Real Life Murder Songs - Farmville, Virginia

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

Yay, Cho, Cho.

Oh, yay, indeed, Jimmy.

Yay, indeed.

My name is James Petrogallo.

I'm here with my co-host.

Yeah, I'm Jimmy Wisman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another wild, crazy episode of Small Town Murder Express.

10 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag, as it's known around these parts.

Lots of crazy stuff today.

Somebody that we can all hate together, which is fun.

I love when it's just, there's not a person alive who can go, yeah, that person's okay.

That's great.

That's what we have for you today.

A lot of fun.

And stick around for the end of the show as we'll explain.

We have moved networks.

Not a big deal.

Really affects very little with the show.

The shows are exactly the same.

A long show on one day and Express the other day.

Twice a week.

I could have done two shows a day.

That's it.

So we'll explain everything later, but basically, it's just no more early access.

They used to come out a week early if you paid the thing and Wondery Plus and all that.

We're not on Wondery anymore.

That's why we can't have that.

So we're not doing the early access.

Everyone gets them at the same time, which we really enjoy.

It's so good.

It sucks.

It's a community.

It sucks when some of the audience was like, hey, no

spoiler alerts.

I don't have early access.

And it's like, no, let's just all get them at the same time.

We are working on an ad-free option as well.

I know a lot of people love the ad-free option.

We are working on that.

We're trying to work something out so we can have an ad-free option.

We'll talk about it more at the end of the show.

But quickly, before we get to that, definitely head over to shutupandgivemeurder.com.

Tickets for live shows.

They start back in September.

Grand Rapids and Madison.

I think those are about sold out, though.

I think Irvine has some tickets left.

Seattle's got some tickets left.

Portland's sold out and then DC Philly get your tickets for those because they're going fast too so yes get in there we can't wait shut up and give me murder.com also patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of your bonus material and by the way crime in sports is the name of our other show that you should be listening to along with your stupid opinions as well you should listen to that so anyway patreon.com slash crimeinsports anybody five dollars a month or above you are going to get a whole lot of stuff hundreds and hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard heard before immediately upon subscription, binge away, and then new ones every other week.

One crime in sports, one small town murder.

This week, for crime and sports, we're going to talk about this really weird league that plays 1864 baseball rules

with the wool and the skinny bat.

It's the weirdest thing in the world.

We'll talk about that.

And then for small town murder, we are going to talk about this Sherry Papini documentary

where she says now she's telling the truth.

And it is crazy.

We're going to talk about that.

Can't wait for that.

that patreon.com slash crime in sports that said and you get a shout out at the end of the show as well i think at the end of the regular show i think it's time everybody to sit back what do you say let's all clear the lungs arms to the sky let's all shout

shut up

and give me

murder

Let's do this, everybody.

Here we go.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

We're going to Virginia this week.

We are going to Farmville, Virginia, which when we're talking about small-town murder, a town called Farmville,

that's about

the app game.

Yep, on brand as it gets right there.

Yeah.

Is the town named after the game or the other way around?

We'll find out.

We will find out.

This is in Central Richard.

It exists.

I know.

It's hilarious.

I'm like, Farmville, is this real?

Way to hear who's from there, too.

A couple of people you wouldn't expect.

An hour and 15 minutes to Richmond one way.

About two hours to Durham, North Carolina, the other way.

And then it's about three hours to Parisburg, Virginia, which was our last Virginia episode.

Episode 555, Murder on the Trail.

That was the AT killer, the Appalachian Trail killer, and

El Randall.

What a weird.

Lion Randall.

That guy was wild.

This is in both Prince Edward and Cumberland counties.

Sure.

Area code 434.

Population 7,266.

So not a lot of of folks in Farmville.

It's a pretty rural area.

A lot of people played the game, that's for sure.

Definitely.

Median household income here, awfully low.

It's about half the national average, $35,690.

That's not great.

And then median home cost is pretty low as well, $214,000.

Not low enough.

Not low enough if you're making $35,000 for the whole house.

That's tough.

The motto of this town is just, quote, the heart of Virginia.

Sure is.

And it kind of is in the middle of Virginia.

It's in central.

They're being both literal and figurative on that one.

History of this town.

Farmville was founded eight years ago after the app gate.

No, I'm just kidding.

Can you imagine?

That was the truth.

No.

Farmville.

We're in Mafia Wars, New York.

You know how it goes.

What's the one that LeBron James is always pushing lately?

The kingdom of

the Royal Clash or some shit.

I don't know.

I I have a crossword game that it always pops up on, and I'm like, damn it, go away.

I don't know how these app games are making so much money they can pay for.

They hire everybody.

Everybody.

That game has everybody.

They have Jimmy Fallon playing like eight characters on one of them.

Like, dude, he had to be there for like two days.

That's a bunch of costume changes.

Like, what do you, how are you paying Jimmy Fallon?

That was funny.

That was a whole weekend that that guy did to fucking advertise your stupid candy.

Go back to the tonight show after that.

So Farmville was formed in 1798, but wasn't incorporated until 1912.

So, you know, they needed about 115 years to think about it just to make sure they wanted this to be real.

There was, it started out with coal mining.

John Flournoy was the first to mine coal near Farmville.

He started in 1833 working on a seam, which was two feet thick, just pulling coal out of it.

In 1837,

they granted a charter to the Prince Edward Coal Mining Company to mine and sell coal.

They lasted until about the 1880s, that company.

Another coal pit in the 1880s was worked

at another property.

The coal from this small pit was used to fuel a blacksmith shop that this guy had so that, yeah, he

basically was like a subsistence coal farmer or coal miner, not a farmer, really.

You don't grow coal.

Coal farmer.

Coal farmer, you know.

Coal crops are coming in good this year.

They got that deep black to it this year.

That's how you like it right there.

Fertilize the coal crop.

Yeah.

They come in a little too gray, a little too light.

It ain't no good.

But that shows it got proper water over the winter if it's a nice shiny black color.

We got a plane coming in the morning to dust the coal crop.

Famous people from here.

We have Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad.

Writer-creator of Breaking Bad.

Vince Gilligan?

Gilligan is his name.

Little Buddy.

Little Buddy himself.

Like second Vince Gill.

Yeah.

Vince Gill.

Also, also from here.

Again, also from here.

Lady of Rage.

Rocking.

Is that right?

She rushed.

She's rapped with us.

And she's in Farmville, Virginia.

That lady?

That lady.

She's from.

Apparently not.

Apparently, she's a farmer.

That's so funny.

And Joseph E.

Johnston, Confederate general during the American Civil War as well.

That's more expected.

Reviews of this town.

Here's five stars.

Okay.

I love it in Farmville.

It's a great place to live once a person retires.

That's very specific.

The people in this town are so loving and polite.

The town of Farmville,

the town of Farmville have a few good historical places you can attend to learn about history of that town.

In Farmville, they even have a college you can also attend called Longwood College.

Yeah.

Think about it.

This is a college town.

There's still only 7,000 people here.

Right.

That's That's wild.

I myself thought about attending there as well.

It's plenty of place you can choose to eat as well.

They have a Walmart, a food line, an Arby's, Burger King, Huddle House, Granny Bee's, Apple Bee's, you know,

the grandson of Granny Bee's,

KFC, Double Bees,

Pizza Hut, Chick-fil-A, Frosty Frog.

Oh, they got a Frosty Frog.

Frosty Frog.

A Dairy Queen and more.

Oh, my God.

Then they go on to name pawn shops, faxing places, literally like every business in town.

They're reading the phone book to us?

We get it.

There's business.

We get it.

You guys have commerce.

Enjoy.

Five stars here.

The employees were very polite and welcoming to the restaurant.

They provided cups and plates for my meal.

Five stars.

God.

I mean, they didn't just slop it on the table and tell you to eat it with your hands.

Eat it with your hands and get the goddamn hell out of here, okay?

That's what they said to me.

That's just a restaurant.

That's not the town, so I don't get it.

And then finally, one star.

This person is right to the point.

Everyone around here is lazy and sucks at their job.

No cups or plates for that guy.

I love when people describe anything as sucks.

Sucks.

They're out of synonyms.

They don't even know that.

It's so funny.

They're so exhausted.

No descriptors whatsoever.

Sucks.

Just sucks.

You can see that our restaurants in town compared to other towns get way worse reviews.

The people just don't care.

It's a town of zombies that America has left to die.

Oh, 7,000 zombies over there.

Left

left to die.

Things to do here.

Oh, baby.

The Heart of Virginia Festival

celebrates the arts, music, food, and our community.

Before you, listen to this.

Before you come to the festival,

we want to make sure you you have all the information to make your visit one where you will want to come back.

What a weird way to put that.

Strange, strange.

They have bands here.

Zombies talk, Jerry.

That's true.

That's some lazy zombie talk right there.

Under the,

they have the Heart of Virginia Community Band we'll be playing.

Sure.

which they prepared to perform here under the direction of David Ganzert.

The band performs several show tunes, traditional songs, and patriotic pieces.

Oh, boy.

Great.

A community band singing fucking, doing stars and stripes forever makes me want to blow my brains out.

Put your patriotic piece back in your pants.

Well, listen to this, too.

It's comprised of local musicians who gather to play, enjoy music, and provide concerts at community events.

Musicians with all levels of experience are encouraged to join.

No?

Of course.

And then

here's some bands from a couple years ago because they don't have their upcoming schedule.

So this is from 2022.

They had Jordan Cooper.

Yeah.

Sounds country to me.

Sure.

DJ Playdat.

Is that a jukebox or like just a fucking

John Schenk?

That sounds like a rock star.

Let's see.

The Travis Ray Re-band, R-E-I-G-H.

Ray.

What?

That's a terrible name.

Change it.

I hate it.

Good lord.

With special guest Rebecca Moreland.

Oh, well, now I'm in.

I wasn't in before, but now I know she's going to be there.

Starfire Live, The Righteous Roots.

Yeah.

And then, what is it?

Oh, they got karaoke also you can go to.

So there you go.

That said, let's get to some murder here.

There's not going a lot going on in this town.

So let's talk about some murder.

Here we go.

We're going to do, we're going to be in 2009 for this one here.

So

not too much different than now, honestly.

Not a lot has changed in 15 years when it comes to.

I mean, if a car is still being manufactured, it's just in a different iteration.

Yeah, it's a little more rounded now.

It looks a little different.

It looks a little different.

Social.

This is a transition period for social media, and that's only important because of the story involved has to do with that

partially.

So this was a time when

people were just joining Facebook at the time.

Right.

You know what I mean?

And like Twitter was still like a very like a tech nerd thing.

I think it just came out.

Instagram wasn't even around yet.

So this is this is the very end of MySpace.

This is the last gasp of MySpace.

Timberlake bought it.

No, no,

that was long after.

That was after.

After that?

Oh, that was after it was dead, buried, and gone already.

This is when it was still

hanging on before Facebook completely buried it.

And then obviously Twitter and Instagram piled on, did a dance, and peed peed on the corpse of Myspace.

Peed on Justin Denver Lake's wallet.

Just pissed all over it, man.

Good purchase, Justin.

That's great.

Yeah.

That's good.

I'm going to purchase the rights to the Ford Edsel next year.

That's what I'm going to do.

I think it's due for a comeback.

I really do.

I know that didn't work out in the 50s, but I think I can make it happen now.

So 2009, this is.

Let's talk about a man first, Mark Niederbrock.

Mark Niederbrock, born March 20th, 1959.

He's 50 years old here in 2009.

He's born in Benton, Illinois.

He is raised in a nice family.

He's the son of Jan and David Niederbrock.

He was an Eagle Scout.

Oh.

Did everything right.

He liked photography a lot, which normally I'm suspicious of.

I'm suspicious of men who like to take pictures.

I'm just suspicious.

There's a sexual component to it always.

I don't care if they're taking a picture of a tree, they want to fuck that tree.

There's something weird about it.

I don't know what it is, but if women are taking pictures, fine.

If men are taking pictures, I'm like, you creepy fuck.

You creepy fuck.

You're just trying to lure women in to take pictures of them.

So he went to study photography at the University of Illinois.

So he actually went to study it and he's actually interested in the science of it and everything.

Later, though, he ends up wanting to be a minister

and earned a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia.

Sure.

Which I don't know what that means.

That's probably not accredited.

I mean, it's probably fine to preach, but it's probably about the same as if someone signed you are a preacher now on the back of a Denny's placemat as far as, I don't know, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I don't know what preaching schools have for

me.

Oh, you went to Union Theological?

Oh, you're horseshit.

Like, does that happen?

Yeah, that's...

Oh, he went to Union Theological.

This guy knows his stuff.

Like, I don't know how that works.

So in 2003, he began serving as the pastor of Walker's Presbyterian Church in Hicksburg, which is in Appomattox County.

Known as a real nice guy and a real approachable guy.

Yeah.

Easy to dole out advice and to kind of

a

if you got a problem, he's a guy you can go to and expect a soft touch, basically, everybody said.

He's not one of these guys that's like, well, that's because you're a moron or anything like that.

He's like, well, well, let's, you know, let's pray about it.

Which is, you know, what you would want out of a guy in that position, I would hope, you know, rather than just telling you how you've wronged the Bible and how you're going to be going to hell if you don't fix it.

So they remembered him as not only a spiritual leader, but as a good guy and a nice guy and a friend and liked to tell stories.

And everyone said he was the exact guy you want leading a small congregation.

This is like a 50-member church, too.

This is a very small.

Tiny.

Yeah.

That is a tiny-ass church.

I mean, that's.

You're not even making any money.

No, that's like

the guy from the Julia Roberts movies in fucking in Gemstones there,

who shot Chad.

That guy.

He had like a church like that, like 50 people.

Little tiny thing.

You can picture it.

So he's the pastor there.

Now he's married.

He has a wife named Dr.

Deborah Kelly.

Oh.

Yes.

She is born September 28th, 1955, making her about 53 in this time, 54 years old.

She's born in Richmond, Virginia.

Her parents are Tom and Margaret Kelly, and she is all about academia, mentorship, that kind of shit here.

She'll end up being an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice studies at Longwood University.

Wow.

So that's what she does here.

Talks about shit that we talk about a lot.

She'd probably be a fan of the show, maybe.

Or hate our guts.

One of the two.

One of the two.

It would never be right up the middle.

No, no.

Hell yeah, or fuck nothing.

Fuck them.

That's kind of the reaction we get.

Hey, I love those guys.

Oh, I hate those guys.

There's really no in-between.

It's really odd.

We are podcast Raiders.

We're podcast grapefruit, essentially.

That's what we are.

You never know.

Yeah.

So

they have a daughter named Emma, who is 16 years old in 2009.

Emma Kelly Niederbrock.

Now, Emma, she's an interesting young lady here.

She's a real dichotomy of personality,

which a lot of kids are.

And

I find it normal when kids like very disparate things.

You know what I mean?

That's kind of how kids are.

Sure.

They can be into this, they can be into that.

Adults, they get more, you know, honed in a, you know,

to a certain thing that they like.

So she is homeschooled since middle school.

So that she's a homeschool kid.

She's real creative.

She does like fashion design that she's into.

She wants to do that.

She also wants to do like hair stuff.

She's very into music and very into online communities, which you would be if you're homeschooled since middle school because you need.

And young, yeah.

And young, that's the only way you could really get some social, you know, engagement.

So

she is equally kind of like a typical, like, a typical high school girl and then also she's rebellious at the same time so it's which is yeah the same sort of typical um like she's real into like horror core rap which we'll talk about yeah she's real into shit like that but she also really liked the backstreet boys and played soccer Okay.

You know what I'm saying?

So she's like a chick who's like drawing like horses on her trapper keeper, but the horses are like smoking joints.

You know what I mean?

Like that's the kind of girl she is, which is cool.

She's, I mean, you know, got different interests.

She's got, yeah, she's got different, not just different interests, different, she might have different friends, too, you know, like

different groups.

Yeah.

She does.

She goes by her screen name of Ragdoll on all the online places she is.

MySpace is where she's real big.

Okay.

And a lot of the, because this is, like I said, if she's, you know, 16 years old at the time.

Yeah.

You know, she's been doing MySpace for a few years now.

It takes them a while to get out of that and into something else.

So cool, those kids got

so lucky.

Like, they got to code.

Like, you know what I mean?

That generation got to code their own website.

That motherfucker was the most stress-inducing website as a fucking late teens, early 20 guy.

That's what we did.

We didn't have to do that.

That's what was great about it.

We just went to school.

No, no, no.

I meant when we were kids.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We were teenagers.

We didn't have to do that.

We just, it wasn't, didn't exist.

You just hung out or you didn't.

That was it.

Now, we, of course, did it later on, but that's because we're morons.

So,

Because we wanted to fit in.

Yeah.

So her Emma's parents, Mark and Deborah, Dr.

Debbie here,

and Pastor Mark, or I guess whatever you call him here, Minister Mark and Dr.

Debbie.

Mr.

Mark, yeah.

Deborah,

they get divorced a little bit like they get divorced kind of at the end of 2008.

So it's interesting, though.

They're very kind of like educated, mature people.

So when they get divorced, they don't like fight and like, you know, throw poop at each other's houses and stuff like that.

They like,

they make a plan to co-parent and to do things together with the kids still that they, you know, they act like adults with their, where their child matters, which is nice.

Really good.

And they have a very cooperative relationship.

Everybody seems to be getting along here, which is terrific.

Enter into this also Emma's friend Melanie.

Melanie Grace Wells is her name.

Melanie Wells.

She's 18 years old, so a couple years older than Emma is, and she's staying with Emma in this time in 2009.

They're staying.

She's from West Virginia, Melanie Wells.

Her family had moved to West Virginia from Louisville, Kentucky, just before she was going to go into high school.

Melanie ended up dropping out and was trying to get her GED at this point.

Okay.

She had gone to Muscleman High School, and she was now staying with Emma and Emma's mother.

Again, real into music,

just like Emma is.

Particularly likes heavy metal and horrorcore rapist as well.

So that's kind of how they get together.

She's a real nice kid.

Now,

her appearance looks like real kind of, you know, like kids who are into weird music.

You know what I'm saying?

Like gothy-looking appearance, kind of.

Sure.

But she's a real nice kid, as a lot of those kids often are.

That's just kind of a

so they can have a personality, you know what I mean?

Yeah, their identity seems very welcoming and friendly.

Absolutely.

One friend said people assume she's a bad person because of how she looked, but she's actually an amazing person in general.

So that's how she gets it.

Now, Emma meets a boyfriend on MySpace.

Yeah.

The best place to find young love, obviously.

So she, under her ragdoll persona,

Emma, wrote several messages to a young man that she met here that we'll talk about.

What brought them together was horrorcore rap music.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

Horrorcore rap.

Now they have an online romance all throughout like late 2008, early 2009.

Yeah.

So they're going out online for a year and they haven't met each other yet.

Emma and Emma and this young man.

And they're an item.

They are another together.

Yeah.

They got a MySpace status.

It's in a relationship.

With this person.

Yeah, for sure.

Tagged, you bet.

And the person she is having this relationship with is Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III.

My Christ.

They are proud lineage.

He is a horrorcore rapper.

Oh, he's an actual rapper.

Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III.

Yeah.

He is a short, chubby ginger kid who horrorcore raps.

He's a hatchet boy.

Yep.

He goes by Sammy because Dick isn't the name you're picking.

Yeah.

He's born December 26th, 1988.

So he's about 20.

He's four years older than Emma is, which 20 and 16,

no thanks.

That much, yeah.

I don't like that.

19, 16?

Is she a junior?

He just graduated.

We might be able to make that work.

20?

You're in a different decade now.

Fuck off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're not doing that.

I had a friend 16 dating a 21-year-old kid.

That's fucking weird, man.

I knew a girl who was 15 who was dating a 22-year-old in high school.

And the 22, and her parents were fine with it.

Yeah.

Because he had like, came from a bad background.

So like, he's, you know, he didn't mature as much.

I was like, he's 22.

He's humping your fucking 15-year-old.

I don't give a shit.

He's going to mature.

That's horrifying.

Yeah.

Fuck that.

Now, Sammy here goes by.

He is a horrorcore rapper, goes by the handle of Psycho Sam, S-Y-K-O, Psycho.

Sam.

Psycho Sam.

Now, we'll talk a little bit about the music too here.

He is originally, or he's comes out to visit her from Castro County, California, or Castro Valley, California.

A little bit about his background.

He has an older sister named Sarah.

And he was an average student, had some friends, you know, and that sort of thing.

His mother said he took karate lessons, enjoyed jogging, and watched horror movies with his family and never got detention in school.

Oh, so

all's fine, apparently.

Yeah, that's it.

He took karate and never got detention.

I don't know what the problem is here.

So

she, the mother, his mother was so protective of her son.

This is not, this is too much, by the way, for your kids' development here.

She worked as a teacher's aide from his kindergarten through his third grade years.

So she could be in the class to look over him the whole time, which is

the point of school is to send them away from you into another environment, and they learn how to do that.

If you're there,

if you're there the whole time,

it doesn't do anything.

Yeah, they're too attached emotionally.

In 10th grade, he started an independent study program, mostly working at home, and just got a GED.

So he just dropped out and got a GED.

Now, his sister, Sarah, said, quote, we weren't a leave-it-to-beaver type of family.

We each had our own space and did our own thing.

That's the main vibe I'm getting off of their family is there doesn't seem to be anything real bad going on.

Nobody's like coming home drunk and beating the shit out of everybody, but

they're not close at all.

They just seem to get home and go to their separate corners of the house and not really interact as a family.

Okay.

Which happens.

You know what I mean?

So

she said that she in high school, her and Sam were both teased and picked on because they were both overweight and had ginger hair, as she put it.

That's her term.

Redheads, overweight redheads.

That's a tough one for school.

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She said it broke our confidence and we grew up with a lot of insecurities.

I always fought back, but Sammy was way too passive.

He didn't say anything.

He just took it.

Horror core rapper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I guess there's probably some sort of

rage built up inside.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's the stereotypical fat ginger nickname?

You know what I mean?

I don't know.

There's got to be one.

There is none.

There has to be.

I mean, I don't know.

There's something.

Hey, Fat Wendy.

I don't know what you'd call these people.

I don't know.

I don't know what.

There's not a specific name for that.

So

his sister described him as quiet and insecure individual.

He often got bullied, and that's what led him to dropping out of high school, the sister said.

He dropped out because he got bullied all the time.

And then rap about fantasies of chopping up your fucking

classmates.

Later on, yeah, that's going to come in.

So they both drop out of Tennyson High in Hayward, California.

Then they went to Hayward High and dropped out again.

Hey.

Hey, word.

Perfect.

Dropping out.

Goodbye.

She said, we both fell into the wrong crowd, but high school was just uncomfortable for Sammy.

He was just unhappy.

He couldn't do it.

She said he spent much of his time in his bedroom, which was decorated with like basically Friday the 13th hockey masks he had all over the place.

Yeah, shit like that.

And he would do web design and he liked to do music production, like to make beats and shit like that.

So their neighbors here, the McCrosky family neighbors said, quote, they never noticed anything troubling about him, his parents or his older sister.

They said he appeared to be a loner, always wore a black hoodie, basically.

Just had a black hoodie on and was kind of doing his thing.

Which, by the way, is not the best.

It's not the best color if you're super pale and ginger and you wear black all the time you just look redder and paler at that point yeah

work on your color schemes green i hear works for them a lot the irish they wear green don't do that works for them holy a lot of times matches are i think the supercon thing is not good either that's better than fucking is it

I don't know what is going on here.

Is that Matrix guy?

Who knows?

Who knows?

His dad is a construction worker who plays guitar in a band called SNM.

What is going on with

his family?

His sister, Sarah, is a drummer who played in a heavy metal band.

Yeah.

So they like music.

We don't have the name of that, but we do have

SM.

Sarah said that he was very good at making music and he would spend endless hours in his room doing music shit.

She said it was our way of escaping reality and finding a way to cope and relax.

Yeah, that's what music's supposed to be.

Now,

his whole thing, Psycho Sam is is his alter ego here, and he speaks of the typical horror core rap shit, death, mutilation, killings.

Now, horror core rap, by the way, you go, what the fuck is that?

Okay.

I don't, the best way I can describe it, to me, the, the, well, I would say the best of the genre would be gravediggers, I think.

They're the

best.

They're the best.

I guess you could

lop hops in in there.

I guess, yeah.

Brother Lynch was kind of like that too.

But to me, like, Gravediggers was the most like,

that was like the first, too, in my mind.

They came out in 95.

I mean, that was.

Yeah.

And that was

suicide and

Diary of a Met.

Yeah, that's, yeah.

Whereas this was like Graveyard Chamber was the name of a song.

You know, Two Cups of Blood is the name of a song of Grave Digger.

36 Mafia might be that, too.

I don't know.

Like, they tried to, like, in a lot of articles, they tried to put the ghetto boys into that.

And I'm like, that's not that's not that.

They literally tried to lump ghetto boys because they had, like, one song that was.

And it wasn't even Mind's Playing Tricks on Me.

It was something else.

So,

but, I mean, I guess after they kind of did their own things when Ghostface, or when Scarface was doing his own thing, and Bushwick Bill, when he was doing his own thing, he was kind of that, though.

He had like a Phantom of the Opera album that was weird.

It wasn't as to the point as Gravediggers, though.

I mean, Gravediggers was two cups of blood, fucking tripping,

suicide, diary of a madman, shoot my fucking arm off and made an escape.

Yeah, but this was.

It was like Mafia had a song about being buried alive.

Yeah, but this was like I'm being trapped in a.

Have you heard gravediggers?

Not recently.

I don't know any of their lyrics.

That's fine.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

It's way.

Yeah.

It's exactly this genre of what it's kind of supposed to be.

There's no songs on the thing about just hanging out with your friends or like, you know, you're.

Yeah.

You met a girl.

There's no songs like that it's all about

no blowjob betty

be the bushwick dutch master rapper i love black women and i hate fucking crackers that's the that's the most

that's a that's a great fucking line that's the most non like horror-ish line in the whole album that's just a guy talking some i mean i guess there's probably a lot of horrorcore rappers that we don't even know oh i'm sure so because they suck so yeah right because it's sound cloud yeah it's stupid nobody gives a shit gravediggers is fucking awesome that shit is great.

That shit's so good.

It's Rizza.

I mean, it's fucking

Rizza made all the beats, and it's his shit, and he's rapping on it.

So anyway, in his stuff, he's just, he hasn't been rapping that long.

He started rapping in like 2008, for Christ's sake here.

So his sister said here, quote, much of horrorcore rap is

taking you through the mind of a killer and their point of view.

Psycho Sam was just a stage name.

It wasn't his alter ego.

And she said also he wasn't obsessed because some people said he was obsessed with serial killers, especially David Berkowitz.

Really?

But she said, No, he wasn't at all.

That's ridiculous.

On his MySpace page, he posed with a

he had like a skull with a bandana covering his face, trying to look tough and shit like that.

He's got certain lyrics.

Oh, yeah.

Here's some lyrics of his,

and I'm going to read them

in a Shakespearean way.

Amazing shit.

This is from the track entitled My Dark Side

by Psycho Sam.

All right.

You're not the first, just to let you know.

I've killed many people and I kill them real slow.

Oh, boy.

It's the best feeling, watching their last breath, stabbing and stabbing till there's nothing left.

And that's a lyric from that.

He's good.

Oh, he's got the gift.

He really does.

Next up is a song entitled, I Kill People for Real.

We have like a good chunk of lyrics here.

So here we go.

Night I was the murderous rage, but now I got to get rid of the bodies before the corpses start to

something.

I can't read what that is.

Get, I don't know.

Get a bout welcome to my dark side.

Yeah, the other side.

That's side through my dark side, the dark side, yeah, the dark side, the place you die.

Where's that?

The dark side.

The dark side.

The evil voices, they're in my head.

They want to see me kill.

They want to see me dead.

Yeah.

Call me a demon, or call me the ice.

The I see.

I don't know what that is.

I am here to take your life, and I'll take it twice.

Kill you once.

I'll bring you back to life.

As I'm better to do it again, for another sacrifice, questions.

What the fuck?

Possibly even thrice.

Burn to the ground, burn to the ground.

Let's all burn the churches to the ground.

No boy.

Burn it to the ground, burn it to the ground.

The ground.

Let's burn all the churches to the ground.

The ground.

We kill, we die.

It's true.

Sick minds, we think alike.

We kill.

On the dark side.

On the dark side.

Oh, yeah.

really the john cafferty that's what this guy

yeah that's a john cafferty it's it's john cafferty's the beaver brown band for christ's sake and

eddie and the cruisers eddie and the cruisers exactly the soundtrack

and they also the one of the things is a little gravediggers ish to me as well here yeah yeah where i i can see where he's going which he's he's trying to be like a gravedigger-esque type of thing but those guys were way better than him is the the difference.

So, I mean, yeah, and you know, that whole genre is as interesting as it can be because you can be like dark and

I don't know,

it's very easy, it's just emo rap.

That kind of gravediggers is not like that at all.

It's

aggressive and it's funny, too.

Like, suicide's fucking hilarious.

It's a funny song, it's all about different crazy ways to kill yourself.

All right, the one kid wants to kill himself because, what is it?

He's fucking thinks he's adopted or whatever because mom and dad are white and you're dark as ink.

They say maybe you're Sicilian, but you hate lasagna and the pizza man.

So you're upset at your parents.

So you want to kill yourself.

So all these different scenarios.

It's fucking hilarious.

It's so funny.

I mean, that's kind of what ICP was trying to do until they started like feuding with people and then it was stupid.

But they're like, I don't know.

They were trying to be funny.

But then they dressed dumb, too.

That's the thing.

Can't you just do that with with just your face, man?

Yeah.

If you look at the cover of the Gravediggers album, they look terrifying.

They look like you'd be terrified.

Whereas I'm not scared of ICP at all.

They look ridiculous.

I don't want to keep my kids from them, but I'm not going to be able to.

I definitely shield my children from them, but I'm not physically scared of them, even though they're both gigantic lunatics.

One of them is just a big fat dork, but the other one's the scary one because that guy's actually clinically insane.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You want to stay away from that one.

So, other tracks on his page here, on his MySpace page, included Sick in the Brain.

It's not a Cypress Hill

takeoff at a shrimp shore.

I hate this world.

And Up in Flames.

Okay.

On his website, he posted videos and pictures of a grave where a cross and miniature American flags had been turned upside down.

This is, by the way, a dead Marine's grave that he's defiling.

He really did it?

He said, we defiled the grave and then lightning struck seconds ago.

I think we were being warned, and he's laughing in the video saying that.

Dude, what the fuck?

He's just trying to be a jackass on social media.

He's just trying to, yeah.

He's pioneering the social media jackass

phase of our fucking social development.

He's starting

Instagram trolling.

Yep, that's MySpace trolling is what he was doing.

Oh, he'd be

wonderful on Twitter, boy.

I'm sure he would love that shit for the next 10 years.

So, spring of 2009, his parents broke up.

Apparently, this Sam really devastated Sam, even though he's 20 years old and really shouldn't really matter that much to him.

But I guess his father asked the mother to move out,

which is different.

You don't hear that very often.

So

September 7th, 2009.

Okay.

On MySpace here, Emma.

is posting on MySpace how excited she is for Sam to come visit her at her house in Virginia.

He is planning a trip to Virginia to see his online girlfriend here.

So she said, the next time you check your MySpace, you'll be at my house in all caps.

Oh, yeah, that's cute.

And then she also wrote, she was basically had a countdown of the days until he got there

going.

And she said, you are my one and only everything.

Also,

very hardcore of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

there is, there's romance in everything.

I mean,

every genre, man.

It's just funny.

September 12th, 2009.

He is, He came to visit them.

He landed in Virginia.

They all end up in Michigan on September 12th.

This is Emma, Melanie, her friend from West Virginia, and Dr.

Deborah here

are all take and Sam.

They're all going up to, Dr.

Deborah's driving them all up to Southgate, Michigan to go to the Strictly for the Wicked Horror Core Music Festival.

Fucking ICP.

Which I'm sure mom just loved.

I'm sure she had a great time all day at that place.

Just really had a good time.

Although, if she's into psychology and like criminal stuff like that, that might be a good place to

check in, honestly.

I mean, yeah,

she could probably get a lot of work.

Yeah, she can get a little bit of work there in the background.

So, yeah, this was outside of Detroit here, Southgate, Michigan.

Now, there's a guy named Andres Schrimm, and he owns an independent horrorcore music label, a little record label, named Serial Killin' Records.

Right.

In New Mexico, where all the good horror core, where all the good rap comes from, obviously.

So he performs under the name Sictanic.

Right.

Okay.

And basically

he saw Sam, Melanie, and Emma all on September 12th at this festival.

I think he's like one of the main people of the festival, like help putting it on and shit.

Now, serial killing records

here.

The labels roster includes such stalwart artists as Rozikal,

Stitchmouth.

We all know old Stitchmouth there.

Comatose with a K.

Yeah, obviously.

Concrete.

Two clips.

With a Z, of course.

And Bloodshot.

I've heard of Comatose.

That's crazy.

Okay, interesting.

So this is the

SKR, the Serial Killer Records, was the organizer of the Strictly for the Wicked Festival here.

And

Shrim, the guy who runs it, said that he said, these people aren't violent people.

It's all about the music.

Yeah, we're just saying things.

Yeah, he said, you look at the music we do, and it's kind of harsh and somewhat brutal at times, but there's a different side of life that people aren't normally accustomed to.

And being an artist, I think it's important to see both sides of life.

Yes, for the art of it.

Sure.

Shrim said about

Sam, quote, he was brilliant at web design, graphics, and all that.

I commissioned him to do our website and to do some graphic works for us.

So he did some shit for them.

Now, Melanie was also excited for all of this.

Sure.

Her handle on MySpace is Lil Demon Dog.

Okay.

Lil Demon Dog,

her page makes references to this concert and excitedly says that there was after parties in multiple hotel rooms we were going to and hanging out.

And

she wrote on

show, this is not from this time, from another time, another post.

She wrote, I can't wait to get drunk

with like five Us.

So that's nice.

She also,

she describes herself as an SKR unholy disciple, so a fan of serial killing records.

Yeah, yeah.

There we go.

She also calls herself a believer in Levian Satanism.

Whatever that is.

And Anton Levay is satanic, all that shit.

And she notes also on there that, quote, McDonald's, McDonald's, cigarettes, caffeine, and drugs keep me alive and healthy.

Yeah.

That's the food pyramid you learn about in elementary school.

That's what it is.

McDonald's, cigarettes, caffeine, and drugs.

Well, I mean, really, if I remember correctly, the food pyramid, the base of it was caffeine and drugs, I believe.

And then you built it up from there.

Yeah, McDonald's

at the tip top.

Peeking at the tip top at McDonald's, obviously.

So that's what I thought.

McConnell just really brings it all together.

At such a time in all of our lives when we all did all of that.

When that was, yeah, life.

She lists her interests, and these are very relatable, as blood and gore, open graves, dead people, and animals.

Doesn't say dead animals.

They're live animals, I'm assuming.

And she also says, I'm a sinner and I repent not.

She's got a little online character that she's got there.

She also has a poem that she put on her page here where it's basically a country song,

but not a country song.

It's about fantasy about killing a cheating boyfriend.

Oh, killing.

Yeah.

Quote, you're screaming and bleeding, lying on the floor.

I can't help it.

I'm aching for more gore.

Slowly I make an incision in your main artery.

I feel the blood rush gush all over my body.

It's going deeper and deeper.

Your life is slowly fading.

Your eyes roll back and your body starts shaking.

Well, I'm terrified.

I am.

Wow.

I am terrified.

So horny.

I'll be right over.

Oh, I can't wait to get over there.

Yeah.

Oh, all right then.

So they all head back to Deborah's house, you know, where Emma and Deborah live here.

After the concert, they all go back to Virginia.

And this is at 505 First Avenue in Farmville.

The house is a four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,600 square foot house.

So comfortable, nice, comfortable house.

And I've seen it the yard.

It looks very comfortable.

Built in 1924, by the way.

Wow.

Now, apparently,

okay.

At some point during the festival, Emma was sending text messages.

Now, I don't know if it was to Sam or two other people or wherever the fuck the text messages were going, but apparently Sam was getting upset about it.

I don't know why.

I don't know.

I mean, who knows what goes on in the mind of a young horror core rapper.

So we don't know these things.

So I guess as they got home, he started to become more and more angry and all of that.

Somebody said later on, I think he had a certain expectation about what that relationship with Emma Niederbrock was going to be like after a year on the computer.

Yeah, he thought he'd get in and start plowing away right away, I think is what it is.

He was like, oh, we're just going to be fucking.

I thought it was just going to be a river of jizz, always.

Always.

They said it did not turn out to be what he had imagined it was going to be.

I guess he felt rejected because he thought they were in an exclusive relationship, but I guess seeing her, what she was doing, he thought maybe that she was like talking to other guys or whatever.

Who the fuck knows?

She's 16 years old.

I mean, what are we talking about?

You live in California.

Relax, Chief.

You know?

So Thursday,

September 17th, 2009 comes down.

Okay, so it was all back on the 12th is the concert and all that.

On the 17th here, police are called

after Melanie's mom in West Virginia calls the local police in Farmville to say, hey, it's been days since I've heard from my daughter, from Melanie,

who's staying with these people.

Can you go?

to the house and see if they're around, basically, make sure there's not a carbon monoxide leak or something.

So

they go to the home, and Sam answers the door.

Yeah, hello, officers.

They say hello.

He says, Oh, yeah,

the girls, all of them, Deborah and the two daughters, they all went to the movies.

They were going to see some chick-flick.

I didn't want to see it.

So, I'm here.

They're there.

And I don't know, be home in a couple hours if you want to come back.

So, the cops are like,

Oh, God, they can't wait to see it.

They're seeing Twilight, fucking whatever.

So, yeah, they're seeing that, Craig, because I'm trying to think 2009, what was was that?

I don't even know.

So, yeah, I can't think of it.

So, the investigators are like, okay, sounds good.

We made contact with a person.

He said they're gone.

What else are we supposed to do here?

So, they leave.

Now, Friday, September 18th, 2009, this is the last time Sam is going to

log into his MySpace page.

for a minute here.

And his status, he listed as out of town, and he listed his mood as determined.

Sure.

Okay.

Now, the next day, the Friday, when he's listing his mood as determined,

Melanie's mom in West Virginia still has not heard from her.

Oh.

So she calls the police again and says, Still haven't heard from my daughter.

Can you guys go back again?

Yeah.

So

here is a quote from one of the police spokesmen here: quote, when officers arrived at the house, they noticed a distinct odor

that they recognized as possibly being decaying bodies.

They made entry and observed three bodies on the floor.

Three.

Three.

Three women on the floor, all off in the downstairs bedroom, all of them unrecognizably bludgeoned about the head and face.

Real?

Just can't even recognize them.

Complete mess.

Wow.

Then they get a search warrant because they walk in, see that, go, oh shit, and run out.

Get a search warrant.

They go back in, when they search all around the house, they go to the second floor and in an upstairs bedroom, they find a fourth body.

Oh, no.

And it's a man.

Oh.

And they end up identifying them as Deborah, Melanie, and Emma downstairs.

And Mark is upstairs.

Dad.

Emma's dad.

He's there.

He's dead upstairs.

Also bludgeoned unrecognizably.

Horribly bludgeoned.

So that is, they're like, where the fuck did this guy come from?

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And that's it.

Those are the, that's the only people on the scene are four dead people.

Nobody alive in the house.

No Sam at all.

So the police sergeant said it's a horrific crime.

It's hard to imagine what these people must have gone through.

They said Farmville has very little violent crime.

He said it's a close-knit community and everybody knows everybody.

It's just devastating.

They said, do you have a possible motive why somebody would do this?

And he said, I wish I knew.

That's all he said so they recovered several possible weapons from the home most notably and what turns out to be the murder weapons is a ball peen hammer wow and a wood splitting maul very horror core weapons brutal yeah just terrible those are horrifying middle-ages you know torture weapons those are that's brutal absolutely brutal um and a maul is like a big axe if you don't know so they that's what they found here They were also removed from the home a meat cleaver and a red stained knife, but they don't believe that either of those were used in the killings because

there's no knife wounds to these bodies.

It's just bludgeon.

They've just been bludgeoned.

So

the next day, Saturday, September 19th, 2009, obviously they'd like to talk to Sam.

Yeah, Sammy, what's going on?

But they don't really know that Sam is in existence at this point.

The cops that show up and find dead people, they knew they talked to a kid there the day before, but they didn't know what, you know, he might have just been house sitting.

They have no idea what the hell his connection was.

So turns out, also, Mark's 2000 Honda car is missing as well.

Okay.

So they figure out that Sam took off in the car.

Okay.

And a sheriff's deputy,

after he, this is wild, he crashes the car.

He crashes.

He had to crash that Honda for a pulp fiction reference here.

So a sheriff's deputy encounters him, has no idea about any of this shit, issues him a summons for driving without a license and sends him on his merry way.

What?

Absolutely.

They have not

put a, oh,

wow.

They don't know they're looking for him yet.

And this is the day after the bodies are found.

So

he,

yeah, that's that.

So they, and the sheriff's sergeant who talked to him said that they didn't think much of someone else, someone driving someone else's vehicle because it's a college town.

Most of these kids have parents' car.

Somebody else's car.

So it's very normal to find a 20-year-old kid in a car not registered to him.

It's just real normal.

As long as it's not reported stolen, it's fine.

It's fine.

But they towed the car because he didn't have a license.

Now, the tow truck driver dropped Sam off at a nearby gas station.

and said that he wasn't acting strangely.

He said, I just asked him where he was from and all, and he said he was from California.

I said, what in in the world are you doing down here?

Great question.

In the middle of fucking nowhere.

He's, I'm looking for fucking Lady of Rage.

Do you know where she is?

I'd like her on my next album.

No, he said,

trying to get a feature.

Trying to get something in, yeah.

A duet with Afro puffs would be nice for me, I think.

He said, my girlfriend lives down here.

And so at that point, the tow truck driver said he could see what appeared to be hickeys all over.

His neck.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're suckers around here.

And he asked, he said, Jesus, what happened to your neck?

Yeah.

And he said, my girlfriend did that.

And they both chuckled.

You know,

yeah, teenage love.

He immediately put a Bob Seeger song on the fucking tow truck stereo.

And he was like, yeah, there we go.

This ought to use the feel right now.

This ought to do it for me.

Points of a row, way up high.

They won't be that way for a long time, son.

Not for long.

Take advantage while you can, boy.

And he's like, what are you talking about?

So the tow truck driver said, she was about to eat you up wasn't she and they just chuckled about it together oh my god how gross and they they said they had no reason at the time to be suspicious of him he's just a kid that didn't have a license happens all the time being a normal kid now he left a weird phone message for his family after this

saying i love you guys and saying a bunch of weird shit And the sister, Sarah, said that that was completely uncharacteristic of Sam because they're not a leave-it-to-beaver kind of family.

Again, she says.

So we didn't call each other and and say we loved each other and shit.

Yeah.

So 11.30 a.m.

on Saturday.

This is when the police now find out they're looking for this guy.

And they're like, oh, shit, we had that guy.

We gave him a ticket.

Shit.

Yeah.

So they find him at the Richmond airport.

Where's he going?

He's got a ticket for California.

Right the fuck back home is going to be a good one.

Right the fuck back home.

They find him asleep in the baggage claim area.

Oh, it's got a wow.

Yep.

They rouse him in the baggage, which is not where you hang out before a flight, which is probably why he was hanging out there.

Right.

Yeah.

So he gives them ID and

doesn't resist, talks to them peacefully, goes peacefully.

When they get to the police station here,

a reporter asks him how he committed the crime.

You know, they shout questions.

He said, Jesus told me to do it.

Which is a bad answer.

just a bad don't say anything anyway don't say that by being perp walked Jesus holy shit uh and so they search through Mark's car and they find they say an assortment of pills a folding knife and items from a satchel that he had with him when he was arrested at the airport as well a computer and phone electronic shit like that they believe that he spent the

that he's been hanging out at the airport just for however long yeah so they also seek records for phone records and all kinds of shit like that.

They got text messages and everything so they know that he was talking to Emma and that's where he was and all that kind of shit.

Sunday, September 20th, 2009.

Now he's in custody.

Yeah.

Police custody.

His MySpace messages start being deleted.

Oh?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

What is that about?

Someone accessed his MySpace page and deleted a shitload of messages, including pretty much all of them from Emma.

Oh.

Cutting off all electronic ties.

That is interesting.

One of the deleted messages from Emma said, quote, I know my mind works weird because I always expect the worst, but I'm trying so hard not to with you because I know you'd never hurt me.

That's nice.

So they're going to charge him with murder, robbery, and auto theft here.

Sure.

Seems interesting.

And he said that there's

anyway, so he's charged with all of this robbery, grand larceny.

He's later going to be charged with six counts of capital murder.

Six.

Wow.

And four people.

Four people.

Now, remember the serial killing records there guy?

Yeah.

He said, this is not something from the Sam I know.

This is not something that I would ever, ever in a million years envision him doing.

You would never, ever imagine that kid even being a suspect.

If he is found to be guilty, I would be 100% shocked.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sarah, too, the sister, said that she thought there was no way her brother could be the prime suspect in any of this.

She said, but it hit when investigators called and she became overwhelmed after seeing the reports all over the internet and TV.

She said, I just fell to my knees.

I couldn't see.

I couldn't talk.

I failed as his big sister.

Well, it's not your job to raise him.

That's the thing.

You're his big sister.

That's not your job.

She said, since then, death threats started being left on her cell phone voicemail.

So it's not just him.

His family is getting threats too, which is pretty shitty, honestly.

She said also that sheriff's deputies came over

in California to her house to search it, too.

Wow.

She said they tore the place up.

Everything is on the floor.

They took house phones, computers, and anything relevant to the situation.

They even took baby books,

which is strange.

So

Sam is put in jail at the Piedmont Regional Jail.

He's on suicide watch.

And his lawyer, because he's given a public defender, said that sleep isn't easy for him.

Oh, that's good.

He said he's still feeling remorse about this whole thing.

It's a bad situation for everybody.

What a shitty lawyer, first of all.

Number one, you're a terrible lawyer.

He hasn't pleaded guilty yet or anything.

You're already talking about remorse.

Shut the fuck up.

What the fuck, man?

help the kid out you might as well tell the kid to just talk to the cops he can't do any worse for himself than you're doing for him

so this guy said that he remains in jail and he has had no visitors except for his attorneys although he's been in contact with family members and all of that now what the fuck happened okay

Sam initially did not cooperate with police

and all he put out there was Jesus told me to do it but eventually he cracks and tells the story yeah

he with a lawyer like that, not surprising that he would decide to confess everything.

So he said late in the evening of September 14th or early in the morning of September 15th, you know, late night, he was drinking beer, smoking weed, and quote, may have taken some painkillers.

May have.

When he got, he was pissed off about Emma.

And so he said about 3 a.m.,

he went around and killed all three of them as they slept.

They have no defensive wounds on them whatsoever.

What the?

He just did this while they fucking slept.

He killed Melanie first, who was on a sofa on a first-floor den.

It's like a guest room type of situation.

Then went upstairs and killed Deborah in an upstairs bedroom.

Now you're noticing that's not where these people were found.

No, they're in the bottom floor.

He drug them downstairs.

Yep.

And then finally, Emma was in her downstairs bedroom and he went and killed her last.

Okay.

Which is odd because he seems to be the target of her ire, but he goes for her last, which is like, if I'm eating, I'll eat like my vegetables first and whatever.

I save my meat for last because I like it the most.

So you know what I mean?

Like maybe he's saving

killed them first as to have as much time as possible so nobody could interrupt it.

Yeah, but the weird part is he didn't like do anything different with Emma.

He struck each victim multiple times with the maul.

No one woke up.

There's no defensive wounds.

I mean, when the first shot is to your head with a maul while you're sleeping, there's not a lot of...

Now, the thing is, Mark came over to the house on September 17th, about 5 p.m., just to check on everybody because they have a good relationship.

And he was just checking in, seeing how Emma was doing and everything.

When he came in, apparently looking around, hey, everybody, what's going on?

Sam jumped out with the maul and attacked him in the living room.

Whoa.

And later moved Mark and Melanie's bodies into Emma's bedroom and attempted to clean up the mess.

So, but he ends up, Mark ends up being on an upstairs floor, so he ends up changing his mind.

I don't know what's going on here.

At some point, he used a digital camera to record a video of himself as well.

In the video, he indicated he knew he had to pay for what he'd done and also thought it talked about suicide,

which is interesting.

So, yeah, killed Melanie first, then Deborah, then Emma, and then two days later, kills Mark.

So he sat in the house with dead bodies for multiple days.

My God.

Multiple days, which is horrifying.

The wood splitting mall is about eight pounds, by the way.

Yeah.

It's heavy.

That's a lot to get hit in the head with.

And the cop said after talking to Sam, quote, he said that's what he picked up, and he felt like because of the weight of it that nobody would suffer.

He's like, well, this will kill him.

It'll clobber a head.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

That's fucking crazy.

So, yeah, he recorded his video, which the camera was recovered from his backpack at the airport.

So, they got that.

So, he had no way out of this.

I mean, he was in a video with dead people saying how he just killed them.

Now,

he called police at one point.

Sam did, called the police to come and check on noises in the basement because he said Mrs.

Wells told him to, Melanie's mom.

Okay.

Which is crazy.

He explained during one of the many conversations he and Melanie's mother had, which involved fictitious stories of where they went and all that kind of shit.

She told him to call the police since he felt uncomfortable because there was noises in the basement.

So the cops saw him three times after he killed these people and never got him.

So

now the college, by the way,

The state police are involved in this and Longwood University did not issue an alert because they were like, did they issue an alert at the college?

And they said no, because

they said not only on campus, but even in Farmville, it just doesn't happen here.

So he didn't expect this was like a serial killer, so he just didn't bother telling the kids about it.

Okay.

So there's an occult idiot, by the way.

Every one of the, if you have a case like this,

this is a chance for attention from some fucking old gray jackass who knows nothing about what he's talking about, but has wrote three books because he did like some correspondence course in 1983, like the West Memphis 3 idiot guy.

This is Dave Reimer or Reimer, Rimmer.

I'm going to call him Rimmer.

R-I-M-E-R.

What I'm calling him Rimmer.

Don Rimmer, he described the scene as a slaughterhouse, the crime scene.

He's a police occult.

Taxpayers give him money, this idiot.

He spent 33 years as a detective with the Virginia Beach Police and now teaches police departments around the country about occult crimes, and he knows nothing about what he's talking about.

He said he was called in because an expert on the symbols found in the music the teens listened to.

So they wanted to get his opinion.

He said, my end goal is to educate parents, law enforcement, every discipline on the dangers of the occult.

He said, what those investigators stepped into, a slaughterhouse.

They stepped into a slaughterhouse on Friday night about murder, about killing, about all kinds of ritual abuse.

Anyone could take a look at that, and that's the world she was interested in, meaning about the music.

He says that there are parents that just believe it's a fad.

It's just the music.

It's just a game, just a movie.

But I call it Russian roulette.

You're an idiot.

We can't take that chance.

No, I'm sure.

Yeah.

So then there's another occult idiot named Paul Kalkagno, and he said that

Sam was part of a satanic cult.

who engaged in ritual music videos and idolized the son of Sam.

He said

he describes meeting Sam in 2006, this guy.

He said, as a result of my personal experience with Sam and his affiliated horror core rap artists, I believe that New Mexico rap label Serial Killing Records is behind the grisly mass murder.

They did it.

They sent him out there to murder.

Yeah.

They're calling hits.

That is fucking crazy.

He said, basically, I was an actor in one of their music videos.

In the video, they killed a priest, a rabbi, a Muslim cleric, and the Pope.

Well, yeah, you don't want to discriminate.

You kill them all.

That's the way it works.

Well, you can just kill one.

It looks like you hate one religion.

You got to show you it's everybody.

We can't write them, so we call them.

Yeah.

He said, and now Sam McCroskey killed a pastor in real life.

Okay.

Mark.

In the video,

Sic Tanik tells the clergymen one by one, or kills them one by one by slitting their throats, masturbates onto a magazine,

and is sexually serviced by a chained-up woman.

Perfect.

Okay, interesting.

According to Cal Cagno, the video is actually a satanic ritual itself.

The filmmakers were all members of the Church of Satan.

They showed me red membership cards.

Oh, my God.

He also says that there's a connection because Melanie's screen name, Lil Demon Dog, is a connection because that's a reference to David Berkowitz and all of that.

This is, dude.

The dog tells her what to do.

Or she tells other people what to do because she's a demon.

Yeah.

And also, he says, serial killing records head sickanic

joked that one of them were to go out and pull a manson, that they should blame it on Jesus.

And then say, Sam said Jesus told me to do it.

So the prosecutors, on the other hand, when they talk to them, you know, people who actually have to present a case in court, they say

had

0% to do with horrorcore music.

And their case to the jury would be more upped if it did, but it doesn't.

They said, nope, just a fucking chubby ginger who didn't like rejection.

That's all.

Just a dipshit who put himself out there.

Dealing with

the pains of

not enough experience with relationships.

Didn't know how to take rejection.

That's all.

Deserves to be a young man being told no.

Yep.

Just an angry little shitty kid.

Maybe if his mom didn't go to fucking school with him every day for the first four years, it would have been better.

Maybe she should have told him no more.

Yep, that's it.

So they said the other three were just wrong place, wrong time.

He wanted to kill Emma, and they happened to be there.

That was it.

And he didn't know what to do.

That's why he hung out there, and that's how Mark ended up getting killed.

Now, he's eligible for the death penalty here.

Yeah.

In Virginia, a person can be, because you say six capital murders for four bodies.

The rule is in Virginia, a person can be charged with capital murder when there are certain aggravating circumstances, such as the murder of a police officer, murder and commission of a rape or robbery, or more than one murder in a three-year period.

So I'd say four in two days qualifies.

That's it, yeah.

Yeah, a defendant can then be charged, tried, and convicted of more than one count of capital murder for the same murder, because it's an aggravator type of situation here.

Each of the capital murder indictments against him charges him with killing multiple people within three years.

All right.

So September 2010, are we going to trial?

What's happening here?

He's got a plea, right?

There's nothing

to go to court over this.

He confessed like three weeks before his trial was to start, too, which is a real bad negotiating position for you.

Yeah, you're handing them all the cards.

Yeah, so the plea agreement comes together and the prosecutor said over the course of the last eight weeks, we've met with the various family members and went through the case with them.

They said all of the victim's families supported the decision to have a plea agreement instead of going to trial and seeking the death penalty.

So there you go.

They said the family played a large role in going over specifics in the case.

So he's going to plead guilty.

Okay.

Two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of capital murder.

Two counts of first-degree murder are for

Emma and two counts of capital murder of

Melanie and Mark.

So Deborah,

I don't know if hers is in charge.

I don't know what's going on.

But there you go.

So during sentencing,

his dumb shit lawyer said that

he spent a long day and a half with the bodies of his girlfriend and the other two.

And

the lawyer said, I think he was just contemplating.

He was contemplating the severity of

what he had done and just didn't know what to do about it.

The judge says, I know exactly what to do about this.

You, sir, may fuck off life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Yeah.

A couple of times, by the way, over a few times.

You're never getting out, man.

Yeah, you're getting nothing.

Three without possibility of parole.

Done.

He's so young.

He's 20.

Oh, my God.

He's 21 by now.

On his way out of the courthouse, he smirked as he walked toward the van.

I have a picture I'll post on the social media of him smirking.

But his his attorney said, no, he wasn't being proud of what he did.

He's just friendly.

That's all.

He said,

make your acquaintance.

That's all.

He said, I think

it's both a relief and he's thinking about the rest of his life.

So that comes out and smirks at the camera.

Well, the thing is, James, when you're 20, you're so young, you're still used to mom saying, smile.

Yes.

That's probably why he did it.

It's probably why he saw cameras and just smiled.

He is so damn young.

Oh, that's funny.

He said that his client expressed remorse and understood the severity of it.

He said, quote, he said how bad he feels about it.

He's left families without their loved ones.

We have four people dead here.

He's not proud of that.

No.

He said that he allowed his anger to get in the way.

He said, this became an issue regarding his perception that his girlfriend wasn't being loyal to him.

It was a deterioration of the relationship.

And he said, four bodies is pretty compelling evidence.

Also, this is the defense attorney saying, well, why'd you take a plea deal?

He goes, four bodies is pretty compelling.

We didn't have anything.

Yeah, he said, I don't know.

So the prosecutor here said, yeah, the other three people were killed.

Wrong place, wrong time.

She described, the prosecutor described Sam as a closed-off individual.

There's no history of violence or any bad acts in his life at all.

He's never gotten in trouble before.

Wow.

For anything.

Yeah, he said he's going to prison for the rest of his life.

What it really means is death in prison.

Hopefully it'll bring some measure of closure to the family.

It won't go on for years in the appellate system with no resolution in some of their lifetimes.

Which death penalty would have.

Now, in prison, his offender ID is 1434584.

He got 143 in the beginning.

God dang.

143.

He is at the Red Onion State Prison.

Sounds great.

Yeah, sounds gross, right?

Jesus.

In Pound, Virginia.

I'll bet it is.

That is amazing.

He is in Poundtown.

Poundtown.

Now, murderabelia.com.

Yeah.

They,

there's a letter.

One of his letters was for sale where he was asking for photographs of two of his victims, explaining I'd like to put them in photo albums for memories, LOL.

Fucking scumbag.

Yeah.

Now, the prosecutor

here said that in the 12-plus years I've been monitoring this industry, this is the first time I've ever run across a particular defendant requesting pictures of his victims in murder abelia type shit.

He said, I thought that part of his sentence structure where the death penalty was taken off the table, he would not publish or produce anything that remotely had anything to do with the homicides.

It's disconcerting when you think of the victim survivor, think of it from a victim survivor's perspective.

And they said they're going to look into the matters, and they said they have no further comment.

And

What else are you going to do to him?

He's in life without.

That's the problem.

What can you do to him at this point?

He didn't get the pictures, right?

No, I would think not.

Yeah.

His lawyer, the dumb one, said that he'd be pretty disappointed if Sam started to do that, you know, look into this shit.

He said, we had a gentleman's agreement, and it would be unfortunate for him to capitalize on such a situation.

A gentleman's agreement with a murderer.

They're not a gentleman.

You spit in the palm of your hand and shook a man's hand about what?

About a horse that I sold him.

I won't jerk off to the pictures of them.

Is that what you talk about?

Apparently, it's a gentleman's agreement that he wouldn't do this type of shit.

Apparently, it wasn't in writing.

So, by the way, there are some fans' comments under the song I Kill People for Real that he wrote and that he performed in on the video.

And they're all making fun of him, which is pretty fun.

So, I figured we'd end this making fun of this idiot.

Terrific.

This is from Adrian Jr.

At least he's not capping.

Okay, it's right.

It's true.

I mean, it is true.

Next one here.

This is from 15 years ago.

So this is right when this happened.

I usually hate auto-tune, but I think it would have helped this guy out a little.

That's not a compliment.

Here's one from three years ago.

This is a great example of how we are completely screwed as a society.

My God, may God, actually says, my God, have mercy on us all, but I think May is what they were going for.

Here's one from 14 years ago: I seen this dude on TV when I was in prison, I don't feel his music.

Don't get me wrong, I like horrorcore rap.

Rappers such as old school Brother Lynch, old school 36 Mafia, etc., they go, yeah, they all say they kill murder and other crazy shit.

But actually, murdering after rapping about murder makes this guy on the bottom of my top horror core rapper list.

Honestly, I personally won't be a Psycho Sam fanatic.

fanatic.

And another person says, quote, I'm not even going to press play.

I know it's whack without even hearing it.

You are correct, sir.

So there you go.

There's Farmville.

Very quickly, shutupandgivemeurder.com.

Head over there.

Get your tickets for live shows for the rest of the year.

Rate review on whatever app you are currently listening on.

You can give us five stars.

It helps the show a lot.

ShutupandGiveMeMurder.com.

I told you about patreon.com slash crime and sports.

All the bonus material, anybody $5 a month or above, which you might be saving on your Wondery Plus subscription now, I would go there because you're going to get hundreds of episodes to binge and then you get new ones every other week.

That's where all that shit is.

And this week, what you're going to get, crime and sports, which you'll have access to, we're going to talk about a really weird group of guys who play 1864 rules baseball.

Now, it's real weird and funny.

And then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about this Sherry Papini documentary where she says she has the real truth is now coming out.

So we'll talk all about that.

Patreon.com slash crime insports.

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

Very quickly,

why might they be saving on their Wondery Plus, James?

We moved networks.

We moved out off of Wondery and not going to talk any shit about Wondery.

They're fine.

They're checks cash just fine.

And they were allowed us to put fucking shows out and we put them out.

And, you know, not allowed us to, but, you know, whatever.

Paid us to put shows.

Great.

They're terrific.

But business relationships end and we moved on to another network.

So we moved on to another network.

We're on Lipson now, and they're very nice to us, and they're treating us really well.

And their whole thing is, you know, hands off, as always, our number one contract thing is you can't tell us a goddamn thing about our show.

Okay, good.

Once we agree to that, then we can move on to everything else.

So anyway, they're really good.

They don't want to fuck with our show, and they're excellent people.

But what they don't do is early release.

Very quickly, I'll explain to you the reason why early release existed for Wondery.

And this isn't a shit talk.

It's just reality.

Wondering is owned by Amazon.

Amazon and their Amazon music app, they were launching hard a few years ago and they signed us.

They wanted that to compete with Spotify.

That's what they were going for in the marketplace.

So they were getting all these podcasts, paying us good money and getting it so they had early release so people would subscribe to that and then they would listen on Wondery Plus or listen ad-free on Amazon.

And if they could get all these podcast people to use that as their main app, which they didn't, they only used it for the podcast and they'd go back to spotify to listen to music or whatever then they could they could dominate the market it didn't work out for them and so that's why it didn't work out as they planned and so didn't work out as they planned is everyone is that your main app probably not so so that you could see

other people and we're fine so that so that yeah and we were like yeah let's that's fine so that's the reason why they did early release is what i'm getting at they were doing that's the only reason why we hated the early release it was so tough watching our fucking listeners argue with each other.

Don't post that joke about this.

That's a spoiler.

And well, I don't hear that yet.

Well, I don't have that.

It was so confusing for everybody.

Now everybody gets the same episodes, one regular, one Express every week.

Everybody gets them at the same time.

We can all hang out together with them.

We are working on an ad-free option.

We don't know if that's going to be via Patreon or via some other thing with Libson.

We're not sure, but we are working as hard as we can.

And hopefully, we'll have that resolved for you in the next couple of months.

But for now, there's a fucking button where you can just dip, dip, dip, dip.

It goes right by it and keep listening and hanging out.

So there you go.

We have to go now.

Thank you so much, everybody.

And until next week, it's been our pleasure.

Bye.

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