Beauty Queen Conspiracy Murder - Freeland, Washington

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Okay.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

We are going to Washington State this week.

It's a nice place.

It's lovely.

This is a very lovely place we're going to.

It's Freeland, Whidbey Island, Washington.

The town is Freeland.

That's the name of the town.

It's on Whidbey Island, which is in Washington.

Whidbey.

W-H-I-D-B-E-Y, Whidbey Island.

It's in northwestern Washington.

It takes about an hour and a half to get to Seattle, even though it's like 30 minutes away, or 30 miles away as the crow flies.

There's a ferry involved.

It's complicated.

About an hour and 15 to Kirkland, Washington, our last Washington episode, which was the charming serial killer.

Yeah.

That was a weird episode.

There's posing involved.

That was real creepy.

This is in Island County.

Seems appropriate.

Area code 360.

There is about 1,966 people here.

Rich people.

Yeah, and it's hard to tell.

Well, some, not really.

It's some rich people, some people that have had cabins there throughout their families.

Since before.

Yeah, it's kind of like Lake George, is the best way to put it if you're an East Coast person.

Like, there's rich people with these giant houses up there, and there's also like these small houses that have been in families for three generations, and they're, you know, middle-class people.

It's that kind of thing.

Yeah, they're just getaways for

middle class.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've already found out.

Yeah.

It can be either or.

And the population is way higher in the summer here than it is in the winter.

So there's that too.

But it's about 2,000 permanent residents.

Median household income here is $82,474, which is not that high above the national average.

And then the median home cost here is out of control compared to that.

that the median income it is six hundred sixty seven thousand four hundred dollars i'm shocked they're on a million dollars.

A little expensive.

Well, it's only because a lot of them are small little cabins, like little summer vacation places.

They're ruining the property value.

Yeah,

they're worth $300,000 and then the million-dollar house.

And so median, there we go.

So the little bit of history, because we got to speed through this here.

George Washington Daniels and some other people here incorporated the Free Land Association in 1900 and established the colony on land they purchased through a trust company.

So the members purchased dividend-paying shares in the association store fund and machinery fund.

This is a complicated way to start a town, man.

This isn't just some people showing up.

So they had all these things.

Because the members could pay for their land with dividends from their shares, the founders considered their land to be free, which is why it's free land is the name of the town.

So by 1902, they said now you have to purchase your land outright.

And it kind of ruined the whole whole thing here.

So it considered itself a cooperative profit-sharing association.

The town did.

Yeah.

And rejected the rigid communal structure of other colonies on the island.

They described themselves to the newspaper as simply a settlement of socialists cooperating on semi-capitalistic principles.

Hippies.

They're the first hippies, is what it sounds.

1900 hippies.

Co-ops involved, yeah.

Interesting.

So reviews of this town.

Five stars.

I love this town.

Probably one of the best places I have ever lived.

I've lived everywhere.

It's such a safe place, and I can really enjoy life here.

It is, it's beautiful.

There's water everywhere.

I mean, it's gorgeous.

Four stars, not much crime at all, just a few robberies, which make the police a little lackadaisical.

Yeah, they can get a little lazy because there's not enough crime.

They need practice, everybody.

That's what it is.

Get out there, commit some crime.

And by the time they're called, it's already over.

It's, yeah, they don't know.

They're like, like, oh, well, back to what we were doing.

Oh, so what are you missing?

All right, we'll do the paperwork on it.

Back to fishing.

All right.

Two stars.

Watching the orcas.

You're watching the orcas.

Two stars.

Rains all the time in all caps.

Yeah, it's Washington.

It's awful.

That's the only kind of weather we experience here.

Okay.

And then finally, two stars, very pricey and not very family friendly.

No such thing as nightlife or clubbing.

Well, no, because.

No, it's an island vacation town.

There's 1,900 people.

What do you want?

You want a club?

Do you want people to show up and do a show?

Well, I mean, Ludacris will probably show up if you do a state fair, as we figured out from this show.

He's coming.

Throw a fair up.

You will not be able to keep him away.

Be like, there's a van outside with a, it just says Ludacris on the side.

Is that, did we invite him?

It's a van, so it didn't have enough room to write the Chris part.

It just says Luda.

It wraps around the back, actually.

The last IS are on the other side.

So

we didn't invite him.

He's here.

I mean, I guess he'll put him up.

I don't know.

I mean, he showed up.

He's got a microphone.

I don't know what that means.

He's fully dressed.

Like, he's got jewelry on and shit.

Like, it looks like he's ready to go.

We should probably just let him do it, I suppose.

He's at all the other ones.

I guess.

So, things to do here.

They have the Whidby Island Fair.

And it is in its 100th year this year.

Oh.

They have a parade and a livestock auction.

And from what I can see, it looked like some kind of rodeo.

And it also has

a lot of performers.

There's a pie-eating contest.

There's a lot of performers, including the wandering performers, which you just have to see some of the pictures of these people.

There's an old lady doing lasso tricks.

And she just wanders around doing them.

Karen Quest with her cowgirl tricks.

She looks like she's 85 years old.

She does.

It's a trick that she's walking.

Paul Isaac, some dickhead juggler, it looks like.

Adam the Great

doing a magic show, obviously.

This asshole and his puppet,

Jerry Breed, and this dickhead

in a giant green foam cowboy hat, juggling bowling pins, Ren the Juggernaut.

He's on stilts, James.

Oh, I'm sure he is on stilts.

Yeah, he's taller than the tent, for fuck's sake.

Coventry and Calooza, which is a tiny girl

and a tall guy, and it features juggling acrobatics, music, comedy, hula hooping, and dog tricks.

Everything's entertainment and this thing.

And that.

Do you want bubbles?

Matt Henry.

Bubbles are big.

This is amazing.

Do you want bubbles?

Matt Henry has all the bubbles.

Big ones, small ones, and all sizes in between.

There he is.

He does.

Look at that.

All the bubbles.

Keep an eye out for your favorite princesses and superheroes and just walking around.

And then

this guy, Jerry Harris, will mesmerize and entertain during his hypnosis shows each day.

He's dressed like.

He's got me hypnotized.

He's dressed like Conway Twitty, and he's going to hypnotize me.

Focus.

I can't focus on anything but your shirt, dude.

It's busy.

Stare at the Paisleys.

And then a female clown, which is even creepier than a male clown somehow.

Who's the clown?

Penelope the clown returns to paint faces.

That's what's going on.

Oh, I'm sorry.

And then there's also Mr.

Clucky,

who's a guy with a

he's wearing a chicken on his head.

And then there's also Joe Stoddard, just some guy who looks like he sings patriotic tunes.

This sucks.

That doesn't look like a lot of fun.

That said, let's talk about some murder.

There's also some bands and stuff playing, but I had to show you those are the people that will be wandering the crowds.

There's a lot of 14-year-olds there with their parents going, this sucks.

This sucks, man.

This totally sucks.

That's so funny.

Let's talk about some murder.

Okay.

By the way, I am going to.

I'm going to let Ann Rule channel my thoughts on this case because this is a case where you look at it and go, where do you start?

And I had such a trouble with that.

And then I read part of the Ann Rule book, and this is how she started.

Quote, I have wondered if in their machinations can be reconstructed here in any orderly fashion.

Where do I jump in and build a foundation of sentences and paragraphs strong enough to bear the weight of everything that must be told?

There are no locks that my author's keys will open easily, just as there are few threads that might be woven into a pattern that makes sense.

And all she does is write true crime books that are literally 18 fucking hours long, the audio version.

And I can't bear the weight.

It's too much.

And she's like, I don't know where to start with this shit.

Like,

that's exactly where I was.

So I'm going to start where I'm starting.

Let's meet a young woman here, Peggy Sue Stackhouse.

Peggy Sue.

Peggy Sue, baby.

Peggy Sue Stackhouse.

And

a lot of songs.

And Stackhouse, she's stacked too.

She's a six-foot-tall redhead dang yeah yeah she's got and she's pretty a pretty six foot tall redhead who's good at basketball so nice she's got a lot going on she's born in 1965 in washington uh she's got a sister who is named sue so she's peggy sue and she's got a sister named sue and they call her sister sweet sue so there's peggy sue and sweet sue interesting uh now she has an interesting origin story before she even was born Her father's first wife, so not Peggy Sue's mother, her father's first wife was murdered by a teenage neighbor two years before she was born.

Whoa.

So she's born into straight murder, which is interesting.

Really odd here.

So she's a high school basketball star growing up,

very popular.

She married a reverend

out of high school,

which was odd, and then divorced him.

And she grew up here?

She grew up in Washington State, but she'll end up on this island.

She became a licensed beautician after that.

Okay.

And she also then joined the U.S.

Navy.

As a beautician.

Yeah, well, it's the Fighting Locks unit.

You know how it is.

I'm with the 102nd Fighting Permers.

We get out there, we put those curlers in, we sit you under that dryer, and boy, you're something when you're done.

No, she became a a female, like one of the few female aircraft mechanics at the time and served in Desert Storm, too.

Wow.

In the early 90s.

So, I mean, yeah, she did a lot.

I mean, she's like fearless, this lady.

She ends up marrying another

fellow veteran here that she met while she was in, which is her second marriage.

They'll have two daughters.

And, yeah, the guy's name was James Kelvin Thomas.

So she becomes Peggy Sue Thomas and keeps that name throughout here.

They had two daughters together, and that's how that goes.

Now, so she gets a beautician's license when she gets out of the Navy, is how it works.

She doesn't want to work on anything, huh?

No, just gets out.

Jet mechanic, yeah.

And doesn't want to, there's not a lot of, I guess she doesn't want to be a jet mechanic outside of

she'll be a lady's head mechanic.

I knew a bunch of guys in Arizona that were Air Force jet mechanics, and none of them had anything to do with airplanes in their jobs at all.

Really?

None of them.

Too fucking hot.

They all worked at Luke, and it was like, dude, it was so hot.

I I want nothing to do with a runway.

No, it's so hot.

So, and plus what they have to do, like, you have to crawl inside the engine and check every fan blade with a tiny flashlight.

You know, fucking, oh, that would drive you crazy.

I couldn't do that.

So anyway, she ends up

working as a hairstylist and a car mechanic, which is a

couldn't be more two different professions than that.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, you're cutting hair during the day.

And he's like, I got to go rebuild a tranny at about six o'clock, so I got to get out of here.

That's nothing cooler than a gal that can work on the car, though.

That's badass, yeah.

And I trust them infinitely more.

But

I feel like they're trying to prove that they are good at it still.

There's that, but there's.

There's a guy who's like us that's trying to scam you, you know what I mean?

Right.

It's not also that they're just good at it.

They just want to fix it right.

And they're not selling you bullshit.

They're not trying to rotate your tires because you got 1,500 miles on it.

They're just great.

Generally, you trust male salesmen less.

It's just the way it is.

You know, it's just one of those things.

We look at each other and like, what are you trying to pull asshole?

What are you doing?

I don't know if women feel the same way about women.

Maybe they do.

So she has a best friend

named Brenna Douglas.

Okay.

All right.

Now, her and Brenna,

now she'll be Brenna Douglas later.

She's born Brenna Haslam.

She's born, just a few years younger than Peggy Sue here.

She never left Whidby.

She's always lived here, this woman.

She didn't go to college at all.

And not only did she not go to college, she married her high school sweetheart, this Brenda, or Brenna, I'm sorry, named Russell Douglas, Russell with one L, by the way.

Yeah, that's weird.

Russell Douglas, they're the same age.

They go to high school together.

They don't, no one understands why they're together.

Oh.

They're this couple that all they do is fight.

from high school on.

They met like at one of those teenage clubs.

Remember the clubs that you had to be like under 16 to get into?

That's when they met.

They met there.

All they do is fight.

They're total opposites in personality.

He very much wants to pursue higher education and do all this.

She like has, hates higher education and vows her children will never go to college.

I never heard a mother say that before.

I will keep my kids dumb.

I just want to grow up and have a family and make sure my kids don't go to college.

I've never heard that before.

Not that you have to go to college.

There's a lot of other routes, but I mean, I've never heard a mother go, they will never set foot on a college campus.

So they get married later on, despite the fact that they're always fighting and no one in their families understands why they're together.

Guaranteeing a miserable wife together.

Makes no sense whatsoever.

They end up, now Russell, a little bit about Russell here, or Russell Douglas is his name, born same time, same year as Brenna here, 71.

He grew up on Whidbey Island

and with his mother, Gail, and his stepfather, and he's got a brother and a sister, brother Matthew, or I'm sorry, yeah, brother Matthew, sister Holly.

And

he's described as a nice kid when he was a child, a little stubborn, but you know, a smart guy, too.

He ends up graduating from college and things like that.

Now, Brenna is a licensed beautician.

That's what her profession is.

And that's how she knows our Susie.

That's how she knows Peggy Sue, and that's how they're all together.

Now,

Brenna and Russell are going to have a son named Jack in late 1994, I believe.

But everyone convinces them not to get married.

This is

okay.

Most of the time when, yeah, you have a kid, your parents are like, you two should get married.

They're like, you know, you two should wait a while, I think, still, because they're such a bad couple.

Maybe you guys will get it if you just stay together and you'll understand that you hate hate each other.

Yeah.

They got married the next year, though.

In 95, they get married.

Then in 98, they have a daughter named Hannah as well.

Now, Russell is a bit of an, he's an oddball.

He's a hard, he's a hard character to pin down.

And that's, that's one of the things that's tough about this story is it's really hard to know,

like if this was a movie, you'd be seeing Russell through different people's eyes.

Like

if I was making a movie, I would make this with, I would start in an interrogation room and I would have detectives interrogating people.

And as they start talking, I would show what they're talking about.

And it would show Russell in like six different lights.

Yeah.

Like dressed completely different, acting completely different from everybody that talks about him.

It's a weird, he's a real weird guy to pin down.

That's why Anne Ruhl had a problem with it, too.

So

he's named Jack and Hannah, like the zoo guy.

Jack and Hannah.

Yep.

Fascinating.

So

he worked in land management.

He's a big computer guy.

He does computer stuff for them.

And he is also getting his, pursuing his online master's degree as well.

He's co-owner of the hair salon, even though he doesn't work there.

He does the books and shit, but

Brenna does the hair and hires the stylists and all that kind of thing.

He's got some depression, some mood swings, and some

he'll just dress in a kilt sometimes.

All right.

He'll wear a sarong once in a while.

He's just a strange guy.

He's got his own personality.

That's what I'm saying.

Like, if you were describing him, one story, he'd be wearing a sarong doing one thing.

The next one, he'd be in like a polo shirt working on computers.

It'd be a very different,

getting very different views of this guy.

Poncho tied around his waist.

It's so strange.

2000 comes around, and Peggy Sue, remember her?

Yeah.

Peggy Sue gets hot.

What do you mean?

Peggy Sue got overweight after the Navy and all that kind of thing.

She drops 100 pounds.

A hundred?

A hundred.

Wow.

And wins the Ms.

Washington beauty pageant in 2000.

God damn.

Yeah.

She really focused herself here.

How old is she?

At this point, it's the Ms., so it's like she's 35.

It's like, yeah, like for kind of.

Wow.

Good for her to be able to tighten it back up like that.

Not to win something like that.

After two kids and everything else, solid work.

Now, she went for another pageant in Las Vegas and fell in love with Las Vegas.

She was like, this is the life.

Really?

The lights and the action and the, yeah.

Really?

She must not have spent more than 14 hours there.

What are you doing?

Did you leave the airport lately?

Once you get to 14 hours, you're like, so I'll come back here maybe five years from now for a minute.

So this is all it is?

Over and over?

All right.

This place is rough.

She saw it and went, This is the only way to be.

Wow.

And she started a limo company where she's the driver.

Okay.

And she has this card.

I'll show it to you: Peggy Sue Thomas, your personal chauffeur.

Oh, and it's a limo with her all leggy with her tits popping, sitting on the hood of the car.

She's in like a tuxedo top kind of thing, but she's like looking like, hey, you want this hot chick to drive you around?

I'll do it.

Fascinating.

So that's pretty cool.

She starts that.

She also, when she moves to Vegas, she rents her house in Langley, which is right next to Freeland.

She rents her house to Russell and Brenna Douglas.

Oh, yeah.

That's how this all goes down.

So they're all kind of involved together.

Sure.

Russell and Brenna here have a real weird relationship, as we've discussed.

But

sex is a problem here.

She claims that he's really dirty and really deviant and likes all weird sexual practices and she's very prude and stayed.

That's what she claims.

But at one point they had a business where they sold sex toys and like threw sex toy parties and did demonstrations.

I don't know if they were like nude demonstrations or whatever.

She also says that

he would rip on her a lot and abuse her verbally and psychologically.

She says, like she says they went to a baseball game in Seattle, a Mariner's game, I suppose.

And there was two women in front of them that were dressed what she thought was in a trashy way.

So she was remarking to him, look at these two.

And their doo-doo shirts.

Look at them and their tits hanging out and all this.

Yeah.

Just ripping.

And he, according to her, turned on her and said, how dare you?

Maybe if you look better, you could dress like that.

Instead, you're the fattest person in this stadium.

The fattest woman in the stadium, he told her, Which she wasn't.

This is America.

You got to really work at it to be the fattest person in any group of 30,000 people.

You got to be like,

Where's your walker?

No, I didn't think so.

Back in line.

Back toward the end of the line there, fucking three bills.

We got fucking six, seven bills walking in.

If you fit in that seat, you're not the fattest person in this fucking stadium.

I guarantee you.

If you don't have to sit up top in your rascal, then yes, then you ain't the one.

But that's what she claims and all of that.

So

their business that they open where Peggy Sue works is called Just Bees,

just the letter B, Just Bees Salon, which is Brenna, I guess.

Brenna, in Langley here.

Brenna is a hairstylist.

Like I said, he handles the business side.

The salon is never financially sound.

It's never working ever.

And she, by the way, spends a lot of money.

Russell's mother will say later on that she called her a shopaholic.

She goes, she's, every time she went to Costco, it was $1,000 at least.

And this isn't now.

This is in 2000.

It was $1,000, which you had to work to spend $1,000 at Costco in 2000.

They said that she one time went back with her to help her unload groceries after one of these trips and said she had multiple refrigerators and multiple big freezers, and there wasn't room in any of them for their stuff that they had.

What the hell?

But yet she still fed the kids like fast food all the time.

What Even though they had fridges and freezers full of food that she would just get them fast food.

It's a real weird.

So much.

Real, real strange.

And also that she really is starting to envy Peggy Sue's lifestyle.

She sees Peggy Sue

when they started out, they were both kind of heavy-set hairdressers.

Now Peggy Sue's dropped 100 pounds.

Putting herself on the hood of a limo, living like what she sees as a glamorous life in Las Vegas, meeting high rollers, doing all this shit.

And she's looking at herself like I'm a dumpy Broad in Washington fucking cutting hair in a non-financially successful business that I own.

Probably the fattest lady in town.

Not only in town, the fattest lady in America.

No, ridiculous.

There's a picture of her.

She's heavy-set, but she's not the fattest lady.

I mean, fattest lady in town.

You wouldn't notice her if you were walking around Walmart.

It's not like you'd go, whoa, holy Jesus, I can't fit past her in the aisle.

I mean, she's just kind of a heavy-set lady.

It's fine.

I don't know

why it's such a big deal.

So in 2002, Peggy Sue lands herself a rich playboy.

Here we go.

And he's a weird definition of playboy is this guy.

His name is James Edward Hewden, H-U-D-E-N.

He goes by Jim, Jim Hewden.

He's 10 years or so older than her.

A little more than that, maybe.

He is

charismatic.

He's in a band.

They'd only tell you about the band, but he's also very successful in business.

So he's like wealthy and he's in a band that he fucks around with at the side, on the side there.

So

he grew up with an abusive stepfather, this Jim Houden.

He's from Whidbey Island.

His stepfather abused him his whole life, beat him unmercifully for years and years and years.

And it made him a little bit off, basically, everybody said.

He was in the Navy or in the Air Force, I'm sorry.

He has a wife named Gene Houden, by the way.

He still has that wife when he's hooked up with Peggy Sue.

It's a straight affair.

And

he played guitar in a band called Buck Naked and the Exhibitionists.

Oh, boy.

With an ex, exhibitionist, by the way.

Other guys in that band, I'll just name you the one here.

Dick Deposit was one of the guys.

Dick Deposit, his name was.

Is that not Jiz?

Well, a Dick Deposit would be, I'm going to put my dick in you and deposit it inside of you.

So Dick Deposit.

That's pretty fucking gross there.

Gross.

Weird.

He's a very big-time,

very brilliant computer programmer who sold software shit to Microsoft and made millions and millions of dollars.

So now he just fucks around,

bangs women that he finds, plays in bands, just lives his life.

He doesn't care.

He's just what he does is doesn't get a divorce and just goes and

single.

No, he left Whidbey Island for Florida in the late 1980s, and he he made all his money, and then he lived in Punta Gorda with his wife, but he would return to Whidbey Island for a funeral, and that's where he met Peggy Sue Thomas, who they had known each other years before, and they reconnected, and there we go.

So now

they're hooking up again.

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And his wife, Jean, is just in Florida, none the wiser, basically.

Wow.

Yeah, everybody describes him as like in a perennial midlife crisis.

He's just

from like 32 on, just straight midlife crisis, even when there's no crisis.

He just has to act like it.

Everything's fine.

He's just in crisis.

Yeah.

And he lives a double life, basically.

During the day, he's a guy with, you know, khaki shorts and a polo shirt talking about his wife and software in Florida.

And then he's playing in Buck Naked and the exhibitionists at night.

He tells his wife that he's scouting music venues for the band when he just goes out and picks up women.

She buys that.

I'm going to go.

We'd know like three guys like that.

We know like three guys.

If you don't know why we're laughing,

this sounds exactly like somebody we know.

Like exactly like someone we know.

Doesn't tell her anything.

Just comes home and pretends like he's got a winning venture out there.

That's it.

winning venture everything's good everything's going great

can you write another check please everything's going wonderful i promise i won't use it banging somebody else in the hotel no never

some shithole that i can't pronounce anyway

so he would fly to las vegas to see peggy sue and they would fucking party by the way This wasn't like going out for a nice dinner, sitting home and watching a movie.

They'd go out, they're blowing fucking lines, they're doing Coke, they're drinking all night.

They're going to clubs in Vegas that are open all night and drinking and partying.

They're partying like they're 23.

Yes, and they're 40.

It's weird.

You can't do that.

No, and also, he's just racking up massive credit card bills because he's going and buying champagne and Coke.

Vegas, if you want to live like that, is expensive.

Yeah.

You can do it, but it's pricey.

So April of 2003, Russell and Brenna separate, which seems like it's it's been about 20 years in the making here, or 15 years in the making.

Brenna files a restraining order against Russell, claiming that he threatened to punch her in the face, that he threatened to hold her head under hot water until she stopped moving.

Hot water.

Hot water.

I'm going to drown you in hot water is what he just said there.

You're going to burn your own hand, man.

Wow.

That he had hit their son, Jack, years earlier.

A while ago.

Years earlier.

That he neglected the children and that he was having affairs with both women and men.

That's what she claims.

She's swinging for the fences.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We can't substantiate ever that he has affairs with men, but we know he has affairs with women.

But I don't know anything about men.

She gets the restraining order lifted two weeks later, though.

But Russell moves out into a small, little tiny one-bedroom apartment in Renton, which is about

45 miles away.

Renton, that sounds like a place where

future divorced dads live.

Yeah.

Going to Renton, it's just a

bunch of divorced dads walking around going, I don't want to make it better.

Yeah, I mean, it's not much, but you know, I got futons for the kids, and you know, when they come on the weekends, it's going to be fine.

They grabbed a handful of clothes and left.

Yeah, it's like where Mill House's dad was staying on The Simpsons, where he goes, I sleep in a race car.

Do you sleep in a race car?

That's what's going on.

So

Renton.

So their separation is to give them some space to work on their marriage, is what they say.

Same month here, April 2003, Peggy Sue is back in town.

Okay.

Peggy Sue is back in town.

She is staying for several weeks at a house on Wall Road,

W A H L, like the Clippers.

Like the Clippers.

Wall Road.

So she's staying next door to a house number 6665.

That's the house next door to her.

Good Lord.

Okay.

Now,

she files a harassment complaint on behalf of one of her friends against an ex-boyfriend, which I didn't think you could do.

I didn't know you were allowed to do that.

You got to be the harassed party.

You can't just claim somebody's harassing people.

I know a lady who's being harassed right now.

I'm going to get to this dickhead.

So, Jim stays there with her for all these weeks.

How many music venues must he be scouting to stay for weeks 3,000 miles from you?

So many music venues.

So, you know, they know this area.

They walk around.

They stay here for weeks.

Now, of July 2003, Russell has a lady on the side here.

Her name is Marge Bailey, and she's about 50 years old, significantly older than him.

Her name's Marge?

Her name's Marge.

Marge, the 50-year-old he's banging.

Now,

things are going great at home, obviously, if you're banging Marge, who's 20 years older than you.

So

this really pisses Brenna off.

She knows about it.

Sure.

And it really pisses her off that they're so that she's old, basically.

How dare he fuck an older woman?

And I mean, he's like depressed and alone.

He's sitting in an apartment in Renton.

Yeah.

You know, all that kind of thing.

You could see how it could happen here.

But he meets her at the Beach House Tavern in Ocean Shores.

That's where he meets old Marge.

She's been married.

She's in her.

She's like 51 years old and been married four times.

Yep.

Twice to the same guy.

A lot of of rum and coke, that lady.

Yeah.

Any woman who's been married twice to the same guy drinks a lot of rum and coke.

They dance until 5 a.m.

5 a.m.

dancing?

Jesus, that's a little much for a 50-year-old, don't you think?

Good Christ.

I'm not doing that, and I'm not 50.

I'm still not doing that.

Yeah, I can imagine the dancing they're doing.

It's just a little

jig.

They're just

like

one of those quiet reggae bands that you just kind of

popping back.

Feet don't move.

You just kind of sway.

Do the rum and coke sway?

Yeah, yeah.

Now, Marge describes Russell as shy, gentle, goofy, respectful, and considerate.

They're going to, quote, see each other about four to five times a week.

So they are horny.

They're horny.

They talk for hours, though, about real estate.

They talk about starting a business, about taking a vacation to Hawaii or Australia.

Oh.

Yeah.

She says she never sees him drunk.

He never yells at her.

He's never abusive or violent or anything.

He's just a nice guy.

Fall of 2003, the hair salon is really taking a shit.

It's going deeper and deeper into debt.

Because Russell isn't doing the finances anymore, Brenna can't manage the QuickBooks.

She does not know how QuickBooks work.

It has no idea how to do accounting at all.

So that's a problem.

And bills start to pile up.

Things go unpaid.

And you need someone who knows what they're doing in that respect.

100%.

November of 2003, Jim Houden, okay, Peggy Sue's boyfriend here, he gets a 380 Bursa Thunder pistol.

He buys it.

Was he about to go robbing liquor stores?

Well, no, he's actually, he's got a very specific reason for why he wants this.

He approaches a friend of his, a guy named Keith Ogden, who's a former cop in Las Vegas, and tells him that he needs to shoot pigeons that are pooping all over his back patio.

It's literally.

A 380?

I got a 380 to shoot pigeons who are.

You could get a pellet gun.

I got a 22 pellet gun that would destroy those fucking pigeons.

I mean, blow their little skulls apart.

You do not need a 380 for that.

A 380 is how you get $88 out of a liquor store.

That's how you do that, exactly.

That's all it's for.

That is all it's for.

This is, yeah, you don't need this for pigeons, but he's going to teach those fucking pigeons.

He's going to teach those pigeons a lesson.

I think it's illegal to fire that in city limits.

I'm sure it is.

It can't be legal.

I think he's basically saying, I'm going to make an example out of the first one, and the rest are going to know what's up.

When they see that pigeon explode into a pile of just feathers floating down, they'll take off.

They know.

Oh,

slick-headed.

Jesus.

So.

teaches Jim to shoot in his backyard.

They fired six or seven rounds into the dirt using a plastic Coke bottle as a makeshift silencer so neighbors won't complain about them shooting off weapons in city limits.

He said that for someone that was in the Air Force, Jim seems pretty inexperienced with weapons.

You'd think he would know how to at least handle a pistol a little better if he's in the military.

Now, late 2003, Russell and Brenner are going to try to make their marriage work.

Why?

This is strictly for kids.

This is one of those things where we have two kids.

Let's try to make it work because they don't like each other.

They have nothing in common.

They grew apart years before they were even married.

They had already grown apart.

So there's no

point except to try to make a life for the kids, which is, you know, I guess to be, I don't know, to be admired in a way

if you can pull off the charade.

Yeah.

But if all you do is fight, you're making it worse for your kids, I feel like at that point.

It's not helping

any.

The whole point is to make two happy homes, not one angry home.

Yeah, yeah.

Either one happy one or two happy ones.

Either way, better than one angry one.

So early December 2003, Russell ends his affair with

old Long in the Tooth Marge there.

So he tells her that Brenna is the one.

My wife is the one, and I need to try to save his marriage.

Why?

For the good of my children, he tells her.

Oh, no, Lord.

And decides that they're going to take Christmas to try to spend Christmas as a family and see if they can reconcile this whole thing, which anyone anyone should be able to get along around Christmas.

It's, you know what I mean?

You get along with family members you hate at Christmas time.

It's you have to.

So, December 23rd, Russell arrives at Brenna's home for the Christmas holiday.

They're going to stay together over this holiday.

He is excited and hopeful.

Brenda said, or Brenna will later say she was less enthusiastic but willing to try.

Peggy Sue claims that Peggy Sue will claim that she met Russell at his apartment that night, even though he was in

Langley.

She says she met him at his apartment to give him a gift.

She says that he was wearing spandex shorts and a bandana.

Very attractive for a man in his 30s.

Says he seemed happy and excited about spending Christmas with his family.

That's what she claims, but there's no proof of this.

That'll tie in later.

I mean, the story is

a pretzel within a kaleidoscope.

It's just a mess.

December 24th, Christmas Eve, Brenna takes Russell's car, which is a bright, I fucking searingly yellow Geo tracker, is what this man drives.

Really?

Yes.

In the early 2000s, he's got one of those tiny 90s Geo trackers.

Those are meant to compete with the Samurai, I think, but it had like a hard top on it.

It didn't even take the whole top off.

I mean, they're both pieces of shit.

So yeah,

they'll both tip over if you're driving weird.

They're both carpets.

They both compete with trash compactors.

Yeah.

For the adults who want to drive a toy market.

That's what they have here.

Oh, God.

So she goes out to buy pies and stuff for Christmas dinner, other stuff that she needs, you know, odds and ends.

The family is going to prepare for the Christmas holiday.

December 25th, Christmas morning.

The family opens their presents.

By the way, there's a fight about that.

What?

Traditionally, the way they did it is they ate ate breakfast and then opened the presents that's how they did their everyone's got a different Christmas routine that they do you know what I mean some people just dive right in she this time told Russell we're not doing that you can wait for your breakfast this is about the kids opening their presents oh we're opening them right now we're opening them now

Russell bought Jack an Xbox Adam so yeah Jack is pumped, as you can imagine, as any eight-year-old would be who got an Xbox for Christmas.

Now,

he also

buys Brenna a gift that she is massively pissed about.

Okay.

What is the one?

Because she says she wants to take it slow with him.

So he buys her

lingerie,

a box of flavored condoms.

You'll be sucking my dick tonight, is what that says.

Merry Christmas.

Put this on, you fat pig.

Yeah.

I know you won't suck it unless it tastes tastes like cake, so that's what this one tastes like.

That's like, what is that what you're telling her?

That's your birthday cake condom.

Yeah.

Put it in your mouth.

These are chocolate chip cookie dough flavored condoms.

I think you like them,

which is ridiculous.

And a sex swing.

Jesus Christ.

Okay, you can buy your wife that, number one, if things are going well, but you have to buy them like a Christmas present, a regular one.

And then like, I got a private Christmas present for you, too, for later.

This isn't all you're getting.

Jack, open that up.

Here, baby, open this in front of the kids.

He put a sex swing under the tree.

You can't do that.

This is crazy.

Holy fuck.

So, Jesus, we got to hurry.

We're going to run out of time.

This story.

God damn it.

So

Brenna here at that afternoon, her stepfather comes over because her mother had died.

Brenna's mother died.

So her stepfather comes over and has Christmas dinner with them.

He leaves.

Russell and Jack play Xbox while Brenna and Hannah watch a movie.

And then the kids go to bed, and Russell and Brenna watch Bad Boys 2 together in their bedroom.

I swear to God,

that's what happened.

Nothing stops a Christmas argument like

Bad Boys 2.

Every time they're known as the settlers, they settle every argument.

The reconcilers.

That's the subtitle.

So December 26th in the morning, before 10.45 a.m., Brenna and Russell actually have sex.

No lingerie, swings, or flavored condoms involved, but

she will say that she made him wear protection because he's been banging Marge, and she thinks that he's banging men too.

All right, right.

They have breakfast with the children.

Russell is in a good mood.

He thinks things are going well.

He just had sex with his wife.

He thinks things are going fine.

10.45, he kisses everybody goodbye, says says he's going to go run some errands and will tell Brenna,

will later tell Brenna that he might be going surfing, he said.

Yeah.

So he waves as he backs out in his Geo tracker, his yellow Geo tracker, and takes off.

Singing bad boys, bad boys.

Bad boys, yeah.

So

between 11 and 11.30 a.m., a Wall Road resident, the same street that Peggy Sue was staying on a few months back there, Diane Bailey, sees a yellow geo tracker driving slowly through the neighborhood.

Now, I'll tell you, I'm pretty sure he's probably the only yellow geo tracker on this island.

I'm just gonna say, yeah, you know what I'm saying?

So, the vehicle entered her driveway where her

Volvo was parked and then backed out.

So, it was driving slow, speeding up, looks like it's looking for an address.

Yeah, probably making a U-turn right now.

Yeah, yep.

So, about 11:30 to noon, Russell heads to 6665

Wall Road, which is

next door to where Peggy Sue was staying months ago.

The family who owns this property is the Black family.

They're in Costa Rica

for a vacation, for the holiday, but they also have their kids' teacher's family staying in one of their cabins

on the property as a vacation.

It's a long gravel, just for a vacation for them, for the Christmas holiday.

It's a long gravel driveway that leads to all of these Douglas fir trees that make a real dark overhang at the end of the, at the, toward the house.

So there's two women at 4.30 walking, and they see the yellow tracker.

They were cutting across this yard, this property, to get to a beach.

They see the yellow geo tracker in the driveway with its door open, interior light on.

Okay, passenger side door open, interior light on.

They didn't approach it, but they were like, that's weird.

And they said, if it's, they don't know if there's somebody staying at the black house or they have no idea.

So they said, if it's still there tomorrow with the door open, we'll call the cops.

But otherwise, who cares?

Later, Brenna says she tried to call Russell, wondering where he was, and she says that she thought he'd blown her off and gone surfing.

Yeah.

So he never comes home.

Oh.

Just disappears.

So December 27th, the next day at 4 p.m., Joseph Dussette is out walking with his kids trying to burn off Christmas energy.

Like, it's literally making them run around.

They spot a bright yellow geo tracker, same driveway with its door open and its dome light on still, 24 hours after it was seen the first time.

That's what he called.

Yeah, well, that's what I'm going to say.

Those geos were no shit with the battery.

He calls out, nobody answers.

So then he approaches slowly, tells the kids to stay back.

He said he was going to go close the door of this car because he thought, you know, somebody probably just went and left their door open.

Their battery is going to be dead.

So he's going to be a decent neighbor and close the door.

As he approaches, he saw a figure slumped over the steering wheel.

Oh.

With sandy blonde hair.

He said there was blood everywhere on the seatbelt, on the steering wheel.

The seatbelt is on the guy, but it's not buckled.

Okay.

Oh.

The truck is off, but in reverse.

Okay.

It's in gear in reverse to back out of this driveway.

There's blood all over the place.

There is

sunglass remnants all over the place, too, because this person has been shot right between the eyes.

Okay.

Dead center between the eyes.

His hands were balled into fists in his lap.

The transmission, like we said, in reverse, parking brake engaged, as if he was going to, you know, turn it on, pop the thing, and go.

So this guy calls the cops, obviously.

He doesn't just keep walking.

They get there.

Everybody, when they get there, just assumes it's a suicide.

Because it's just past Christmas.

This is the time they find the most suicides.

Driven into a stranger's house under some trees, secluded, one single shot to the head.

You know what I mean?

It seems like probably a suicide.

And they don't have a lot of murders around here either.

So they're like, ah, this guy.

Problem is,

there's no note or anything like that.

And they search everywhere.

There's no gun anywhere.

No gun.

So they're like, okay, well, you can't shoot yourself in the forehead without a gun.

Right.

Would you do that through the sunglasses?

You know what I mean?

That's the other other thing.

Wouldn't you take your sunglasses off first?

So they look

in his wallet, which is still on him, and it's Russell, 32 years old, single gunshot wound between the eyebrows, blood everywhere.

Blood spatter patterns indicate the seatbelt was

across him during the shooting.

It's a 380 shell that they find also.

We'll talk about that.

The problem is they think it's a suicide for like a day until they can't find a gun.

And then they're like, okay, it's not a suicide.

And once they get him into the medical examiner, the angle's wrong on a suicide anyway.

The bullet traveled from front to back, slightly upward from less than 12 inches away, which is not how you would shoot yourself holding it out.

You'd put it against yourself.

So by 10.15 p.m., they go to notify Brenna.

Oh, boy.

And one of the detectives knows Brenna personally.

She babysat his kids and like his wife went to her hair salon.

They all know each other.

It's a small place.

It's not a big place.

2,000 people in this town.

And this corner of the island itself, it's a bunch of little towns.

So they arrive at the home.

She answers wearing her nightclothes and shit because it's 10-something.

And

she invites them in.

She asks no questions about why you're here right now.

Nothing.

Cops at your house.

at 1045 at night.

You don't even ask why they're here, which is weird.

They asked.

What's up?

Nope.

They asked about her relationship with Russell.

She answered, but she's just very flat affected, and everything she says is a negative spin on it, too.

The other weird thing that the detectives found is when they first got there, on the door was a note to Russell

saying

we went out.

Me and the kids went out.

Oh.

But she left it on the door.

She didn't take that down before the cops got there.

No, and she said, last time I saw him was before noon yesterday.

I called him several times.

He didn't answer.

I figured he went surfing and he blew me off, basically.

And surfing, people do go surfing even in the winter there.

It's a thing.

If you have a wetsuit, you can do it, apparently, yeah, which is crazy.

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So she says they were separated.

She gives the whole story about everything.

She also says nothing positive about him, essentially.

All negative.

He's a deviant sexual monster.

He's this, he's that.

It's real weird for someone for one of those.

She still hasn't said, why are you here?

Oh.

Through the whole thing.

She said, I just couldn't accept his deviant lifestyle.

That's why they were apart.

She said that he was cruel and he would be open about sharing his lifestyle.

She knew about an older woman who lived in Tacoma.

That's Marge.

She's around 50.

I think she works for a telecom company.

Russell sometimes tries to tell me about how he parties and has sex with her.

I think he does it just to get to me.

They said, They said, where do you think he is now?

What do you think has happened to him?

And she said, I don't know.

She said, I talked to his sister.

She lives in Everett.

We're good friends.

I wanted to take her a birthday present.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

She said they went shopping and to see the movie Hook, which did they re-release that for a Christmas thing?

Yeah, that's late, right?

Yeah, the Dustin Hoffman Robin Williams movie.

Robin Williams is Peter Pan.

But she said, by the way, still didn't ask, why are you here?

She still doesn't know that.

Then they said, after a while, they talked about, she kept talking about how I have a lot of friends, friends, but he doesn't have any friends and all this type of shit.

Then they said, are you surprised that we're here tonight?

And she said, yes and no.

I don't know where he is.

He just came into my life a couple weeks ago.

And they said, is he physically abusive?

And she said, no, not so much.

He did some

pushing.

Okay.

Okay.

They said, do you own any guns?

And she said, yeah, I do.

I got a.22 caliber pistol.

And she went in her bedroom, came back and showed it.

She said her home had been broken into recently and her stepfather, which she thinks it was Russell, by the way, who burglarized the house.

And my stepfather gave me this.

I've only fired it once.

That's what she said.

They still, she still has not said, Why are you here?

Yeah.

Asking me this.

And they said, Do you know why we're here, Brenna?

And she said, No, not really.

And they said, Russell was found dead in his car this afternoon.

We're not looking for him.

Yeah.

And she says, Oh,

that's her response.

Oh, my God.

Oh.

And they were like, they waited.

They're like, is she in shock?

What's going on?

Oh, but she never, she didn't even ask what happened.

After a few more minutes of talking,

they said he was shot in the head by the, because they were like waiting for her to ask how did it happen because that's normal.

They thought maybe she was in shock for a second.

She needed a few minutes.

She just never asked.

Wow.

They said she just sat there in silence, didn't say anything.

Most people don't because they know.

And then she kept going on and talking about that Russell likes to party and he cheats and all this shit.

She just ignored the fact that he's dead.

She said, I couldn't accept his sexual ideas.

He thought whatever he saw on the internet was normal.

And they said, did you ever participate in any of those sexual activities?

And she said, no, absolutely not.

Of course not.

So, you know, I wouldn't do that.

Super fucking weird.

She says he downloads pornography and he tries to join swingers clubs and

downloads pornography and he wears kilts and sarongs and all sorts of weird shit.

And he gave me a sex swing and flavored condoms.

And

so, anyway, the detective said Brenna seemed calm, showing little concern for why we were there at such a late hour, wanting to talk to her about her husband.

The next day, she goes to the police station to talk to them again.

They go to her to his apartment.

They find it's got hardly anything there, surfboard leaning against the bedroom wall, which means he didn't go fucking surfing.

No, we know that.

They find empty laptop cases.

Then, two days later, his laptop miraculously appears back in its case.

Oh, he didn't.

Interesting.

Russell's brother found a laptop in one of the previously empty cases.

The detective tells

because Brenna calls saying that, oh, I have a laptop.

His brother found it.

And they said, well, don't touch it.

Preserve the fingerprints.

Just leave it alone.

When they got it, it was not a print on the keyboard, mouse, casing, nothing.

Like, it's never been used.

January 2004 comes along.

Oh, boy.

Brenna files insurance claims for two policies on Russell, $200,000 through AIG and $300,000 to $400,000 through Farmer.

Oh, boy, almost a million dollars.

Fuck yeah.

She told the investigators initially she didn't know about any policies except maybe a small one at Russell's work.

But it's not small.

So that's interesting.

She also hires an attorney, refuses to take polygraph tests, and stops talking to the police completely.

That sounds not guilty at all.

No,

I would say.

February 18th, 2004, they email Russell's brother and said, Brenna has stopped cooperating completely.

She won't call me back.

I don't know why this happened.

I got a suspicion that $600,000 of life insurance is a lot.

Jim heads back to Florida to reunite with his wife and tells Peggy Sue he's recommitting himself to his marriage.

Jim Hewden.

May 2004, detectives discover phone calls between Russell and a Las Vegas number belonging to Peggy Sue Thomas.

Three calls on December 23rd, multiple calls on the 20th through the 26th.

So they call Peggy Sue because they didn't even know she existed up until this point.

She says, yeah, she says she was trying to give Russell a Christmas gift for Brenna and claims she met him on the 23rd at his apartment and gave him the gift, which we know isn't true.

July 26th, 2004, this is seven months later.

No shit.

Finally, a tip in the case comes in.

A guy named Bill Hill calls the cops.

Bill Hill?

Bill Hill is a member of Buck Naked and the Exhibitionists.

Okay.

And he says that,

quote, I have information, but I'm scared to talk about it.

He says his best friend, Jim Houden, told him that he killed a guy

in Whidbey Island.

Oh.

In Widbey up there.

He says he shot someone in Whidbey Island around Christmas using a 380 handgun

and he said he couldn't find the shell casing.

By the way, they found a shell casing wedged in the door of the geo tracker.

That's why, so Jim tried to find it.

She said that Peggy Thomas lured him to that address saying, meet me here.

I have a gift for Brenna.

That's why all those calls came in.

Peggy Sue did that.

Then also, he says that Brenna knew it was going to happen.

This was all a big, because Peggy Sue and Jim wouldn't kill him on their own.

They had no reason to.

Apparently, he said that Brennan was going to keep most of the insurance money, giving Jim $50,000 and giving a cut to Peggy Sue as well.

Sure.

Okay.

It was because that Jim told his friend that Brennan said that he was abusive and he had an abusive stepfather and he didn't like guys like that.

So he'd kill him for 50 grand, even though he didn't kill him.

Not even 10%.

Oh, my God.

Not even 10%.

He said, this bandmate said, I was having a hard time dealing with what I knew.

And the reason I made that first call was I needed to know if it was was really true.

So yeah, Peggy Sue lured him there, which is fucking crazy.

He tells him what went down.

Russell pulled into the parking spot at a right angle to the driveway, put the transmission in reverse at the parking brake to get a quick departure after he grabs the gift.

He said,

Jim moved from the woods, came out of the woods.

Russell was wearing his sunglasses still and couldn't make out the figure, who it was.

By the way, he's the same height as Peggy Sue.

They're both six feet tall.

And he said, the person, this is Jim, rushed to the driver's side door before he could get his seatbelt off, even.

And it was Jim.

And Jim shot him in the forehead with a 380.

Wow.

Yep, that's what happened.

He said Jim opened the driver's door to confirm the kill and then fled.

He couldn't find the shell casing because it was lodged between the seat and door frame.

So August of 2004,

the investigators go to Florida to talk to him, but the problem is

fucking, there's massive two hurricanes that month, Charlie and Francis, that fuck everything up.

They talk to Peggy Sue as well.

When they go to talk to her, they find her house had lines of cocaine laid out on the dining room mirror

and they found meth in her car.

Yeah.

She claims, she claims she bought it from a quote toothless hooker.

That's redundant in it yeah

she said that um the 26th she has an alibi she said she and jim took the noon ferry from widbe to port townsend drove to vancouver for dinner with her sister at six jim went out for swisher sweet cigars which just means you're rolling blunts nobody smokes those while she did laundry

Now, the investigations are all fucked up due to these hurricanes.

They can't get down to Florida to find Jim.

So what Jim does, oh, by the way, August 19th, after all this comes out in the newspaper that they are suspects,

they get another call from Keith Ognan in New Mexico saying, I think I have a murder weapon.

Oh, who's Keith?

Keith.

Keith is the guy who helped him fire the gun for the pigeons.

That was right with the Coke bottle.

Yeah, he left the gun with this guy.

Oh, my God.

So he said Jim asked him about guns and claimed he needed to shoot pigeons.

And he said that Jim asked him to hold the gun for safekeeping in January because Peggy's daughters were around.

And

so he remembers when Jim gave him the gun, he said Peggy's mother had just called to say someone they knew on Whidbey Island had been murdered.

So, yeah, so they find that the 380, they have that in their possession now.

And they said that we have reason to believe Jim Hewden did not act alone, and there may be multiple motives.

Also, this is confirmed by ballistics to be the murder weapon.

They dig the bullets out of Jim's backyard as well.

Or I'm sorry, Keats' backyard.

Bummer.

They just left evidence in the fucking yard.

Yep.

Then they find phone records

between showing the Russell and Peggy Sue calls and all that kind of shit.

Jim disappears.

He took off to Mexico.

Gone.

Absolutely gone.

He took $5,000 cash.

He took a Greyhound bus.

He had an ID, a gun, a bottle of Crown Royal, and $5,000 in cash.

That is quite the go bag right there, man.

Wow.

That's his life sentence in fucking Mexico.

He settles in Veracruz under the name Jim Martin and has everyone call him Maestro Jim,

which is hilarious.

Grows his hair out long, wears sunglasses, teaches guitar, and plays guitar in local bands.

Yeah.

Jean, his wife,

visits him a bunch of times, sends him money, but then has her phone tapped by the feds, and that's how they know that she's down there.

Okay.

2005, Brennan receives $400,000 of an insurance payout, uses the money to buy a car and a house.

2006, she loses the house to foreclosure after she doesn't pay any more mortgage payments.

2006, Peggy Sue got married.

Like the movie again.

That's right.

Absolutely.

She marries a wealthy rancher, son of oil tycoon Bill Allen, an owner of Kentucky Derby winner Mind That Bird in

2009 Kentucky Derby winner.

She is

the marriage.

She has expensive taste.

The marriage is short, but she gets a hell of a good payout afterwards, so she's fine.

She originally moved into his ranch in Roswell.

She quit her limousine driving job, of course.

Why would you?

2007, Jim is performing in public in Mexico.

Wow.

One guy that he was playing with said he loved this area.

He would come in here and sit for hours.

Everybody liked him.

He was a blues player and a bluesman, never had any problems.

July 2008, Jim is featured on America's Most Wanted, saying that we know he's in Mexico.

Early 2011, Jean, his wife, is arrested

in Florida.

Theft, forged checks, and drug charges.

Oh, God, she's an asshole, too.

She's facing tons of charges, so she makes a deal, leniency,

in exchange for Jim's location.

So she does.

June 9th, 2011, Jim is caught in Mexico.

Wow.

2011.

That is so long.

So long.

He's finally fucking caught.

His brother said, I haven't heard from him in years.

He said, it's very bizarre to me.

By the way, 48 Hours goes down there because in the place he was staying, there's a locked cabinet.

So 48 Hours is going to do like a Geraldo going in the Components Vault thing.

They bring the whole camera crew down there.

They get a locksmith.

They open it up.

A single drumstick.

Not the ice cream cone, just one drumstick.

Oh, damn it.

That's what was in there.

At least the ice cream cone.

You could eat the ice cream cone.

We can all share it.

Oh, man.

Then they found, like,

hidden in something, they found notebooks and they were like, here it is.

It was just music stuff.

Nah.

It's just how to play runaway.

Him practicing Spanish also, him like writing Spanish phrases.

I felt

in the must be.

And the only

in English that he had a list and it said no alcohol, no white stuff, run in place, no eating after 7.30 p.m., fruits, vegetables, water.

Yeah.

So that's it.

They found his driver's license and shit down there.

Wow.

His bandmates said it's jaw-dropping.

Is it?

Jaw-dropping.

One said, and I think it was alcohol that had a big part in it, but

you've got to also have a streak of evil to do something like that.

I've been drunk, man.

I mean, that's what I'm saying.

That's crazy.

July 9th, 2011, Peggy Sue gets arrested.

Not married this time.

Now she's arrested.

That's a much different.

Nicolas Cage wasn't in that one.

She gets arrested.

By the way, the license plate, her Nevada license plate said it was F-I-R-Y-R-E-D, fiery red.

That's her fucking license plate.

She is arrested in New Mexico on her houseboat called Off the Hook,

charged with first-degree murder.

And

her bail will be reduced later on, though.

Yeah.

So

the evidence, Peggy Sue's fingerprints are on a gun manual that Jim had, apparently, and they have methamphetamine in her car, so they have some shit to hold her on.

She's released on bail in September.

She makes 500 grand bail.

She really got that husband good.

No kidding.

So January 2012, Peggy Sue's half-sister dies, and she was going to be a big witness in this case.

So they thought maybe foul play, but then it's natural causes, it turns out she died by

July 2012.

They're going to take Jim to trial

here.

They said, we'll give you a deal.

You testify against Peggy Sue and especially Brenna, who's the one who benefited from all this, and you get a reduced sentence.

And he said, go fuck yourselves.

Really?

He went to trial for first-degree premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances.

Idiot.

Oh, yeah, which was victim particularly vulnerable or incapable of resistance because he was seatbelted into a car and that he was armed with a firearm.

Bill Hill, the guy, his bandmate who ratted on him,

he said he had to testify.

He said it was guilt that made me call.

I just knew too much.

And then he said about seeing Jim in court, it was a scary situation.

I couldn't look at him the whole time I was on the stand.

His wife, Jean, testifies against him and said that he and Peggy and Brenna planned on this killing.

They planned it out.

He told me.

He also said at one point he wanted to know what it was like to kill somebody, which blew my mind.

But she said, to be honest, I think he did it more for the thrill of killing someone.

He thought it made him feel like a man.

Verdict comes in, less than four hours of deliberation.

He's in so much trouble.

He's in so much trouble, guilty of first-degree murder.

He's seen mouthing to his attorney, I'm done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're fucked.

During sentencing,

all the family comes out, and you know, Russell's family, and they're all obviously have a lot to say.

His mom says, in one split second, you pulled the trigger and you killed Russ and you changed our lives and futures forever.

The judge said, I too, like many of the victims' families, would like to know why.

There's something more, you know.

We all know it, but you refuse to speak.

So you, sir, may fuck off 80 years in prison.

How's that?

Think about it a while.

Standard range was 24 to 32 years.

Holy shit.

The aggravators got them good.

Yeah.

And Peggy Sue does interviews.

I'm, you know, I'm innocent.

You know, whatever.

Jim said, I'm sorry I got you involved.

Just know that I love you and you'll never see me again.

Yeah.

She was asked what type of innocent person takes a deal because she is offered a deal.

Peggy Sue pleads guilty to rendering criminal assistance.

That's a fun movie.

It's a better one.

Peggy Sue renders criminal assistance.

Isn't the same movie?

Pleads guilty as part of the agreement.

No matter what new evidence comes out, she can never be charged with murder for this case, no matter what.

Even if it says you pulled the trigger, no.

Oh, my God.

Sentencing you, Ms.

Washington, may fuck off four years in prison.

Four.

One, two, three, four.

Stop it.

Four years.

That includes a three-year firearm enhancement, by the way.

Oh, my God.

The judge expressed regret at the short sentence,

saying that it was shockingly short.

Jim's sister, yelled, or I'm sorry, not Jim, Russell's sister said, I'm sure they'll like all that plastic surgery in prison.

Okay.

Yeah.

The prosecutor summed it up well.

In terms of just looking at the human behaviors, it's a succotash of greed, madness, depression, addiction, and power.

It really defies simple explanation.

Wow.

I would say the book is called Practice to Deceive, the Ann Rule book.

Jim is going to appeal his shit, but he's dead to rights.

It doesn't matter.

Peggy Sue appeals as well.

That gets thrown out, but it doesn't matter because she's paroled in August of 2016.

She maintains her innocence to this day, calling the whole thing just poor taste in men.

Okay, Peg.

Wow.

Jim remains at the Washington State Penitentiary, eligible for parole in 2085 when he's 127 years old.

Oh, my God.

Brenna was never charged with shit.

She got hundreds of thousands of dollars and not one fucking day in jail.

Why would Peggy

organize this?

How would they know

what the fuck are they doing?

She changed your name back to Haslam and works in a hair salon.

Oh, my God.

Fucking crazy.

Okay, quickly.

That was a long one.

So quickly, we got to rush through here to the end.

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Keep coming back and hanging out with us.

this story could have been an entire a long episode because it's insane but peggy sue forever we can pick on peggy sue for the rest of eternity i feel like because she's and jim too what an idiot asshole yeah this guy

he got really just for the thrill of it and he got everything he got railroaded i mean yeah he did it but he he took the brunt of everything for everybody he took everything on this he took it all so man there you go everybody hope you enjoyed the show thank you so much you want to follow us on social media Shut up and givememurder.com is the place to find that.

Do that, follow us, hang out with us.

And until next week, everybody, it has been our pleasure.

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