Brilliant Brutality - Prairie Village, Kansas

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This week, in Prairie Village, Kansas, a wildly intelligent person hands in their medical license amid a failing marriage and begins to lose their mind while slipping into a world of alcohol, drugs, strange threats, and eventually two murders that are so horrific the town has to change the street addresses.

Welcome to Small Town Murder.

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

Yay!

Oh, yay, indeed, Jimmy.

Yay, indeed.

My name is James Petrogallo.

I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Westman.

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

If you listen to the opening, any murder that's so bad that addresses need to be changed,

that's a wild one.

This is just a crazy, weird, just odd story we have for you this week.

We will get to all of that and more.

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This week, what you're going to get for crime and sports, we're going to talk about.

A crazy fight that happened in the NBA in the 70s, where almost killed a guy

and just changed both of their lives massively.

And it's just a wild story.

Then for small, it's so crazy.

Yeah, just butterfly effect going out.

Then for small town murder, we're going to talk about the history of executions in the United States.

A very fun topic, obviously, but just crazy going back to the 1600s.

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Disclaimer time.

Yeah, yeah.

This is a comedy show.

We're comedians.

We also try to tell real murder stories better than anybody else in the world.

That's our goal here.

So

that's the game.

The most information, everything is as real as it could possibly be.

No details are made up for comedic effect or any garbage like that.

You might go, well, how does that work?

How do you make jokes around murders?

Very simple here.

We don't make fun of the victims

or the victims' families.

Why, James?

Because we're assholes.

But.

But we're not scumbags.

See how that works?

It's real simple.

It's a real easy line to cross there and not to cross.

So that's a good time.

Yeah.

So if that sounds good to you, you're going to hear one hell of an incredible wild story.

If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever mix, I don't know.

Maybe this show isn't for you, but maybe it is.

Either way, no complaining later.

I think it's time everybody to sit back.

What do you say here?

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

Shut

up

and give

me murder.

Let's do this, everybody.

All right.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

All right.

We are going to Kansas this week, and this is very close to

Skidmore, Missouri, which was a few weeks back.

Yeah, yeah.

In distance, it's not very far at all.

It's all kind of Kansas City suburbs.

Yeah.

This is in Prairie Village, Kansas,

which sounds like it's a tumbleweed is blowing through it, like there's nobody there.

Prairie Village.

It's in far eastern Kansas, kind of in the northeastern part there.

It's a suburb of Kansas City.

It's 20 minutes to Kansas City, Missouri.

About 10 minutes to Overland Park, Kansas as well, where a lot of crazy stuff has happened.

And about 15 minutes to Lenexa, Kansas, which was our last Kansas episode, episode 577.

It's been a little while.

Behind the Serial Killer's Mask was that one.

That was a crazy one.

Kansas never lets us down, and and this is all in one area.

I mean within 15 minutes.

So that's interesting.

This is in Johnson County, Area Code 913.

Now a little bit of history of this town.

In 1858, a guy named Thomas Porter bought 160 acres of land.

Oh.

And that's how this started.

And he did it as a farm.

And he

was man with a dream.

He raised all his children on the farm and was involved in the agricultural development and everything like that.

So during the 1940s, J.C.

Nichols, a developer, wanted to turn the farmland into

suburban housing for soldiers who were returning from World War II.

That was his thing.

So he bought the farmland from the Porters and a couple other families who had bought into the Porters farmland.

And yeah, so he put it in and he tried to do this.

Prairie Village started to expand.

They built the Prairie Village Shopping Center in 1947, and then another shopping center, and then a bunch of subdivisions with names like Corinth Hills and Corinth Meadows and Corinth Estates and Somerset Hills and Ridgeview Heights.

A lot of hills, heights, meadows, and estates going on.

Now we've got a town.

Now it's a town, yeah.

Some reviews of this town.

Here's five stars.

Okay.

And there's no bad reviews of this town, too.

There's like 50 reviews and none of them are below three stars.

So people

really like it here.

Here's five stars.

Prairie Village is one of the safest cities ever.

We'll be the judge of that.

We have statistics.

The only major crimes are police chases from Kansas City, and the community is very supportive, and there is hardly ever any racism.

The only con to Prairie Village is the massive trees that fall down in the major storms that we get now and then.

We get a storm and a tree falls down.

Why mention that?

That happens.

It's weather.

Five stars.

Prairie Village is an amazing town to live in.

Has the best location on Kansas side where roads and streets are very well maintained and very safe, yet within minutes to KC metro areas such as

Country Club Plaza, KC Power and Light District, and Brookside.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Highly rated award-winning public schools.

My goodness.

Yeah.

Wow.

Here's three stars.

It's a decent community.

Decent.

Generally safe with a police station close by.

It's a bit boring, but if you're looking for a good middle-class place to raise a family, this is it.

So, yeah.

If you're looking for your soul to die, but your kids to get a good education, this is it.

Good and boring life.

You can pay your taxes and get on with it.

Move on.

Move on.

Enjoy.

Here's three stars.

Prairie Village is perfectly fine.

Perfectly.

When someone says that, you know it's not perfectly fine.

That's a guy with

a bag of moldy bread that pulled out three pieces.

Like, these are okay.

Make a sandwich.

That's what I say when I get food at a restaurant.

That's I don't want.

It's perfectly fine.

Just don't worry.

Yeah, I like your sandwich, too.

So the prairie village, perfectly fine.

The yards have oak trees, and we know because they fall down in the street all the time.

The houses are reasonably sized.

The people are generally nice.

There are a few Starbucks.

A few.

That's good.

And then sums it all up with, it's the suburbs.

It is.

That's all you need to know, really, right there.

It's lots of houses, a couple of Starbucks, and some strip malls.

That's what we got.

People in this town, 22,812 people.

Oh, it's a good size.

It's a decent-sized town.

Like it's right outside Kansas City in a suburban area, kind of upscale.

More, and this is strange for such a town with so many people.

It is 54.5% women,

which it's usually very close

either way when it's this big of a town.

So that's strange.

It's fine, but it's strange.

The median age here is about a year older than the national average.

It's 39.7.

Family here, 57% married, which is well above the national average.

It's the burbs, man.

Less than 10% of people are single with children here.

People stay married and they have kids.

Race of this town: 93.8% white, 0.6%

black, black, 1.3% Asian, and 3.2% Hispanic.

We have religion in this town.

56% of the people here are religious, which is above the national average, but there's no clear-cut, real...

There's a lot of other Christian faith.

There's some Catholics.

There's some Methodists.

It's just kind of mixed all around, really, if you think about it.

It has low unemployment here,

actually.

It's about half the national average, so very low unemployment.

There's a lot of places to work here because Kansas City is right there.

There's a bunch of different cities.

Median household income here is also way above the national average.

Median household income here is $92,753.

Doing great.

It's perfectly fine.

$23,000 over the national average.

And then cost of living, here we go here.

Prairie Village is $100 as regular in the United States average.

Here it's $106,000.

It's a little high cost of living-wise.

And the housing is the highest one out of all of them.

Median Median home cost here, $399,700.

$400,000.

In the rest of the state of Kansas, it's $194,000.

So this is a very upscale area.

This is very nice.

Yeah,

there's not a lot of trailer parks or any of that stuff.

Perfectly fine.

Perfectly fine.

You're going to like it.

Not love it.

You're going to like it.

And live here and deal with it.

So if we've convinced you, damn it, the only place to be is Prairie Village, Kansas.

We have for you the Prairie Village, Kansas Real Estate Report.

Average two-bedroom rental here goes for $1,710 a month, which is high.

It's about, it's almost $500 above the national average.

So that's, that's cooking right there.

Here is a house.

It is a two-bedroom, one-bath, 975-square-foot house.

Little As you can see it, it looks nice from the outside.

Wow.

It's got a one-car.

It kind of looks like BTK's house a little bit.

It's a

kind of a plain, small little house.

It looks bigger than $970.

That's crazy.

It does.

The front doesn't go very deep, I don't think, here.

This is on, God, not even, it's 8,8,800 square feet of land.

$260,000 for that.

Whoa.

For a tiny house on no land.

Nothing.

And they just

an agriculture worker house.

No, shit.

They just cut the price on that $20,000.

Every house that we've done in the last like two months in the real estate reports all has a huge price cut in them, all of them.

Here is a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,440-square-foot house.

This one, again, just a raised ranch, single-level.

It's nice, newly painted.

And you can see like inside, it's got nice, you know, nice floors.

And it's definitely redone.

Yeah, it's it's definitely redone, but it's only 1,400 square feet here.

It's on 0.34 acres.

It is $469,900.

How?

That is crazy.

That does not seem like it's worth it in the slightest here.

And that's with a price cut, too.

Really?

Yeah.

And then finally,

three-bedroom, four-bath, T-bowl for each and every B-hole, and one left over.

3,012 square feet.

It's not a house, It's a condo.

What?

You get it part of this.

3,000 square foot condo?

Condo, yes.

So you get no acreage.

It's literally a condo.

I mean, it's very nice on the inside, very fancied done and all that kind of shit.

$2,450,000.

There's no land.

I wish everybody could have seen right there the look on Jimmy's face.

What do you do?

It looked like I just told him, hey, your 14-year-old daughter just made the the Denver Broncos roster.

The 53-man.

She's on it.

You'd be like, what?

How?

I don't get how that works.

She doesn't even play football.

She doesn't even like it.

I don't get it.

I don't understand if you look at it.

You have $2 million.

Why would you want to live amongst other people?

I have no idea why you wouldn't want some.

Unless you're living in Manhattan or something.

If you're living in Kansas, especially.

Give me some room.

Oh, shit.

Don't fence me in, motherfucker.

You know what I mean?

Don't give me an elevator that other people use.

No, God, no.

I don't want to ever touch anything anyone else.

Plus, it's my kids and my wife.

Yeah.

$2 million.

Jesus.

No strangers are touching anything I touch for $2.5 million.

Not happening.

Right.

Things to do in this town.

Here we go.

They have the Village Fest.

Yeah.

This is a 4th of July event here.

Of course.

This is what happened this year.

They started out with a patriotic ceremony and community spirit award.

Yeah.

I don't know what that's all about.

Then

the mayor's welcome from the CFD2 bucket truck on the skate park lawn.

That sounds very official.

Go on, get the mayor up in the bucket truck, put him over near the half-pot,

and let him tell us something.

Patriotic electric company, right?

Yeah, I think so.

CFD2, what is it?

Or maybe the fire department.

It might be the

CFD2.

Doing bucket truck rides.

God damn.

That's a big

mayor's going to welcome you from atop the bucket truck.

Then from 7:30 to 9 a.m., there is a pie baking contest registration and a pie drop-off.

Oh,

but no eating contest.

No, no, no.

That's what I was waiting for.

Then at 11 o'clock, so in two hours, they're going to parse the whole town's pie making skills because by 11, the pie results are in on the main stage.

Calculating it.

We got it.

Then at 11 a.m., line up for children's parade.

Decorate your bikes, trikes, and wagons to parade down Mission Road.

All are welcome to participate.

No registration is necessary.

Jump right in.

Then the entertainment comes.

Here we go.

At 10 a.m.

This is awesome.

On the main stage, right across from City Hall,

right by where the mayor will be addressing you from the bucket truck.

Atop a bucket truck.

Mr.

Stinky Feet and the hiccups will be performing.

Mr.

Stinky Feet and the hiccups.

It's everybody's uncle.

He's coming.

He's going to be there.

He's not going to be there for for that long because at 11 a.m., Multiphonic will be there.

All right.

I don't know what that's all about.

Then Sterling Silver Sound DJ will be playing.

Yeah.

So there's that.

Now, if that's not your comfort,

that's it.

That's the whole festival.

It's one day.

This shit's over by one in the afternoon.

It's a 4th of July festival that is

done by one.

Fireworks.

That's it.

No fireworks.

No, it's fucking bright in the middle of the day.

It's time for a hot dog, and we don't serve them.

Get the fuck out.

Go fire up your grills, assholes.

Enjoy.

Fuck off.

So there's also the Prairie Village Jazz Festival.

So we got that.

This is where I would expect all the best jazz to come from.

Rural, not rural, suburban Kansas.

That's where it all comes from.

But it's close to Kansas City.

That's what they're banging on.

I mean, right?

Yeah, I suppose so.

That's probably the theme of why they would do it.

This is actually an evening thing.

This doesn't take place at 7 o'clock in the morning.

At 3.05 to 3.35,

which is not a long set, the Shawnee Mission East Blue Knights will be playing.

They're a student jazz ensemble, so you know that's going to be excellent.

Then at 4 to 4.50, Henry

Scamora's Urban Forum.

The fuck?

I don't know what that is.

I don't know.

Henry Scamora apparently graduated from UMKC's Conservatory.

Yeah.

And he formed this band, Urban Forum

with Spencer Reese, a vibraphone, and then a vibraphonist.

I don't even know what that thing is.

I threw my hands up on that one.

Isaiah Petrie and some drummer.

They released their self-titled album in January 2025.

You can find out more at henryscamora.com.

Figure out how to spell Scamora.

Good luck, everybody.

Enjoy.

5.10 to 6 p.m., Brad Gregory sextet with Clint Ashlock.

He's going to have sextet with Clint Ashlock.

It's going to be

gross.

This is composed of local Kansas City trumpet players.

Band leader Brad Gregory played for the Houston Jazz Orchestra and worked as a professional jazz musician in New York City before relocating with his family to Kansas City

after failure.

That's not in there.

I put the comma after failure because that's why you'd move there if you're a musician.

New York City.

New York City.

So, yeah, they're going to play a mix of covers and originals.

Yeah, and their owns.

Then the Vanessa Thomas trio will be there.

Oh, three Vanessa Thomases.

All three of them.

Vanessa Thomas has been wowing audiences across the country for years with her five-octave range and versatility across genres.

Oh, my goodness.

Why wouldn't you?

Of course.

Vanessa ThomasSings.com for more.

Then finally, 745, the headliners of the night, Glamour Profession is their name.

Glamour Profession.

What do you think they do?

I'll tell you guys.

You'll never guess.

Vanessa Thomas is pissed.

She's got five fucking octaves doing this for years, traveling the country, and she's being upstaged by fucking glamour puss.

What are they?

Wait till you hear what Glamour Profession does.

I can't wait.

They are a steely Dan cover band.

Oh, my God.

That's God.

Are you reeling in the years?

Over and over again.

I'm going to live it.

No.

Steely Dan cover band.

Oh, my God.

It's composed of 11 of Kansas City's finest rock and jazz musicians.

It takes 11 of you to recreate Steely Dan.

How many are in Steely Dan?

Not 11, I hope.

Yeah, five tops, I would say.

They play more than just the hits.

They also play covers, fan favorites, and deep cuts.

Got to get that deep cut off the Asia album.

The fuck out of here.

Oh, my God.

You can follow Glamour Profession KC also on social media.

Crime rate in this town, what we're concerned with here.

The property crime is about one-third below the national average.

So,

not going to steal too much of your shit.

Then, violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime is about two-thirds below the national average.

Okay.

This is a safe-ass place, man.

Very, very safe.

It is very safe, very sterilized, you know, type of joint here.

That said, let's talk about some horrible, terrible murder.

What do you say?

All right.

Let's start out by talking about two people named Joanne and Bob Jones.

Okay, the story is going to start out in Havana, Illinois, which I did not know existed at all.

And I really want to murder there in Havana, Illinois.

It's a little small small farming town, basically.

Kind of the place you kind of drive past.

Havana.

Yeah, if you're going to like Champaign, Illinois, you'll pass Havana type of joint here.

So this place, there's a woman named Joan, which everyone pronounces as Joanne for some reason.

Oh, boy.

Okay.

Joan Purdy.

Yeah.

Now, she met a guy named Robert Jones, and they got married and settled down in Havana.

What?

She is Joan Jones?

Joan, Joanne Jones.

Maybe that's why she goes by Joanne.

I would.

She went by Joanne before that, though.

Really?

Maybe she knew.

Very clever.

Yeah, clairvoyant gal.

Yeah, ESP.

She got her Ouija board out and figured this shit out.

So they get married very young.

Joan just turned 18, and Bob is 17 when they get married.

Oh, really?

So this is some old-school 1940s farm marriage type of shit here.

They are going to have two daughters here that we'll talk about.

And they're going to kind of basically grow up.

Both parents came from large families.

That's why, and they both came up really poor, which explains why they got married so

early.

Yeah.

If there's eight other kids in the house and you don't have any money, you're looking to get the hell out of there.

I've got to save myself.

Yeah.

Now, Joan is a really, really smart.

young lady.

She's blonde and pretty and really smart.

She won a partial scholarship to Stevens College in Columbia, Missouri.

She went as a freshman, even though her new husband didn't want her to go.

No.

No.

She's not 18 yet.

Who's going to watch me?

She's like, you have to stay home.

I'm sorry.

I'll get you a babysitter.

So

this is a prestigious women's college.

And a lot of the other kids there are very wealthy kids going there.

And Joan is not a very wealthy kid.

So she had to make up the difference between her scholarship didn't cover everything, so she had to actually work to make up the difference and everything like that.

So that's way different than all the other girls at the school, pretty much.

And this is the late 40s, and you know, she wants to get like the new clothes because fashion didn't really change much for like 10 years because of the war.

Yeah.

So, but then after the war, that's when like fashion exploded and, you know, people wanted new furniture and new stuff.

And they just, you know, you wanted to completely kind of clear out the Great Depression, you know, years of war thing and start over again, basically.

Forget all about that.

Yeah.

So she didn't have that kind of money, though.

She, you know, still dressed the way she did before.

She came to school and stuff like that.

So she felt kind of out of place with everybody.

She called them the snooty girls.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So she dropped out of college eventually.

Oh.

And that's when she marries Bob.

They were together before that.

Now he's a very handsome guy, and he's only 5'8 ⁇ , but he's real muscular.

Oh.

Real muscular guy and a handsome face on him.

Yeah.

So they got married on Halloween 1948.

But Joan had a dream of becoming a math teacher.

Really?

Which is a, I don't think a lot of kids, if you ask them, what do you want to be when you grow up, they say specifically a math teacher.

There's not a lot of that nowadays.

Yeah, it's not a lot of.

But she did.

Very few people want to be teachers in the first place.

That's usually what they'll teach.

Back in the day, people used to want to be teachers all the time.

That was a very common profession for people to want to be.

But nowadays, for the last 40 years, everybody knows teachers don't make any fucking money, so nobody wants to.

It's not really a goal that much anymore.

So you used to be able to make a living off being a teacher.

Now it's difficult.

I know that because every single year I give...

fucking thousands of dollars to our listeners who put up their their lists.

Yeah, their children's lists.

Yeah.

Dude, every week,

yeah.

Every year.

And it's like,

god damn it.

You know, it sucks that we have to do that.

Why do I have to give you so much money?

I know I do.

It's not their fault.

I'm just like, damn it.

Why are we crowdsourcing Mrs.

Bethel's

fucking

art project classes?

What is happening?

This is not even

for art projects, it's not even that.

It's for like basic shit, like pencils and paper and things that she needs to like visual aids for like very what the fuck and forget about the special ed classes.

There's a million of those.

Those I dig deep.

I deep, dig deep in the pocket for those.

So it's it's it's tough, man.

We don't support shit anymore.

No.

So Joan,

she becomes pregnant pretty much immediately and gives birth to Pamela in the summer of 1949.

Yeah.

And then two years later, 1951, here, February 28th, 1951, to be exact, they have a daughter named Deborah.

Okay.

Now, it's going to end up being spelled D-E-B-O-R-A.

At first, they had an H on it, then they took it off.

Changed her mind.

Didn't want that.

Then they changed it to Deb Rubb, D-E-B-R-A.

Thought that was easier.

Then they called her Debbie.

Then Deb.

Oh, boy.

And then they finally figured out after a while, how about D-E-B-O-R-A?

That's perfect.

Okay.

That's the compromise.

So

the household is happy enough.

You know, Joan is a homemaker.

Dad goes out and works and does that sort of thing.

You know,

that was just it.

They stayed together, and it was, you know, a 1940s marriage.

Average house.

Doesn't matter how miserable they are, damn it, they're going to stay together.

We're going to figure it out.

He'll have a couple more drinks.

She'll do a couple more word searches and we'll be fine.

Everybody's going to figure it out.

So the girls are both little cute kids.

Both of them are really smart, but Deborah is like an actual genius.

She is

really insanely smart.

She taught herself to read by two and a half.

Whoa.

No one taught her.

She looked at the newspaper by herself and could read and started writing by that time as well.

Two and a half.

Turns out she has a 160 IQ, by the way.

Brilliant kid.

Which is extremely fucking brilliant.

Like that is really, really, really smart.

160.

140 is genius.

So what does that say?

She's killing it.

She's doing great.

Yeah.

She's doing amazing, really.

Hey, everybody.

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Joan really wants the girls to succeed because she never got anywhere, basically.

I guess she, the only thing Joan would harp on them about was not studying hard enough.

She said Joan was obsessed that the daughters had to succeed.

Yeah.

Just had to.

Deborah said later on, between my parents, I think I would say my mother was the strongest and the one who made the decisions.

She was the serious parent.

Bob was the fun parent.

Kind of mom and dad of the day.

Although

not really, because back then it would be, wait till your dad gets home.

He's going to come.

I'm going to have him beat you to death.

You know what I mean?

Mom being the disciplinarian is interesting, but

somebody's got to play each role.

I guess so.

You could split them up a little bit there.

He would play games and make jokes with them, but Joan wanted food or wanted, you know, school work, school work, school work.

Now, Bob, the dad, drove a bakery truck.

So that's nice.

You're getting free snacks anyway.

I've known a couple of people that drove bakery trucks.

Some shit falls off the truck every day.

Yeah, I have a

mom was a

chuck wagon truck.

Oh, hell yeah.

She was stealing bear claws like crazy.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Now, Deborah, real different, as we'll talk about here.

Like we said, teachers herself to read it to 160 IQ.

Deborah, the weird part is both girls are good students, but Deborah's a lazy student.

Oh.

But she doesn't, she still gets straight A's because she's so fucking smart.

She just doesn't have to do, she doesn't have to work very hard to get good grades.

And a kid will realize that very quickly, exactly how much they can dick off and slack and still do what they need to do.

Yeah, the shit that you kind of, is your whole life when you get older, kids figure it out quick.

Yeah.

My whole life is how much can I slack?

Right.

How much can I, how much can I not do this?

Yeah.

So, um, and that's what Deborah's all about is accomplishments, scholastic things, the fact that she's so smart, that's all anybody ever talks about.

So that's all she kind of is, basically.

She also would

kind of be shitty if she didn't think people were as smart as her.

She'd be kind of shitty to them also.

Oh.

Which, I mean, you're telling her she's so brilliant from a young age.

It's really.

kind of hard for a kid to not do that at that point.

Also, she's athletic.

She's a good musician.

It's wild.

So dad's driving the butternut bread bakery truck, butternut bread,

and,

you know, would move up in the company a little bit.

But Deborah said we didn't have a lot of money, but we always had everything we needed.

Nothing negative or unusual about her childhood.

She was never beaten or dragged into some trees, you know, and felt up by a bunch of boys or anything weird like that.

Nothing crazy happened to her.

She said, you know, everything was fine.

There was one incident, though, that other family members recall.

Deborah was angry with her father when he came home drunk from a bowling tournament.

Uh-oh.

Okay.

If I'm driving a fucking bread truck all day, every goddamn day.

Bowling tournament.

Which seems like a special event.

Yeah.

It's not like he's bowling every night.

It was a tournament and he got a little tank.

Yeah.

And my child is telling me, giving me the what for.

We're going to have a talk.

You're going to be writing something 100, 200 times to shut the, just to keep you out of my hair.

Go away.

I won't bother Dad when he's pissed.

Quit fucking up my buzz.

Get out of here.

God damn it.

I work hard for this buzz.

Yeah.

Come home and get yelled at by you.

This is an expensive buzz.

Leave me alone.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

It was late at night.

She stayed up pissed off waiting for Dad to come home.

What?

Everyone else was asleep.

She sat on the couch.

How dare he?

Yeah.

How dare he?

Where have you been?

Wow, that is wild.

You're like, you're the daughter, right?

All shit face.

What happened?

Is there homework done?

She popped in the kitchen as he was counting several hundred dollars he won in the tournament.

Oh, I got drunk and won?

I got drunk.

Yeah, I won, so I got drunk, I think is really probably what it was.

Getting drunk and then winning a bowling tournament probably is

pretty amazing.

But yeah, so she's going to come in breaking balls.

She screamed at him and yelled at him.

And later on, she felt bad about it because she found out that the money he always got from stuff like that, he put into her college fund.

It was for her.

He didn't spend it on himself at all.

He had like a coffee can that he put it in for her.

I drank a couple of beers because I don't get to keep all this.

Yeah, this sucks.

So, yeah, she said, ah, goddammit.

So, Deborah and Pam, her sister, shared a room.

They got along pretty well.

Pam is smart too, but Deborah is like next level smart.

So, Pam, if your little sister is so much smarter than you, it's got to kind of piss you off a little bit, I would think.

But Debra took piano and violin lessons and was very good at both, continued to play piano into her college years.

She's incredibly smart.

She was the national merit scholar, the co-valedictorian.

And so you would think maybe, you know, she seems kind of prickly and awfully smart.

She'd probably be that like nerdy girl that nobody really wants to talk to because she's kind of snotty too at at the same time.

But not true at all.

She was also on the student council.

She was a cheerleader.

Oh.

Which that's not.

It's rare that the smart girl's that pretty, too.

Yeah, yeah.

Or has time to be a cheerleader.

You know what I mean?

So she's doing all that.

One of her classmates said she was a hard worker, intelligent, and pleasant.

He said she was quiet, nice, and smart.

This is, yeah, he said it's just, you know, he sat next to her in chemistry, said she

did everything right.

She was a cheerleader.

She dated the varsity football quarterback.

Dang, what?

Yeah, she's got to have all the success she can have in every aspect.

She played violin and piano.

She did everything.

One of her class, or the principal, said she fit right in.

She was a rather aggressive girl.

You could tell she was going to be successful.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And she ends up going off to college at the University of Illinois where she's from there.

Yeah, the Illinois, fighting Alina with the orange helmets.

She majored in chemical engineering.

Dang, she's hot, driven, and brilliant.

That's amazing.

That seems hard.

Chemical engineering?

Yeah,

I can understand electrical or like structural, but chemical or further.

No.

Biological?

No.

I don't know.

I don't understand any of it, by the way.

How do you make?

She makes it like gasoline, man?

Yeah.

I don't know anything about engineering, of anything.

She can make gasoline at home.

That's incredible.

Couldn't even drive a train.

I wouldn't know what to do.

No engineering of any guy.

I mean, that one I think is just throttle and brake.

I still wouldn't know where they are.

I don't know how the do you know where the throttle and brake are in a fucking train?

I don't either.

It feels like there's probably a lever that goes forward.

There's probably all kinds of levers and a thing to let out like steam and all sorts of shit.

I don't know what I would do with that.

It would be really hard.

So, yeah, chemical engineering, which is, like I said, any, the word engineering scares me.

Quick story.

When I was in the 10th grade,

the guidance counselor fucked up, must have pressed the wrong button in the computer when making my schedule.

And instead of putting me in one class, she put me in this advanced engineering class.

What did they make?

Everyone else in the class was a senior who'd been taking engineering for three years.

This was like a film.

It's the fourth class.

I'm in 10th grade.

I've never taken engineering before and had no fucking idea what I was doing.

So I sat down and I was lost in three seconds.

I felt like the dumbest person in the world

for like three days.

I really did.

I felt so stupid.

And then I went to the guidance counselor and they were like, oh, yeah, those kids have been taking that for three years.

You came in like in the fourth quarter.

You should not know what anything about that.

Because I was like, I'm dumb.

I'm too dumb for this class.

That feeling you felt.

No, I felt in remedial fucking

engineering remedial English.

I felt like the dumbest kid.

Oh, God.

Maybe you should have sat down in that class and been like, oh, I think I can handle the other one.

I think I got this.

Maybe you could have done chemical.

Maybe you could have done engineering and didn't know about it.

Maybe.

Maybe that's what the...

My brain was just geared for that one.

They had drafting boards in front of them.

I was like, what am I?

I don't know how to do any of this.

This is terrifying.

I'm not doing any cats in here, guys.

No.

So she ends ends up meeting a guy here while in her undergraduate here.

She dated a man named Dwayne M.J.

Green.

Hell yeah.

M.J.

Why?

But sure.

Yeah.

Dwayne M.J.

Green.

He's an engineer, and they get married while she's studying at her, at Kansas, University of Kansas, which is next.

They're going to live together in independence and do all of that.

And then

things are going to have some problems.

She later would say, we had absolutely no common interests, is what she said.

Fascinating.

So she graduates a four-year program in three years with the chemical engineering in 72, then goes to University of Kansas Medical School, graduating in 75, which is again early.

So everything she does is early, early, always.

She switched to medicine because she believed the market was flooded with engineers back then.

So

imagine if you had to decide between, I mean, there's a lot of engineers.

I guess I'll just be a doctor.

Imagine if that was our decision.

Wow.

That is awesome.

Rather than, I guess I'll go work at Peter Piper Pizza or wherever you went.

And I said I'll go work at.

I guess they'll write some dick jokes and hope people like it.

In 15 years, what are you talking about?

Not out of high school.

Oh, God.

Then?

I'm talking about college.

There was certainly an influx of pizza makers.

Yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

Plenty of people working at Taco Bell for me or whatever the fuck I was doing back then.

So she chooses emergency medicine as her initial specialty, which is, to me, the craziest form of medicine.

Emergency medicine.

Things that people need right now.

To not

go to work and not know what you're facing at all is crazy to me.

To just go in there and be like, someone's going to come in with a sore throat and the next guy's going to come in with a sprinkler key sticking out of his temple.

Like, and I got to deal with both of them back to back and have the same

equally, have the nice demeanor for the kid, and have the fucking holy shit, there's a sprinkler key in you for the guy.

There's a lot going on there.

So, that's too much, I think.

I couldn't handle that.

That would drive about two days of that, I'd have a fucking breakdown.

Wouldn't be able to handle it.

So, she undertook a residency at the Truman Medical Center emergency room after her graduation.

And she finished this program in three years instead of four.

Wow.

Again, so a lot of people take eight years to get through all this.

She did it in six years.

Dang.

A doctor after six years.

Six years.

Pretty goddamn impressive, I would say.

She's going to deal with other specialties as time goes on, but we'll talk about that.

So by 1978, she's making about 70 grand a year,

1978 money, which is 400 grand a year now.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

She's doing great as a pretty young person.

She's 27, for Christ's sake.

She's crushing it.

That's when she divorces Dwayne.

See you around, Dwayne.

Bye, Dwayne.

Now, Dwayne's, her version of why the marriage failed is they didn't have any common interests.

Yeah.

His version was, I put her through college, then she dumped me.

That's his version of it.

A little bit different.

As soon as she got a job and got out of there, she dumped me.

Since she didn't need me any longer, goodbye.

Yeah.

And he's an engineer, so she's not real interested in that.

That's what she was, when she got with him, that's what she wanted to do.

But now, you know, it's different.

Our common interest was getting me through school.

Once that was done, it was over.

She's not lying.

She's just

different.

She said we had no common interests.

They did have one common interest, getting her through school.

And then it went away.

Then it was no more.

So the divorce, though, everybody says was pretty amicable because, I don't know, it didn't seem like it was that much passion flowing around where anybody really gave a shit.

So pretty much immediately she meets another man, probably a little before, you know.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

she probably bridged that relationship gap

she could see the yeah she could see it coming

yeah she met a guy named Michael Farrar F-A-R-R-A-R oh there's a lot of R's and A's in that name Farrar so Michael he's born in 1955 so he's four years younger than her yeah

he was a medical student at the time and she was already a practicing physician he's pretty handsome and his goal in medicine is to go into cardiology Okay.

Yeah, this is the perfect matchup, it seems like.

It's going to be great for them.

You know, she also, she's like, she's cool at this point.

She's like a young, she's a young chick doctor with a, with a red sports car and all this type of shit.

Like, yeah, of course she'd be attractive.

Who wouldn't be attractive to that?

And she's had a pretty great goddamn life.

Not too bad so far.

Wins at everything.

Yeah.

And Michael said, quote, I think it was all those things about her that attracted me.

Yeah, her attractiveness of in every aspect You know the money the hot chicken the fact that she was attractive Yeah, smart as smart as I am all that stuff It attracted me Yeah, her attractiveness attracted me

He said the couple of things weren't so great though.

She's very volatile Yeah, she'll go from zero to 60 in a heartbeat hot crazy

a lot of warm.

Yeah.

Yeah, which she's strung tight and a lot of times very smart people are sure wound a little tighter.

They're strung a little different than the rest of us here.

He also said she, quote, felt threatened by my family's closeness,

which is odd.

And she described her own family at this point as very cold.

So that's why she didn't understand the closeness of their family.

She said, my family's just very cold.

That was her kind of excuse.

We don't need all that comfort and shit.

You guys are supporting each other.

Do it yourself.

Who needs a hug when you walk in the door?

Fuck off.

Hug yourself.

Fuck.

That's all.

So

she would lose her temper at minor things, though.

And

that kind of made him a little bit leery, but he's real stable and dependable.

So they're kind of a good match for each other when it comes to that.

If she pushes, he'll lean back a little bit type of deal, you know?

Okay.

So they, yeah.

He'd went to high school in North Kansas City School District, graduated from medical school at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

And then the couple's going to move to Ohio

where she's going to finish up what she's doing, and he's going to start his residency at the University of Cincinnati.

So that's how that goes.

May 26th, 1979, they get married real quick.

Yeah.

That is real fast.

They got married.

Michael later will tell somebody that

after the, this is during the first couple of years of their marriage.

that he'd kind of known during the ceremony that he was making a mistake.

Oh.

During the ceremony,

which is odd.

Hello, Reverend.

I'm making a big mistake today.

How are you?

So you two have composed your own vows?

Yes, I have.

My darling, I'm making a huge mistake.

I mean, shit.

Hold on a minute.

I wrote that note to myself.

Sorry.

Hold on.

Forever and ever.

Whoops a daisy.

You're so beautiful.

I love you.

Yes, my bad.

So he said she had anger management issues.

And it wasn't just with him.

It was with anybody that she came across.

She once, a couple

in a parking lot, parked in the parking spot that she'd wanted to go to.

Yeah.

Didn't like, you know, screech in front of her and slam into it, then give her the finger and fucking, you know, walk away with their pants down, showing their asses.

Like, nothing like that.

They just pulled in a parking spot that she had wanted to go to.

Okay.

So she followed them through the parking lot to berate them for it for the whole, like just screaming for 10 minutes about this parking.

just as we're parking into the store we're just she's bitching at them wow level just fucking going crazy she'd also yell at restaurant servers

oh no airline staff anybody and and as much as airline staff deserve to be yelled at i'm not the guy to yell at them you know what i mean i don't yell at i don't yell at people like that i just don't i yell at people who are above me that can hurt me that's what i do because i'm stupid like

she's actually the smart one.

I'm an idiot and I only yell at people that can ruin it.

The man at the gas station that was working the gas station yesterday, I'm on the phone getting a drink, going to my daughter's volleyball game, and I said, fuck.

The guy behind the counter said, sir, watch your mouth, please.

And I, and I said, and I just went, oh yeah, sure.

And then just went about my life.

As I got out to the truck, I was like, why didn't I tell that guy to mind his fucking business?

Fuck you, man.

How's that?

That kind of shit I have.

And I still won't do that.

No, see, that kind of shit it's like a ball bouncing if you bounce it i'm coming back at you twice as hard

i would have said no problem you fucking cunt face how's that better

better dick liquor i would have

just because i'm an asshole like that but i would have kissed his ass till he was a dick though that's the thing

you've seen me with

what what you've seen me with servers that completely fuck my order up and i i feel like it's my fault like i don't even i i'm sure i did something wrong like i'm not i'm not a come down on you guy, but don't tell me what to talk to an adult.

I got, I just, I'm too busy for the fucking, I don't mind dealing with this.

I'm not going to know.

We're not fighting today.

Fuck you.

Not happening.

Nope.

Fucking unbelievable.

So this is what I mean.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat servers.

Yeah.

Number one.

And anybody that

is at that time, quote unquote, beneath them, has to serve them or kiss their ass.

Frontline employee and we're berating their life.

You can tell a

I promise.

You can tell a lot about character like that.

But it wasn't just that.

It was anyone who crossed her.

She would just, if she was in the mood, boy, it was happening.

It was going to be a battle.

So

that's a lot.

It reminds me of my mother and it scares me.

Okay.

That's what my mom always did.

She's just.

Frontline employee just berated them.

Not frontline anybody.

Any employee.

Anybody.

No, a doctor, a fucker.

It doesn't matter.

It was any person.

Right from my grandmother to

anybody and it used to freak me out as a kid because i'd be like yeah we just it's okay it's all right and she'd be like no

i was like oh god jesus christ used to embarrass the fuck out of me but i'm telling you it was wild so that's a tough thing luckily she doesn't have any kids at this point to

take this in she's got a roman

yeah so now michael's going to accept an internal medicine residency at the university of cincinnati like i said they moved to oio and deborah who at this point is going by Deborah Green, and that's what she's going to keep this name, even though she married.

From Dwayne?

She's keeping Dwayne's name because I think that was her professional name.

She started medicine with that.

Yeah, you got Dr.

Green.

That's real easy.

And

you don't want people going, what happened to Dr.

Green?

Yeah, and you might make an appointment just based on the fact that she might be giving me weed.

Yeah, you don't know.

And Dr.

Green, maybe it's a code.

Yeah.

Maybe it's just a code.

Dr.

Green sounds like a doctor that's done this a long time and just fucking knows what to do.

Absolutely.

So she goes into her own practice or goes into a practice at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital

as an emergency physician.

But eventually she didn't really like the emergency room

thing.

No, she switched specialties and joined a second residency in internal residence and internal medicine, joining Michael's program.

So now they're doing that together.

It's cardiology soon.

Well, yeah, it starts out with internal medicine, I guess, and then they're going from there.

Now, by the way, way later on there is an ann rule book about this whole thing now yeah if you're not like a big true crime aficionado if ann rule writes a book that means shit has gone off the rails it's gone crazy bad things have happened if ann rule's heard of this you got issues yeah because every one of her audio books is 18 hours long

and extremely detailed.

And shit, you have fucked up royally if Anne Rule is sitting there taking notes at your trial.

Bad stuff here.

So

the bad things are going to happen.

Now, Anne Ruhl describes it this way.

She describes how Deborah kind of coasted through college and med school easily.

Really?

Had no problems.

She said, quote, her genetic gifts of talent and intelligence had always made her life so easy, and there were precious few things she wanted that she did not get.

Perhaps that's why she behaved outrageously when anyone crossed her.

She couldn't abide anyone who questioned her intelligence or any glitch in plans that inconvenienced her because she had everything so set out.

Yeah, so she didn't expect people to be as smart as her.

They just she just expected them to bow before her because she's better than them.

Bow before my altar of intelligence, stupid.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

It's not her going.

What's so hard about trigonometry?

She's going,

I do trigonometry.

It's so fucking...

It's clearly inferior to me, is what she's saying, obviously.

So you should kiss my ass.

And also, when her plans are laid out and then they don't come to fruition fruition like she wants, that makes her fucking crazy.

So

now in the early 80s, she starts to develop some medical issues.

She had surgery on her wrist.

Her wrist got infected somehow.

So she had to have surgery to remove some abscess or some shit.

Also, migraines and insomnia she gets as well.

I would think the stress of doing another medical residency and doing all that would give you migraines and insomnia.

Also, she's probably got an exhausted brain.

That thing's probably working hard.

It's exactly what I'm saying.

If you're doing all that,

I would fucking know.

That probably hurts a little.

You use your elbow too much.

The motherfucker hurts.

It's a tennis elbow.

I'd be on the floor with like a green fluid dripping out of my ear, probably, if I tried to get all that in my head.

And

I can't.

I don't know.

So they're going to start having kids here, these two.

And January 20th, 1982, they have their first child, a son named Timothy.

Goes by Timothy's children, huh?

She wants children.

Absolutely.

She wants it all.

I mean, she wants a family.

She wants the career.

She wants everything.

And so does he.

They both want it all.

She did a six-week maternity leave, then returned to her fellowship in hematology and oncology.

Whoa.

At University of San Francisco.

She's going into oncology as her specialty.

Wow.

Which is, oof, good for her.

That's something.

Never.

No, it's too sad.

But it would feel amazing to be able to help someone with that.

So maybe

that's why you do that.

Yeah.

It has to be the drive to treat it better, I would think.

Yeah.

So

I have a medical issue, whatever.

But they thought it was cancer.

So they sent me to the cancer doctor, and he's like, there's a couple ways you can treat it.

You can do stuff at home or you can come here.

He goes, Do you want to come here?

He asked me that to me.

Obviously not.

He doesn't even even want to go there, and he gets paid.

I'm sure, incredibly well to be there.

I don't know how oncologists show up every day.

Not every day.

I might work once every three days.

That sounds horrible.

Treat it like a fireman because that's crazy.

But for you, that was a good visit because you don't have children.

Oh, yeah, I don't have cancer.

His main thing was, hey, stop eating that shit.

That was his main thing.

Stop fucking around.

Take life seriously.

Yeah, that's much better.

So that's the thing you go for: hey, you don't have cancer.

You're an idiot, but you you don't have cancer.

You don't take care of yourself like an adult, but.

You can't operate a train or this body very well.

No, neither.

To be honest.

I'm going to be quite honest with you.

So December 27th, 1984, almost three years later, they have a daughter named Kate.

Yeah.

So here we go.

1985, she received a fellowship in hematology and oncology, and she completed that.

I'm sorry, that was before she completed it in 85.

So now she's got two kids, a completed fellowship.

Everything's going great.

So she returned to her studies and completed it and she went into private practice in hematology and oncology while Michael finished up the last year of his cardiology fellowship.

Wow.

Heart and cancer doctor.

That's what they are together.

The most important ones, right?

Wow.

I would say, Christ, they do a lot.

But

that's an impressive, that's a power couple.

That's That's pretty goddamn good.

And they would later, they joined kind of the established, a couple of well-established medical practices in the Kansas City area after this here.

After about a year, Deborah starts her own practice,

which prospers pretty well here in the mid-80s.

Yeah.

Until we'll talk about what happens in the late 80s that kind of makes her have a maternity leave and take some time off and kind of messes it up a little bit.

But by 1986, Michael was, one doctor that knew him in Ohio said, quote, he was a real superstar.

Yeah.

Killing it.

He completed his fellowship in cardiology and agreed to stay at the hospital.

Three months later, he quit out of nowhere, and he told his colleagues it had something to do with his wife.

His wife wanted to leave Cincinnati, is what the other doctor said.

She didn't want to be there anymore.

So that's when they move back to Kansas City and start their own practices.

Sure, she starts her own, and that's how it goes.

They move into a very nice tutor-style home in a very upscale, fashionable neighborhood.

And then in 1988, they add a third child to this mix named Kelly.

Now it's another daughter.

Now, this was an unplanned one, which you would imagine two doctors who can both write prescriptions would

not have unplanned pregnancy.

Shouldn't have pills to take.

Yeah, and there's that.

You don't do.

If you don't want a kid, one of you write a prescription for something.

Or one of you don't put the secret.

Yeah, don't put the special sauce on the burger.

That's one of the two.

You can figure it out.

I'm saying out of that, I would think medically two doctors could figure this out.

They should not

have unwanted children.

But apparently, Deborah didn't want the kid at first.

She didn't want to have the baby because she was in too much of a flow, but then she said, okay, fine.

Okay.

So, yeah, it's very, very interesting.

Now, during this period, here is an interview.

This is living in Kansas City,

doing doctor stuff, both of them.

This is an interview later on with a woman named Ann Slegman Eisenberg.

And she knew Deborah,

you know, during this whole time.

And they will go from there.

She said, the interviewer said, how did you meet Deborah?

She said, I started taking a three and a pro tennis class at a little club near my house.

I played singles and wanted to learn doubles tennis.

Deborah Deborah was no longer working as an oncologist and was also learning tennis, so we got to know each other.

They said, was she likable?

And this woman said, she literally had a genius IQ.

So she was so quick and as funny as a person can be.

Kind of the life of the party type of person.

That sounds fun.

She said, did you meet her husband, Michael?

And he said, she says, my husband and I socialized with her and her husband once at a tennis get together.

He was nothing to look at, kind of a drip, but was well thought of in his field.

Jesus.

He's a dull little fucking ugly man, but he's well thought of in his field.

Okay.

Kind of a drip.

They said, Did you meet their kids?

And she said, they went to a private school and my kids went to public school.

Some of Deborah's kids would come around the tennis club, and I think they really did have a good relationship with their mother at that time.

Kelly was darling with a poof of blonde hair.

So they're both working really hard.

They both end up on the staff at Trinity Lutheran Hospital.

Wow.

This is going to be from 86 kind of on.

They do this.

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A nurse who worked with her though said that she found Deborah very

not

a great bedside manner.

She described her as, quote, very cold.

She was very unfeeling to the the patients.

That's what you want in a cancer doctor.

Yeah,

was that what she was doing?

Was cancer doctoring at that time?

Yeah, you can't be unfeeling to those people.

You have cancer.

Gonna be dead pretty soon.

All right, have a good one.

Don't worry, it's almost over.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, no, you're going to be

worse and worse and worse, as a matter of fact.

But the worst worst is almost here.

There you go.

So that's pretty good anyway.

Even that would be somewhat

likable.

Somewhat, yeah.

It's not that.

It's depending on who you are, yeah.

At least if you're trying to make a joke,

she also said, this woman, that Deborah never talked about her husband or her children in a loving way.

It was always as far as obligation, mainly.

And another medical doctor from this area said that she was obsessed about her husband, Michael, and kind of followed him around all the time.

Oh.

She's always trailing him and tracking him type of deal.

Now,

she's going to have some problems, though, because she starts after a while she starts losing jobs

due to her strange behavior.

She failed a couple of board certifications which was a strange thing from her.

For her she gained a ton of weight out of nowhere.

Well I think we know why she started gaining weight because she also started taking prescription drugs and drinking to the point of stumbling around the house and falling into shit.

What is that?

When you do that, you'll put some weight on.

What is going on with Deborah?

I don't know.

One of the friends said it almost seemed as if she had given up at a point here.

Now, the school the kids go to, the Pembroke School,

it's the Pembroke Hill School.

It's a private school in Kansas City.

And people from the school said

Deborah was a good mother.

who encouraged the kids to do activities and do well in school.

After her last maternity

leave, she had to, she wanted to resume her medical career, but her practice faltered because she had more chronic pain problems.

Now, I don't know if there's actual chronic pain that she takes drugs for and gets more into that, or if she takes drugs because she says she has chronic pain and then says she has more chronic pain to get more, to have more drugs.

I'm not sure.

You never know what that, you know what I'm saying?

You don't know if it's drug seeking or legitimate or what here.

So

also, there's a lot of fighting going on.

Sure.

Her friends said

they described her temper as having a, quote, explosive velocity.

Velocity.

Explosive velocity is how you would describe a bullet coming out of a gun.

Yeah.

Not a person's temper.

That's

crazy.

Yeah.

Or a running back if you're like trying to sell him to the skin.

Explosive velocity.

Watch the way he hits that hole between the watch the way he hits the three gap.

Look at that.

Oh, baby.

Wow.

Or the B gap.

So

she accused Michael a lot of emotional neglect

and because he was at work a lot and she wouldn't be now at this point.

So now she'd come home.

He'd come home and she'd be drunk and pissed.

And stoned probably.

And yeah, also pills mixed with that too.

But this all happened.

She ends up deciding to kind of quit her practice at this point.

Really?

And well, apparently it was a mutual decision between Michael and Deborah.

They decided that one of them them should probably watch the kids at some point.

Okay.

Two doctors, there's no time for the kids if they're both doctors.

Let's be honest.

We don't need that much money.

Yes.

We're fine.

They said, also,

somebody should spend time with the kids.

Now they're getting older.

They have like sports and activities they're doing and neither of us are going to them.

And, you know, one of us should do that.

And you're drunk all the time.

Yeah.

And, you know, I like to day drink.

So, you know, it's perfect, actually.

So she quit her practice.

And

friends said, quote, she attended soccer clinics to become a coach to help her kids play better because they played soccer.

And her friend said, I just don't know a lot of mothers who would do that.

A clinic?

No.

No.

No.

My parents would have never done that.

To be coaches?

No.

My parents would have went, I don't know much about soccer, and then went in the house.

That would have been it.

Oh, okay.

I guess I'm.

I had a friend that did it, but it was because the coach didn't give a fuck.

So he was like, I'll do it.

That's possible, too.

So she just kind of becomes a homemaker.

She works part-time from the family's house on medical peer reviews and Medicaid processing.

That's all she's doing now.

So she's taking a 160 ID, IQ, and working from home and just kind of hanging out doing that.

So 1994 comes around, and this is when problems really start in the relationship.

There's been problems before, but this is when the cracks start to

become chasms here.

Now, the kids at this point, they have Timothy, Timothy, who's about 12 at this point.

Tim, he's doing great,

happy, confident, popular kid, plays soccer and hockey.

Sure.

Doing all that.

Really good.

He goes to like special oral early morning practices and weekend tournaments, and he's really, really into it.

You know, and then they have, you know, their other kids.

They have a cute little six-year-old.

And

this six-year-old, by the way, Kelly,

people think she has intellectual gifts like her mother and

grandmother.

This is running in the, it's running in this, and the family is going to the second daughters, apparently.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the accident one.

That's the, yeah, that's the accident.

It's not like the second daughter was stupid either.

Right.

Kate's not stupid.

This one just happens to be brilliant.

Brilliant's a different story.

And everybody would dote on her.

She's a little blonde kid who's brilliant.

And

she's, you know, doesn't have activities and shit yet.

She's just a little kid at this point.

She's still teaching herself to play Beethoven.

Yeah, and Kate is a ballerina, the middle daughter.

Oh, she's a ballerina actually dancing with the state ballet of Missouri by the age of 10.

Jesus.

So they're accomplished, successful, the opposite of our families, essentially.

They've done wonderful.

That's who they are.

You look at as a kid, you look at people like this and go, wow, that must be awesome.

Likely no

depression in that house.

It doesn't seem like it, anyway.

They're too busy to be depressed, these people.

And also, the two of them, Deborah and Michael, are hanging out with like the real influential families who are the parents of the other kids at the school.

This is a private school that costs a lot of money.

So this is a kind of a, it's its own little society.

These people will be helping each other out for years and years.

When you apply for a job in years and years and don't know why you didn't get it, it's because these people did.

You didn't go to school.

Yeah, you didn't, you're not like the dad of somebody who went to school with a guy whose kid was here.

It's crazy.

A friend said that Deborah was loving with her children.

She did everything with her kids is what she said.

Now, Michael starts to tell his friends that, you know what, our marriage wasn't ideal.

It was more of a partnership than a marriage.

He said that neither of them ever expressed their love to each other, even when they first, even they were newlyweds.

They weren't like, I love you so much and all that.

It was more like a business arrangement.

You know, we'd be good together type of thing.

Yeah.

So we should be together.

Not a lot of emotional anything.

And maybe they're both so smart, maybe emotions don't come into it too much as much for them.

I'm not sure.

I've never been dealt with this kind of.

No.

So

he said and he told other people that Debbie, Deborah seemed to not have the coping skills.

that a lot of people have.

She would go into a rage and sometimes would even break things and end up like harming herself over it by accident, breaking shit.

And she, yeah, and they said it didn't matter if it was a private or public setting either.

You could be at the grocery store.

She could be in the living room.

It doesn't matter.

She'll have equal reckless abandon with this type of shit.

Michael would work long hours and he would stay, and this is a self-perpetuating thing here.

She'd be mad at him for working a lot, so he would work more so he didn't have to argue with her.

So he didn't have to go home and argue with her.

He'd just come home and go right to sleep and then get up and leave again.

He'd be like, at seven o'clock, he'd be like, well, I worked till seven.

She's going to get pissed.

So I better work till 11.

So maybe she'll be sleeping by the time I get there.

Yeah, it's not good.

So it's definitely just kind of plugging along here.

It's like a big snowball going down a hill.

And also,

he thought that she was a shitty homemaker as well.

Which, I mean, you're never there.

What do you care?

So anyway.

She's drunk, man.

What do you want?

yeah.

Hey, what do you want?

I'm tanked by 4:30.

You try cleaning, yeah.

You try cleaning the house after half a bottle of tequila.

It's not easy.

Tell you what.

Try putting that fucking fitted sheet on the bed when you're wobbly.

Either that or she goes, I thought I was clean.

Didn't I make this?

I don't know.

The kids are sleeping, so they seem fine, I guess.

I don't know.

Yeah.

So

he said when they fought, she would treat the children, especially Tim,

as sounding boards,

as little adults that

she would tell them about what their father had done wrong.

And like bad relationship shit, which as a kid who had to fucking deal with their parents,

one of my parents' relationship issues that would tell me about them all the fucking time is not good for your psyche.

It's just not good.

No.

You're not good to make your kid an adult that has to worry about your adult shit.

You know what I mean?

So they would tell,

she'd tell them that and the kids were, oh boy, after a while, the kids were a little upset about hearing it.

But then after a while,

they would just go along with it.

And the kids thought, man, our father's a terrible guy.

Wow.

Mom keeps saying how awful he is.

They would start to resent him to the point where...

Tim at 12, 13 years old would have physical confrontations with his father because he was pissed off and mom had told him all this shit.

Oh my God.

So that's not good.

Now, she's also apparently during this time self-medicating with sedatives and also narcotics to treat pain from certain injuries she's had periodically over the years here.

Apparently several times he confronted her with issues regarding how she was acting.

Even the fact that he said, listen, you're acting like this.

Your speech is like this.

Even your handwriting, I can tell you're fucked up.

I know you're fucked up.

I'm a doctor for Christ's sake.

I didn't drive the bread truck home and then tell you I think you're fucked up.

I'm in medicine.

Trust me, you're fucked up.

And

she finally said, yeah, you're right.

I shouldn't be using all this stuff.

And she agreed to stop using the medications every time he would confront her.

Okay.

And then it would be like that for a week or two.

And then, you know, he's still gone a long time at work and she's still pissed off and she would take it again and it would, you know, rinse and repeat the cycle over and over.

So by January 94, things are getting real real tense.

Real tense.

Over a very tense dinner,

real fucking tough day here.

Michael just bursts out and says, quote, I can't do this anymore.

Okay.

Can't do it.

I want out of this marriage.

I'm done.

Divorce.

I want a divorce.

She apparently lost her fucking mind when he said that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Was real pissed.

You don't want to tell a drunk person you want a divorce.

They usually

upset.

I leave you.

Yeah.

She started picking the plates off the table and hurling them at the walls as hard as she could and breaking them.

Just started destroying everything in the dining room, basically.

Breaking shit, screaming, collapsing on the floor, sobbing, cursing.

The kids are home.

They heard all of this.

Really?

Which is fun for them.

So Michael moves out.

Really?

Yeah, he moves into a little apartment nearby.

And imagine you're a cardiologist and you come home to a fucking small one-bedroom.

You'd be like, you,

oh,

fuck.

So they would like do their kid handoffs at fucking neutral ground locations, like not at their houses.

Like shit is very, very tense.

Now, Deborah wanted to get back together, she said.

She did.

And during this time, by the way, she really steps up as a mom, too, and does even more

than she was doing before.

Absolutely.

I mean, because now Michael's around even less.

So she's got to pick up the slack, and she does, too.

I mean, she takes the kids to their soccer practices, ballet recitals, hockey games, everything.

A neighbor said she was trying so hard to prove she could hold it together still.

Sure.

Absolutely.

She's trying to show that I'm still can do this and I'm going to go on with my life, which is what you have to do.

She, you know, had all of that kind of thing.

She is working a little bit doing doing medical consulting.

She's still reviewing Medicaid claims from a home office.

But they said the office is like a mess.

She's kind of scat.

You could tell by her desk that she's got issues going on right now.

He is doing great.

Michael's doing fantastic in her career.

So it's at this point

she tells him on the phone one night while very drunk, she said, I fucking gave up my practice

to work, to do our family.

So

she said to him, quote, you owe me stability.

Oh, boy.

You owe me stability, which in this case is kind of true.

Yeah.

Even

you had three kids with her.

She quit her thing to do.

She certainly deserves a certain amount of stability.

Stability.

Yeah.

Unless the alcohol and drugs were the reason she quit.

You know what I mean?

Well, that's going to certainly be a conversation.

But yeah, he definitely owes her help.

Yeah, if she's taking care of the kids all the time while he's never around, then yeah, I would say stability is the basic minimum.

Now, this goes on for a few months.

Then, in May of 1994,

they decide they're going to give it another shot.

And they do this in a grand fashion.

They decide that basically a local real estate agent told them they had this house that was a good deal, and it was a big, beautiful six-bedroom, Tudor-style, huge house.

Wow.

At 7517 Canterbury Court in Prairie Village, Kansas.

That's nice.

Sounds so nice.

It's just a beautiful neighborhood.

It's excellent.

Excellent.

It's got a big backyard for Tim to practice his soccer.

There's a studio that's perfect for ballet, for a ballet studio in there for the kid.

For Kate, it's a lot, man.

So Michael said, you know what?

Let's try this.

Because that was the other thing they said.

Our house was kind of small and it was cluttered and it caused a lot of,

there's a lot of tension.

And maybe if we get into a big house, we're all a little more spread out.

We'll give it another shot.

So they decide to do it.

Now, it's a big fucking nut, this house.

Way expensive.

Real expensive.

A lot of debt.

So as the day comes up, Michael starts getting cold feet about the house.

And he said later on, I backed down.

He said, fearing that if we moved in together again, it would just get worse, basically.

So the deal ends up collapsing

and they don't make the deal.

They pull out of the deal for this house.

Deborah said,

quote, it felt like he was pulling the rug out from under us.

That's what she told a friend of hers.

So, yeah, Michael, that's not cool to say you're going to.

It's pretty fucked up, yeah.

It's kind of fucked up here.

So May 21st, 1994, they go on a family.

This is just days after the house falls through.

They go, look, we're not going to move into the house, but let's try to be a family anyway.

So they all pile into the minivan and they're going out together.

Family day.

That's it.

They're going for a picnic at the local park.

Really, really attempting to do some family shit.

That's that's go to the park in a minivan to have a picnic is

pretty middle America.

That's good stuff if you're a kid.

So

and they're all talked and you know did their things and

whatever, basically.

So when they drive home to their

house that they've been living in,

they pull up to smoke pouring out of the windows of the house.

Oh, fuck.

Absolutely engulfed, basically.

It's a two-story colonial, little quiet cul-de-sac, and there is smoke and flames.

Neighbors are in the street.

Fire trucks are pulling up.

The house is on fucking fire when they get home.

They've been gone for hours.

Something happened while they were gone.

So the fire department, it takes them a few hours to contain the blaze.

They are.

Yeah.

And the damage is awful.

The living room is, they called the couch a charred skeleton.

Fucking all the family photos are burned.

Everything.

The kitchen's destroyed.

It's just destroyed.

No one's hurt because nobody was home, luckily.

That's correct.

Yeah, it was wild.

So the insurance investigators go over the wreckage and they decide and they figure it out what happened.

It was an electrical short and a frayed power cord to the VCR in the living room.

The VCR did this.

The fucking VCR did this.

Oh, my God.

Undoubtedly, while it was flashing 12 o'clock, also.

Just to be a dick.

So it was exacerbated by overloaded outlets, and the home had kind of an older wiring system as well.

So when you added all that up together,

you get a fire, essentially.

Absolutely.

They found no foul play, no accelerants, nothing like that.

Just a shitluck, basically.

Shit lucky.

Wiring VCR.

That's it.

Cheap VCR is what they got.

So they get an insurance payout that covers repairs and replaces their stuff.

Even Tim's, their son's hockey stick was burned.

I mean, everything.

You know, ballet slippers gone, all that shit.

It's a lot.

I guess Deborah would go to the house and just wander around it looking at it, just burned and gutted.

It hurts, probably.

It had to hurt.

All your memories, everything's gone.

She told a friend it was like our whole life went up in smoke when it happened.

She said she was just that.

That's the worst thing that could happen to you.

Everything is gone.

That's horrifying.

You've gotten nothing.

Not a little bit.

Yeah.

Nothing.

Like, that's mad.

All your shit on fire.

It's not even like in a flood, like you might find something and like dry it out and it might be okay.

Something, maybe.

Or something just gone.

Generally, a hockey stick will float in the house.

Yeah, yeah.

It's gone.

You can still keep that.

But if it's all burned, it's all gone.

No shit.

So Deborah and the kids move into Michael's apartment because they have nowhere else to go.

Luckily,

Michael's got a two-bedroom apartment

that, you know,

like a single guy's two-bedroom apartment.

He's got a couch and, you know, he's got like

some hot pockets in the freezer.

Like, that's pretty much what he's got going on over here.

So

this ended up kind of bringing them closer together because they all have to.

Oh, yeah, on top of each other.

Yeah.

Same little table and, you know, all that kind of thing.

And Michael said, man, you know, the fire, it burned down our whole house.

We could have been in there.

It could have happened.

We were sleeping.

We could have been killed.

And he said, at that point, he said, no more long shifts.

I'm going to

go home with the family.

I got a life to lead.

This is crazy.

So he cut back hours.

He volunteered as an assistant coach on Tim's soccer team

to do this.

He went to all of Kate's recitals, the ballet recitals.

He was never, never had time to do that before.

And

Deborah actually said, you know what?

I'm going to try my best.

So she tried to keep everything nice, tried to make good meals for everybody, tried to keep the kids going.

If he's going to try his best at doing that, I'll try my best on this.

And we'll do it.

So that summer, they have a real nice summer.

They have barbecues in the park and they go for family bike rides.

And it's like this idyllic family at this point now.

Oh, yeah.

Fall of 1994,

they renegotiate that deal on that house that fell through because they need a house at this point.

Yeah, this is great.

This is a roof.

God damn, we don't have one.

So they move in in October of 1994 into that big giant six-bedroom beauty there.

They got the same house back.

They got the same house back.

It's very expensive, and apparently it didn't sell.

It wouldn't sell.

Nope.

So they felt that this is the stage in which to mount their comeback, essentially.

So

by winter, though, as fall creeps into winter, Michael starts working longer shifts again.

A little more here, a little more there.

He starts getting emergency calls and taking them and going in and conferences that go into long weekends and things like that, where it gets a lot.

At the same time, Deborah's getting her migraines back again.

And she also starts drinking a bunch of wine, which then rolls into drinking a bunch of booze.

Yep, parlays into whiskey.

Sure.

And so just everything they were doing before just kind of everybody settles back into

settles back into this shit.

So they have fights over their finances.

They also have fights because he's mad at her for telling the kids bad shit about him, and then they're mad at him.

And it's a lot.

all the baggage the kids are all on her side big time well except for the kelly the youngest really doesn't know what the hell's going on she's six but the older kids are on her side because she's

they're told constantly that their father's terrible yeah um she'd yell at him and say you're never here and he'd fucking go in another room and that was that um

so

They had used

a lot of the insurance money from the earlier fire to purchase all new furniture.

They had a formal dining room, a large oak dining room table and 12 chairs, one of those

big old, you know, Thanksgiving dinner tables there.

They got a very expensive oriental rug on the floor, a big gold, expensive China cabinet.

They never had people over, by the way.

But they're prepared.

They're ready for them, though.

Yeah.

They're ready for them.

They invited a few people later on that they met out of town, and they stayed in the recreation room near the pool, those people.

So

she was trying to keep the house cleaner, but then, like I said, that kind of fell apart.

By spring of 1995, Deborah is drinking way more.

Yeah.

Way more.

And now she's got, when Michael's gone, she is positive he's having an affair.

Oh, boy.

She starts spending all of her time going over his credit card statements,

going over phone bills,

doing all of that stuff that people do.

Insecurity.

Yeah, big time.

July of 1995,

they're all going on a trip to Peru.

Really?

Not Peru, Indiana.

Yeah.

Peru the country.

They're going down there.

This is ayahuasca together.

Yeah, that's what they're doing.

No,

this is what a rich school this is.

That the two parents, Deborah and Michael and Tim, are all going with about 50 other students and parents from the Pembroke School.

All of these kids have enough money to go to Peru.

Wow.

Think about that.

Remember when you were a kid, if like you were going to like Six Flags?

Yeah, we were all.

The kid had to have enough money and all the kids had enough money.

You know what I mean?

I've sat out several action park trips for that very purpose.

Yeah.

So, yeah,

it's interesting.

A friend of hers down there said that Deborah was funny, bright,

She said, when we were there, it's really hard, 8,000 feet above sea level.

It was really hard on her, but she's a real trooper.

So I don't know what the sea level was hard on her, why that was hard on her.

That's like flagstaff, basically.

It's not that bad.

Yeah,

but the thin air, is it because she's heavy?

Is she heavy again?

Yeah, she gains some weight, but I mean, unless you run up a hill, it's fine.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I don't.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

So

during this trip, by the way, Michael starts talking to a woman.

Oh, now he's going to have the affair.

During a school trip.

Yeah.

So weird.

A woman named Margaret Hacker.

We'll talk about her in a second.

So basically, Mike was saying about his fan, about Deborah's that she was depressed and he would become more and more distant.

And he also...

tells his friends that she's not the woman I married.

No?

She's not.

Doesn't have the same ambition, doesn't have the same drive, doesn't have the same, she's just not the same person.

She's just kind of gone off into herself.

Sure.

So, yeah.

He

starts

turning to other people.

He tells his friend, a woman that he knows, that,

quote, within a matter of days, I guess Mike had told a woman that he found another woman, the perfect woman, the woman he had been looking for.

Oh, he's been looking for.

Well, he's been married for a long time.

You shouldn't be looking when you're married.

So the woman he found is a woman named Margaret Hacker, H-A-K-E-R, Hacker.

She's a nurse.

That seems like a perfect marriage there.

Oh, did I mention she's also married to a doctor?

Oh, boy.

She's married to an anesthesiologist as well.

She doesn't work for him, though, right?

I don't think so.

Okay.

She's a fellow parent from the Pembroke School.

Yeah.

So in Peru here, they started talking and they bonded over the fact that neither of them liked their marriages, essentially.

But both of them loved sex.

But they love sex.

They love fucking being on top of another person.

Yeah.

So this

started out as just these conversations and then it evolved into them sneaking off to the side to kiss every now and then during the trip.

That's fun.

Then by the time they come home from Peru, they're going to hotels and banging.

Oh, boy.

So,

yeah, this is interesting.

He told a friend of his that she listened without judgment, and that's something my wife wouldn't do.

Yeah.

She's mad at you all the time.

And she's got no interest in fucking you, whereas this woman does.

So, yeah.

That's that helps too.

Yeah.

And, uh, but still, that's, that's kind of part of it.

You got to figure that out.

So, Deborah is very suspicious.

Uh, she's calls her her girlfriends up late at night, shit-faced drunk, to complain about Michael.

Uh, she'd yell, she'd say, he's destroying us.

He's destroying us.

Yeah, he would talk about how, you know, the other school moms are whispering.

I know they're whispering behind my back.

She said, I found an earring in the car I didn't recognize.

Physical evidence, that's not being different.

Jesus, what are you doing that for?

What are you doing?

Then the last week of July 95, he tells her, I'd like a divorce again,

which at least that's only been a month.

That's not bad.

She freaked out and told the children that their father was leaving them.

Your father's leaving you, she said.

She was very upset.

Also, and this is something she mentioned more than once to several people, a broken home could disqualify the girls from debutante events.

Oh, not that.

You can't go to the debutante's ball.

Well, fuck that.

I don't have a dad.

You know what?

I'll be miserable for the rest of my life so the kid can go to a debutante's ball.

Is that what debutante means?

Father?

They have fathers.

It means intact family, is what that means.

I didn't go to one.

Only.

And events such as the Bells of the American Royal.

God, I'm so happy I didn't grow up with a fucking pot to piss in and don't know what any of this shit is.

Stuff sucks.

God damn it.

So Deborah's all pissed off, man.

She's upset.

Her behavior at this point becomes

unpredictable.

Erratic?

Yeah.

Unpredictable and erratic.

She drank all the time.

She wasn't watching the kids very well anymore.

Really?

She would just threaten people.

She'd say she's going to hurt herself.

She would just act all sorts of wacky at this point.

Oh, boy.

Now, Michael initially declined to move out of the house.

So this is all going on while he's at the house.

Well, she knows he wants a divorce.

I want a divorce and I'm not leaving.

Well, no.

He said that she was never a heavy drinker.

So all of a sudden, her drinking large amounts of alcohol, he said,

you can't supervise the kids.

It's not even like you're a functional alcoholic.

This is new to you.

Yeah, I'd divorce you and leave if I could, but my kids are fucked if I do.

They're going to be drowning in vodka if I leave.

She's like a kid who never drank and then starts going to frat parties every night.

And you're like, you know, you don't know how to do this.

Why are you standing upside down on the keg?

Stop it.

Why are you sucking dick in a pond?

What's happening right now?

How'd you get in there and why?

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Now, back to the show.

It's just strange.

So she would continue her routine of taking the children to all the activities, and then she would spend her evenings at home drinking alone,

sometimes to the point of passing out

and all of that.

And she, while she's shit-faced, she has no filter with the kids in terms of why dad's an asshole

and everything else.

Some drama starts August 4th, 1995.

Deborah calls Michael

saying

that she left the residence and is currently walking the streets of Kansas City hoping someone would kill her.

That's what she's doing right now.

Hey, I'm just walking around the streets hoping someone will kill me.

Okay, see you later by.

So the next day,

that didn't bring him home right away.

He waited until the next day.

He's all right.

Have fun.

It's all right.

Yeah, you'll be all right.

The next day, he came in.

Literally

down there, go in, check it out.

Yeah.

Well, he couldn't find her in Kansas City.

So the next day, he came home and

found her hiding under a bed in the basement.

Okay.

And he said, why the fuck did you do all this?

And she said, to make you worry.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

That's not manipulative or weird or anything.

Bizarre, that's for sure.

Yeah.

August 7th, 1995, Michael starts getting sick.

And he assumes this is the residuals from Peru here, basically.

There's like microbes and bacterias

that can linger for

weeks in your system, for weeks and weeks.

So August 11th, he becomes even more ill.

Uh-oh.

And by August 18th, he's hospitalized

with a condition the physician feels is life-threatening.

Oh.

Now,

they just say it's you got a tropical tropical disease of some kind.

He was hospitalized with severe dehydration and high fever.

He developed sepsis while in the hospital.

Oh, shit.

Yes, the doctor.

Doctor identified Streptococcus

viridans,

which had probably leaked through the damaged digestive tissue as a result of his extreme diarrhea.

Extreme diarrhea.

His diarrhea gave him strep.

He has diarrhea to the point that it's like dissolving his insides.

Yeah.

Things are leaking into other things.

And they said they couldn't pinpoint the source of the sepsis or the root cause of the illness itself.

But he recovers and he's released from the hospital on August 25th.

So he comes home.

He's home for a few hours and then he's sick again.

So they bring him back.

He's hospitalized again.

And they go, yeah, I don't know if it's the stress of being at home, you can't handle it, or we had you eating like rice, and now you're eating normal food, too.

You can't really do that.

He got home and had spaghetti.

Right.

So you can't put red sauce on a stomach that's been destroyed like that.

It just doesn't work.

Marinara is going to be bad.

You've been tapioca for three weeks.

Yeah, it's from

a little softer.

From tapioca to marinara is a big jump.

So he's hospitalized again.

He stabilizes.

He's released on August 30th.

That same week now, a couple days after he gets out of the hospital, Margaret Hacker, his girlfriend, files for divorce from her husband.

Oh, boy.

Okay,

that's on right at that time.

September 4th now, the same week, Michael's sick again.

Back in the hospital where he stays until September 11th.

So a week in the hospital is a lot.

And

they're trying to figure this out.

They base their conclusions on the fact that he was in Peru.

They narrowed down the possible causes of his gastrointestinal issues to typhoid fever.

Wow.

Tropical sprue.

What?

Or the most, and this is true,

the craziest gluten sensitivity that's ever happened.

Gluten-sensitive enteropathy.

You're either incredibly gluten intolerant or the craziest typhoon.

What was it called?

Typhoid fever.

Typhoid fever.

What was the other one?

Tropical sprue.

S-P-R-U.

Either got the typhoid or the sprue.

We can't decide yet.

Or you eat too much bread.

We're not sure.

Or it's the noodles, man.

It could be any one.

What kind are you eating?

You're not eating those shit runzoni, are you?

I either got typhoid fever.

You've got those American beauties, are you?

Typhoid fever.

I got typhoid fever, everybody.

That's what Sally gives me.

I got a typhoon in my belly, or I can't have pizza crust anymore.

Or somebody sprued me up the ass pretty good.

So they said they don't know why you're getting sick immediately.

They thought probably the stress of your dissolving marriage coupled with the fact that you're going to normal food when you go home.

You can't do that.

You got to keep doing that shit.

And you're having an affair and a woman just got divorced, so that made it super real.

Filed for divorce.

Yeah.

Now, this is September 4th.

Margaret Hacker.

She comes, his girlfriend, and says, I think your wife's trying to poison you.

Oh.

And he's like, calm down.

I was in fucking Peru.

Like, relax.

It's the pizza crust.

Yeah.

It's Peru.

Again,

I think I have typhoid sprue at this point.

I'm not sure.

So maybe there's that.

September 5th, the day after he goes into the hospital,

Margaret's husband dies.

What?

Margaret's husband is found dead in the garage of an empty house that they had rented.

Whoa.

Yeah.

How weird is that?

Did he have typhoon fever?

No.

He, uh, they are, they suspect a suicide.

Oh.

They suspect a suicide.

So couldn't take it.

Deborah's still acting weird.

Uh, Michael is released from the hospital on September 11th, and he remained home because he was upset that she couldn't care for the children.

September 25th, 1995, Michael calls the cops

to intervene in an argument they're having.

Um,

He said that Deborah was acting bizarre, and that's how this all started.

So

he had searched the house for his belongings, and in her purse, he discovered seed packets labeled as castor beans.

What are castor beans?

We'll talk all about castor beans, but they're poison, basically.

Oh.

They don't really, they have like some industrial uses to make some oils and some stuff like that.

We'll talk about.

Castor oil?

I don't know if that beats the shit out of me.

I don't know.

I would assume so.

But it's not something you'd mix into like a

chili.

Yeah.

It's a three-bean.

It's a kidney.

It's a fava and a castor.

I think I use it in the other.

We get rid of the cannellinis when we chop in the castors.

So there's also a copy of a supposedly anonymous letter that had been sent to Michael urging him not to divorce him.

So he got an anonymous letter to him and he found a copy of it in his wife's purse.

She wrote the anonymous letter.

I bet.

You shouldn't divorce your wife.

He also found empty bottles or empty vials of potassium chloride, which is

poison, is what that is.

There is no other use for that, I don't think, but poison.

So he took all three items out of her purse and hid them

because he figured she's going to try to kill herself.

That's what's going on here.

Oh, he doesn't connect that to his fucked typhoon in his belly?

No, because he went to the doctor and they told him it's typhoid fever because you've been in Peru for a month.

So why would he think it was her poisoning?

Right, maybe.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, when a doctor tells you that.

When a doctor tells you that, yeah, I suppose.

Because she's acting very depressed.

So he's.

Okay.

I mean, she's acting suicidal.

So this all makes sense and all lines up.

And the fact that they think that his girlfriend's husband just killed himself makes him extra wondering, you know, extra.

Well, he's got to feel like extra shit.

Everybody around him is killing themselves because he is

pussy.

Yeah, real bad.

Now, she,

he said, listen,

you know, I know what you're going to do here with these fucking seeds.

She said, I was going to plant them.

And he said, you're not going to plant castor seeds.

Why would you do that?

And she said, okay, fine.

I was going to kill myself.

You got me.

I was going to commit suicide.

And this day, too, her drinking was especially heavy.

And that's when her behavior got more crazy.

And that's when he contacted the police and asked them to take her for some psychological care.

She's some psychiatric care.

She's going to kill herself and she's shit-face drunk.

She's in a bad spot right now.

The police who responded described Michael and the children as, quote, shaken and Deborah's behavior as bizarre in the police report.

Though she didn't seem to,

it's weird.

She didn't freak out when the cops got there, there, though.

She knew to be chill for that.

Yeah.

She denied being suicidal.

Oh.

And instead said, my husband's just a fucking piece of shit.

And then went on with a string of obscenities about Michael.

Michael showed the cops the seed packets and the other items that he found in her purse.

So the police transport her to an emergency room.

where a doctor said that she smelled strongly of alcohol but was not visibly drunk.

They said

she appeared unkempt, unkempt, but he also felt her demeanor wasn't unusual for someone going through a divorce, especially a bitter one, and noted that Green said she had no desire to hurt herself or others to the doctor.

All right.

Now, Michael came into the hospital while this is going on, and her whole demeanor changed.

According to the doctor, this is a woman who said, no, no, I'm very calm.

I'm not going to hurt anyone or myself.

This is all blown out of proportion.

Soon as Michael got there, the doctor said Deborah spat at him.

Oh.

Spat at him and called him a fucking string of obscenities and names and said, you're going to get these kids over our dead bodies.

Oh, my.

Not my dead body.

Yeah, our

dead bodies, all of us.

More

suicide shit.

Wow.

So with some persuasion from the doctor, she initially agrees to a voluntary commitment.

Listen, let's just put you somewhere for a couple of days and you can get a lot of stuff.

You just said our dead bodies, man.

That's a lot.

So she said, okay.

okay, and she's sitting around the hospital, and then she just walks out of the ER without telling anybody and leaves.

Oh, Jesus.

That's it.

She was found hours later because she was walking home from the hospital, and they brought her back to the hospital.

Oh, boy.

She then agreed again to a voluntary commitment in the Meninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

So

that's what was going on here.

While she's in the hospital, she's diagnosed with major bipolar depression with suicidal impulses.

Wow.

She's placed on Prozac,

transene, and clonopin.

Okay.

Those are pretty.

Glonopin's an antipsychotic.

That's heavy.

That's a heavy one, too.

Yeah, that'll put you down.

She returned home after four days in the hospital.

Now, Michael, who while she was in the hospital, had been researching castor beans,

came to the conclusion that she fucking made ricin and poison me.

That's what happened.

she made rice she's a chemical engineer she's a chemical engineer he said she fucking made

she made literal terrorist warfare materials to murder me like i'm a japanese subway this is something crazy um so as soon as she gets out of the hospital whether it's true or not he doesn't trust her so um as soon as he she gets out of the hospital he leaves he moves out again

so um jesus christ by the way i love this when michael came into the hospital, after she spat at him, she called him a fuckhole, which is amazing.

What year was that?

She invented that one, maybe.

95.

It's pretty early for that one.

Yeah, as a teenager, I never heard the word fuckhole,

especially

in reference to a person, not a body part.

Yeah.

You fuckhole.

I could see one of my friends being an idiot and being like, I stuck it in a fuckhole or some dumb shit like that.

But I never heard anyone go, you fuck hole.

That's an early usage of fuckhole.

Good for her.

That's pretty good.

Good for her.

So that's what she had said to him specifically here.

Now, October 5th, 1995, he's moving out like fucking Billy Joel here, moving out.

He moved into another apartment nearby.

Over the next few days, Deborah continues to act very strangely.

Yeah.

drinking heavily, all of this type of shit.

But she says she wants to get back together.

She keeps saying that.

Oh, boy.

She then kind of puts everything aside, all her drinking and her craziness for a minute, and really doubles down on her mothering efforts,

taking the kids to soccer practice, ballet games, hockey practices, trying to keep it all together.

Same as before.

This is her thing that she does.

She's still doing

her medical shit and everything like that.

October 23rd, 1995.

Okay.

Michael had taken the day off from work.

It was supposed to be a week-long vacation to recover some strength after restarting his job post-hospital because he was sick and he got out of the job.

So, yeah.

He spends the afternoon with his girlfriend, Margaret,

maybe picking out a coffin for her dead husband,

and then picked up Tim and Kelly for Tim's hockey game.

Yeah.

So Kim and

the youngest daughter.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

I think they're all going.

I guess Tim plays well and his team wins.

They talk about the game.

They talk about school.

They do all that shit.

He drops them off at the home with the mom at 8.45 p.m.

At 9 p.m.,

they eat dinner.

Michael, or not Michael,

Deborah and the kids eat Kentucky Fried Chicken at 9 o'clock.

Okay.

All right.

Now, 10, which is so funny because you were just talking about eating Wing Stop at 9 o'clock after your daughter's game.

That's so bad.

It's impossible to eat healthy if your kids play sports.

You're eating shit at 9 o'clock.

It's just happening.

Yeah, that is.

You're eating deep-fried shit.

Everything that you're putting in your face was cooked with grease.

Absolutely.

This is a conversation before we started recording.

There was no grill in that place.

I was shocked.

I was like, what do you make here?

Oh, everything in there.

Fry it in microwave.

That's all we do.

Those are your options.

So at 10.35, someone pages Michael from the house

on a beeper for young people who don't know that.

This little thing you'd wear on your waist and go beep, beep, beep, and then you'd say what number it was and you called it back.

And you have to go find something to call it.

Some primitive shit.

So at 11 p.m., there's a second page to Michael.

They talk for a while here and discuss lawyers that they're, I'm picking this lawyer, I'm picking that lawyer.

They're kind of having a reasonable discussion about divorce at this point.

11.30 p.m.,

she calls him back again, and they have a fight at this point.

They have a big fight.

Mike threatens a custody battle.

Well, if you're going to be a dick, then I'll fucking take the kids and, you know, we can do all this shit.

I don't trust you with the kids and blah, blah, blah.

By 11.40, he's telling her that I know about the poisoning, Deborah.

I know you tried to fucking poison me.

Oh.

So she said, no, I didn't.

This is crazy.

Bullshit.

He said, I know you're drinking heavily while you're watching the fucking kids, and I know you tried to poison me.

And

I might even call social services to protect the kids if you don't get your shit together.

Basically, he said that he was so angry.

He said, I told her I thought she was crazy.

I told her I thought she needed continued psychiatric care.

I told her she was, I knew she was poisoning me, and I told her I was going to try to take the kids away from her.

That's what he tells Margaret that he said.

So

then he went to Margaret's house,

hung out with her for a minute.

Then he drove back to his apartment

and all of that.

So that's what happened.

That's where the phone call takes place from his apartment.

October 24th, 1995, 12:21 a.m.

So less than an hour after this phone call, where he says, You're a fucking waste and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Police dispatch receives a hang-up 911 call from Deborah's house.

Oh.

A little bit of heavy breathing and a hang-up.

So the police are dispatched, and by 1227, there are police and fire units all over the street because the house is completely engulfed in flames.

Oh, the house is on fire.

Their new big giant house is on fire.

Same VCR.

Why would you do that?

Fucking get a new one, you cheat bastards.

So they pull up.

There's a woman standing outside, Deborah, in a pink nightgown.

while her 10-year-old daughter, Kate, the middle child,

is clinging to her side, and she's just watching the house burn.

Kate, the 10-year-old, begs the firefighters, please save my brother and sister.

They're still in the house.

They're still in the house.

But it's fucking ridiculous.

They never get the two kids out of the house.

Oh, no.

Two kids are trapped in the house.

13-year-old Tim and six-year-old Kelly are trapped in there.

They never make it out of this fucking house.

Wow.

So, yeah, at the scene, a corporal Steve Hunt was approached by the 10-year-old Kate, who said, please save my brother and sister.

Deborah's neighbors are all gathering on yards, immediately saying she set her fucking house on fire.

That's her.

She's nuts.

I know she did it.

The whole neighborhood is saying that.

They said Deborah was casual and very nonchalant.

She said she fell asleep in her room with the door closed.

An alarm woke her up.

She opened the bedroom door, saw smoke, closed the bedroom door, and went outside through a sliding glass door in her bedroom.

Not grab the kids.

Not grab all the kids and take them.

Holy shit, that's a bad answer.

She never asked anything about the other two kids that are still in the house.

She just said, yeah, that's what happened.

How did Kate?

She said, as she was exiting the house, she heard Timothy, the 13-year-old, calling her through the intercom system the house has.

She told him, quote, stay in the house and let the professionals rescue you.

Oh my God.

Come on.

As a parent, honestly.

I didn't say that.

As a parent, you'd throw a fucking wet towel over yourself and you'd rush through the flames and you'd kick the goddamn door in and get your fucking kid out, period.

Or you'd burn in the fucking process, but you'd try.

You know what I mean?

You'd give it a fucking shot.

Tell my kid.

Don't worry.

There's guys with masks coming to get you.

They're coming.

Strangers will be here.

Oh, boy.

Wow.

This is the fucked up part.

She knew, by the way, that he had crawled out of his bedroom window and got outside a few times in the past.

So he's very capable of crawling out the window and getting down and being fine.

Get out of here.

And she told him to stay in there.

Holy shit.

Now, inside the house, once they get it out,

they go in there and they find that Deborah's bedroom door was open,

not closed, like she said.

She said she closed it and then went out on the porch.

It's wide open.

Her hair was also singed.

She had singed parts of her hair,

which is inconsistent with not being around fire and only seeing smoke.

So that's pretty fucking interesting.

By the way, the children died, both children died of smoke inhalation

in their rooms.

So a neighbor watching Deborah stand with her daughter, watching the house burn, said, quote, she didn't say anything to her daughter.

She was just real nonchalant.

She never said her children were in the house.

There was no indication from her, no hysteria.

She said later she saw her and her daughter in the back of a police car sitting there, and she said there was, she wasn't even talking to her daughter, no conversation, no hugging.

They were just sitting there.

She's just, this one got out too.

Staring.

Yeah, how the fuck did you get out?

So the investigation starts here, and this will be some technical fire investigation shit here.

There's a bunch of experts here.

One of the guys,

said he's looking, you have to look for clues in a different way in this type of case.

uh he said it's really so simple the investigative work he said we work from the least amount of damage back up to the most amount of damage and what figure it out they said through that doing that same thing every time you can put everything back together and reconstruct the scene sure so they sift through all of this and this is immediately that night and uh They said, usually they begin by walking around the structure to assess the damage to see which areas are mostly affected.

Then they move through the inside where, you know, they do the same thing.

So they look, they all look at the burn patterns, telltale black Vs that they see.

That's what they see.

They say a lay person could see that and not understand it.

You know, see charred wood in a pile of ashes, look like that, but to an arson expert, they can really see how it happened.

This one investigator said, we begin to remove the debris by layering down through the damage until we got down to the floor level.

We photograph as we go along.

We draw diagrams as we go along.

We want to remove the top portion of the structure first, the uppermost portion that fell in.

We will remove that layer.

It might be part of the roof material that's on top of a pile of debris.

Then we'll look at what's underneath that layer and we'll go down to the floor level.

If we're on the second floor, we'll go.

We'll go next to the ceiling of the room below.

Then we'll get down to the contents of the room and down to that floor level.

So just

kind of like circles getting smaller, basically.

They said they sift through the debris and they're looking for burn patterns on the walls or floors.

They can tell whether it was a fast burning or a slow burning fire.

They can tell whether it burned low or high in a room, whether it burned up or down.

They said, given certain conditions, they can even determine the direction the fire traveled.

They said fire.

usually tends to burn up from its point of origin.

It burns down only when it's consumed everything above it.

Then it goes down looking for anything.

They said an accidental fire has only one point of origin, obviously.

Your VCR doesn't light on fire and an outlet on the other side of the house bursts into flames at the same time, generally.

That'd be a wild coincidence.

So they said that this fire,

you know, fires set deliberately have many points of origin sometimes.

So they said they had a big job because this is a big fucking house.

It's close to 5,000 square feet and a bunch of different levels.

So it's a holy hell you go through.

And it has burned to shit to nothing.

The first thing they said they noticed here was that the front of the house showed evidence of fire damage and there was almost nothing left of the rear of the house.

The railings around the main floor's rear decks were a good 8 to 10 feet from the wall of windows and sliding glass doors, but they had been charred black by flames blasting out of what had been the living room.

The origin and cause team, because they have a team that you guys figure out where it came from, began their investigation on the ground floor because it was the least damaged.

So they said this was significant to the investigator because many of the most common sources of accidental fires are in basement areas.

Or kitchens, yeah.

Yeah, they said in the back part of this basement storage area, there appeared to be two water heaters and a gas furnace.

To the right, there were two electrical panels.

They were all ruled out as the cause of the fire.

And those are the main ones they look at first.

There was a second gas furnace near the fitness room, and they said that furnace was fine too.

So they're like, shit.

So then they started checking

the house, if it had underground utility lines, which could have been affected by a windstorm.

Maybe that fucked it up.

So they came to the workout fitness room.

The weight machine, treadmill, and other exercise equipment were all in good shape.

However, the investigators could look up through the ceiling joists and see

the other floor, basically.

So they said a section of the ceiling beams in the fitness room were gone.

They were sawed through by the firemen.

They knew in order to remove the young boy, Tim's body for autopsy, the medical examiner had asked members of the fire company to remove the joists that had fallen on him,

which is horrifying.

The fire

had begun to burn down the fitness room, and the drywall was intact, even to the paint on the walls, but there was soot and charring at the top of the walls, so it didn't completely eat through it yet.

The heat had come from above the living room,

come from above, and the living room was completely destroyed.

The fitness room was excluded as a point of origin.

However, the floor of the room was deep

in fall down, they said, some of which had

come from two stories up from the bedrooms.

Parts of Tim's bed and his furniture still hung from the floor joists of the living room.

Oh, God damn.

Holy shit.

They said they entered the wreck room where the ceiling had fallen in, and they said they were searching for survivors.

They said there was a pool table in the center of the room.

There was a television set.

The ceiling had fallen in not so much because of the fire, but because of the weight of the water from the firefighters' hoses and all the debris.

They said the fire did not start there either.

So they went to the family room with a fireplace, a big screen TV, and a large wet bar with a refrigerator, bookcases, and a bunch of videotapes.

That room was pretty intact too.

Two bar stools were still pulled up to the bar.

However, they noticed some carpet next to one of the stools had been burned.

It melted in an irregular pattern, and then the fire had gone out because the carpet had been pre-treated with fire-retardant chemicals.

As you do.

So, as you do.

You don't want your carpet to be on fire.

So they said there was no reason for the carpet to burn unless someone had tried to start a fire on it.

Yeah.

They said the ceiling overhead was unscarred by smoke or flames and the walls were intact.

They said this, that's weird.

So this is a fire that's not connected to the main fire.

Yeah.

Red flag for arson, they said.

So they said in the guest bedroom where they had to crawl through the window in a desperate search to find the kids, they said things looked almost normal.

There was a king-size bed made.

There was a bathroom there, untouched.

The vertical blinds that they ripped out had burn marks on them, but they said they didn't know where those burn marks came from unless somebody tried to set them on fire.

Yeah.

Because there's no fire around the blinds otherwise.

So that's two unconnected fires, they said.

They said the family's basement was not where it began.

They said the 700 wine collection, they had a 700 bottle wine collection

that was stored in the unfinished north end was completely intact and fine.

There's a silver lining.

That sounds wonderful.

I'm going to need those tonight.

So then they go to the main floor.

They said this structure had been weakened by heat and flames, and the floor was buckling all over the place.

It's not good.

So they said the foyer

just inside the front door was two stories high.

Big entryway, you know, flanked by stone.

It faced the living room, which was straight ahead and one step down.

The single stairway to the children's upstairs wing was to the left of the foyer.

So we're getting a map here.

Farther to the left, there'd been a formal dining room, and beyond that, a breakfast area, a huge kitchen and a laundry room.

To the right of the foyer, the main hallway of the house led to the music room, guest bathroom, den, and a master suite to the left.

They have it set up for good parental fucking.

That's what they have it set up for.

They found out that by shutting and locking three doors, it was possible to seal off the den and master suite on the south end of the main floor that has the master bath and jacuzzi.

He said there was extensive damage on the the main floor, but not so extensive that an appalling discovery could be hidden.

They spotted pore patterns where someone had spread accelerants on the floors.

Oh.

The foyer's floor had been expensive tile, giving way to the central hallway's solid oak.

The stairs leading up to the children's wing had been carpeted.

So they were working and going through this, and they said that they examined the amorphous patches they detected on the floors and stairs.

Liquid.

A flammable liquid had soaked into the carpeted stairs.

Uh-oh.

The treads had burned away so vigorously that the flames had rolled underneath the treads to burn the risers, some of which had been burned through.

Got through the carpet into the bottom.

And burned through the risers.

Burned through the patent.

Which are thick.

Dang, yeah.

They discovered as they climb up the stairs, the landing at the top had been drenched.

completely with some kind of accelerant, so drenched that it must have gone up the wall, must have gone up in a wall of fire, basically.

They said they were standing there in all these sections, and

yeah, they said that it was just fucking, it was horrifying.

Somebody somehow had blocked these kids from getting out of here, like something.

It's terrifying.

They said the guy said he had never seen the dining room as it had been before, but he could tell where the china cabinet was originally, but the table had been reduced to rubble.

He said it was possible to stand on the floor.

It was much more stable than the music room floor, but that's about all that was left in the room.

Was a floor.

They had a music room.

Oh, yeah.

They had a six-bedroom joint there.

They said they removed the debris by layering down, and his team found pieces of furniture so small that they were identifiable only as wood.

Didn't even know where it came from.

There was no way to say how big the dining room table had once been.

No sign of that oriental rug that we talked about.

And when they got down to the bottom, they found a tongue-and-groove wood floor.

They said some intensely flammable liquid had pooled in the center of the room, charring the wood deeply in a flowing irregular pattern.

The breakfast area had the same pore patterns, and a closet in the kitchen had been destroyed.

They said looking up, the investigators saw it was directly below Kelly's room.

One by one, they climbed up on a ladder, which was the only way to reach Kelly's room now.

Yeah.

And they saw where she had been.

They said there was a quote, this is from Ann Ruhl's book.

There was a pale child-sized outline on the smoke-stained bedclothes.

Oh, damn it.

In all likelihood, Kelly had gone to sleep and never woken up.

Didn't wake up through the fire.

Wow.

Never woke up, ever at all.

They said she had, and it doesn't matter because she had no way to escape.

Yeah.

So

she slept through it, probably.

Yeah, they said it was better that she slept through it.

At least she wasn't terrified in her last moments.

In the living room with the windows, window, with its window walls and sliding glass doors overlooking the back deck and the pool had no floor at all.

And every room leading back toward the master bedroom so showed signs of isolated charring or low, uneven burning where flammable liquid had been poured.

So they have a they have a dog too, a sniffer dog that looks for accelerants.

And they found on the floor, they said just red flag after red flag as they go down the hallway.

Oh boy.

Dogs just

alerting like mad of of

the cast down all day.

All fucking day.

A couch against one wall was burned, but it was recognizable, while an oak roll-top desk had burned so completely that it had collapsed onto itself.

The accelerant had to have been splashed over it

for it to have crumbled to ashes mere feet from the couch.

It's still not that fucked up.

The carpeted floor had heat damage and was discolored.

However, one section of the carpet was completely missing, and once again, they saw pooling or puddling outlines.

So that's where they started.

So this is like, what, six points of origin so far?

So many fires.

Yeah.

From the door of the study, they could see directly across to the master bedroom and see the end of the bed.

They said fall down, covered in the bottom of the door, holding it firmly in position.

It had been during the fire open.

So the door was open.

That's where they found out.

They said

the origin and cause there they found was clearly arson.

The proliferation of pore patterns and the heavy charring in certain areas were strong indicators for arson experts.

Starting at the north end and the main floor, someone had saturated the dining room and kitchen floors with accelerant.

The heavy soaking of the stairway carpet leading to the children's rooms could have been nothing less than a deliberate attempt to kill the children to trap them there by a wall of fire.

Drenched the floor and walked it to the kids' rooms.

That's fucked up.

A fucking wall of fire.

Wow.

Remarkable.

They said the flames had

exploded, and the children had no way out.

So they said the fire starter had gone onto Spread Accelerant.

Yeah.

Wow, in the living room and the music, God damn it.

And then down the central hall, all the way to the door of the bedroom where Deborah said she'd been sleeping.

They said the bedroom was not burned, although curiously, the investigators found evidence of another unconnected fire close by in the bathroom off the master bedroom.

A drawer in the double sink vanity was charred, and the rest of the bathroom was perfect.

It went out.

It went out.

Yeah, not a good, bad fake wood or something.

Didn't burn well.

They said they didn't care what accelerant was used because it doesn't matter.

The guy said, quote, I don't know what it was, and I don't care because it doesn't matter.

Okay.

He said, there are many, many substances that'll burn like that.

And they were gasoline, lighter fluid, kerosene, charcoal, lighter.

Even ginner vodka will make flames that'll race through a house.

He said,

lots of things that'll do it.

He said he also didn't know how much accelerant had been used in the house.

He said, this is only conjecture because I can't be precise.

I'd venture to say that it was less than 10 gallons, but more than three gallons of accelerant.

Holy fuck.

Think about that.

Think about a gallon of milk, fill it with gasoline, and pour three of those around your house.

A five-gallon jerry can of gas is a lot.

It's a shitload of gas.

That'll get you miles away.

Less than 10, but more than three.

So it could have been two jerry cans of gas.

That's so crazy.

It could have been eight gallons of gas.

We have no fucking idea.

So they took all sorts of pictures.

They did everything.

They said the pour pattern stood out distinctly, outlining where the liquid accelerants had hit the tile and oak floors in some uh photographs the sniffer dog stood poised like the hunting dog they were i think they probably had a german probably a short-haired pointer in there they're they're good for doing this whenever there's anything they need to find that and they don't need the dog to like bite the person when they find them they use pointers Because you know, Oscar's not biting anybody.

They're too fucking friendly to bite people, so you can't do that.

You'd be like, chase him.

They'd be like, no, no, no, he's fine.

He's good.

Maybe he'll take me around the woods.

Yeah, I'll go find him.

I doubt he even wants to bite.

He got a turkey, but

didn't even want to hurt it?

Well, no, that's not, that's what they do is they just grab them.

They don't kill them themselves.

So, yeah, he got a turkey in the woods.

He just grabbed it by the back of the neck and looked at us like, huh?

I got it.

And we said, no, no, no, let go, let go, which is, we tell him that with any toys or anything.

So I said, drop it, drop it.

And he just opened his mouth like, okay.

And then the turkey ran away.

He was like, dude, what the fuck?

He's not a surprise.

I got a turkey for you, man.

Damn.

He's gotten a couple turkeys and geese, too.

He likes to go after in the water because he likes traipsing around in the creek a lot.

Now,

wow, this is fucking horrifying.

So two of the pictures that the photographer took of the fire were pretty crazy here.

Detective Gary Baker found that the latter

found the ladder, meaning the later picture here.

One showed two books intact but singed around the edges.

That's an iconic photo.

And then one

he found on the living room floor of the wet bar in the basement recreation room, the words of the title were emblazoned on a red cover.

He had been summoned by the firefighters to see the bodies of the two children when he saw the book.

He said, it gave me a chill.

We'll talk about what book it is in a second here.

They also could.

Don't worry.

And you probably won't know it now.

It's a book, so I doubt it.

I only know a couple.

If it was made into a movie, then yes.

And this is a novel, so I don't know it either.

The arson investigation confirmed what police and firefighters had suspected.

It's a goddamn arson and an intentional murder as well.

Murder and double homicide.

So

the cops put together a task force and all this type of shit, multiple jurisdictions.

This is a big deal.

Two kids are dead.

This is a big fucking deal.

Yeah.

Big fucking deal.

When the Prairie Village police requested help in this case, the Metro Squad Board placed calls to police departments in Kansas and Missouri asking for trained officers who are available.

21 investigators responded.

Wow.

So they work beside all these people.

They put up a tips hotline so anybody can give information.

It's a lot.

There's rumors pouring in from the hotlines and everything else.

They said, usually,

you know,

the Metro squad was activated for a set number of days.

But if leads keep coming in, then they keep asking for extensions to keep these people from their departments.

And

this turned into like a military operation because there's so many people involved.

You got the chief of the Prairie Village Police Department.

You got a couple other guys, a few experts, including Gary Baker, Greg Bernetta, and Rod Smith, the ex-wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, obviously.

The guy's amazing.

He came in and worked on this.

Oh, he was great.

It's a good walk-on.

He was phenomenal, man.

He was great.

Was he 81, I think?

He's a great, great player.

Is it 81 or is it 80?

80.

I can't remember.

80.

80.

There you go.

There you go.

So, yeah, the burn patterns are a lot here.

They released to the newspaper arson not ruled out in Fatal Fire.

That's the next day that comes out.

Not ruled out.

They said, we haven't determined this is arson,

which is interesting.

So they said there's all the red flags of arson.

They said the home was burned very, very heavily on two levels.

The heavy burn patterns were on the main floor and the second floor as well.

The children's bedrooms were all upstairs and there were heavily burned areas found there.

Okay, now Deborah's said woke up to a smoke alarm, opened her bedroom door.

Oh no, there's smoke, closed the bedroom door, walked out the sliding glass door to the the deck.

Heard Tim on the intercom, told him to wait for firefighters.

Now, evidence says her door was open during the fire.

Burn patterns proved it, that it went right through an open door and didn't burn the door off.

So guess what?

Her hair was singed, meaning she was somewhere near an initial burst of flames at some point.

Her, then a neighbor noticed her hair was wet when she came to the door

to tell him to call

911.

She had wet hair.

Okay.

Like she was sweaty?

No, like she was splashing water on it because it got caught on fire.

Wow.

And they said Deborah knew that Tim had escaped out of his bedroom window multiple times before.

It was like a fun thing he liked to do to get downstairs.

He would go out of the window and do all that.

But she told him to stay in the room.

So they collect hair samples from Deborah and from Mike because like, oh, you're in the middle of a divorce and you just argued with your husband at 11.30 and then your house burned down.

That's crazy.

That doesn't sound good at all.

His hair is not a singe on it, nothing on it.

Doesn't even smell like smoke.

Wasn't in there.

Deborah's hair has significant singeing.

Not good.

Then they found the books.

One of the books they found is called Necessary Lies.

Jesus.

I will give you a book synopsis here.

This was in Deborah's bedroom, by the way.

The synopsis, quote, North Carolina, 1960, newlywed Jane Forrester, fresh out of university, is seeking what most other other women have shunned, a career.

But life as a social worker is far from what she expected.

Out amongst the rural tobacco fields of Grace County, Jane encounters a world of extreme poverty that's far removed from the middle-class life she's grown up with.

But worse is still to come.

Working with the Hart family and their 15-year-old daughter, Ivy, it's not long before Jane uncovers a shocking secret and it's thrust into a moral dilemma that puts her career on the line, threatens to dissolve her marriage, and ultimately determines determines the fate of Ivy and her family forever.

Soon, Jane is forced to take drastic action, and before long, there's no turning back.

This is a book

about a woman fresh out of university.

Jesus Christ, that basically

several children are burned to death in an intentionally set house fire.

That's what the book is.

Because the woman snaps.

Exactly.

Wow.

And this is a book that Deborah got from the public library.

Okay.

She also, they found, had checked out several other books recently, all dealing with intra-familial homicide.

That's way worse than

I expected in cold blood.

Yes.

No, no, no.

Just books about killing your own children, not other people's.

Right.

This is way worse.

This is fucking crazy.

So police talk to young Kate here, who's 10 years old, and this poor fucking poor girl, I feel so.

This investigation investigation is like the

it's not arson's not been ruled out on by now is like saying terrorism hasn't been ruled out on September 13th.

On 9-11.

Yeah.

Don't know.

Not sure.

Terrorism not ruled out.

Which is exactly what they said, actually, which is funny.

Pretty much exactly because they were like at first really like.

We didn't go over to her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, this poor girl, I mean,

how, if you're a cop, you'd want to talk to this girl, but you'd want to, how do you not want to help her and want to,

you know, how do you make her feel better, basically?

Lots of hugs, chocolate chip cookies, pizza.

I don't know.

Remember how being the middle child sucked?

Outside of that, what else do you say to this poor kid?

Now you're the baby and the oldest.

Oh, this poor child.

That is horrifying, man.

Isn't that the worst?

Like, what else would you say?

I don't know how you...

It's really funny.

No, but how do you comfort her?

It's horrifying, yeah.

You just saw your house burn down with your family in it, and you begged and pleaded for to save them.

She said that on the night in question, she woke up to find the fire burning.

She saw smoke seeping into her room and opened up her bedroom door and called her brother, then closed the door, and she's the one that placed the 911 hang-up call.

The heavy breathing?

It was Kate.

Yeah.

I don't think she knew what to say or what to do.

She probably got scared.

She crawled out of her bedroom window to escape the fire.

Out of it, girl.

That was it.

Got out of there.

She said that when she called to her mother mother after escaping onto the garage roof, she said that Deborah, her mom had been terribly upset, as anyone would be while their house is burning, and called to Kate to jump off the garage into her arms.

She said, but mom missed me when I jumped.

She said, but I wasn't hurt.

She's like, whoops.

My bad.

Fuck.

Dude.

What the fuck?

And a neighbor said

she saw Deborah

take her arms back when she jumped and let her fall, basically.

Wow.

She acted like she was going to catch her and then didn't.

But she wasn't hurt.

Kate wasn't hurt.

Yeah.

She's a ballerina.

She's agile.

And

it's only a couple of stories.

So

that's long enough to hurt yourself, but 10, 15 feet, if you jump down to mom and you're going to fly.

Yeah, you'll be fine as a kid.

Yeah, you'll be fine as a kid.

Christ, we used to jump off walls and shit way higher than that.

I jumped off walls.

As a kid, you know how to fall as a kid.

It is weird the first time you do it, though, because that is surprisingly far.

That 10 feet is a drop.

And you realize

if you don't hit and roll, your ankles hurt.

Right.

Or your knees, your body just like collapse and your knees smack you in the fucking face.

That too.

Yeah.

So Kate was not hurt when

they, I guess, fucking...

Michael showed up at that point, too.

He showed up, and they said that Kate said that Michael had been accusatory toward Deborah while Deborah was crying and worried about the missing children.

He was blaming her for it.

According to Kate, Michael had moved out of the family home and spurned the mother's desire for an amicable separation.

My dad's been a real problem.

She stressed that she loved and respected her mother, and that of all the children, that all the children had good relationships with her, but that she was angry at her father for upsetting her mother by leaving.

Wow.

Kate acknowledged her mother had begun to drink a lot of alcohol, but she denied having ever seen matches in the house and expressed a surprise that Timothy had not escaped the same route she had, which was off the bedroom window, because he used to do that all the time.

She couldn't believe it.

I don't know.

And she's a goddamn hero and doesn't even know it.

Oh, she's absolutely a fucking hero.

Yeah.

No doubt.

So, Deborah, they bring in.

Okay.

Yeah.

They said, I'll read this right from Anne Rule's book here.

Deborah, still barefoot and wearing a a dark rose cotton nightgown with a white collar and cuffs and a whimsical pattern of white sheep, was taken to, which makes it even more ridiculous of an outfit when you're in a police station with singed hair,

was taken to a basement office in the police department.

Here she would be interviewed by Detective Sargent and Detective Rod Smith.

This interview, and indeed all the interviews connected with the investigation, would be videotaped, obviously.

Although the Prairie Police Village have since moved to a new headquarters, the department was housed in a rather outdated facility next door.

The best room for talking with Deborah had been a painted cement block wall with linoleum floor room, the same bland pale celery color.

Who the fuck makes a room celery color?

There was a folding table, the kind that you get for like a kid's table at Easter.

and some vinyl and metal folding chairs.

It was not soundproof, and occasionally phones would ring from the outside, and you could hear people answering it.

Oh, boy.

All that kind of shit.

This is 4 a.m.

now.

They start the tape, and they knew nothing about the cause of the fire at this point because that was still being investigated.

So they're sitting there while that's happening.

They just got

awakened at their houses and told to come to headquarters.

Here we are.

So they didn't know.

They also didn't really know about the,

because they thought Timothy, for a second they thought he had a chance of survival and that didn't end up being coming to fruition and they didn't even know they didn't really know exactly what happened they didn't have all the facts yet so they

they said they were somewhat startled to find Deborah talkative and even oddly cheerful right

they said slight over odor of alcohol on her but she didn't seem drunk Ann Ruhl describes this quote she was not an attractive woman stocky with heavy almost masculine shoulders she appeared to have been in her mid-40s, yet she perched in her chair with one leg tucked under her in almost like a childlike posture.

Laurie Vallo.

That's the Laurie Vallo.

To watch somebody casually sit in an interrogation room to talk about a death is the creepiest fucking thing in the world.

It is so creepy to watch her just pop her feet up on that couch and act like, let's just have a chit-chat.

Like we're making s'mores over here.

She shifted her position frequently from time to time.

She rubbed her feet and picked at her toes.

That's an odd thing to do

in a police interrogation.

She was not crying, nor did she look as if she'd been crying.

So they sat there and,

yeah, they said, let's fucking do this shit.

They said, we're going to talk about,

is the fire, is the house fire at your house?

And Deborah interrupted him.

Yeah.

This is his introductory sentence.

Yeah.

What we're going to talk about is this.

She said, which, by the way, is the fire out?

What?

The detective said, We haven't been there yet.

We'd have no fucking idea if the fire's out.

We came here to talk to you.

Weird thing to say.

They said, you're not under arrest.

You're free to leave anytime you want.

And she said, who are you guys?

And they introduced themselves and explained their roles.

And she nodded and said, I'm just curious.

And then she laughed and said, I didn't know whether you were police or fire department.

Okay.

Your kids are dead, stupid.

We have questions.

It doesn't matter who we are.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

So they said her voice was very nasal as if she had a cold, but her affect was that of a woman completely comfortable in her environment.

She seemed anxious to talk.

She gave long, convoluted answers to every question that they asked.

Asked if she was under the influence of alcohol or any drugs, she said, no, I had a drink earlier tonight.

One, maybe one and a half, maybe four.

I might have had six, seven of them.

I'm not sure.

She said barely.

I'm fuzzy on time tonight because I can't remember what time I went to bed.

You know, because I only had a drink and a half.

But I'd say between 9.30 and 10.30, which we know isn't true because she was talking on the phone at 11.30.

I had about a drink and a half at dinner time.

They were not strong to begin with.

I drank about half of the second one, then just turned the light off and went to sleep.

Later, she said she had gone to her room, the master bedroom on the south end of the main floor, where she read and perhaps dozed off.

She thought Tim had gone to bed at about 10, but some noises had awakened her at about 11 and she went out to the kitchen.

He was there getting some food.

They had a good night.

They said good night and gone into their own rooms at opposite ends of the house.

Okay.

She said, and that's the last time I saw any of them.

I turned

my lamp off somewhere around 11.30.

I did have a conversation with my husband on the phone sometime during the evening.

It must have been 10 or 10.30.

He called me and asked me, what did you want?

He said someone had paged him.

I told him, I did not page you, and to the best of my knowledge, the kids are asleep.

If you want, I'll go up and check.

She said she found no one awake.

And,

you know, there's that.

So the cops are noting all of her time fuck-ups at this point.

Deborah told Smith and Bernetta that she was taking Prozac 20 milligrams a day, and the last dose she had taken was at 10 on Monday morning, 14 hours before the fire.

She recalled that she had been awakened awakened from a sound sleep by a blaring noise.

She assumed that her house had both a burglar and fire alarm.

She said, the alarm signal that woke me was nothing I recognized, and when I went to the panel in my room to try to shut it off, it didn't do anything.

Shit's on fire.

There's no shutting that off.

Deborah said she was used to the burglar alarm going off.

It had done so several times recently because she had two big dogs that set off the motion detector.

Dogs didn't make it out either, by the way.

Yeah.

But this sound was entirely different.

She said, I thought I'd heard every noise it knew how to make, but this was a new one.

She tried three or four times to shut the alarm off at the control panel with no success.

Quote, so I opened the door to the hall and it was just filled with smoke.

It scared me, so I found the key that's always on my bookshelf.

She explained that she had to unlock the deadbolt on her bedroom door from the inside in order to step out onto the deck along the back of the house.

She said, I left that way.

And as I went around the corner to inform the neighbors to call 911, that's when I heard Tim on the intercom by the pool deck.

Quote, he used to be my 13-year-old.

Oh, lady.

He used to be my 13-in case you're wondering who that is.

He used to be my 13-year-old till, you know, three hours ago.

Oh, boy.

That is the coldest thing I've ever heard anybody say.

Even if the kid was dead for five years, you'd say, that's my 13-year-old.

What the fuck?

And he'd just never be any other age but 13.

Martin Short still speaks of his wife in the present tense.

Do you understand that?

She's been dead for a decade.

Still speaks of her that way.

This kid's been dead for three hours.

He used to be.

Used to be.

He used to be.

That's a strange word.

She's talking about the kid like Dr.

Dre talking about EZE.

It's fucking ridiculous.

Crazy.

It was a string of words together.

Yeah.

Deborah spoke in a stream of consciousness style, and she was apparently unaware that she had just referred to Tim in the past tense.

She didn't even know she didn't.

She hurriedly explained that Tim had lost so many keys that he was quite used to going in and out of his window by means of the second floor roof.

She said he must have done that 30 times.

Deborah had heard his voice in the intercom, but she hadn't seen him.

She didn't explain why she hadn't looked up toward his voice, but only listened on the intercom box attached to the wall of their house by the back deck.

He said, Mom, what shall shall I do?

I said, Tim, wait where you are and I'm going to call 911 to come and save you.

And he said, well, should I get one of the girls to try and try to come out?

I said, no, which I'm sure was the kiss of death.

She said that.

First of all, she should have been saying, no, I'll be doing that.

I'm going to call it.

You're calling out the window.

I'm going to rescue the girls.

Whoa.

Quote, her words were chilling, but her inflection was so matter of fact, even chatty.

Deborah could not recall the last time

she had talked to Tim.

She mentioned often that she was still fuzzy on time.

She did remember running to the foremans and asking them to call 911.

She said, but I have a feeling someone else called because by the time they understood what I was saying, the trucks had started to arrive.

Deborah did not say why she had not simply dialed 911 from the phone in her own bedroom or whether she had lifted the phone to see if there was a dial tone even.

After

the people that she talked to there, Dr.

Foreman, had left her at his side door to call for help, Deborah remembered she turned around and, quote, saw my 10-year-old on the garage roof.

She said, she's afraid of heights,

she remarked.

Kate's afraid of heights.

She's afraid of pretty much everything.

She then goes on to say, I said, jump, and she said, no, I can't do it.

I said, you will.

Jump to me now.

And she jumped, and I missed her totally.

I'm sure she'll never trust anybody.

Yeah, that's the ultimate trust fall there.

Yeah.

And she finds out.

Yeah.

And well, you'll see.

And she fell down right at my feet, but she was not hurt.

I'm sure that's the only reason we have her alive.

So they asked her to go over the afternoon and evening before the fire in as much detail as she could.

She recalled the day virtually minute by minute.

picked her children up from the schools about 3 p.m.

She said they all go to Pembroke Hill.

She said it was, she was, they said she was speaking so hard it was hard to make out her words.

She said they all go to Pembroke Hill, at least the living ones do.

Oh, lady.

Like they've been dead for five years.

Living one, by the way, you ass.

Yeah.

You fucking idiot.

So, wow.

Again, the cops noted that she was referring to her children in the past tense, but she continued her recitation without pause.

She said that after she got them home from separate schools in the Pembroke Hill system, she took Kate to buy two pairs of shoes.

Then we got home and I gave everyone small assignments of chores to get done and they did them.

And then we were watching Save by the Bell

or one of those shows until the point that Kate and I had to leave.

Save by the Bell.

We had one of those typical nights.

I had a psychiatrist's appointment at 5.45 and Lisa, that's from the book.

I'm sorry, Kate is the real name.

They used her different name because she's alive, but it's all in every paper.

The 10-year-old had a ballet class from 6 to 7.30, and Tim had a hockey game at 7.15,

which left Kelly at loose ends, the six-year-old.

Deborah said she left Tim and Kelly home alone, waited for Mike, who was to pick them up at 6.40.

He brought them home around 9, give her take 5 or 10 minutes, she said.

And then they had their typical meal of Kentucky fried chicken.

The girls went to bed.

Tim was up till about 11.

I talked to him for a while in the kitchen.

They discussed his hockey game, which had gone extremely well.

They asked if he was a goalie, and she shook her head.

Quote, he's not a goalie.

He played goalie for two or three years, though.

Asked about the status of her marriage, she said, I'm not even sure anything's been filed, but we are signing in the process of a divorce.

She said the two older children were very angry with their father.

In fact, later today at 1.30, I have an appointment with a counselor to talk about what to do with the kids before they go to see him.

I think you can cancel that one, probably.

She said the counseling would be for her and her three children because her husband had never been a major part of their lives.

She was concerned about

Tim and Kate, while Kelly seemed to be taking the divorce fairly well, the younger girl.

She told the cops Mike's a cardiologist, listed her own varied medical specialties,

saying that she stopped practicing, quote, at the suggestion, really the coercion of my husband, who wanted wanted me to stay home and be a mom.

I even retired my license.

A big deal in my life the last couple weeks have been, what am I going to do?

Because my life is changing, whether I like it or not.

So I've decided what I want to do is go for a psych residency, which would be a whole new deal for me, to live the life I want to live.

How could you even talk at this point in time?

The things she's saying are not, none of them are right.

No, it's all wrong.

It's all wrong.

She's figuring all the worst things to say.

They They said that her words came out so fast that they were really happy that the video camera was running because they couldn't write them down as fast as she was talking.

They said there was scarcely a second's pause between one of her thoughts and the next, and she seemed entirely rational except for her references to both of her dead children in both the past and present tense.

One thing was clear, Deborah harbored intense rage toward her estranged husband.

She apparently found fault with almost everything she did.

She recalled that the weekend just past had been chaotic because she had to pick up Tim from his father's apartment when he called wanting to come home and then return for Kate at midnight because she had heard her paternal grandmother and other relatives talking about her mother.

Oh boy.

Deborah said she was very upset and very angry because she was hearing her father and grandmother talking about what a slob her mother was and how she couldn't keep the house clean and how Kate had no social skills because Deborah had no social skills.

Oh boy.

Oh man.

Deborah told the detectives she had promised her children she would always come home and get them if they found themselves at their father's apartment in a situation they just couldn't handle.

She then elaborated on her appointment with the counselor, said the therapy was intended only for her children and their feelings toward their father.

She said, we always said it was just the three kids and me, and they didn't really care if he was there, but they were tired of listening to his crap, so they're angry.

Asked about her own feelings she chuckled and said i haven't been particularly upset or really even terribly emotionally involved

that's not quite the truth i felt tremendous sense of relief when he moved out which surprised him because he thought i'd be devastated yeah

yeah they said with virtually no prompting she continually would leap from one aspect of her life to the other they noted her conversation pretty much exclusively revolved around her feelings and her plans.

She told them again of her intention to become a psychiatrist and of her hope that she would be accepted into a fellowship or residency.

She wondered aloud how she could get back and forth to Topeka and still be sure someone can pick up her children who would of course remain at the Pembroke School there.

She returned again and again to her contention that all three of her children hated their father.

He said, Tim has come to that incredible level of respect where he says, fuck you to his dad.

And Kate's beginning to do it too.

She said it laughing.

13 years old saying fuck you to dad.

Who did that?

10-year-old daughter, too.

Yes.

They said, the cop said he deliberately averted his face so that Deborah could not read his expression on that one because it was horrifying.

The other guy, playing the good cop, basically, grinned at her, although he was taken aback by this insane amount of hatred she has for her husband.

It's wild.

So it was obvious, too

to Deborah that the children were hers.

I mean she didn't describe them as both of them.

She seemed to have forgotten also about that her house just burned down.

She explained that Kate had been very excited Monday because she had won the role of Clara in the Nutcracker suite.

That had been her goal since she began taking ballet lessons when she was only six.

She said she already had 10 and a half hours of ballet a week to begin with, and last weekend got 30 extra hours.

So she was pretty tired.

They said one interrogation

technique that they used over and over again was to ask the same question slightly different ways, which is what they always do.

Any little things will pop up.

So

when they asked her again to recall the previous evening, she repeated herself in precise detail.

When Mike brought Tim and

Kelly home from the hockey game, she said, quote, I was kind of surprised that he had just walked into the house because we reached a point a few weeks ago when I kind of demanded to have all my keys and garage door openers back and he refused to give them to me.

She had not had her locks changed.

She said, I just let it go, but I thought we worked it out and he was not going to be there unless he was invited.

I was walking down the hall toward the kitchen, glanced over to my left to the entryway, and he had come in with Kelly.

She said

she ignored him while he flipped through his mail.

And then she said, I guess he got bored and left.

Saying that was about 9 p.m.

From the Ann Rule book, quote, Deborah's ceaseless monologue was bizarre.

But Bernetta and Smith were not psychiatrists.

They didn't know if she was talking so fast because she didn't want to think about the fire or if she simply enjoyed having an audience.

Nor did they know if she was trying to present herself as a good mother and show them what a rotten father Mike was.

She was clearly not drunk, did not seem to be under the influence of medication.

Her memory

for minutiae was perfect.

She was so sure of times and places that she might have been reading out of an appointment book.

And the two investigators most certainly did not know the motivation behind her barrage of words.

They just sat and listened.

Wow.

Deborah described the layout of her entire house, ending with the children's wing on the upper floor.

There are four bedrooms, two bathrooms in that wing.

She said, they go up there and they stay up there, she said, laughing, because I don't want to see their mess.

They share it with the dogs.

Well, that's a weird thing to say.

Oh, yeah.

She said, usually the two dogs slept with Deborah, but on Monday, the two dogs discovered a bag of coffee beans, dragged it out in the living room, and ate shitloads of them.

Quote, so I said, these dogs are not going to go to sleep for 100 years, so they're not sleeping with me tonight.

So each of the girls took a dog.

That's fucking insane.

She then said,

quote,

she just jumped to talking about her husband.

She said, he's been so odd lately.

She said they had phone conversations that night.

And, quote, I said, no, I'm not going to talk to you tonight.

I'm just not interested.

Then I hung up, and then I remembered something.

She said that she knew he was on his way home to his apartment in his truck, so she called him.

For a moment, she could not recall why.

Oh, yeah, it was about their attorney.

She said they'd been, she said that Mike had been really snotty because she'd taken so long deciding about an attorney to proceed with.

So then they bring Mike in.

Let's bring Mike in.

6.20 a.m.

They bring him in.

He's had a tough night, obviously.

Clearly.

So they led him into the same interrogation room.

He had on jeans and the same clothes he wore on to the hockey game that night.

They could see immediately that his demeanor was completely different than Deborah's.

He's distraught.

He's sad.

His eyes were red from crying.

And he's hunched over.

He's not looking great.

So they said, Mike, I'm Greg Bernetta.

It's a shame to have met you under these circumstances.

Go ahead and have a seat.

He explained that he'd been called to the home.

And, you know,

he had already talked to Deborah.

And they asked him, are you up to date on the most current information?

And he said, I haven't heard anything.

Then they had to tell him.

They said, I wish I didn't have to tell you this, but your two kids are dead.

Yeah.

And they said his whole body sagged.

And he said, I knew it.

I knew it as soon as I got there when they told me they weren't out.

Did you find them at least?

And he said, They said his voice was trembling, and they said the firemen found the bodies, and some of our police officers are present at the house.

At this point, they stepped out of the room to let him have some time to be sad.

Yeah, really, they're just watching him on the video to see what he does.

See if he switches right up and he's fine.

So they said they stepped out of the room, and after they sensed he needed some time alone.

And

yeah, they said that the weird part is they attempted to confront Deborah and they said they'd been completely rebuffed by him, by her.

She didn't give a fuck.

But they said that, you know, they didn't know how to react to him.

They said Mike was being watched on the video camera.

He sighed deeply, covered his eyes with his

hands, and cried softly the whole time they were gone.

Like a man.

Like a person whose kids just died.

Yeah, like a normal human.

Like a man who's experiencing grief.

Exactly.

The cop said, I wish there was some way I could make you feel better.

And Mike said, I know.

I've told enough people their loved ones were dead to know how bad they feel.

He's a cardiologist.

He's done this.

He's like, I've done your job.

I've seen it all.

So

they gave him some coffee.

And

they said, look, you know, this is fucking horrible.

They said, that was a pretty unpleasant task at your house when we had to take your children's mom away because this is the same cop who was there taking her away when he he called.

And Mike said, I know.

He said, I know.

They did a fine job when she was gone, too.

So they hurried with some basic questions, birth dates, pager numbers, all that and everything.

They said, Mike grew, he did well until the room grew silent.

And then he would kind of break down a little bit here.

So they talked about how

long ago was the, when you called us out there, was that about three weeks ago?

He said, yeah, I bet about, I think it was about three weeks.

They said, they asked if Deborah might have started the fire and should we consider her a suspect?

He said, Mike said, I think it's a likely possibility.

She's been mentally unstable, drinking, severely depressed.

I could never

talk to her psychiatrist.

I could only talk and deal with the social worker as an intermediary.

When I saw Deborah had started to drink again, I confronted her.

She denied it, denied it, denied it.

I reported my concerns to the social worker.

She said that, he also said, she has a very characteristic pattern of speaking.

Clearly, to my eyes, she was drinking last night.

I suppose it's inconceivable that she was drunk enough and drugged enough that she left a burner on.

I have to tell you, she's done some odd things.

I suppose it's conceivable, he said.

She might have done this by accident.

He told them about their first house fire only 18 months ago.

He said, but I then talked about getting back together.

He said, but I realized that was just like having a baby when a couple's having a problem when they were going to buy that big house to begin begin with.

He said, two days later, our house burned.

The arson inspectors couldn't find a cause, but the insurance company did.

They said it was a wire

wound around a pipe too tightly.

And they also said VCR, so who knows?

Anyway, we all moved into my apartment and resubmitted our bid to the house, the house that burned tonight.

My God.

He said, some of my friends were convinced that Deborah burned down our first house to get me back.

At the time, I thought it was absurd.

I didn't think she could outsmart the investigators, but I will tell you this.

This woman is brilliant.

She's a brilliant woman.

She's brilliant.

She reads avidly.

Who knows what she reads about?

So they talk about the deteriorating marriage.

And he said, in late July, I asked her for a divorce, and then things started getting weirder.

Yeah.

It was more than the bad behavior and swearing I was used to.

All of her emotions were laid wide open with the kids.

He said, and then I got sick.

I was in the hospital for a total of three weeks.

I was admitted three times starting August 18th.

There was no diagnosis.

I had a number of specialists.

It was a very serious illness.

There was one point in time where I damn near died.

So they were like, yeah, you look pale and fragile, and he's lost a bunch of weight.

He's 5'10, but he's 130 pounds, right?

Oh, boy.

So he lost a ton of weight.

He said, each time I went back to the hospital, I had eaten a meal at home that had kind of a bitter taste, but I thought, that's nuts.

That's crazy.

It's just nuts.

And I went through her purse then and I found packets of castor beans.

He said, I saved one package and gave you all the rest.

I started thinking about it.

I found an old internal medical textbook, the seventh edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, and I looked up the symptoms and they all fit.

Nausea,

vomiting, diarrhea, low blood pressure.

Then I went to the North Kansas City Hospital Library and had them do a literature search.

And he said had asked that any articles turned up

by the search be mailed to an address because he didn't want Deborah to open them.

So he said, honest to God, when I started reading the articles, I started shaking.

I found out that even the KGB had used castor beans, ricin, to eliminate people.

The problem is, unless you do the specific toxicology screen at the time of the illness, you can't get a diagnosis.

It's very hard.

That's interesting.

He also told them about mysterious letters that had been left on his porch and in the neighbor's yard.

He knew Deborah's turns of phrases and recognized everything she did.

Also, the beans, obviously, they had to deal with that.

The Prairie Village detectives had to find which garden store in the Kansas City area had sold the beans and to whom.

So the label had read Earl May, the name of a chain of Windwestern garden stores with headquarters in Shenandoah, Iowa.

They said at least to half a dozen branches in the Kansas City

area.

They sell fertilizers, planters, hoses, all the gardening bullshit.

So they believe she might have bought the castor beans there perhaps in late July or early August, but they haven't been able to find proof.

No one at the store remembered her.

One woman worked there for five years and said that she, you know, again, didn't remember.

I've seen a lot of people in five years.

Her store manager received a call from a detective around Halloween who asked whether anyone in the store recalled selling a dozen or so packets of castor beans.

They said they didn't remember such a sale, but they did carry castor beans in season, and he promised to ask the clerk if they remembered such a sale.

And at that moment,

that employee walked in the store, and they asked her the question, and this employee said that she had sold a large number order of castor beans about a month before.

So they got that.

They said there's a good reason why Earl May had no castor beans in September, smart merchandising.

The castor bean is an ornamental annual that gardeners sow in the spring.

It's fast-growing, but short-lived.

They said they get anywhere from 6 to 10 feet tall, depending about the site.

They're used for quick cover and kind of have a tropical appearance to them, but they'll die off with the first freeze.

So they said that planting time for castor beans would have been April 15th to May 1st.

So they said they'd never heard of anyone buying castor beans in the fall.

So that's odd.

Yeah.

So they said when she saw requests for 10 packets, she hadn't even bothered calling the other stores in the area because they wouldn't have any in stock.

The only way to fill the order would be get the seeds directly from the warehouse in Shenandoah.

So she had made this order

and did all this.

She said she would be up later to pick up the seeds, and she picked up 10 packets.

Holy shit.

When they first asked about the woman, she had trouble remembering what Deborah looked like since she waits on so many people.

But she said this sale stood out.

She didn't sell many castor beans anyway, but a special order for out-of-season poisonous beans stands out to her.

So she was able to say she was maybe mid-40s, medium build, leaning toward the heavy side, medium dark hair with a chin length.

And they said, we have register tapes.

And the tape read September 21st, 1995.

Should have been September 22nd or 20th, but the time was correct, 3.27 p.m.

10 packets of seeds for $1.29 a piece.

She paid with a 20.

They have all a receipt and everything.

So the receipt that they have is a big deal.

That's going to lock her in.

Castor beans, by the way, used to produce a non-toxic oil found in cosmetics, lubricants, paints, and also as a source for biodiesel and chemical feedstocks.

The beans themselves are highly toxic, containing a potent poison called ricin, which is separate from the processed oil, but has been studied for anti-cancer treatments.

Historically, cancer castor beans have been used in folk medicine for their laxative

and other properties, and the seeds can be made into jewelry

as well.

That's a lot of things.

They're ornamental for the most part.

Now, suspects.

They announced that they have some suspects, but they won't say who they are.

Oh.

Make it sound like there's a team of people fucking burning a building down.

They announced to the press, the police do, that anytime you see small children killed in a fire that was intentionally set, words can't describe how horrible you feel, nor can words describe what a treacherous act that would be for somebody to do this to these two small children.

It's terrible.

Sure is.

They have the funeral.

Margaret Hacker comes to the funeral.

Oh.

Oh, boy.

That's fun.

By the way, Deborah acts completely erratic at the funeral, yells at the funeral home staff about minor details of the funeral.

That's parpolit of course for this woman.

And told her parents in the middle of the memorial service to, quote, shut the fuck up.

Oh, my God.

Grieving grandparents, shut the fuck up.

They didn't sit together, by the way.

Deborah and Michael.

No.

Didn't sit together, which is odd for grieving parents.

And Kate sobbed throughout the service because she's 10 and that's normal.

Other weird Deborah behavior here,

real fucking weird.

She

spent many hours watching Kate, who's living with the grandparents at that point, practice for the nutcracker, like

you know,

giving her instruction and shit.

She visited the burned-out house several times just to walk around.

And one time when she attended a soccer game, she wept on the sidelines the whole time.

Now, the fire report is finally issued.

Poor patterns and all that kind of shit.

This is November 10th, 95, so it's about two weeks.

Poor patterns starting at dining room table, by the way, which was covered in divorce papers.

That's the first place the fire started.

She lit the whole house on fire starting with divorce papers.

Yep.

Wound through the living room, focused on Mike's piano and his desk.

His shit.

Yep.

Up the stairs to the second floor, soaked the hallway carpet outside the children's room so they can't get out.

Yeah.

Created a trap barrier to escape, stopped at Deborah's master bedroom door, used three to ten gallons of accelerant, multiple points of origin.

This is arson to kill those children, period.

Arson to

and Mike's belongings.

Inflict maximum damage on Mike.

Yes.

That's what it is.

That's exactly what it is.

Yeah.

Exactly what it is.

That's absolutely fucking crazy.

Wow.

They said that Deborah at 5'4 carried and poured all this flammable liquid all over the house.

She's very small at that point.

November 17th, 1995,

after the fire, they do some blood testing at a naval research laboratory on Michael's blood, and experts conclude that his blood had been exposed to ricin.

So that's not good.

November 22nd, 1995, Deborah drops Kate off at ballet practice at the Midland Theater.

And as she goes to get in her car, the cops are fucking waiting, and they arrest her in the parking lot.

Charge her with two counts of capital murder, one count of attempted capital murder, aggravated arson, one count of attempted first-degree premeditated murder.

Should be some abused animals in there, too.

And possibly some poisoning.

Throw them in there.

Yeah, that's the attempted murder.

Oh, okay, got it.

I thought the attempt was on the baby, on the other baby.

Oh, yeah.

It survived.

Oh, one count of attempted first-degree premeditated, one count of capital.

There it it is.

All right.

So that's two attempted, both attempts there.

$3 million her bail is set at, which is the highest in the history of Johnson County and will stay that way for years and years.

And the prosecutor announces the death penalty will be sought.

Yeah, she's a bad woman.

Yeah.

By the way, remember her friend from tennis earlier?

Yeah.

They said, how'd you first hear about the fire?

She said, my sitter came over that morning and said there was a fire on Canterbury Circle.

And I thought, please don't be Deborah.

I called her phone, and it was busy, so I thought she was chatting on the phone, and everything was okay.

But then when I took my son to the barber and saw on the news there was a fire at the house, I thought, oh, no, they're going to think Deborah did that because of that other fire.

Yeah.

Because that other time her house went up.

No, shit.

They said, were you surprised about the substance abuse claims?

And she said, Deborah did call me and it was obvious she was intoxicated, but she showed no signs of drug use before.

As Anne Ruhl wrote, the night of the fire, she had taken a lot of Prozac and vodka, so maybe she might have been out of her mind.

Yeah, maybe.

Oh, man.

So

there's another, there's a lawyer who used to be a respected prosecutor that takes her case, and there's a whole article about how mad everyone is at him for that.

Really?

He's a defense lawyer.

That's what they do.

And they were mad that he had a job.

Yeah, well, you don't get mad at a doctor for pulling a bullet out of some gangbanger's chest, do you?

No, that's her job.

Like, let him die.

No, don't let him die.

You're a doctor.

She maintains her innocence.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

Somebody says she's in

profound grief.

Her lawyer says that's all she talks about and worries about is Kate and what the pressure is doing to Kate.

I think she's still somewhat dazed and confused.

She's very surprised she would be charged with these kinds of crimes.

She lost everything in this fire, including her children, everything, and she's astounded.

All right.

Okay.

Interesting.

The neighborhood said, people in the neighborhood, the police chief said that environment has changed 180 degrees.

They know they can't be insulated, but it's difficult sometimes in their minds to finally admit that things have changed and they may never be the same around there.

1996, they send her for a competency evaluation.

Yeah.

And she actually passes that.

The defense strategy they announce for court, because you have to basically get a judge to okay your strategy.

They blame it on Tim.

Tim Tim did it.

The child did it.

Tim.

Oh, boy.

They said that Tim was angry at his father and had a fascination with fire.

He'd been caught, she said, to nobody else

knew this, but that he'd been caught setting off Molotov cocktails once.

He's obsessed with fire.

Okay.

She also said Tim poisoned his father's food because he likes to cook.

So that's what he did.

Okay.

Tim's a bad kid.

Jesus, evil.

Yeah, evil, evil.

13 years old, tells his dad to go fuck himself.

Yeah.

Then Anne Rule comes to town.

You know you are fucked and you've done something really bad when you're in jail and Ann Ruhl shows up.

You are fucked.

She's going to write like a 900-page book about you.

You did some bad shit.

How much of a piece of shit you are.

April 17th, 1996, she smartly agrees to a plea deal.

Really?

In exchange, they agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Okay.

She pleads no contest to all charges.

They submit a 17-page proffer of the evidence.

At her hearing, she said that her defense would certainly challenge some of the state's evidence, but Deborah understood that the material above would be presented to the jury if the case proceeded to trial.

She said,

I'm aware that the state can produce substantial evidence that I set the fire that caused the death of my children.

My attorneys are ready and willing and able to present evidence that I was not in control of myself when Tim and Kelly died.

However, true that may be, defending myself at trial on these charges would only compound the suffering of my family and my daughter, Kate.

I love my family very much.

I never meant to harm my children, but I accept the fact that I will be punished harshly.

I believe that this is best to end this now so that we can begin to heal from our horrible loss.

What a convoluted, messy thing to say.

Fucking asshole.

The judge has something else to say to her, though, and that's you, ma'am, may fuck off

a hard 40 life sentence.

That's 40 years to life with 40 before

possibility of parole on the Capitol murder counts.

We'll talk about in a second.

And all of the other additional sentences run concurrently.

She will be 84 the first time she's eligible for parole.

There's no way she gets out.

No way.

I would fucking hope not.

No.

By the way, Michael was there in court fresh off of brain surgery he had to have because of all this shit.

Oh, my God.

He had an aneurysm?

Yep.

He said, they said, why'd you you show up?

He said, despite what she did, this is still a human being.

I was married to her for 11 years.

Showed up for her?

To be, yeah.

To support her rather than to hate her.

Wow.

By the way, the friend, the tennis friend, they asked her, Did you stay in touch when she was in custody?

And she said, Deborah reached out to me quite a bit.

I visited her at the Olaith jail when she went to prison in Topeka.

I visited her there.

She was always proclaiming her innocence.

She wrote me letters and asked whether I would perjure myself and say that Tim said, quote, sometimes I get so upset with my dad, I want to burn down the house.

Will you say that for me?

I think I sent it to our lawyer who sent it to the defense, and pretty quickly afterward, she pleaded no contest.

That's

wild.

I didn't know you could plead no contest to murder.

No shit.

So March 2004, she tries to withdraw her plea years later,

saying that she didn't actually do it.

There's new scientific evidence.

She has a bunch of experts that argue with each other.

It's pretty fucking stupid.

There's a hearing to withdraw from that.

That's 2005.

Tons.

I have so much here on these experts.

It's fucking ridiculous, but we can't have time to get into that shit.

They said, get the fuck out of here, affirmed, take a hike.

They said her new evidence is insufficient, even though there are advances in the science of fire investigation.

It's still an overwhelming amount of evidence that you did this.

Yeah.

She said the factual basis was and remains sound.

Absolutely.

The court wrote, Deborah's focus on advances in science ignores the inescapable, the inescapable, like a house fire that you're trapped in.

Well, you can't say that.

No.

2007, her whole appeal is based on the fact that she was too medicated to remember setting the fire at all and probably was too fucked up to carry all that accelerant, so it couldn't have been her.

They said, yeah, right.

Federal appeal, they say, take a fucking hike, sweetheart.

Get back to jail with you.

Yeah.

Petitions denied.

Now, Michael never pursued a civil lawsuit against her.

I wonder what that is.

Which is interesting.

He's not a confrontational person, as it seems.

He's a very calm man.

He obtained a divorce and got full custody of Kate.

Insurance claims from the fire were complicated by arson.

There's medical bills from poisoning that the insurance didn't want to cover as well.

So we had that.

Kate was placed with Mike's parents initially because she was mad at her father.

Oh, Kate.

The court allowed supervised visits

with Deborah.

Kate visiting Deborah in jail.

Oh, my word.

For the next, I don't know if today, but at least for like 15 years or whatever, Kate maintained her mother's innocence.

She says, my mother's innocent.

2008, another hearing, no go.

2015, she's trying to get re-sentenced, and they said, get the fuck out of here.

You're lucky we're not fucking beating you to death.

You killed your kids.

August 23rd, 2023, Michael dies at age 68.

Oh, my God, this poor bastard.

Fucking poor guy.

Deborah is inmate number 007.

That's the first thing.

Really?

Yep, 007-4319 at the Topeka Correctional Facility, medium to high security, two concurrent life terms.

Parole eligibility is November 21st, 2035.

So she's only 10 10 years away.

But still, she'll be 84.

She's had no major disciplinary infractions that would affect that, by the way.

Was it her?

Yeah.

Yep.

Ann Ruhl's book, Bitter Harvest, A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice.

Jesus.

Jesus.

See, I couldn't give you the title in the beginning because you know exactly the whole story at that point.

It's got 4.5 stars out of 2,500 reviews on.

Yeah, that's pretty goddamn good.

Ann Ruhl began corresponding with Deborah Green in 1996 and interviewed her in person in 1997.

Rule's theory was that in destroying Michael, Green would have been able to preserve her own ego and that Michael would not have been able to leave her for another woman.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

Also, in Kansas, it influenced fire investigation training standards, led to changes in how accelerant evidence is presented, and affected death penalty negotiations in domestic cases.

Also cited fire science reliability challenges nationwide.

And Prairie Village had to create a new address system after demolishing the murder house because so many people were coming to stare at it.

Wow.

This has been covered in Red Book magazine.

Yeah.

It's been covered in

a big one.

I'll bet that shit was in my living room.

Bitter Harvest and Rule, New York Times bestseller for that.

Forensic Files episode, an episode of Deadly Women, a 2021 Lifetime movie, House on Fire.

There you go, everybody.

So that is Prairie Village, Kansas, and that is a crazy ass story.

We got to bust through the end of it because we're running very, very late.

But definitely, if you like that show, head over to whatever app you're on and give us five stars.

It helps a ton.

ShutupandGiveMemurder.com.

Head to our show at The Moor in Seattle in mid-October, right?

October.

Get in there.

And it's just a couple weeks away.

Get in there and see us.

Definitely.

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And you get a shout out at the end of the show, which is right now.

Jimmy, hit me with the names of the most wonderful fucking people on the face of this earth.

Hit me with them right now.

This week's executive producer, Arlena Zemmel, my favorite Canadian.

Jason Fuller, Gary Howard.

Gary and Jason.

Thank you both.

Thank you for coming.

Great to see both of you.

It was amazing.

Fuck yeah.

Anna Mueller, Phil

and David Bayer, both of them.

Jennifer Widner, thank you all so much for what you're doing.

You're fantastic.

Voltrove, other producers we got, Voltrove Electronics.

They didn't give a name.

Just donated

in a business name.

So that's fine.

Peyton Meadows.

At Voltrove, wherever that is.

We know.

Happy hour checking in and loving New Mexico.

That is not very.

Ooh.

Yikes, you poor bastard.

Janice Hill, S.J.

Surage, Martha Whiting, 508's Phone, Dave Cohen, Jennifer Probst, Flossie Mae, Tyler Scarborough, Phantom Inc., Madeline Michaud, Rick Gallagher, Amy Clausen, Kate with no last name, Ashley Green, Kaylee with no last name, Keely Moore.

Is that Kelly?

Keely.

Is it Kelly?

I don't know.

Kay Ellie.

Yeah, is that Keely or Kaley?

Kele, usually, actually.

I knew a girl with that name.

Kayleigh?

Yes.

That's a wild.

Pele.

Like Hawaii.

It's wild.

Yeah.

Okay.

Kelly Moore.

Kayleigh.

Okay.

Jim Chachas.

Kachas.

Austin Stevenson.

Mike Stanton.

Isn't that the pitcher?

Yeah.

Yeah, I thought I knew her name.

That's funny.

Victoria C., Melody Cadwell, Aaron Arin, Aaron Weingartner, Weingarten, Donna with no last name, Brittany Longmire, Angela Zimwaldi, Lisan

Bodhi, Bodie, Bodhi,

Body, perhaps, Vanessa with a J.

Guess where that's at?

Vogan,

Joseph Rhymesy,

Vanessa with a J, Timothy McMillan,

Christina Van Sickleherd, Naomi Kramer, Libby Knight, Thomas Mink, Dennis James McIntosh, Nikki Smith, Tiffany Freeman, Aaron Taylor, Adrian Zimmerman, SHM Ashley Berry.

I don't know what that means.

Patrick with no last name.

Jason Heinrich, Dizzy Flame, Lucia with no last name, Brad Edwards, Brooke Tamburo, Jessica Davis, Vinnie Bagadonuts.

Who is that?

It's a.

Is that that other guy?

Uh, it's that guy's joke, isn't it?

Uh, there was a dice thing.

It was Joey Bag of Donuts.

Oh, okay, got it.

I think there was a

the guy with the weird last name that's a comic.

I think he calls his brother Bag of Donuts.

It doesn't matter.

Uh,

definitely not his then.

Okay, Sam Milbauer.

He probably explains it better than uh, me just saying Bag of Donuts.

Chloe Wyland.

Uh, he's an amazing comic.

Uh, Melissa and Resson.

Reason?

Rising.

Timothy Reagan.

Velvet Armadillo.

Brooke Braun.

D.

Uh-oh.

D.

Grant.

He's stole from someone else.

He's amazing.

He certainly didn't steal it, is my view.

He did if he's using it.

No, no, there's.

I'm sure there's a reason he's telling it.

Oh, okay.

Try what you're saying.

I'm not quoting his joke very well.

Okay, okay.

Jamie Souza, Tricia York, Serena Lagore, The Easterlings, Debbie Anderson, Carol Picoraz, our Percos, Shauna Isaman,

Amanda P, Nancy Cantwell, and Can't Well Read, Taya Taya, Taya Elise, Ava with no last name.

Sorry.

What is it?

Is it Domerrera?

Domera always said that.

Big Petey, Little Petey, Regular Petey, Regular Pete, Joe Bag of Donuts, fucking this one, that one.

That was his name.

I'm sorry.

Very common.

He's been a bullshit.

He's an Italian guy, I think.

There you go.

Yeah.

Barbara Missy.

That's better.

Where did I go?

Damn it.

Ava with no last name.

Jen Tattershell.

Nicky, Nicole Coates, Karen Iowenthal, Joshua Gardner, Miss N.

Barb Farney.

Farney hoe.

Farney Hoff.

Fernie Hoff.

Fernie.

Fernie Hoff.

I'm asking so many questions

with that last name.

All right.

Crazy Ann.

Crezian with no last name.

Terry Morris.

J-Bob Imel.

Sonya Nelson.

Sarah Wolf Hill.

Megan with no last name, Ricky Hutchinson, Aiden Rolfe, Aaron Bagley,

Bagley, it's Bagley, Cindy McGee, Jackie with no last name, Breonna Brenna

Kosilsky, Leah McClendon, Russell Mylot, Anthony Og Miller, Adrian Lopez, Steph with no last name, Jackie Buddha, Mark Spark, Mary with no last name, Megan Dykeman, Cinnamon with no last name, Sweet Care, 74, Matt Lomas, Gracie Parrish, Christian Puckett, Drew with no last name, Bethany Alice, Patience Harper, Jenny Mae, Elise Christensen, Alice, perhaps, Taylor Haas, Glorious Lorius, Rachel Guerrero,

Ryan and Alyssa Dole, Jared Schappell, Chappelle, maybe, Zira

Holtam, Zyra, Zyra Holtam, Dina Dean, Dean Rashkow, L.

Minnie, Lauren B., Philippa Lees, Kelsey Prengel,

Tamara Hughes, Lorna Grayden, Jess with no last name, Vanessa Healy, Parrot Heads with no last name.

Those are the people that are big fans of Jimmy Buffett.

Diane

Putsch, Steve King, Blair Osgood, Mick Mike, Mike with no last name, Jamie Kashirsky, Amy Graves, Bill with no last name, Kate Sullivan, Super Flaxon, whatever that is, Kelsey Unger, Bry, Brie, Bree, Delvo, Delvo, Delvox,

Ross with no last name, Wendy Sue, Isabella Bascom, Bascombe, Sarah Johnson, Catherine Taylor, Liz Jones, Ed Jones, Ryan McAfee, Alex Jarding, John West, Gene West, maybe, Ryan Marshall, Kristen with no last name, Jennifer Finley, Wendy Katamoto, Jason Miller,

Joanne Bacon, Melinda with no last name, Sarah Lee.

Oh, because nobody doesn't like last night.

Nobody doesn't like her.

Nobody doesn't like her.

I'll tell you that right now.

And all of her patrons, you're amazing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, everybody, so much.

She's fantastic bastards.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tell everybody, keep tuning back in.

You want to find us on social media, head over to shutupandgivemeurder.com.

There's drop-down menus.

Take you anywhere you want to go.

Keep coming back and seeing us.

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

Bye.

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