guys after school.

So it must be a drug-related.

He's in so deep with his trace amount of marijuana that someone wanted to fucking dismember him and put him in bed.

Wow, that's a lot.

They said he was a known occasional user.

Oh, oh, my God.

I'm going to go hide and lock all my doors because I'll be dead any day now.

What have I gotten myself into in my mid-40s?

Fuck.

I might as well just cut myself up.

You know what I mean?

Forget it.

Then after a minute, though, they said they found no correlation between drug use or dealing and this murder, nor did any substantial leads come from the early questioning of friends who allegedly saw him with several older teenagers at York Plaza, which is a mile east of

where the family was living, the evening before his body was found.

So, I mean, that's the night before, so who knows where the fuck he was.

An interview with his girlfriend, Tony's girlfriend, several days after the murder also revealed nothing.

So they said they couldn't find shit.

They said, quote, she did not say anything of any significance.

It's possible she was not completely candid, but I don't think so.

I don't think she knows anything that could solve the case.

So,

yeah,

this just disappeared and was cut up.

Now,

they interviewed the girl.

The girl's mother was there.

Also, two social workers and her attorney.

That's a crowded interrogation room.

Oh, shit.

Two social workers?

Wow.

Yeah, that's a lot of people in there.

They said that the detectives were going to return to Rosemont School to try to get permission to interview more of the friends.

They They said that two other interviews Wednesday did not turn up any new information about Tony Muncie.

They said they checked with a woman who said she thought she saw Muncie playing pinball Saturday with an older man on the west side of Columbus.

They said that they do not, but the cop also said that they don't think that it's accurate.

Another friend of Muncie said the last time he spoke with him was last week on the phone, and family members say they want to search.

The cop said they want to search, interview family members and search the home, but the family is in Kentucky for the funeral, so they can't do that.

About a week goes by, and they say that the motive is just elusive.

They'd have no idea.

They said, by this time, we usually have a feel for the case, but there's just nothing there yet.

We're having trouble even coming up with any possible motive, nothing.

They said they even investigated 14 new names in an attempt to find motive, but they said basically they're feeling a little exasperated by the investigation at this point.

They don't know what to do.

The sheriff said there's lots of unanswered questions about this killing.

We have no clear-cut motive, nor do we even know where the killing occurred.

Answers to either or both of those questions would be of considerable value to us.

Yeah, you used to have bags full of parts with no fingerprints on them.

So they said that

whoever killed him and cut him up must have wanted the body to be found.

They said, because a few hundred yards away from where the remains were discovered was a creek and a heavily wooded area where the body could have easily been hidden for a much longer.

This was on an embankment.

This was find this body.

Yeah.

Definitely, which all these bodies except for the lurches have been wanted to be found.

Obviously, the head on the nightstand, somebody wants somebody to see something there.

So, yeah, this is horrifying.

They can't get anything on it, and they really have a hard time with finding anything.

And a year goes by, and they do have a suspect for Muncie's killing, and it's Timothy E.

Hall, a 20-year-old who is in the Franklin County jail.

They say he is the prime suspect in another murder, the Hubert Eugene Campbell murder in Columbus.

The similarities to the two murders are there and they said some evidence found in the Muncie killing points to Hall.

They said they had hoped the case would have gone to trial long ago, but insisted the prospects of solving it are not getting worse.

They're getting better now.

They said, I think we'll solve this one, even though most homicides are usually difficult to solve up here.

That's a weird statement.

Yeah.

Most, why are they difficult to solve, quote, up here?

Why do you have so many, too?

That's the other thing.

Why can't you solve them?

There's a valid theory that if a homicide is not solved within 48 hours, it gets harder and harder to solve, but that's not true in this type of case.

It takes a long time to gather evidence and put things together.

He said, it's a perplexing and frustrating case.

We're not getting the feedback that we hope from people on the streets.

We We usually get a lot of leads to check, even if they're fruitless.

Here, we're getting very little.

We've done a lot of digging, too.

So, they did say one clue they found was a plaid blood-stained shirt found near the dismembered body.

And they said that might be the key here.

They said the shirt, which may belong to this hall guy who's a mental patient, they said somebody said that he had a shirt sort of like that.

That's the connection they have.

He had a plaid shirt.

He had a plaid shirt in 1982 or whatever, whenever he was 83.

Blood-soaked plaid shirt.

They said the sheriff's department took blood and hair samples from Hall, who at that point was a patient at the Moritz Psychiatric Hospital in Columbus.

He goes undergoing psychiatric testing after being charged with another murder.

The sheriff said that they filed an affidavit to conduct the search warrant.

He said it's certainly the most solid lead we have.

He's the best suspect to date.

We don't have a clear-cut clear-cut motive, but there's reason to believe that Muncie and Hall were acquainted.

They said that

they thought it was drugs at first, but now they don't think so.

They said, we're not ready to make an arrest as there's a lot more investigative work to do, but we have reason to believe that Hall was involved.

The hair and blood samples have been sent to the FBI lab for testing.

Turns out, not Hall, by the way.

Whoops.

Whoops.

They said it's his understanding, the sheriff said, that Hall was already a resident at the Columbus Psychiatric Hospital last fall, but had walked away sometime before the dates of the murder he's charged with and Muncie's murder.

They said it's known that he was walking around free on the streets at the time of Muncie's murder.

He said at the time of the killing, we found a shirt at the scene that did not belong to the victim.

Since then, we've shown a picture of the shirt to relatives of Hall, and they indicate he had a similar shirt.

I don't know.

Here's a shirt one day.

Here's a picture of a shirt.

Did your cousin have this a year ago?

How the fuck do I know?

It doesn't say anything on it that would make it, you know.

Oh, yeah, that's his fucking, you know, I'm with stupid shirt.

I know that one.

If it doesn't have a name tag on it, then let's go.

Oh, shit.

They said that this lead started to firm up around Christmas time.

We began asking questions on the street and began developing information that Hall may have been involved in the killing.

Importantly, it's known that Muncie and Hall knew each other, but just what the association was, no one has answers for.

They said Hall is also capable of a vicious crime like that.

They said, right now, there's some evidence to indicate Hall could have done it.

We have some evidence and some testimony, but we have to dig up even more that would corroborate what we have.

Yeah, it's not Hall at all.

It's not him.

Then there's another victim in Florida.

Informants tell police, multiple informants, that Wickline accepted a contract to execute a man in Florida in early 1983.

Oh.

Police then contacted Miami-Dade County police, who confirmed that in January 1983, the body parts of a man had been discovered in a canal in a rural section of the county, exactly where these informants told them that Wicklins told them that he put them.

That's they just looked where they were told to look, and there's the fucking body parts.

Yeah.

They said that

they were still trying to identify the man, but he had been stabbed to death, decapitated, and dismembered.

I think we got a routine here.

So the Dade County detective said that the medical examiner who assisted in the investigation had suggested police consider looking for suspects among the hog farmers of the area.

Oh, hog farmers

shot people up.

Because they have obvious knowledge of butchery displayed by the killer.

And it was an area where there was a lot of hog farms.

They were like, this would make sense.

Toss out the, they would just feed it to the hogs.

They would feed it to the hogs and also, I mean, they make some bacon.

Who knows?

I don't think they they just leave them.

How the hell would these people all know about it then?

Right, right.

If some random hog farmer did it, they wouldn't be informants all over Ohio and West Virginia with this information.

So the police at the time were told by the medical examiner, whoever killed this person, quote, really knew what he was doing.

No shit.

So, again, a pattern.

Now, January of 84

is

when

Wickline is arrested for breaking into the Foster drugstore and is arrested at the scene.

He's given a year and a half in jail for this.

While he's in jail here, this is when Teresa Kemp takes the handcuffs, the jewelry, the wedding ring, the knife, and everything else belonging to Chris and Peggy Lurch to the cops.

She takes them all to the cops and says, here you go.

Now,

there's conflicting reports of when he was arrested, by the way.

It says in a report that he was arrested at the scene of the drugstore robbery, but then another report says that he was arrested in a shitty motel on the outskirts of Columbus where he was using an alias named Cliff Harmon to stay there.

Either way, everybody said he's armed or he's calm and eerily cooperative when taken into custody.

That's what cops always say.

Strangely cooperative.

They said he didn't run, he didn't flinch, like he had already played the scene out in his head.

He knows how this is going to go.

I'll deal with it in the court.

Yep.

So there's several witnesses that allege that Wickline detailed killings with clinical detachment, discussing the best ways to dismember a corpse, how to silence a victim, and which cleaning chemicals worked best to destroy the evidence you leave behind as well.

Best.

Your blood evidence.

Best.

Wow, that's a lot.

prosecution is now coming up with these big timelines of where was he?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's one of those things.

They have to figure out where he was because wherever he was at whatever time, you're looking for dismemberments around there.

Yeah, it's this guy.

So they're looking for everything.

They're tracking his movements, looking at call logs, bills that he's paying, everything.

If they can get a phone bill from 1979, they'll get it.

Like, they just want to know.

One discovery they made that they were a little freaked out about was a receipt for large quantities of muriatic acid purchased under a pseudonym, which, by the way, matched the acid residue found at a suspected disposal site.

Oh, boy.

So that's not good at all.

This is what these hitmen do, though.

They find the best ways to do things and they really perfect it and get it just right.

So the Columbus Dispatch newspaper quoted an unidentified police source as saying that Wickline may be linked to two other central Ohio killings.

They quoted police as saying that the slayings were the acts of a quote psychopathic killer who

robs for money and drugs and gets a kick from cutting the heads off of victims.

My Christ.

So December of 84, he's finally charged with murder.

Oh.

He is charged with the swampy murder.

Okay.

He absolutely is.

So they say, besides the testimony of Pixie, who talked about this, the case is also supported by evidence, including the fact that he has somebody else's wedding ring and all that kind of shit.

So they're saying that he's a murderer.

They call him publicly.

Prosecutors contend he's a drug dealer and the leader of a, quote, cult of female drug addicts.

The leader of.

Those two things don't go together, though, because

a cult is, you know, worshiping something.

The drugs are the thing.

So you don't need to say they're a cult.

They're just drug addicts.

They're a cult worshiping drugs.

Yes, that's exactly right.

So that's just called a bunch of drug addicts that hang out together.

And that's it.

Or a pimp that has control over them with drugs and money.

Another guy, this is a retired Columbus detective who interviewed Wickline.

He said, Wickline was just a scary guy.

He's got those eyes and you can just tell.

Right.

Okay.

Peggy Lurch's mother here said they tried to interview them, and Peggy Lurch's mother said they got themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and then hung up on the reporters.

That's all she wanted to say.

So this is,

yeah, this is basically, I'll read this from a newspaper here at this time.

William Wicklines Jr.'s macabre methods were, to some homicide investigators, the mark of a professional killer.

Carve up the victim, bag the body parts, scatter the bags where no one will look.

No corpse, no crime.

No crime.

No body, no crime.

Impressive.

And he figured this out so long ago, and he was doing it all over the place.

Everywhere.

Everywhere.

They said.

Here's another.

West Virginia police detective said he was the most dangerous criminal I've ever run across in this state.

Now, he disagrees, Wickline.

He says he's a hell of a guy.

He says he denies killing the couple at all.

He says this Teresa is just a jealous, spurned lover who invented this whole tale to keep custody of her then-infant son after admitting drug use and sales to authorities.

They told her they were going to take your kid away unless you tell them this guy.

So she made up this whole story, which happened to match up to the evidence perfectly somehow.

Incredible.

Isn't that weird?

She must fucking be psychic, you know?

Wow.

So Teresa, you would think she'd be charged with something because she held a woman's legs down while she was strangled to death, but she was never charged because the way the prosecution put it, quote, she didn't do much to help kill Mrs.

Lurch.

Not much.

Are you joking?

Are you kidding me?

That's crazy.

She fucking held her legs down.

That's crazy.

And that prosecutors couldn't find evidence of intent to kill.

Okay.

Now, another charge also here.

While he's doing in jail for this, Columbus Police Department matched a set of his prints with

with an

August 29th, 1979, Ada, Ohio breaking and entering of a pharmacy.

Oh.

So he left Prince and they matched him up, a five-year-old breaking and entering.

So they're going to charge him with that, too.

Yeah, he at the time had used an alias and was released.

They didn't have his fingerprints going.

So then they, yeah.

So, but now they matched him when he was in this time.

Now there's another thing that they think he's a prime suspect for.

Go on.

And that is a murder in Logan, Ohio, which we've done an episode in, but not this.

A murder in Logan, Ohio, where the man they convicted and was already sentenced to death is on death row, and they think, oh, shit, this guy might have done it.

That's not good.

So they said, in addition, this is from the newspaper, in addition to the six killings to which Wickline has been linked in some fashion, detectives in the Columbus Area Police Department believe he should be investigated for a possible connection to two other dismemberment murders, the 1982 killings of 19-year-old Todd Schultz and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Annette Johnston, whose body parts were found in and near a cornfield in Logan.

In 1984,

Miss Johnston's stepfather, Dale N.

Johnson, was convicted of those killings and put on death row.

Yeah, not good.

So they say there's possible links.

links.

The killer of Miss Johnston and Schultz dismembered and decapitated the victims.

Obviously, that sounds like Wickline.

Unlike the other cases already linked to Wickline, there was an added element of mutilation in these murders, though.

The sex organs of both victims were cut off and never found.

Which is gross, and you say that's a specific thing, but if he also sometimes cuts heads off and puts them on nightstands,

this guy might be,

he just might be exploring or, you know,

fucking

trying new shit out on the road.

You know what I mean?

Trying some new jokes on the road type of deal.

Burying a new one in the middle of the act.

That's what I mean.

I mean, they won't notice between these two good jokes.

So,

yeah, that's interesting.

So they said that

a three-judge panel convicted Dale and Johnston.

Prosecutors portrayed Johnston as an insanely jealous stepfather who had an incestuous relationship with his stepdaughter, Annette, and who went into a jealous frenzy over her plans to marry Schultz.

The prosecution focused on the situation within the Johnston household, so no evidence on the murdered couple's lifestyle or any possible drug involvement was presented at trial because it was all in the house.

Despite the verdict, some Columbus area homicide detectives have said they still believe Wickline should be the suspect here.

The Beacon Journal published a series of articles that raised questions about the police conduct in the investigation of the Logan killings.

At that time, police sources said that Logan investigators never seriously considered any suspects other than Johnston and that they doubted the killings could have happened in the manner alleged by the prosecutors.

They said, but does all this make Wickline a better suspect than Dale Johnston?

Well, if he's never dismembered anybody, probably.

I would say so, yeah.

And he was there.

And he was there.

Investigators in three different police agencies say they believe the question of Wickline's possible involvement should be investigated further.

One police investigator and one prosecutor, however, say they don't think that Wickline committed the Logan murders.

They said based on cases in which they investigated Wickline, he was strictly a professional killer.

Thus, the sexual mutilations of the Logan victims would not be characteristic of Wickline.

Well, then it wouldn't be characteristic of him to write shit on the walls either, but he did.

Also, there was no drug angle brought out in the Logan case.

Again, there's no drug angle in the Muncie case either.

I think he likes killing people.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's that.

Columbus lawyer Don Woolery, who represented Wickline at his murder trial, said he was convinced Wickline did not murder Schultz and Miss Johnston, but added that he could not divulge why he was so certain.

I just know, but I can't tell you why.

Woolery charged that some police investigators might be trying to clear their books of some unsolved crimes by trying to blame Wickline.

That's That's not true.

It's as solved as it gets.

There's a guy on death fucking row for it.

Yeah, it's already

super solved.

Yeah.

It's a palace.

Another friend said he didn't do it.

One friend said she had put the question directly to Wickline after she heard of the Logan murders, asking, have you been out playing again?

Yeesh.

Yikes.

But Wickline denied he was involved in that at all.

He also denied that he was involved in the two murders he was convicted of as well.

So, you know, where he's going to be convicted of later.

So, I mean, come on.

They said some people investigators,

some police investigators are haunted by the possibility that one man may have committed all these murders, and we'll find out.

So here's the police theory that he did it.

They said the notion that there could have been two such sadistic butchers operating at the same time in the same small area of Ohio

is a little bit too big of a coincidence.

That's one of the things.

They said only

rarely is a killer capable of this behavior and to have two of these guys in the same place.

What kind of hell on earth was Columbus, Ohio back in the day?

It's not much better today.

Wow.

Yeah.

No shit.

Wickline was living just a few miles from Logan when Miss Johnston and Schultz were slain.

According to a friend of Wicklines, he left Columbus after the lurches were killed in August 82 and moved to a trailer in the rural community just north of the Hocking-Fairfield County line.

Wickline continued living an active outlaw life after he moved to the Logan area, and police sources claim he was part of a burglary ring that specialized in breaking into drugstores, then dealing with stolen narcotics.

The same sources confirmed the ring was active in the Logan area.

Wickline's last arrest in January 84 occurred 15 miles from Logan in Nelsonville, where police arrested him during a thwarted drugstore burglary.

Wickline's arrest there, they said, now Ms.

Johnston and Schultz were known to have friends in the Buckeye Lake area of northern Fairfield County, an area among the first where police were dispatched to search for the two after they were reported missing.

Wickline also frequented that area, stashed stolen goods and drugs there, and had friends and relatives in the same area.

Wickline also demonstrates the proclivity and expertise for committing murders like the ones in Logan.

Law enforcement officials from three different agencies said that dismembering his victims was more than just an efficient means of body disposal for Wickline.

One said, quote, he really seemed to enjoy it.

It was like a sport to him.

He was good at it.

He was good at it, and he liked it.

Officially, the Johnston case is before the state appellate court, from which a ruling on Johnston's motion for a retrial is expected within the next month or two.

Logan Police Chief Steve Barron said that he could not comment on the case because it's still adjudicated.

However, he said he'd be willing to discuss the case with any legitimate police investigator.

He said, if anybody's got any questions and they have a real lead,

he said, anytime a police officer has any information on a crime in my jurisdiction, any crime, I want to talk with him.

But under the provisions of Ohio's home rule laws, crime is largely a local matter.

Issues such as when to close or reopen an investigation and whether to cooperate with other police agencies in a multi-jurisdictional investigation are decided solely by local authorities.

Now, attorneys for Dale Johnston say they're watching the charges against Wickline closely.

Really?

Johnston has been sentenced to death, obviously, and his attorney called the similarities in the murders which Johnston was convicted and the slangs in which Wickline is a suspect pretty striking.

I would say.

Get him out of there.

Yeah.

So a little bit of a psychological profile of this guy,

of this, someone who would take

people apart.

A lot of this is from Catherine Ramslin, Dr.

Ramslin that wrote the book about, she wrote a lot of books about serial killers, but especially BTK.

She's gone over his shit with a fine-tooth comb, so she knows

a lot of gross shit here.

They say that it's a decapitation is pretty rare in a murder.

Yeah.

It's a pain in the ass, number one.

Right.

And

it's pointless is the other thing.

And you got to have a lot of time and willingness to stick around.

There's all kinds of shitty reasons to do it.

And it's not for identification purposes because there's plenty of other ways to identify the body.

So they said when it does occur, it's often about domination and symbolic control.

So they said, like Catherine Ramsland

said that murderers who decapitate and retain body parts frequently fall into two categories, mission-oriented killers and sexually sadistic psychopaths.

I think our guy falls

more in column A.

I think he dips a toe in column B once in a while, but not much.

What sets Wickline apart is the absence of a clear sexual gratification.

Instead, his profile aligns with what criminologists call a power-assertive dismemberer.

This is someone who removes the head to dehumanize and to erase identity and to send a message.

Okay.

But to who?

Anybody in particular?

Anybody.

In Marsh's case, they said the placement of the head, combed and displayed, and the eerie note on the wall suggests not just cruelty, but theatricality.

Yeah.

It's a look at what I did.

It's a show-off thing.

Wickline was known to have studied anatomy and psychology.

He didn't just kill, he curated the scene.

Psychologists argue that keeping a head or even just being present for a beheading serves as a way to mentally own the victim forever.

Yeah, but it also signifies a real trouble and problem

behind the mask.

Being capable of doing that is fucked up.

Well, yeah, if that's your thought process, if I do this, I'll own them forever.

That's a pretty weird fucking thing to think.

I wouldn't think like that.

Fucked up.

They said it's not unlike trophy hunting.

You don't just want to win.

You want to mount proof above your fireplace.

That's their trophies.

For Wickline, the severed head was likely a confirmation of dominance.

The same could be said of him keeping Peggy Lurch's wedding ring, which is a lot of times why they keep trophies.

Yeah.

And sometimes, here's what John Douglas said, and this is an interesting quote.

It fits perfect.

It's not always about lust or rage.

Sometimes it's about craftsmanship.

Sometimes they just want to apply their craft.

John, an artist.

Why are you writing advertisements for murder?

It's true.

He's saying the truth.

It's the truth.

An artist wants to paint.

Not because they have to, because they feel like it.

They like it because they're good at it and they want to show how good they are at it.

Sometimes it's about craftsmanship.

It's about craftsmanship.

It's creepy but true.

So they said no single profile fits all offenders, obviously.

Certain psychological patterns frequently emerge.

Psychopathy and sadism, obviously.

They said that offenders who behead may display high levels of psychopathy, including lack of empathy, grandiosity, manipulativeness, enjoyment of others' suffering.

I think this all sounds like him.

These individuals may derive psychological gratification from the acts experiencing a sense of dominance or godlike control.

They said also, in rare cases, it can be some sort of

psychotic disorder, some delusional,

they hold some sort of religious or some kind of, you know, God told me to do it, some shit like that.

Those happen when they believe the victim's possessed, hallucinations commanding the act, paranoid delusions.

A lot of times that's a schizophrenic, severe severe paranoid schizophrenic and shit like that.

They said beheading can be symbolic, especially in an intimate partner homicide or a revenge killing.

The head represents identity, face, voice, so removing it may symbolize erasure of the person, ownership or control of the victim, or punishment and dehumanization.

So

after Wickline is indicted for the lurch case, because that's what he's arrested for, because that's what Teresa came forward on, that's when

West Virginia and Columbus police start sharing information with each other.

And that's when he's indicted for the Swampy killing as well.

For killing Charles Marsh.

Now, he had an accomplice in the lurch murders besides Teresa.

Really?

Yes, Thomas J.

Dillon.

Let's enter.

You could open this up to a whole other...

avenue of scum here.

Thomas J.

Dillon, who at the time this all was going on, was on on trial for cocaine distribution charges here, is also charged in killing a lawyer in Knoxville, Tennessee.

So he's going to go on trial in Ohio for the murder of the lurches.

Okay.

Wickline is.

This is Wickline now.

So Teresa is going to be the star witness, obviously.

She told, and also Pixie as well.

These stories match up to police reports and everything like that.

But they also have a lot of fucked up timelines and dates because, you know,

this happened three years ago and they're all on a lot three to six years ago and everyone's doing a lot of drugs all the time.

So you can't expect it, but you expect just those big details.

If they match up, it's probably a pretty good idea, especially having the wedding ring, having the murder weapon.

That's not good.

Yeah.

Having those people's blood in your bathtub.

You know.

So I guess his common-law wife, whoever that was, was barred from testifying.

And a friend told prosecutors that they wouldn't testify because he was afraid Wickline would kill him.

Oh.

And so he was charged with contempt because he wouldn't testify.

They find one pretty bad piece of evidence for Wickline here would be

a jailhouse letter seized by correctional officers.

What did he write?

Written in his handwriting.

It included a diagram detailing how to efficiently clean a crime scene using industrial strength solvents.

It said, make sure to remove baseboards.

Blood gets in everywhere.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, he's smart.

He knows how to clean a crime.

How many fucking people has this guy killed?

It's got to be so numerous.

It's all over the place, different states, everything like that.

You don't learn that after two.

No, this is all.

Yeah.

This is experience.

He was telling people in the 70s how to gut people.

Removing baseboards.

That's so much work.

That's serious, man.

Yeah, you got to know construction in addition to murder.

You have to know how to be a finishing carpenter in addition to

the murder.

You got to put the cabinets back on, right?

Yeah.

Teresa Kemp testifies to everything we already said.

She said about the Peggy Lurch killing, quote, I held Lurch's legs because I was afraid I would be next to die if I did not do exactly what Wicklin said.

I would be next.

Oh boy.

Which she's probably right, honestly.

Yeah.

You're young.

She probably is right.

Now, Dylan also, they get him to testify.

I don't know if he's getting a break or what, but

recounted

being

at one point in the 70s or whatever, being summoned to Wickline's garage where a body had already been partially dismembered.

And he said Wickline handed him a hacksaw and pointed to the legs and said, quote, he told me we got work to do.

Like like it was a Saturday chore, like we were going out to trim the hedges or something.

Pointed at the legs.

Holy shit.

Another former associate said that Wickline once demonstrated how to sever arteries to minimize blood spray.

This is

how intricate and in-depth he's gotten into this.

Think about how many times you have to kill someone to where you're so calm you can be like, well, let me do this so it doesn't spray too much.

Wow.

He said that Wickline talked about killing the way most guys talk about fixing cars, hence the mechanic.

They said the defense counsel grilled both of these men about their past lies and contradictions and plea deals and all that kind of shit, but their details hang in the air like fucking, you know, like

spores just dancing in the evening breeze.

So the defense calls witnesses during the trial who, this is the defense they have.

They have people who claim to have seen people they said looked like the lurches a short time after they were killed.

They go, yeah, I think it was them I saw.

Are you sure?

Not positive, but I think so.

I think they're alive.

So the defense contends that the lurches are alive, by the way, and in hiding over some cocaine debt or whatever.

Now, the verdict comes in.

By the way, he waived his right to a jury trial and instead gets a three judge panel.

Three judge panel, this is.

So all three.

He is found guilty

with two counts of aggravated murder, and that's in the deaths of Christopher and Peggy Ann Lurch.

Now, the sentencing comes around.

Okay.

The three-judge panel returned the guilty verdict, and the counsel, Wickline's counsel,

turned to the mitigation statute of the Ohio Public Defenders Manual dealing with the mitigation hearing.

Counsel went through each mitigating factor with Wickline.

This is where we're going to say this, that.

Counsel advised Wickline that he could have a psychiatric report, but the counsel said he chose not to have one for two reasons.

First, Wickline said he, quote, wanted nothing to do with psychiatrists or psychologists.

So

if he's not going to cooperate, it's pointless.

Second, the counsel felt like a psychiatric report would reflect negatively on Wickline.

They'd call him a cold-blooded fucking monster.

Psychopath, yeah.

Psychopath with no remorse.

Counsel also advised Wickline that a pre-sentence report delving into his background could be prepared, but Wickline, quote, wanted nothing to do with the probation officer.

So the counsel requested to speak with Wickline's family.

Wickline was, quote, very strong on this.

He did not want to drag his family into this thing and basically told us no as far as his family was involved.

So everything they said, this is how you mount a mitigation defense, he said, don't do any of that.

I don't want any of that done.

They also said they were concerned that if they put witnesses on the stand to testify about his good character, that would open the door for the prosecution to bring in all of his other bad acts.

So you can't do that.

And they said that evidence would...

definitely hurt him in a sentencing phase that this isn't the only time he's killing people and shit like that.

Counsel reviewed Wickline's prison files, but chose not to prevent them to avoid highlighting his numerous incarcerations.

Because the jury doesn't know about that, that he's in and out of prison forever.

As far as the jury knows, he went nuts one day and did this all on a whim.

So after two or three meetings to discuss their strategy, Wickline and his counsel decided to argue that Chris and Peggy facilitated the murders,

facilitated them by attempting a drug ripoff.

So it was basically self-defense.

They

asked to be dismembered by trying to rob me.

I could see.

Yeah,

that's interesting.

So the counsel felt that it would be best to focus on their strongest mitigating factor, avoid the danger of opening the door to harmful information and not cloud it up with stuff we couldn't prove.

He said, though, but Wickline has the final decision of how they proceed.

By the way,

he speaks during this

sentencing hearing all about Teresa Kemp.

That's all he wants to talk about.

She's a bitch.

Pretty much.

This fucking bitch.

He contends that his arrest is the result of a jilted woman spreading rumors to friends.

Jilted.

Jilted.

Dump that.

Dump that, bitch.

And now she's telling.

I went out to the bar too many nights and didn't tell her.

And now she's telling people she held down legs.

She's so jilted that a baby jumped in her stomach right afterwards.

That's how jilted she was.

Yeah.

Held down the legs.

Yeah.

One of whom was the wife of a jail inmate who gave police the tie, which led to his arrest.

So Wickline believes that the police intimidated Teresa into describing the murders by threatening her with the death penalty for her involvement, which they probably did.

He said, if you help, that's a death penalty crime.

He described Kemp as the one who would have no problem lying to police, and he's even as the one who stood to profit financially from the story she told.

He claims that Teresa now has $10,000 worth of possessions, which she took from his apartment after his arrest, even though he told her to take the stuff and please put it in safe

in a storage for me.

In his statement, he attempts to discredit the testimony by pointing out Teresa's weakest points of testimony.

He contends that he had the lurches' jewelry as collateral for the $6,000 that Chris owed him for cocaine.

It wasn't, I didn't steal it.

I took it as collateral.

Further, he says that it was the lurches who were fighting and not himself and Chris.

He said, I wasn't fighting with Chris.

Peggy and Chris were fighting each other.

We were just there.

He said the argument involved Chris Lurch's infidelity.

And in that context, Chris made the snide remark about being with Teresa Kemp at a hotel.

He said it wasn't, as Teresa related, a comment directed at me to piss me off.

It was directed at his wife to piss her off.

Oh,

duh.

Sure.

He then denied that he and Chris ever even argued that morning.

He said, we didn't even argue.

He claimed to have no involvement in their death at all.

And then he says this about Teresa, quote, that's the one comfort I have, is the hope and the belief that they will be found and that I hope they are found alive.

But even if they are found dead and in one piece,

then will she be made to pay back what she has done to me?

Oh, what she's done to him.

Yeah.

He says, what if they find him alive?

What if they find him dead, but not dismembered?

Then she lied and it's all, then what?

Then she can apologize to me.

And she can pay back what she's done to to me.

The judge has something to pay back to him.

The judge says, you, sir,

may fuck off

for the Chris Lurch murder, life in prison.

Oh, shit.

And for the Peggy Lurch murder, death penalty.

There it is.

So, yes, that's what he got.

Life and death.

And the same thing.

That's only two?

That's only the two.

Now, he's still up.

He's still indicted and ready to go to trial in West Virginia on the Swampy Marsh murders here.

Now, after the trial, the prosecutor said that after the trial, the two experienced Columbus homicide detectives independently came to his office, closed the door, and asked him to ensure that they and their families would be notified if Wickline ever left prison.

These are the detectives, not the victims' families or someone who testified against him.

The detective said, he's going to come dismember my family if he gets out.

Wow.

He said, this is the prosecutor.

These were not people who did things like that.

There was true fear.

I'd never seen it before and I've never seen it since.

Homicide detectives don't do that.

They go, I have a gun.

Come to my house and I'll shoot you between the fucking eyes.

They don't care.

Now, Teresa Kemp never charged because she didn't participate in killing Chris Lurch and, quote, didn't do much to help kill fucking Peggy.

Yeah.

And prosecutors couldn't find evidence of intent to kill on her behalf, so they just didn't charge her.

They made a deal.

You get immunity.

That's what it is.

Now, after being convicted and sentenced to death, Wickline moved for a new trial based in part on his counsel's failure to investigate mental health evidence.

So they said, you're fine.

Fuck off.

Keep going on the direct appeal.

Fine.

Now, Swampy, they're talking about, this is October 10th, 85.

The headline is Ohio Man to Stand Trial in Murder Case.

And they're saying he's already on death row, but he's charged with the murder of Charles Morgan Marsh.

Police claim that he tortured him for two hours before strangling him with a telephone cord and cutting him up, putting his head on the nightstand, combing his hair, writing shit on the wall.

Police contend that the killing's drug-related still, and so they say they're going to definitely prosecute him.

Then a month later, on November 14th, they say he might not be extradited to stand trial after all.

Really?

Yeah.

At one point, the prosecutor says, well, if they want to bury him in Ohio, really, who are we to?

We don't want to stand in the way of that.

Basically, if he didn't get the death penalty we might do it but i mean he's already got the death there so what's it matter yeah yeah and basically if they don't kill him then we'll bring him over here who cares but for now let's see if they kill him first before we waste a bunch of money because west virginia one thing about west virginia is it is not a rich state in terms of

no it's like the minimum of everything and government spending and things like that so it's it's not a very wealthy state so they don't want to spend money on a big murder trial that they don't have to spend essentially.

So, yeah.

And they said that he waived his right to a speedy trial, which means that they don't have to return him.

They don't have to extradite him right away.

And the prosecutor's office will, now they can wait and see basically as long as they want on this.

So

1990, he appeals his conviction and sentence.

More than a dozen points of law, including a claim that Ohio's death penalty is unconstitutional, were raised here.

They say the Supreme Court turned down the appeal of death row inmate William Wickline.

The justices let stand rulings that Wickline knowingly and intelligently waived his right to a jury trial in the case.

That's what he tried to say.

I didn't really want the three-judge panel.

Okay.

I want to go back.

Yeah.

Well, when they do that, they ask you like three times.

So you're positive, no one's coerced you, no one's promised you anything.

That's why they do that.

No threats, right?

Yeah.

So he was, that's crazy.

1994, they're still talking about the Logan murders.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

Annette Johnston and Todd Schultz.

This is November 27th, 1994.

Headline, killer live near Logan.

Police have never questioned him.

They say there was an accomplished butcher of human beings living as an outlaw on the run near Logan at the time of the murders here.

His name is William Wickline.

Two months before the bodies were discovered, Wickline murdered a Columbus couple.

Here, Wickline's now on death row.

Police suspect Wickline in three other killings in Florida and Ohio.

The victims in each case were dismembered.

According to two of Wickline's girlfriends, he had connections in this area, too.

Wickline was regarded by police as a professional burglar as well as a hitman and drug dealer.

Wickline was never questioned or investigated in connection with the murders of Todd and Annette.

He refused a request to be interviewed for this article as well.

You didn't want to talk about it.

You didn't want to talk about it.

1996.

God damn it.

He appeals again.

They have some,

these are basically like clemency interviews.

Yeah.

Interview people with the case, involved in the case.

The former assistant prosecutor, who was interviewed in 1996, said this, quote, Mr.

Wickline should never be let out of prison and should never have his sentence of death reduced.

He is the most dangerous man I've ever encountered.

Wow.

Ever.

The prosecuting attorney, Michael Miller said, I've never seen police officers fear a criminal like they do this man.

I'm totally opposed to any leniency being given to Mr.

Wickline.

We believe he has in all probability killed several other people and if released, would kill again.

Probably

immediately.

He'd go for revenge on whoever was fucking wrong.

He's a terrifying man.

Retired detective Rich Sheesby of Columbus Police Department said this, Mr.

Wickline is the most dangerous man I've ever encountered in all the years of my career.

We know he killed many more people and was not charged with their butcherings.

We could never prove these murders as Mr.

Wickline so expertly disposed of their bodies, leaving no evidence.

If he is ever released, he will most likely kill Luana Flowers, that's Pixie, Teresa Kemp, Jimmy Dennis, and George King or two other guys that gave bits of information on him, but not as much as the other two.

We didn't have time to get into them.

In response to the victim notification issued by the parole board, a letter sent from the mother of Christopher Lurch,

quote, another story for Wickline was a disappointment to myself, family, and friends.

All of the unhappiness and torture that this creature represents, creature, I like that.

He should not be living.

There were even two other murders that they were certain he committed.

How horrible does a person have to be?

Personally, it's affected my life as to health and everyday living.

Peggy's sister said, this individual was convicted and sentenced to death.

He's been allowed to take criminal justice, take the criminal justice system to its limits with appeals, granting stays of execution and more existence on earth.

My family will never have closure of this tragedy unless this sentence is carried out.

Please keep in mind the risk to survivors and all of other citizens that are affected by his stay of execution.

Well, it's not like they're letting him out on the street.

He's still in

maximum security prison on death row.

Prolonging the inevitable only gives Wickline rights, rights he gave up the day he took other lives.

Man,

his attorney, though, says

his attorney for this phase, the appeal, said his counsel did no investigation for the penalty phase of the case.

Zero.

They said, now in 1990, they said that wouldn't have mattered because backgrounds, including child abuse and being forced into crime by his parents, haven't

dissuaded judges from imposing the death penalty in the past.

You can't say my parents were mean to me, so

that doesn't work.

That's not a mitigator.

It's like a dog, you guys.

That's not a mitigator.

Yeah, it would have to be, you know, my dad fucking sold me to gypsies or some weird, crazy 50 story or some shit, you know?

So a three-judge panel rejects his request for a stay, saying it was an old argument.

He asserts a number of grounds for his petition, saying all sorts of shit.

Ineffective assistance of counsel, number one.

And this is why.

The three judge panels' knowledge of inadmissible prejudicial information, the extensive prejudicial media coverage, and the failure to request a change of venue.

Where?

What state?

You've killed people everywhere.

I don't want to go, yeah.

Arbitrary and capricious application of the death penalty.

I think this is kind of what it was written for, right?

Multiple murderers?

Yeah.

Multiple

that dismember people for fun.

Yeah, I don't know.

That seems like if it's not him, who is it?

That's what I mean.

If it's not him, definitely get rid of it now.

Failure to request defense experts, Ohio Supreme Court's application of a lesser standard of proof for harmless error, and failure to present mitigating evidence.

Each of the six allegedly omitted issues either lacks merit or was raised by appellate counsel on direct appeal.

So to demonstrate the court was...

to the court that the counsel's performance was deficient, a defendant must show that the counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness.

You have to be insanely shitty to where people are like, what the hell happened here?

Wickline argues his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate and present mitigating evidence in the penalty phase.

He said his counsel should have investigated his mental health history and presented expert testimony on his psychological condition.

Also, his background, character, and all that shit, which we know strategically would have been terrible for him.

Don't do that.

Yeah.

So the court said, even if counsel were deficient in investigating and presenting mitigating evidence, Wickline fails to satisfy the prejudice prong of a particular statute here.

Wickline argues that his trial counsel could have presented mental health evidence, but

no,

it doesn't matter.

They said, because

in his psych profile, it says there's no evidence of a thought disorder or psychotic reaction, and he's actually really smart and has an IQ of 124.

So that would actually hurt him, they're saying.

So that wouldn't make fucking sense.

They said said the only thing they have is that he suffered from a mild depression sometimes, but there's no evidence that his depression made him cut people's heads off.

Yeah.

Usually it's the opposite.

So yeah.

They said that Wickline also argues his trial counsel should have introduced evidence of his good behavior during prior incarcerations.

But they said that would have made him that would that's a strategic decision not to do that.

It's not that he was lazy and didn't do it.

So he also says that the counsel erred in presenting any evidence regarding his allegedly troubled upbringing.

He vaguely states his relationship with his father was, quote, crucial to his development and the way he handled frustration and rage.

And Wickline also asserts that the death of his mother, quote, devastated him.

Again,

can't be killing people.

Who care how devastated you are?

I'm sad my mom's dead, so I killed people.

Yeah.

And the court said, while these experiences are unfortunate, they're not uncommon.

It takes no citation of authority to state that many other people have endured similar experiences without resort to lawlessness

or decapitation.

Let's be specific here.

2003 is the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and they reject him as well.

So 2004 execution is set for March of 2004.

So there's a clemency hearing.

And a written application with documentation outlining the reasons why he should receive executive clemency was filed with the parole board.

And here it goes: Reasons expressed in favor of granting clemency are: he denied the murders.

He never admitted it.

His sentence of death is based on uncorroborated testimony of an unindicted co-conspirator, Teresa Kemp, who stood to gain financially from his incarceration.

All the physical evidence that purports to connect Wickline to the crime was under direct physical control of Teresa Kemp before it was turned over to police.

She did it.

She dismembered a couple by herself.

That little lady.

Yeah, not the 6'3 fucking butcher, this lady.

Wickline's record in prison has been exemplary.

During the 1997 disturbance on death row, he took extraordinary steps to prevent other inmates from being killed and to bring a peaceful end to the disturbance at considerable risk to his own safety and well-being.

This should mitigate in his consideration for executive clemency.

And look at him.

If you leave him alive, he'll do good things.

He won't do bad things.

Yeah.

And also, it's improper to consider any other crimes he's not been convicted or tried for.

There's no way to rebut these crimes.

They've never been put to the test of legal proceedings.

Crimes in West Virginia and other places should not be given consideration.

Teresa Kemp says that she's been unable to sleep soundly for 22 years, still haunted by the image of her lover holding a man's severed head in his hand.

She said, do you know I still walk into a bathroom sometimes and smell blood?

That's what she told me.

Oh, Christ.

The clemency board here.

Peggy's family obviously said we vehemently, adamantly oppose any clemency.

Still,

that's not, you know, none of that's gone away.

Well, the board said he's failed to accept responsibility for the crimes he's committed, expressed no remorse, done nothing like that.

And there was insufficient mitigation presented to outweigh all of the aggravating factors.

And they say we recommend a nine to zero, the board votes

that he should go to fucking get executed.

And on

unanimous die.

Unanimous.

You're the biggest piece of scum we have.

Fuck off.

Execution day is March 30th, 2004.

There's a big protest outside.

A bishop, the leader of the Toledo Diocese, says the church today feels it's very important to give witness to the sanctity of life, and that's what we're here doing tonight.

That day, Wickline slept about five hours and visited with his brothers early Tuesday.

They came to see him.

He then showered and shaved, had two cups of coffee and rice krispies.

Nice.

Then he read the Bible and prayed.

Okay.

I think that's going to do any good at this point.

His last meal, Jimmy.

Here we go.

What do you think he's going to order knowing him so far?

Oh, Christ.

Something very Ohio.

I don't know, corn.

It's going to be bloody is something I know.

Yeah.

Something with blood.

An eight-ounce.

Something butchered.

Eight-ounce filet mignon.

Okay.

Medium rare.

Good choice.

At least he's not a monster.

He's a monster, but he's not an animal.

That's good.

If he said well done, that's worse than killing six people, by the way, destroying a filet mignon like that.

Okay.

Potato salad.

Six rolls with butter, fresh strawberries over shortcake, and butter pecan ice cream.

He also received four packs of Palmol cigarettes.

He's going to smoke four packs?

Smoke up, Johnny.

That's a lot of four packs.

He's going to be gasping for air.

And six cans of soda, including three Mountain Dews.

He's going to be jacked and full of fucking nicotine.

And can't breathe.

Can't breathe.

Spent the day on the phone talking to his brother David and chatting with members of the execution team.

Then about four o'clock.

He's a bread guy.

How about that, too?

Oh, who's not a bread person?

Six rolls.

Just meat and a little bit of potato salad, a dessert, fuckloads of cigarettes.

I want a big loaf of Italian bread and four packs of cigarettes.

I'd want Italian bread anyway.

So about 4 p.m., he served a special meal like we talked about.

By the way, the steak came from the prison kitchen, so they didn't even buy it outside.

The other ingredients were bought at a local store for a total of $11.66.

Wow.

So they're getting all this last meal, $11.66.

Calm down.

He also received four packs of Palmaul cigarettes and six cans of soda, too.

We don't know what the cost on those was, but who knows?

What year, 2004?

It It was

a six pack?

It was $1.29.

Yeah.

So

they take him out there to strap him in to be injected.

His final words are: quote, maybe tomorrow, or I'm sorry, may tomorrow see the courts shaped by more wisdom and less politics.

Well, I completely agree with that.

Not out of your mouth, though, stupid.

Yeah, but

your case is not one of them.

That's exactly right.

So they inject him.

There we go.

Lethal injection.

So, yeah.

They also, later on, a little post-game analysis, the defense didn't obtain a blood expert, nor were they allowed by Wickline to investigate the mental health evidence.

On appeal, the defense argued that the prosecutor's statements comparing the crime to the burning of Jewish bodies in Nazi concentration camps

were prejudicial, but the claim was rejected.

They went, murder's murder.

Yeah, by the way, usually in Ohio,

I'm sorry, a study done nationally, two-thirds of all capital cases are overturned due to constitutional errors.

Ohio courts have had an 8%

reversal rate.

Oh, my God.

66 to 8%.

A little bit different.

They're right all the time.

Remember Dale N.

Johnston?

Yeah, what happened?

Well, as of 2016, he's suing fucking everybody because he didn't do those fucking murders, just like he said.

Wow, good for him.

Yep.

He was, that's wild.

He He was convicted.

The real killer, Chester McKnight, confessed in 2008.

Confessed.

That is fucking wild.

So there we go.

And by the way,

they classified the case as the single most wrongful conviction and imprisonment in Ohio's history.

And Lawana Pixie Norton died in 2016, by the way.

We don't know why or how, but she was.

She was almost 70 years old.

So yeah, so that makes shit older than that.

She was like 75, almost 80 years old.

So that makes sense.

So there you go.

There is Parkersburg, West Virginia.

And one fucking hell of a goddamn tale, I would say, right?

That's twisty.

It's almost like not a lot of justice was done.

No.

A lot of people got nothing for their murders there.

So anyway, very quickly before we get to the end here, definitely head over to shutupandgivemeurder.com.

All your merchandise, tickets to live shows, D.C., fucking Philly in December.

Also, definitely Irvine Improv and Seattle as well.

There's tickets for those.

Shout up at GiveMeMurder.com.

Follow on social media at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Small Town Pod on Facebook.

You want to do that?

You certainly, certainly want Patreon, patreon.com slash crime in sports, where you get all of the bonus material.

Anybody, $5 a month or above, you get hundreds of back episodes, new ones every other week.

One crime in sports, one small town murder.

This week, what you're going to get for crime and sports, the Liver King, that crazy documentary.

And we'll talk more about the guy.

Can't believe he's alive.

I'm shocked.

Small town murder, weird alien rabbit hole shit, conspiracy theories, everything we're going to get into.

It's pretty good stuff here.

Patreon.com/slash crime insports.

And you get a shout-out right fucking now.

Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never, ever, ever dismember us and put us in a cornfield.

Jimmy, hit me with them right fucking now.

This week's executive producers are Elena Zamel, Zamel, Zamel, Gary Howard, Gary, thanks, Gary, Isabella Gill, who is this: Janice Hill, Ryan Paxton, Sadie Lanthier Hardy, Anthony Ayarza, Richard Dowd, Hank Haley, and Timmy.

Thank you all

so much for what

you're amazing.

Other producers this week are Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows, Anita Dickenmey James.

It's probably a person.

Wow.

I'm sure.

Legitimate.

It's a real name.

Happy Hour.

I should have thought more before they named him.

Happy Hour was in Eloy, Arizona.

God damn.

Wow.

My I hope you made it out.

Jesus.

My condolences for

driving by Eloy.

Wally Strickland.

And happy birthday, Casey, Cassie Wright's husband, Garrett.

I imagine it's Garrett Wright.

Happy birthday, Garrett.

Good for you.

Larry Abercrombie, Shannon with no last name.

Brian Murray, Allie would know last name.

Jackson Brooks, Michael Bremster, Bremser, Bremser, Carrie West, Victoria Amundsen, Sharon Jazzman, Terry Ellis, Samantha Foltz, Kenneth Tierney, Thomas Rutherford, Ryan Stiles.

Oh, is it that one?

Probably not.

He's amazing, though.

That would be great.

I doubt it.

I doubt it.

Rissa with no last name.

Shirley with no last name.

Jennifer Roper Widge with no last name.

Bobcat with no last name.

Crystal Zimmermann, Christianne,

Stilsinch, Kelby Marsh, Alicia Kruger, Fallon with no last name.

Don Guthrie, Lacey, Aden Angevine, Angevini, Ali Bahu, Sheila Sapienza, Terry Wozniak, Mr.

Scooter Smith, the tripod cat.

He's got three legs, James.

Oh, my goodness.

Jesus.

Good for you, Scooter.

Clay with no last name.

Give Scooter a hug for me, whoever's got that cat.

Kelly Joe May, whisper in that cat's ear.

This is from Wisman.

Make it real weird.

Rowanna Quinanen,

Queen Ann, Chris with no last name, Deb with no last name.

Emily Ann, Shelby Hooper, Jessica with no last name.

J H, Tesla Nicole, Judy Rhode, Amy Duplessy, Dow Plessai,

Lane Bendicel.

One of those.

Yeah.

Kenzie with no last name.

Kaylee Tengan.

Tenjin.

Teenjin.

Alyssa Finn, TKC, Benjin, Benjamin Swan, Benjamin Swan.

Punjamin Swan.

Sean with no last name.

Samantha Spear, Jennifer Barton, Dorothy Katz, Rick Mazingo, Natasha Rusling, Parsons, Rusling, perhaps.

Paul Long, Catherine Tucker.

Yep.

Sharon with no last name.

Christopher Carmona, Jennifer P.

Brad Sewell, Amy Stewart, Juan Escovell,

Heather Wong, Jonathan Brady, Sam Hunter, Michael Subject, Erica with no last name, Brian McKean, Alyssa, oh, Melissa, Melissa Lodholm, Lodum,

Damon Hansen,

Kevin Brookens,

DeKevin, what was his name?

Jack Evan.

Chick Kevin.

Kyla McDonald's reference.

Hannah Clevenger,

Stephanie Long, Stefani, perhaps, Victor Mancia, Nicole Geringer, Icy Blue, Jessica Lefebvre, Sonia Sanja, Schweiter, what?

Schweifler.

Schifler.

Schweifler.

That is a brutal last name to try to say.

That is a tough one.

Is there an L?

It is.

Schweifler.

Alexandria Renkin.

Jessica with no last name.

Amber Daly.

Amanda Redact.

Redact.

Michael.

Nope, that's Michelle.

Cotton.

Yonji.

Yonji.

Yonji Hong.

Mike with no last name.

Kim Surratt.

Melinda Burke.

Lindsey with no last name.

Maria with no last name.

Sue with no last name, Gabriella Girado, Nancy Kusert, Pigeon Couture, Holly Sullivan, that's gross, what?

Pigeon Kotour.

What are you wearing?

This is Pigeon.

It's pigeon.

It's couture.

It's lovely.

Don't get too close.

It smells funny, but still, it's beautiful.

It still has bugs in it.

Holly Sullivan, Corey with no last name.

Mites and lice.

Tyler Laws, Ebony Miranda.

If that's really somebody's fucking name, that's crazy.

Who would name their kid Pigeon?

Yeah, we're not sorry.

You got named that.

Blame your parents.

Don't fucking talk to us about it.

Paul Thompson.

Kathy loves Jimmy.

Tiffany Woolfolk.

Melissa, MyLisa, Miller.

It's got to be Melissa.

My Lisa?

No.

My Lisa.

It's a My Lisa.

Karen Maguire, Sylvain, LeBlonde, Terry Owens, Megan with no last name.

Ryan Christie, Danielle, Nava, Shauna, Shana, O'Donnell, Big J Swift, Eric with no last name, Brian Gandara, Colleen Overby, Emily Kaiser, Kelly Barnes, Melene Melanie, Melanie McCarroll, Lisa Flann, Kathy Brown, Lydia the librarian, Laura Harrison, Amy Hamill, Jerica, Jerica, Jarika Hopkins,

Cicely Waters,

Jules Bernie, Danny Galuzzo, Kennan Kells.

Is that right?

Khalise?

Is that Kells?

Did I do two L's?

What did I do?

What did I do?

Jamie Simpson, Katie Reimer, Courtney Watson,

Lynn's Priest, Vanda with no last name, James Sumison, Jennifer Vertone, Craig with no last name, Kevin Rosenacher, Murphy Parker, Nicole with no last name, Addie McClain, Jane Kendall, Josh Ellenberg, Julia with no last name, Faith Kovacs, Amber Shannon, Yvette with no last name, Kim Tinker, Cyndia, nope, Sydney, Sidney Taylor, Diane Daggs, Sherry Kimball, Chuck with no last name, Emily Nagee,

Ainsley McPherson, Jennifer Rush, CCBBSS2, River Devlin, Colin Riley, Martha Penny, Don Walker, Ruben Robin, Robin with no last name.

Hey, Jeff, Jeff Jones.

I almost called Jeff Jones Jennifer Jones.

Close.

All right.

Lachlan Hodge, Jenna English, Ethan Pack, Jolene Hargrave, Jenna Jones.

There's Jenna Jones.

There's Jenna.

She's there now.

How did I do that?

that I think you knew you were right.

Six words down.

Lexi with no last name.

Neko Necro.

gross uh ace finch marie mary mary with an i no last name becky stewart heath robert robert rober

roberson rober there's no t cat and uber uh gene or jeanne

fontaine jessica with no last name lydia colness ellie eileen uh with no last name kelse kelsey maybe it's kelse martin michael martin oh

Matsonashivili.

What?

Matt Sonashvili.

Michael, that's a crazy last name.

Sarah King, Nikki with no last name.

Wyatt Lopez, Vivek, Dan Dakar, Jada Brown, Janelle with no last name.

Rachel Fleming, Michael Janair, Agenera, what?

Dr.

Alfred Moore Jr.

Good for you, Dr.

Alfred.

Hey.

Amy with no last name.

J.D.

Pye, S-K-M-F, Sarah F., Hanu Havisto,

Lindsey Cartz, Lisa Dutzman,

Tacey, not Tracy, Tacey with no last name.

F.

Cuff, Miranda with no last name.

Leo Bryan, Rory Carth, Clever Girl JP, Sherry with no last name, or Cherry, Kelly with no last name, Kimberly S.

Cammy Smith, Corey Aldridge, Kelly with no last name, SDK, Kelly Caudle, Kevin McAndrew, Sasha with no last name, Stacey Rebman, Kathy Phipps, Heitch with no last name, Terrace Weber, ATF special agent, Gay bitches.

Okay.

Gay bitches, James.

Yes, I think

bitches.

I think I gleaned that from you.

I don't understand that.

I don't get it either.

Lucian's Aloevera, Will Nasso, Maggie Salem, Jenny Cook, Courtney Ploucha, Crystal McGill.

They fucking wanted it.

Monica Rosen, Jen Arnaut, Ashley Rose, Nikki Enix,

Heather Allen, Harris Potts.

What, Ashley Rose?

Yeah.

Arnott.

R2.

Arnaught.

Okay.

Just arguing.

Ah, Harris Potts, David Michael, Ellen Whaler, S.

Clark, Lizzie MC, Matt, Matthew Hattersley, Eric Selivore, Salova, Rebecca O'Connor, Shanna R., Michael Peck, The Pecker, Princhilla, Tiffany.

It's the Pecker.

Michael Peck.

The Pecker.

Tiffany Ice, Misty Johnson, Sarah Emperado, Matthew Johnston,

Kevin Brown, Marianne D'Antonio, Scout Master Denny, obviously, Jesse Piper, Heather McGuera.

You know these people.

Hope Gatto, Chris Oliver, Elise Palmer, Rachel Chiramatero.

What is this?

Everyone.

Chiramatero.

Wow, nice.

That sounds longer than that.

Paul Lopez, Carissa Comer, Connie, obviously, with no last name.

Brad, you don't even have to give a last name.

You know who they are.

J.

Allen Foster, Jacob Kennedy, Douglas Post, Jamie Anderson, Stephen Brayley, Sam Cook, obviously.

Tara C, Samantha McCormick, Lisa Howard, Melissa Karash, Maximillian, Sam Craman, Megan Stroud, Darnell Cox, Jamie Kakach, Karen with a Y, Kevin with no last name, Kat Meow, Cameron Rance, Echo Lamb, Amanda Smith, Sarah Harris, where about Claire Elliott?

Thank you guys so much.

Thank you so much, everybody.

You're wonderful sons of bitches.

Honestly, thank you for what you do for us.

And by the way, we're still working on the ad-free option.

So give us another minute on that.

We're figuring it out.

Do that.

You want to follow us on social media?

Very easy to do that.

Shut up up and give me murder.com.

Drop down menus.

Take you anywhere you want to go.

Keep coming back and seeing us.

And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

Bye.

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