#557 - Suburban Ax Murder Mystery - Brighton, New York

#557 - Suburban Ax Murder Mystery - Brighton, New York

January 02, 2025 2h 47m Episode 557 Explicit

This week, in Brighton, New York, a woman is brutally murdered with an ax, in her very comfortable suburban home, making everyone wonder if a crazed killer was on the loose. Detectives seem to have no clue who could have done this, until a old neighbor, with a violent past confesses. But police still don't think he's the guy, and focus on the late woman's husband. Who did it? The neighborhood murderer, or the mild mannered economist husband??


Along the way, we find out that the Holiday Inn is very erotic in Rochester, that police shouldn't watch "A Current Affair" for help with their police work, and that sometimes, justice is a real head scratcher!!


New episodes every Thursday!


Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com

Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!


Follow us on...


twitter.com/@murdersmall

facebook.com/smalltownpod

instagram.com/smalltownmurder


Also, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Listen and Follow Along

Full Transcript

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about a delicious dog food, Ollie.
If your dog could talk, they'd want Ollie. They'd ask you for Ollie.
That's what I'm talking about. It's a fresh whole food diet.
It's not just delicious. It can add, like, years to your puppy's life.
Yeah. You want that good, healthy food that's more tail wagging.
And this is. This is real food.
Like, this stuff looks good. I'd eat it.
Yeah. That's how I was like, this looks pretty good.
I might sit down with you on the floor and you could share. It is nice to be able to pop something down on the floor for him that looks like something that you'd put over rice or whatever and eat it yourself.
That's what I mean. It looks great.
All you need to do, you fill out their 30 second quiz that Ollie has for you. They create a customized meal plan based on your puppy's weight and activity level and health info in general there.
You get expert recommendations. Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food.
Head to ollie.com slash STM. Tell them all about your dog and use code STM to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today.
Plus, they offer a clean bowl guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back.
That's O-L-L-I-E dot com slash STM and enter code STM to get 60% off your first box. Now back to the show.
Hi, this is Steve Buscemi. You know, the actor.
Well, now I'm an actor and podcast host.

From piece of work entertainment and campsite media

in association with Olive Productions

comes Big Time, an Apple original podcast.

Each episode follows the story of one misfit with big dreams

who isn't afraid to bend a few rules

or take a shortcut to get there.

Well, who steals bees?

I was duped.

I shoot you in the leg. This is Big time.
Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Location The Lab.
Quinton only has 24 hours to sell his car. Is that even possible? He goes to Carvana.com.
What is this? A movie trailer? He ignores the doubters, enters his license plate. Wow, that's a great offer.
The car is sold, but will Carvana pick it up in time for... They'll literally pick it up tomorrow morning.
Done with the dramatics? Car selling in record time. Save your time.
Go to Carvana.com and sell your car today. Pickup fees may apply.
This week in Brighton, New York, a perplexing mystery unfolds after a horrifying axe murder is discovered in a quiet suburban home, leaving police suspicious of the spouse, even though there's a career criminal down the street.

Welcome 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 Wissman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of Small Town Murder. This one is pretty damn wild, I'll say, right off the bat.
Can't wait to get to that. A real perplexing mess of a case here.
We'll get to all that. First of all, though, absolutely head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com.
Get your tickets. Tickets for live shows are live right now for 2025.
Some places we've never been before, like Grand Rapids. We have one more that we've never been to that we're announcing here in a couple of weeks.
So there's that. We're all over the place.
Everything revisiting from- Irvine, San Diego, Portland, Seattle. Irvine, fuck.
Yeah, Irvine down there. We got Philly, D.C., Pittsburgh, Columbus.
Absolutely. Can't wait for it There's another couple I'm forgetting But they're in there, Chicago St.
Louis St. Louis, don't forget Gotta go get your tickets right now Don't look at the website and find one close to you Let's go Let's go even if it's not close to you Specifically Pittsburgh, let's do that first Pittsburgh do that.
It's Super Bowl weekend. Who cares? It's on a Friday.
It's Friday. You'll be fine for the game Sunday.
Pre-game. Pre-game it.
Get your liver primed. Let's party.
That's right. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you get all of that.
Also, check out Crime in Sports and Your Stupid Opinions, our other two shows. And if that's not enough, go to Patreon.
Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material and there's a ton of it. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get a gigantic back catalog of stuff you've never heard before.
Hundreds of episodes of bonus stuff. Then you get new ones every other week.
One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get them all, baby. You get it all.
That's right. This week for crime in sports, we're doing back to personal ads.
Oh, it's been a while while can't wait for some more old-timey personal ads those are a lot of fun always a popular always a hoot and then for small town murder we're going to do something very cool and weird we're going to talk about the west memphis three which people have been waiting for and we're going to specifically focus on the beginning and how the hell any of this shit happened how did they fuck it up so bad how did we get to the point where we were at you know what i mean like how do we get pre-documentary pre-paradise lost what was bumbled how did this even be a thing that happened fumbled and ruined and fumbled fumbled bumbled and bungled all up at once check all that out uh patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, too.
Jimmy will mess your name up real good for you. Don't worry about that.
So that is fun stuff. That said, disclaimer time.
Hey, everybody, this is a comedy show. Unfortunately, it's also a show about real murder that happens.
Did you just find out? In case you're wondering, nothing's made up for comic effect. We're not like, like oh let's embellish that because it'll be funny no no no these are real stories and you just got to find the weird stuff in them and you might say how did true crime and comedy go together very easily if you do it right that's the thing the thing is you never have to make fun of the victim or the victim's family why there's a reason for that because we're that, because we're assholes.
But? But we're not scumbags. See how that works? It's real easy to do.
So if you think that true crime and comedy, though, never go together and you don't want to hear that, well, then I don't know why you're even listening to the show. But it might not be what you think, so check it out.
No complaining later. That said, everybody, I think it's time to sit back.
Let's all take breaths here we go arms to the sky let's all shout shut up and give me murder let's do this everybody let's go on a trip shall we let's get into this we are going to New York this week been a while since we've been to New York, actually. Sure has.
So it's going to be a thing here. We are going to Brighton, New York.
This is in western New York, outside of Rochester. Lovely.
It's only about 10 minutes outside of Rochester. So this is like Rochester suburbs, which is about an hour and 15 minutes away from Buffalo.
Okay. So kind of up in that cold lake effect snow quadrant of the state there.
Almost six hours to New York City. If you look it up on a map how to get there and just say Brighton, New York to New York City, you have to go through two other states to get there.
It goes Pennsylvania, then New Jersey and then you go up to New York City. If you went through New York, it takes even longer.
It's fucking crazy. And it is about three hours and 15 minutes to Walt in New York, which was our last episode from New York, which was Runaway Husband, episode 502, which was a fun episode.
So this week there, there's the county for this week's show, is in Monroe County. Brighton, New York is in.
And it is area code 585. And a little bit of history here.
The town was named for Brighton, England, obviously, which looks nothing like this. That's a beach town with all sorts of piers and boardwalks and Ferris wheels and shit.
It's definitely not a gathering place. It's definitely not a cold gray western New York suburb, for sure.
Dump snow. You know, one of those.
The first Europeans in this area were French trappers in the 1600s who would visit here but didn't settle here. They're like, listen, we'll go out there and get some fur and then go back to where it doesn't snow four feet at a time.
Thank you. English colonists built permanent structures in about90 that's a took a long time to for that to happen here and they have formally established a town in 1814 making it one of the oldest towns in monroe county um it was mainly a farming community and they also made bricks here seasonably farming obviously yeah season yeah that that month that three weeks of summer that you get i feel like is a big deal and then they made they got fires burning they made bricks yeah um that's how it happened but that's it was like a you know farms and brick manufacturing and then it slowly became suburbs like an upscale suburb basically of rochester when they got rid of all that shit.
In 1999, the town purchased 64 acres with the intention of

developing... like an upscale suburb basically of rochester when they got rid of all that shit uh 1999 the town purchased 64 acres with the intention of developing a central park they don't have a central park with the intention intention they bought this this land and now it's it's still there but it's not exactly a landscaped park they'll get to it yeah they also have a lot of projects like that around my house i get oh i tons of shit i haven't i've been sitting there for two years yeah They'll get to it.
I got a lot of projects like that around my house. I get it.
Oh, tons of shit

I haven't. I've been sitting there for two years.

I'll get to it. I just

usually don't purchase 64 acres of land

first. It's the only difference.

They had

the Alcoa Carefree

Home back in the day, which

was the first...

Alcoa is the aluminum company

of America, by the way. Big, they're a big deal.
And big deal. And back, they were an even bigger deal when we made shit out of aluminum more than just cans, basically.
So back, they wanted to make aluminum houses. Oh.
So they had these model homes. This is there that you could see.
And they built all these model homes, and then nobody ever said, that good idea so they never built their house out of the shit didn't work because you know trailers and stuff yeah you know a lot of people with aluminum houses no not on a foundation i'll tell you that much yeah exactly uh that's what then after that they were like okay people don't want to build their homes out of aluminum what if just fucking encase the house in aluminum? How about that? Maybe we can get them to do that. The Stonehold Tolan House is also here, which is a historic place.
It's just a really old farmhouse. Okay.
It's there. Famous people that have lived here and are from here.
Kristen Wiig is from here, I believe. Is that right? SNL actress.
And then Frederick Douglass lived here for a long time.

So that was pretty cool, too.

Lived here?

Lived here for a while.

Is that right?

I don't think he was from here.

I think he was from other places.

No, but it's a fascinating choice, a place to settle when you're an American hero.

I guess.

I don't know.

I guess he likes the snow is all I can imagine.

He wants to watch bricks be made back in the day.

I'm not sure.

So reviews of this town. Let's find out what we got here because we've never been here.
What the hell do we know about this place? Here is one. Here's five stars.
And this is basically a review of a shopping plaza. It has nothing to do with the town.
I love it when people completely misunderstand the assignment. And give you something that nobody wants.
But this is the reason Frederick Douglas was there. That's what he was there.
Well, yeah, he was there for the Brighton Commons Plaza. I believe he's the founding member of it, probably.
It says, five stars, shopping, services, and a great blend of dining. Brighton Commons Plaza is my favorite with easy parking.
The merchants offer a variety of shopping options from gifts to upscale furniture and clothing,

consignment, and golf tech for year-round lessons.

Everybody knows Frederick Douglass loved golf tech.

Well, he liked the year-round lesson.

See, Frederick Douglass, everybody knows he had a long drive,

but his short game was shit, and he really wanted to work on it.

It was weak, and it was terrible.

Chipping.

Oh, my God, you get that guy in a sand trap, fuck it. He's there all day.
Give him 12 strokes and move on because it's going to take a while. He's no good.
He needed help. Terrible.
A spa, bridal salon, orthodontics, hair salon, dining, tailoring, and the best custard. Okay.
All righty. One of Rochester's most recognized original shopping plazas again this is for this is on niche.com for the town of fucking brighton has nothing to do with this plaza start looking for good custard i'm telling you i've never once been like where can i get good custard never never once happened didn't even know there was whole stores just dedicated to custard.

Custard and Sons.

I never even had any idea.

Four stars here.

You have it all you would need.

You do.

You have it all you would need.

The beautiful water's edge.

The lush green parks.

Acres of apple orchards.

Wildlife runs free.

The suburbs of Rochester is just a majestic place to reside and now we know the suburbs of rochester is a secret majestic yeah you know like like alaska or something it's majestic okay uh then two stars finally this is amazing two stars the people. This is amazing.
Two stars.

The people here seem friendly on the outside, but a lot of them will insult you or talk bad about you behind your back.

That's the whole review.

Okay.

Shit-talking, back-stabbing, sons of bitches in this town.

On the outside, they look pleasant.

There they are, eating their custard, looking all happy.

Judging the shit out of you. You know what's behind that, though.
You know what's behind that custard grin. Custard-eating grin.
You custard-eating bastards. Brighton, full of custard-eating motherfuckers.
That's what it is. So speaking of eating, I was looking up places to eat here, just looking for reviews of stuff, and found Joe's Brooklyn Pizza in Brighton so I found this this place has 3.7 stars which is not wonderful not great and just a couple of these I have to read because they're god damn hilarious so you need to check them out here to maybe avoid this spot Marie gives one star and this is a great review disgusting older man that makes pizza and burps and passes gas while making pizza.
Three exclamation points. Stay out of my kitchen, Maria.
Farts and burps while making pizza. I don't know.
I don't know what to tell you. I don't know.
Completely disgusting and unprofessional. Well, listen, I ate here.
That's the problem. Yeah, you eat pizza three times a fucking day and see if you don't get a little gassy.
That guy might have had a calzone for lunch. He could have just three pounds of cheese in his gut.
And then Mike, one star. I'm just going to read the first fucking line of this.
Gentleman who answers the phone on Saturdays around 6 p.m. is a scumbag.

That's a great insult, but for real. On answering the phone, you know he's a scumbag? Did he burp and fart while he was on the phone with you? Is that possible? Could you spell it through the phone? This is mainly because they put you on hold without saying anything.
They just say, hold, please. Yes, if you call a pizza place on a busy Friday night, they go, yeah, hold, hold, hold, and they're getting, you know.
That is maybe the worst feeling in the world.

When you call somewhere and they answer and they say the place and go, please hold, before you get to say a word.

Anything.

They don't even know what you're there for.

That's demoralizing.

They don't know if you're a telemarketer.

They have no goddamn idea.

You're just on hold. Population in this town, 36,986.
Good-sized town, yeah. Good, decent-sized town.
It's suburbs here. Almost 52% women here in this town, so that's high, higher than the average.
Median age is just above the average. It's 39.3, so that's just above the national average.
It's about 50-50 married. A lot of the stats say upscale suburb.
Not a lot of people single with children, married with children here, got a job, you work in Rochester, you drive here, you fucking mow the lawn on Saturday afternoon. I feel like it's that kind of town.
Race of this town here, 76.3% white, 5.9% black, 10.8% Asian. Is that right? I had no idea Western New York had a lot of Asian people.
I had literally no clue. Twice as many Asians as black people, which is a weird thing.
It's very strange. Don't get me wrong.
Have as many Asians as you like. You're loud.
There's no laws. I'm not telling you a quota on your Asians that you have to have.
It's fine, but that seems like a lot. 4.1% Hispanic here.
Let's see. Religion, 46.5% of the people here are religious, which is a little bit lower than the national average, but still pretty high.
And the most of anybody is Catholic, shocker. Oh.
As we know, Catholics are the Baptists of the North. So that we do know.
1.4% Jewish. Oh, my goodness.
Golly, I love it. Oh, my goodness.
We get to sing the song. Ah, dang.
Here we go. Let's do Hava, Nagila, Hava, Nagila, Hava, Nagila.
I don't know the words. Hey.
All right. We love that.
We got that. Let's see here.
Median household income here is $75,852 a year, which is just above the national average. That's pretty good, yeah.
Yeah, it's not bad. It's kind of a wealthier suburb.
Nice houses, big yards, that sort of thing. It's a nice area.
Median home cost here, or cost of living, we should say, 100 is regular average. Here it's 88.
So a little bit lower housing here. Median home costs $28 thousand nine hundred dollars that's pretty good

not bad for like a nice upscale suburb here and maybe we've convinced you that the only place you can lay your head is brighton new york and if we have we've convinced you we have for you the brighton new york real estate report the average two-bedroom rental here goes for about 1380 dollars which is just above the national average yeah uh but the house is decently affordable here is house number one this is kind of the average house that we'll give you here uh this is a four-bedroom three-bath 1780 square foot house so-square-foot house. So, decent family house.
You know what I mean? A couple of kids. It's nothing special inside.
It was clearly completely redone in 2009. You could tell by the countertops, things like that.
Not a bad house. $289,999.
Okay. So, that's what's your average house is though, in terms of the price.

House number two is a four bedroom, three bath, 2,812 square foot house.

And it actually is very similar to the house that's going to be in our story this week.

It looks similar.

You can tell it's like in the similar type of neighborhood.

Nice house. Pretty decent.
It is $775,000 for that. Yeah, four bedroom, three bath, 2,812 square feet.
And there's no acreage. It's like, you know, less than a half acre, but a decent size yard.
A little pricey, I would say. Then house number three, four bedroom, four bath, 3,247 square feet.
T-bowl for each and every b-hole. And this house, it's on 1.6 acres.
It's the weirdest looking fucking house that's ever been in New York. It looks like a douchebag Hollywood producer in 1989 built it.
Oh, I love it. It's got like those square, like you can't see through the glass things

with some windows.

Yeah, the glass cubes.

Yeah, this is not a nice house at all.

It's real weird looking.

I mean, it's a nice house for somebody.

Somebody.

For a complete tool, it's a nice house.

Like if anyone saw this and went,

oh, that's awesome, you'd go,

that's a douchebag right there.

You suck.

This house is the equivalent of an Ed Hardy shirt and a pair of white Oakleys. That's what this house is.
It's fucking stupid. Real annoying looking house.
Allison, who does our research here, she had a little two cents to add to this. She says, Zillow calls this a contemporary masterpiece.
I call it an ugly piece of shit. There you go.
There you go. That's how it works.
And I agree with her. Ugly piece of shit here.
That's why we like Allison. This is $1,345,000 for this monstrosity.
It's weird, too. Like, it's got thin, weird hallways.
It's a real weird house. I would definitely not pay that money for that house.
Things to do here. Oh, boy.
Here it is, everybody. The Rochester oh yeah yes where is it do you think what's the most erotic place you can think of uh sex stores yeah um close you're close wiggly uh you're close it's the holiday inn in auburn new york that's where it's at's sexy right there.
Holiday Inn Executive Center. I bet that continental breakfast is hot.
Sexy hot. Coming down to make prints, make copies.
What the fuck is going on here? Tiny boxes of Froot Loops and miniature yogurts. Hot.
Sexy. Pull it out.
Yeah. They say that the schedule includes hot, edgy, and beautiful erotic art.
Edgy. Edgy.
Performances ranging from classy aerial dance to bawdy burlesque. Unique shopping for clothing, jewelry, and sex toys, of course.
You've got to have those. I mean, yeah.
Obviously. It's a sex festival.
How do you not have that? Classes in art, dance, and sex

ed for adventurous adults.

Okay. Okay.
And

it's the pictures of this.

It looks like

it's not who you're picturing doing this.

You're picturing this is a very sexy

thing. This is like a lot

of people, a lot of mushy

people in their 40s and

50s teaching each other

how to use whips and shit, which is fine.

Showing people the ropes of

Thank you. people a lot of mushy people in their 40s and 50s yeah teaching each other how to use whips and shit which is fine showing people the ropes of dildo play but it looks about as erotic as a

holiday inn in auburn new york that's the difference it's a little weird but it does have

maybe my favorite thing and a job that god damn it i wish i could do because i would do it in a

fucking heartbeat okay sign language interpreters available all weekend what a great job that, goddammit, I wish I could do because I would do it in a fucking heartbeat. Okay.
Sign language interpreters available all weekend. There you go.
What a great job that is. I'd love to mime fucking on your clit like that.
And then in there, you know, just miming the whole thing would be fan-fucking-tastic. I need to be there for that.
Some of the classes they have subvert the dominant paradigm.

Alternative models for dominant submissive relationships.

And it says owners and slaves, parents and offspring, subs and doms.

I don't like the opening right there.

Owners and slaves, parents and offspring.

The fuck does that mean?

Just say all are welcome.

Is that weirdo sex people? Come on in. Like, it's fine to be a weirdo sex people.
Do you like to fuck? Come in. You're welcome.
Do you like to fuck in a way that you're uncomfortable telling other people about? Here you go. Would your work people frown upon your sex life? Well, this is for you then.
So, yeah, it says in a world that celebrates the erotic imagination, it's funny how limited our relationship models tend to be. So there's that.
Also, have a cookie. Using rewards in your BDSM relationship.
Oh, or do that too. I think that is self-explanatory.
You know, you do the right thing, you get a cookie apparently. Rewards, yeah.
Which is what i want when i'm fucking is cookies and then for your own good using punishment in your bdsm relationships okay so you can either give them a cookie or punch them probably say the number one fantasy of bdsm kink is someone getting punished whether in pure fantasy or as some sort of a structured relationship. But many get it so wrong to explore the reasons for and effective methods of punishment to enhance and strengthen a relationship based upon authority and obedience.
Holy shit. Next up, seducing the butt.
May as well. There you go.
I really don't have to tell you much about that. That is super self-explanatory.

Be nice to it and it'll be nice to you.

The description, just a lot of mention of lube in the description.

Lots of lube mention.

It will be taught by Luna Matadas.

That's her name.

Ain't no passing phase.

Oh, Jesus.

Then there's skills for G-spot and squirting joy i think that's pretty explanatory it's pretty self-explanatory and there's social gatherings as well there's a of course you gotta take this newly learned information this newly learned information and spread it around to the community okay so there's the furries mixer that's one gotta okay yeah whether you have a fursuit or not or just love furries you're welcome to come hang out and make some new friendships they look they missed a it could have said fur ships right there and they missed it. They blew it.
You blew it, guys.

And then if you're really into that, there's a pet play mixer.

That's the petting zoo, right?

Yeah.

Are you interested in active or active in pet play?

This is an opportunity to meet other pets and pet owners, ask questions, dress as a pet, and cavort with ponies, puppies, kitties, and more.

Cavort. And whatever other dumb fucking costumes these idiots put on them then there's a littles social and craft hour does that mean children are there children here please tell me that there's an age restriction on this like a daycare center so you can go oh no no this is for baby people no yeah no join your littles friends and their middles mommies daddies and caregivers for fun activities snacks and networking if you'd like to know more about the littles lifestyle you're welcome to join in the fun you can wear your baby or kids clothes or whatever you're comfortable in and it says bottoms must be covered no dirty diapers allowed you have to tell people please don't shit yourself in public to the fact that you have to tell them that break character at least a little please holy ball yeah use the bathroom sake and they close it out with sibian rides yeah which if you don't know what that is how you gonna follow that yeah yeah it's a fuck machine you can't follow that's a closer right there If you can't come all day long, don't worry.
The clothes don't know what that is, it's a fuck machine. Yeah, it's a fuck machine.
You can't follow that. That's a closer right there.
That's a headliner. If you can't come all day long, don't worry.
The closer will do it. Don't worry.
Oh, my God. There's also a dungeon orientation, a swingers 101.
And then follow it all up with a breakfast buffet with omelet station. Because that's what I want after all this.
On the last day, we will have an omelet and check out. Make me a nice Denver omelet so once I've watched people in baby clothes fuck each other.
Your guts have been rearranged on the inside by a Sibian. Have a Denver omelet.
It's only $16 for the omelet station. Crime rate in this town, what we're interested in here.
Property crime just below the national average, so not too far below, but a little bit. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault is about one-third of the national average, so very low, very low murder rate here.
That said, let's talk about murder. What do you say, everybody? Let's do it.
Let's talk about some people first off here. Let's talk about James Krausenek Jr.
Sure. All right.
James Krausenek Jr. is born in 1951.
He grew up in the small town of Mount Clemens, Michigan. That's where he's from.
I think it's outside of Detroit, but like suburban Detroit. His family owned a carpet store.
That was, yeah, Krauseneck Carpets.

Jesus.

Jesus.

You can just smell it in there.

Yeah.

Like a 60s carpet store.

Yeah.

Flammable carpeting.

Yeah.

Hasn't been made fire retardant yet.

Yeah, but it's got a chemical on it.

You can't tell what it is, but there's a chemical on there.

You don't know what it is.

You smell some shit.

Yeah.

You know what's in there.

It's a sheen of some kind. You walk in and you go, chemical.
What is that? Yeah. I smell something.
Your house will smell like this. Oh, for like a year and a half.
Yeah. Unless you really smoke a lot.
Then it'll, back then they go, I suggest smoking like two, three packs of cigarettes a day in here. It'll kill that carpet smell in a while.
Don't worry about it. So he meets a young

lady named Kathleen

Cathy, is what she goes by,

Schlosser. Now she's born

in 1952. They're like in the same

class in school. So they meet in school

and they're just friends in high school.

They're not going out or anything like

that. But later on they will.

Now she is born

to her parents, Mr. and Mrs.
Robert Schllosser she's the second oldest of six children oh so i don't even know what the identity would be there you're not a middle kid you're not one of the younger ones you're not the oldest yeah kind of stuck in the middle there uh her father was a truck driver and then he ran a gravel business named schlosser trucking so robert sounds sounds like a tough guy. He's been through some – Yeah.
He's got very hard hands. Yeah.
And I feel like if you run a gravel business, your voice is like this all the time. No matter what.
Yeah. You're gravelly.
Yeah. I feel like you could have a perfectly fine speaking voice and everything, a singing voice.
And if you bought a gravel company, as soon as the paperwork went through, you'd be like, hello, Petrogallo and Wissman gravel. It'd be a fucking disaster.
It sounds like your larynx makes the gravel. Yeah.
Yeah. So you're making them yourself, pumping them out.
Now, her mom would make all sorts of Polish food. Oh.
And that's a big deal.

Like, Kathy would have, all the friends from her neighborhood would be over.

Her yard was, like, the spot where they all played and played soccer and hung out and shit.

So the mom would make Polish treats for the kids here.

Come on over and have some food that tastes like it's turnt.

Come on over and have things with kraut on it.

Come get a pierogi is what that is.

That's really the only, outside of, like, Polish sausage or whatever, like, the only thing that I know is Polish is a pierogi is what that is that's really the only outside of like edible right polish sausage or whatever like the only thing that i know is polish is a pierogi i'm not a fan of polish okay pierogies are fine but that that's german yeah yeah i'll take a polish it is like it's sour that's those german shit where you think sauerkraut came from brats got it like a there's some, there's some seasoning in there. I don't know what it is.
Yeah, yeah. See, brats, I love a brat, but sometimes they're a little too plain tasting for me.
There's not enough like. Ginger or whatever the fuck's in it.
I don't know what the fuck it is. I don't know that either.
It just tastes like meat they've taken the flavor out of sometimes. So you have to like load it up with mustard and all that.
Like I'd rather throw like a fucking hot Italian sausage in a bun that's better that i can deal with yeah hot links are fine but it's just a polish is i've never had one that i was like you know i'd do this again it's never great no but it's okay i don't mind it a ton of shit on it to make it edible i'm gonna throw some mustard on there otherwise it's just pierogies, which are basically Polish ravioli. This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp.
We're huge proponents of therapy because everybody needs it too. And independence is very glorified.
It's easy to forget. And we're all better when we have a little support system behind us.
And therapy can be a great source of support for any area of your life when it's time to shift the focus here from doing it all on your own to maybe it's a little better if we ask for some help here or there. It doesn't hurt and there's nothing wrong with it.
And we've benefited greatly from therapy. Just talking to Jimmy about something he wanted to talk to his therapist about this week.
So, I mean, you can't beat it. Makes therapy affordable and convenient, actually, which is a big barrier to a lot of people.
Serves over 5 million people worldwide. You access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties.
And you can easily switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. Build your support system with BetterHelp.
Visit BetterHelp.com slash smalltownmurder today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash smalltownmurder.
Now back to the show. Hey, everybody.
Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit about our safest sponsors, Simply Safe. And everyone has routines that you go through, make you feel good, make you feel secure, like you have control over the world.
And a lot of times you don't, but you do if you're us and your routine includes arming your Simply Safe home security system. You know that's going to do well for you.
So when we're heading out, both of us, we both have them in our houses, our studios, you lock up for the night. Yeah.
This simple step does more than just protect you. It gives you peace of mind.
You're going to feel good about leaving and then you're going to know it's going to be the same when you get back. You'll sleep more soundly.
I can leave the house with confidence and it's amazing how a push of a button can give you that kind of confidence. And with Simply Safe, we love it.
Like I said, it's in our studios, in our homes. It's really easy to install, too.

You can get professional installation also, but if we can put it up, you can put it up.

Put it that way.

Visit SimpliSafe.com slash small to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free.

That's SimpliSafe.com slash small, S-I-m-p-l-i safe.com slash small there's

no safe like simply safe and now back to the show i love a chicago dog so i'll eat anything in a chicago dog way with like salt and pepper and garlic powder and you could doesn't really doesn't really need to be a hot dog even under there right because then you can cook the living shit out of it. There's a fucking salad on top of it.

It's ridiculous.

Kathy here.

She... You need to be a hot dog even under there.
Right, because then you can cook the living shit out of it. There's a fucking salad on top of it.
It's ridiculous. So Kathy here, she is very energetic, smart, engaged.
She's that type of kid. Like her parents are very impressed with her.
Her father said she bought new bicycles for her and her older brother when she was about seven years old.

And I guess he was showing the brother how to do it.

And Kathy just got on her bike and started fucking riding away.

So she didn't even want instructions.

She's that kind of kid.

Didn't know how to ride.

Just didn't do it.

Yeah.

They had a half acre property, which is kind of seems like what most of the properties are here, about a half-acre.

And that was, like I said, the gathering place for the kids.

They played soccer.

Robert Schlosser said they broke the windows all the damn time playing soccer.

She said they were breaking it all the time, the front window and the basement window.

Well, I mean, I guess kids are being kids.

They're playing soccer.

They got fixed window money? Good for them. They got fixed well yeah trucking uh gravel does well i guess apparently that's crazy because it's funny because i wouldn't be mad at my kid for breaking a window for playing ball he's fucking off or doing something but playing ball but when i was a kid i broke a window and my grandmother beat me with a broom handle for it oh my god it was a baseball for fuck's sake i i didn't even throw the rock somebody else threw it but i was with them uh oh no and my grandmother beat me with a broom handle for it oh my god it was a baseball for fuck's sake i didn't even throw the rock somebody else threw it but i was with them uh oh no and my mom had to pay half and she was livid i bet shit big picture window grandma didn't know about grounding she only knew about beating that's they don't have grounding in italy apparently they just beat you until you're until you're too sore to go anywhere's grounded, I guess.
In Hitler times, there probably wasn't much to take away. I was going to say, that's the other thing.
Where she grew up and when she grew up, it was basically like being Amish. Like my old joke about, it's got to be hard to be an Amish parent because there's nothing to take away.
That was the premise of a joke, and that's exactly what it is. Yeah, what are take away chores what do you got nothing to take from these people so kathy's um kathy's such a nice person too her friend talks about how um this is the friend's 10 year old sister was killed by a drunk driver in 1969 that's brutal so shortly this, the girl's father suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on one side of his body.
Okay. So Kathy was so nice when she would come home from college, she would go over to visit this friend's father to like help him out for a few hours a day because she's just a nice girl.
She's very nice. How about that? She doesn't even believe in cur curses that's nothing at all never go up with no that place is fucked man that place is a disaster her friend said she was everybody's friend that's the way she was kathy so they met each other kathy and jim meet each other in high school but they don't start dating until they're both in the same college.
Oh, like, Oh, you again. I remember you for my math class.
Let's go out in the halls. I already know you.
So it's easy. Uh, Western universe or Western Michigan university is where they went.
Uh, they both lived in the Mount Clemens area, which by the way is about 30 miles Northeast of Detroit. And, um, but in high school didn't know each other very well, hook up in college later.
James, also very active. From his high school yearbook here, I have his activities.
Swimming, booster club, German club, key club, golf, council, cadet, and teacher assistant. He does.
That's busy. That's a lot of shit.
I did nothing in high school outside of go to class the minimal amount of time so they won't call your fucking parents and get you in trouble that's it that's what i knew i did yearbook because and i was a quote-unquote photographer and so i was able just to go walk it was great that's fun yeah yeah that's still too much i wasn't gonna shit that's still like I would have had to know what room to go to. I used a shitload of film.
I bet, yeah. Shitloads of it.
Just making excuses to walk around and look at girls at that point when you're in high school. Snap pictures of shit.
I'm not supposed to take pictures of. Yeah.
So they went to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. And basically, Jim would sometimes drive her to and from campus on breaks because they're from the same town.
And that's how they ended up getting together. So they started dating.
You know, you get about a half hour ride, a little time to talk, probably more one-on-one time than you get with most people in college. So one of the first times after they started going out, Jim tried to come over to the house.
Kathy invited him over wanted to introduce him to the parents come meet the fam and serious about him robert the gravel man yeah said quote i threw him out is that right didn't go well uh she said robert said he came barefooted and i told him to go home and get a pair of shoes on you gotta understand when this is it's 1969 It's 1969. So we're talking Woodstock and like, I mean, literally this is the time when kids walked around with no fucking shoes on all the time and shit.
And the older generation was having none of it. None of that.
He didn't even want you to have fucking sneakers on. They wanted you to have wingtips on.
Never mind no shoes. Sneakers were considered, you fucking loser.
Put on some pleated pants pulled up way too high, you fuck. What sneakers were considered you fucking loser put on some pleated pants yeah way too high you what's wrong with you yeah put on greaser put on a pair of pants pull it up to your sternum and go out and do something what's wrong with you headed to the sock off lazy bastard so yeah so at the time and robert's not like a hippie type i think he's just fitting in basically because he's a he's a he'll become an economist later on like he's a very much a like kind of a nerdy guy.
He's not like a hippie type. I think he's just fitting in basically.
Probably, yeah. He'll become an economist later on.
He's very much like a kind of a nerdy guy. He's not really.
None of those clubs said hippie to you, did it? No. I mean.
No, that doesn't scream free love and marijuana. I didn't see a macrame class in there or anything.
Nothing. So Krausenek learned his lesson and then came over dressed properly.

It was like, oh, you don't fuck around

with Robert Schlosser here.

So then they said after that,

once he came back with shoes on,

then the family saw him as a fine young man,

clean cut and quiet and kind to Kathy.

So they were okay with him after that.

Just needed to have some shoes on.

That's all.

Shoes.

It's a big deal.

It's a big deal, man.

So back then, now May 3rd, 1974, they're going to get married. Okay.
So they're both about 22 at this point. Mm-hmm.
This is right after college. They probably waited until they graduated college, which was kind of the thing to do back then.
You know how it went? Pretty rare to have kids, too. I mean, unless you don't go to college.
Unless you don't go to college. Or, like, sometimes the woman would drop out to be in a family, whatever the fuck it was.
But that was the way they did it back in the day. But, yeah, this is kids would meet in college.
They'd wait until they graduate. Then they'd get married.
That was kind of what smart kids, quote, unquote, did back then. So they get married.
They move to Colorado after they get married. Great choice.
Yeah, they go to Fort Collins, Colorado where Jim attended graduate school at Colorado State University and Kathy worked as an orthopedic therapist because he's got to get like a master's degree because he wants to be an economist and have a good job like that. April 15, 1978, a baby is born.
Here we go. Look at this.
They have a baby girl named Sarah here. There we go.
Not bad. So from 79 to 81, Jim teaches at Lynchburg College.
Kentucky? Lynchburg, I think that's Kentucky. Virginia, actually.
Virginia. Virginia.
Lynchburg, Virginia. Lynchchburg virginia yes uh they moved to lynchburg virginia so he can teach there where he teaches economics at lynchburg college how about it so that's what he's doing here and i guess if you're gonna get like a master's in economy i guess that's what you would do if you don't work for a company um so they move to lynchburg in 1979 from Colorado.
They lived on Rittenhouse Street. And this is Kathy's sister, Annette, lived with them for about a year at the time.
I don't know why, what she was doing. But she said, this is the sister, said that Kathy was just the best person in the world.
Which, I mean, it's her sister. What's she going to say?

She's a fucking filthy, skanky hooah.

Like, what are you going to say about her?

Looked her so much, she pooped a lot.

She's a bitch.

She's a bitch with a bad...

Never out of the bathroom.

Bad digestive system.

Bad.

Shit six times a day.

It's her own bathroom.

Nobody even goes in there.

They're like, oh, that's Kathy's.

You don't want to go in there. Forget about it.
There's no paint on the walls. Oh, God, keep the door closed.
Don't let it out. Don't let the stink out.
It rolls. You got weather stripping all on the top and bottom.
Make sure it doesn't get out. It seals.
So that's what it was. Her sister also, I'm sorry, this is her boss, who's the director of the Central Virginia Mental Health Service, where she worked.
This is where Kathy worked. This woman said that Kathy knew so much about babies, pediatrics, and occupational therapy, she was so talented.
And that's the thing. Wherever Kathy works, she's very popular.
She's very, you know, and also thought to be very competent and popular socially and people like her. She's very magnetic.
So she worked for Project Daniel from the fall of 79 until the spring of 1980. Now, the project officials wanted her to come back and work for them, but they said that they were never able to contact her after she left Project Daniel.
The director said, I was concerned about her.

Couldn't get a hold of her.

Meanwhile, it's because they moved.

Yeah, but not even in the state, man.

Yeah.

So when she quit her job with Project Daniel, she did it because she said she wanted to

spend more time with her daughter.

Okay.

And the woman said she kept saying her child was young and she didn't want to go into full-time

work.

Yet they kept calling her and bothering her.

She told you she didn't want to do it.

Thank you. The woman said she kept saying her child was young and she didn't want to go into full-time work.
Yet they kept calling her and bothering her. She told you she didn't want to do it.
I want to be home with my family. Yeah, that's it.
She gave you two weeks. Leave her the fuck alone.
She sent her a letter of resignation. There's the word.
Yeah. But if she says my kid is a baby and I want to spend time with my baby, you know, you only get that one period.

Leave her the fuck alone.

Let her deal with your own bullshit.

Jesus Christ, man.

So now a friend of hers, of Kathy's, received a letter from her at one point and said she was very aware, really bright.

She was a feminist.

She believed strongly in raising her daughter. She talked a lot about having more children.
So that's what she wanted to do. That's where she wanted to focus her energy on.
Her friend described her as happily married. She said they made every decision they ever made together.
They got along well. She was very outgoing, very sociable.
And he's not bad either. He's not like a drag either.
He's a decent guy. He's good.
Is that right? She's described as having long blonde hair, being 5'4 and weighing 100 pounds. Her friend said she was beautiful at the time.
So she said she's very interested in life. She, quote, dabbled in everything.
They did all sorts of shit. This is in the 70s.
They did yoga together, which the 70s the only there was only a few people doing yoga who weren't in a cult in the 70s there was like cults that did yoga and that was it there were very few like normal just classes it was considered really out there and some of it still is pretty fucking weird but it's weird but i mean now it's as mainstream as it gets now it's every suburban mom gets their stupid company makes a line that's just for yoga just for yoga yeah that's considered you know normal and healthy now so at the time considered aberrant behavior so september of 81 this is when they thought to themselves that this job that jim has here teaching just doesn't pay well enough. I don't know what Lynchburg College pays their junior professors, but probably not a lot.
He didn't look at the pay scale before he started? Well, I think he just wanted a job and get his foot in the door somewhere. Just found what's the most high-paid teaching job, and he was like, I can deal with that.
I mean, back then, he couldn't google it all he could do is look for like people who needed people you know whatever i don't even know what publications you'd look in to find a teaching job across the country who knows is there local is that in local papers did i don't know or maybe it's somebody that knew him said i went i'm going to lynchburg they're looking for an economy professor do you want i don't know how it worked way, he said, I got to move to the corporate world and make some dough here. That's where it is.
I got a baby. I got my wife.
I got to make some money for us here. So in 1981, he answered an ad in the Wall Street Journal for a job.
He's sitting in Virginia getting the Wall Street Journal, probably a day late. Probably getting tomorrow's.
Answering ads. Yeah, look at at that but that's how you did it back then a response that's crazy that's how you did it back there was no other choice so uh he ends up getting a job at Kodak which was you know headquartered in Rochester at the time they buy a house on uh Del Rio Drive for $92,000 in 1981.
That's big money.

Yeah, that in 1981.

That's big money.

Yeah, that's an expensive house now.

So that's a big deal.

$400,000 then probably?

Yeah, probably even a little more.

That house, as we'll talk about now, we'll see what it's worth now later on. But it's a decent house here.

So at this point, Jim, Kathy, and three-year-old Sarah all move to Brighton, which is a nice upscale suburb. He's starting his new job as an economist for Kodak.
They're like, this is it. Now we start our life.
You know what I mean? So Krasenek left the college to work for Eastman Kodak. And she said that somebody from the college who ran the, his department said he was well liked by everyone, an extremely nice person, very even tempered.
I took a class from him. He was an excellent professor.
So not bad here. Uh, the area they moved to in Brighton, their street is a very nice.
All the lawns are manicured. It's very, very nice upscale street.
Definitely not lower middle class or anything like that. It's nice.
Now, when they first get there, Kathy's pretty homesick. Oh, really? For Michigan, actually, not even for Virginia, for Michigan, because they moved to Colorado, then Virginia, now now here she just wants to be back in Michigan she talks about her family back in Michigan her friends back in Michigan what if we had all this in this nice house just in Michigan that'd be so much better basically so they would put the family they tried to they did stuff together they tried to get into it the Krausenek couple they would take walks together they would bicycle with the kid.
They tried to get into it. The Krausenek couple, they would take walks together.

They would bicycle with the kid.

They played tennis and racquetball together.

It's a very 80s couple playing racquetball.

It sounds like it's right out of an 80s movie, doesn't it?

It's fascinating.

Little white shorts on them.

There's two groups that play racquetball.

It's like upscale, like people on their lunch break, or it's the white trash people that go on Sunday morning. Yeah.
Yeah. That's where we went.
That's, yep. And that's called handball.
It's not even racquetball. We played racquetball in those rooms with the fucking steel door that would slam.
Oh, yeah. I remember those.
It was terrifying. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. That's just a little box with a ball flying around at 300 miles an hour shit in there oh yeah especially in phoenix so the friend of hers though said kathy was somewhat disillusioned with rochester she said i think kathy's disillusionment could be related to the fact that they moved in the fall and resided here throughout the winter and due to the cold weather that could account for some disenchantment yeah that's a rochester has long winters they're fucking long and they're brutal and if you move there in october you are in for it man you're not going to see the sun again till april and it's brutal and it's a little bit east of there was that albany i guess from there that's way far Is it? Yeah, way far east.
That's like three, four hours east.

But from there to like fucking South Dakota, that whole region.

Yeah, up there.

Winter is long.

It's long and it's brutal.

So that would make sense.

We'd be like, Jesus Christ, this is rough.

So February 16th, 1982.

They've lived there less than a year. He's working at his job.
Everything seems fine. The Kodak decides that, I don't know what made them prompted this, but they decide they're going to do a background check on all their employees just to see.
You know, sometimes you've got to keep an eye on some people. Let's make sure we don't have any fucking weirdos on our staff here.
We didn't do it when we hired you you. We'll do it now.
Do it now. They do a full background check and they discover that Jim Krausenek did not complete his PhD from Colorado State University.
Oh, no. He is one paper shy of completing his PhD.
Really? Absolutely. So they find that out.
Now, they don't bring him in and fire him or anything like that. They probably tell him, get that paper done.
That's a good idea, yeah. And you're fine because, you know, he comes home and goes to work the next day.
It's like nothing happened. So it's not, like I said, they don't threaten him.
They don't tell him, you know, if you don't have it by this date, you're fired. It's none of that.
They're just like, well, you know, we found that. You need to have a PhD for this job, so go finish it up.

That was that.

Fine.

So that's the 16th.

Now, February 18th, 1982, a couple days later, everything seems to be going fine.

Not like he's been, like I said, hasn't been fired or anything like that.

The Kraus and X eat dinner at around 6.30 p.m.

Okay.

Meatloaf for James and Sarah. They have meatloaf.
Three, four, four. There's almost four.
Definitely. Meatloaf for them.
And Kathy had egg salad on lettuce. Oof.
That's a bowl of farts right there. That is a gal who is.
Good Lord. You guys have the meatloaf.
I'll do my own thing that's wow my own thing is gonna be crazy it's gonna be gross but that's like diet food back then egg salad on lettuce yeah that's what people would eat if they were on a diet um then they drove to the bank in the car the lone family car and uh they're gonna own there to deposit jim's checks he's got some checks to deposit. Whole family loads up in the, it's February and it's cold as shit.
Why the whole family is loading up? We'll all die together. Yeah, I don't know why.
You'd think it'd be like, yeah, I'm going to go to the bank. I'll be back in a minute.
Let's not load the kid up in the park in the snowsuit. I'm going to brave northern New York in February.
Yeah, it's weird, but they all go together. Maybe they want to spend time together.
I don't know. So after a stop at a department and a drugstore, then they go to a nearby liquor store and purchase, quote, an alcoholic beverage with milk in it.
I don't know what that is, but it sounds disgusting. How old are they? At this point, shit, 51.
They're 30? 25, yeah.

30.

They're both 30.

Yeah.

That's a brave choice. I mean, that is a lot of, man, think about, you have egg salad and lettuce already fucking

swirling around in there.

You're going to add milky booze to it on top of that?

You're going to drop milk booze on top of that.

Jesus, her stomach's going to be a mess.

Turn that up.

So at home, Kathy had a drink, I guess, of the boozy milk. And he had, Jim has two beers.
And he makes shrimp for Kathy as well. She eats some shrimp a little late.
She's amazing. She's putting it away.
And they put Sarah into their bed at around 10 p.m. to go to sleep.
They watch some TV. They relax in their library.
They let their golden retriever, Amicus, out and then back in again. And then they go to bed around 11 o'clock after taking Sarah and putting her in her bed.
Kathy goes to bed around 11. Jim still kicks around a little bit.
He's in before midnight at some point. She's nauseous.
Yeah, she's got to go to bed early or else she's probably been shitting for the last three hours. So she's just like, man, I'm tired.
I'm tired. I got to lay down.
So then the next morning, February 19, 1982, around 6.30 a.m., Jim leaves for work. And this is uncontested because he gets to work at a certain time, and it takes that long to get there.
So he had to have left his house by then. That's not contested at all.
So he leaves. He puts amicus in the basement.
I guess he does this every day so the dog doesn't bark at everybody that jogs by or trucks that go by and wake everybody up. So he has his normal day at work.
And then he returns home at about 4.50 p.m., which is a little bit early because he's planning to take Sarah to a podiatry appointment. Yeah.
So there's that. Okay.
He comes home to take the kid to the doctor. So he gets home.
He gets there. He said right away the garage door was open, which he knows he closed it and it's normally closed.
But, I mean, who knows if, you know, Kathy opened it for some reason, forgot to close it. People forget to close it.
Who knows? Yeah, who the hell knows out there? So then he said he walked around to the front of the house and saw broken glass by the front door.

And their window,

because it was one of those doors

that has the windows with little panes in it.

The pane closest...

Armout door.

The lower right-hand pane closest to the

knob and the lock

and everything is broken.

And sitting next to the door

is an axe.

A mall, technically, this would be. So that's what's sitting next to the door is an axe from a mall technically this would be so that's what's sitting next to the door so like an axe with a big hard thing on the other side that is terrifying yeah so if you get home from work and your wife and daughter are supposed to be in there and you see an axe sitting next to the door and the door broken and shit and the garage door was open you might freak out a little bit that's like the start of a scary movie uh the door's broken your wife and children are inside here's an axe arm yourself i've probably got something bigger that's the fucking thing too because also he's got like yeah you come home and you go well i mean if he just lived by himself he'd see that probably just call the cops you know what i mean but you if your wife and kid are in there you know you have to go in there and see it make sure everything's okay yeah you have to that's part of it i mean that's that's just minimal adult bravery you have to do no matter what you have to go in and try so he runs

upstairs to try because nobody's on the first floor he doesn't see anybody so he goes oh fuck

there's some stuff's a little messier than it usually is which is weird and he'll deal with

that in a minute but he runs up the steps and runs into the master bedroom where he finds kathy

I don't know. Fuck, there's some stuff's a little messier than it usually is, which is weird, and he'll deal with that in a minute.
But he runs up the steps and runs into the master bedroom where he finds Kathy. She's still in bed.
Okay. And she has a two-and-a-half-foot axe embedded in her skull.
That's not the way to sleep. And the crime scene pictures, it's embedded where the handle is sticking out straight.
It's not leaning down. The axe is fully stuck in her head like you put it in a piece of wood to leave it there for tomorrow.
Fucking horrifying. She lay on her right side.
Her arms pulled up toward her chest like she's sleeping, like fetal kind of curl up. Blonde hair, bloody all over the pillow there.

They said the killer had swung the axe with such force that the blade passed three and a half inches into her brain.

That's a lot.

Your skull's hard.

There's a lot there.

I mean, that is full-on woodcutting swing that they took.

Man, they believe that she was asleep when she died.

She never saw it coming. Just one swing.
It's stuck in her fucking head. Yeah, that they took.
Man, they believe that she was asleep when she died. She never saw it coming.

Just one swing.

It's stuck in her fucking head.

Yeah, that's it.

Boom.

Stuck in the head.

So obviously Jim's next thought is, where the fuck is my daughter?

Yeah.

There's two people here.

Right.

So he freaks out, runs in, goes to Sarah's room, and she's sitting on her bed completely fine. She's fine.
Completely fine. I'm suspicious of her right now.
Listen, kid. It's a bad bitch, man.
That's a bad little girl. You don't know.
No, she's sitting up on her bed just doing her thing. She dressed herself.
She's wearing, like, two sweaters. One's on backwards.
She's got, like, three pairs of socks on. She doesn't know how to dress herself.
So he freaks out, grabs his baby, and runs out of the house as fast as he can. He runs next door to his neighbor's house or across the way to his neighbor's house, across the street.
And the neighbor said when he came home a little before five, he found the back door broken and went into the house, found his wife, grabbed the daughter, and ran out. They said the neighbor said that he came to the door clutching Sarah in his arms with a look of terror on his face.
Yes, he would. Which I would hope so at that point.
If he came over casual like he was going to borrow some fucking salt, that would be crazy. That's a different story.
So he came to her to the door. She said she answered the door.
She said, I saw Jim standing in the doorway clutching Sarah in his arms. I saw that Jim was drained of all color, and he had a look of terror on his face, and then he could not stop looking over at his house.
Yeah, I would never stop looking at it. Yeah, oh, Jesus.
So the neighbor asked, did something happen to Kathy? Is she okay? And Jim, and then she said is she hurt? Is she dead? The neighbor's going through like a list of things that could possibly be wrong. And Jim replied, I think so.
Her body is limp. That's what she told the neighbor.
Then she called police and said that she looked at Jim and she said he appeared to be going into shock. He was starting to lose it.
She said, though, he kept quietly asking Sarah whether she was okay and that the neighbor said every time Sarah spoke, he would cry and hug and kiss her. And the neighbor said, I also heard Sarah say to Jim, I'm glad you came home early today, Daddy.
Yeah, I guess so. So Sarah was in the house all day with her mother's body down the hall at four when her father walked in, curled up in bed with her clothes on, just doing her thing.
She's three and a half. So the neighbor calls 911, obviously, and the cops get there very quick.
They start arriving at 503. Wow.
Upscale suburban neighborhood with a death call. They are there for that shit quickly.
Yeah. So they start arriving.
They note that nothing is taken from the house, they said. And also both the axe embedded in the skull and the mall outside the door are both property of the Krasene's.
There it is. They're from the garage.

So we're out back.

One of the two.

So somebody,

somebody either came empty handed or.

Yeah.

Something decided that was the way to go.

Hey everybody.

Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more

about our stylish and fashionable friends over at Quince.

Elevating your style.

That used to be a real expensive thing.

You want to change your look?

It's so hard to do.

It's a expensive thing. You want to change your look.
It's so hard to do. It's expensive, but with Quince, this is the way you can do it the right way.
You can get high-end, versatile pieces at a price that we can all actually afford and actually want to pay. And now I can upgrade my style, getting nice, real good luxury items and essentials that sync up with what I want and what I want to pay.
It's perfect. And Quince has all the must-haves like Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50.
Come on. That's ridiculous.
Iconic 100% leather jackets and comfortable pants for every occasion, which I got a leather jacket and Jimmy got comfortable pants. That's exactly what we did.
It's great stuff. So you, too, should do this.

Indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.com slash smalltownmurder for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's quince.com slash smalltownmurder to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

quince.com slash smalltownmurder.

And now back to the show. Hey, everybody.
Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit about Life360. And I know this is Jimmy's favorite thing in the world.
I love it. Jimmy has, I mean, he's out there.
His son is driving now. So, yeah, he goes through all the scenarios in his mind of where could he be, and he doesn't have to do that anymore.

No. Because he just gets right on Life360 and sees exactly what he's doing and what speed he's doing it at, as a matter of fact.
It's great. Whether it's your spouse, your kids, your parents, even your friends, you love somebody, it means you're going to worry about them a lot.
We all do it. Life 360 will address this anxiety with this location-sh that puts the real time location of everyone you love right in the palm of your hand.
And I'm telling you, I know you tell me all the time about how you're texting your son. He's not texting you back.
You're calling me like, I'll see where he is right now. I've seen you do it 30 times.
And then you'll text him. I see you're on this road and it makes you feel better get peace of mind in the palm of your hand with life 360 visit life360.com or download the app today and use code small town murder to get 15 off that's life360.com code small town murder and now back to the show in the early hours of december 4th 2024 ceo brian th Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.
This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him. We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world.
And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.
Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.
I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law & Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation.
We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever. He's awoken the people to a true issue.
Hurry, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our healthcare system. Listen to Law and Crimes Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus.
You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. So she had been killed by a single blow to the head with an axe.
They said that she was struck with an axe, one blow, and that was it, is the quote from the police officer there. They said, we feel she was killed sometime prior to 930 a.m.
She was still in her bed, still in her night clothes. She had no appearance of having been gotten out of bed.
So that makes sense. They said the police in their statement said that Sarah spent the day in her own bedroom.
She went into the bedroom where her mother was during the day also to look for. And she said that she just dressed herself.
Now, the police, they say, you know, obviously the press is like, who are you looking for for this? And they said that they have no suspects, but they're not ruling anyone out. We're looking at everything, trying to put things in place.
They speak to Jim for about five or six hours that night, and the detective who interviewed him said he would go from being very deliberate with his answers to very emotional, or he would cry a little bit, which is not out of the ordinary. No, I think that's very ordinary.
Explaining stuff. Then when the, you know, the load of it hits you, then you're upset and you get your shit together for a little bit over the course of six hours.
You can go in and out of that a lot. So he said that he saw the first floor, the first floor and the broken glass.
And he said, I called for my family. Didn't get any get any answer he said i ran up the stairs and went into the bedroom kathy was in bed in our room and she had been struck in the head with a long handled axe i saw the back of her head i did not touch my wife okay but she said she was limp which i don't know how he would know she was limp at that point that's weird and she And she wouldn't be limp anyway.
By now, she'd be in rigor probably. So I don't know if she'd come out of it by now.
Not many hours, yeah. So they said Sarah had a red sweater over a pink sweater with a blue ABC corduroy pants and two pairs of socks.
More than that right now. I was going to say, this kid's got fashion sense.

She said, Jim said, she looked dazed to me. I picked her up from her bed and ran downstairs and out the front door with her.
So Krasinek's parents, Jim's parents, drive in from Michigan, arriving at the police station around midnight to support him. Police suggest after hours of talking, and he's got the kid there and everything else say, listen, why don't you and Sarah go with your parents to a hotel and get some sleep and then come back at 830 in the morning and we'll finish this.
We'll talk more about this. So everyone said, OK, that's great.
See you at 830 tomorrow. And everybody left.
But the detective said he never came back. They said the family checked out of the hotel that morning and drove to michigan gotta gotta go yeah which is not a good that's not a good start here i mean i guess that's him saying uh i'll tell him about it another time i mean i think that's pretty important to talk now probably for this it is like homicide detectives you know they probably think or he probably thinks they'll they'll understand they'll figure it out yeah i don't know so they're wondering is this a burglary is this what happened so they said there were indications of burglary at the house the detective said they said behind the house they found a wood splitting mall that had been used to shatter the glass inside the detective described it as one of the most sterile crime scenes he'd ever seen, which is interesting.
They're unable to find any forensic clues, no fingerprints, nothing like that. They did find what they said, what they thought looked like evidence of a staged burglary, they said.
They said there were valuable items scattered across the dining room floor, including Kathy's purse and a tea set. Oh.
So, like, a silver tea set. Like, you know, whatever.
Like, they said there was, like, a plastic bag there, a black plastic, like, lawn bag. Yeah.
And, like, that shit in a pile in the middle. Like, someone was going to put that stuff in the plastic bag.
Okay. Type of deal.
So, they said Kathy's purse was nearby also with its contents strewn across the carpet.

You can see this in the crime scene photos.

There is a pile of shit,

candelabras and all that shit,

and then the tea set,

and then her purse is there

with shit coming out of it.

So they said nothing appeared stolen though.

This was in the dining room on the first floor.

They found this stuff.

So at first they said they thought it was a burglary, but then they said everything seemed too neat. They said upstairs, downstairs, there was money, there was jewelry laying out in plain sight, things that a burglar would just swipe on the way and stuff in their pockets.
So they said, it's interesting. They said, quote, we didn't find anything taken from the house.
All the indications of a burglary seemed to be set up. So that's interesting.
So now they think that there's a staged burglary involved in this murder. So now they start to focus their attention on Jim.
They go, why would a stranger stage a burglary? That's the main question they have. So February 19th, the day after the murder here, they said there was an absence of fingerprints in the house.
Now, we're not talking an absence of weird fingerprints, aberrant fingerprints. They said they checked the entire house, everything in it, the axe, the walls, the doors, the doorknobs.
They didn't find a single fingerprint, not even any belonging to the Krausenek family. The family doesn't have any fingerprints.
They're smooth, just smooth-fingered people, these people. Or they're just wiping shit down.
That's crazy. Imagine wiping down all your doorknobs all the time.
That's amazing. Even like the sink in the, you know, when you touch the sink, the toilet bowl, fucking plunger, like none of that stuff.
The handle, you know, the washer there. There'd be prints on something.
They said, though, nothing. The detective said it was like nobody lived there.
Okay. Even Sarah was out all day by herself.
She didn't leave any fingerprints on anything. She's good.
So they say the police say the killer may have worn gloves, but they didn't find any discarded gloves at the scene. Well, I mean, outside of OJ, most people don't leave their murder gloves at the scene.
They usually don't stick around, yeah. Somewhere you throw that out somewhere else.
They even took apart the tub and the sinks, checking for blood in the traps and shit like that. Because they find that a lot.
They found nothing. Now, it's hard to blame Jim at this point because Jim went to work.
Yeah. So he would definitely have had to take a shower after that to go to work.
So there would be blood in the drain, probably. You know what I mean? Within the traps.
So in the garage, they did find a piece of carpet that had been removed from the first floor bathroom, washed and draped over a stroller to dry. But they don't know how long it's been there.
It could have been there for weeks.

They have no fucking idea.

So they said the carpet and the liquid in the drains were sent to a laboratory for analysis but got nothing out of that. Nothing at all.
No old blood, no anything. No bleach.
Nothing. No, I mean, no signs of cover up or anything.
Drain water. That's it.
That's it. So the detectives, the one sort of clue they have is a faint shoe print inside the trash bag near the tea set on the ground.
Okay. It's a very faint, just a shoe print of, you know, if the shoe was a little dusty and you stepped on it and you leave an impression.
And it's of, they said it's very specific to a boat shoe. Okay.
Like a specific kind of boat shoe. They found a pair of boat shoes that belong to Jim in the house.
That they say may have matched up, but they don't take them in for evidence at all. Brilliant.
They don't grab those for later. And to compare them, they don't do that.
They just take a picture of the boat shoes sitting on the carpet, not their on the bottom nothing there they are there's boat shoes this is not the best police investigation going here not good so they set up roadblocks and interview people at every home on the street and streets nearby no one reported seeing an intruder or any sign of trouble later on they'll talk to a lady who has a much different story because she wasn't home when they went around canvassing here. So the authorities also now they travel to Michigan, to Colorado, to Virginia to talk to people who knew the Krausenex to try to figure out if James did this or not.
They also check similar killings around the country to see if there's any connection. Nothing there, they say.
So February 19th, 1982, they interview Sarah.

She's three and a half years old.

If you've ever watched an interrogation, a three and a half year old,

this is not the environment for them as far as getting anything out of them.

It's not going to work.

So they do get out of her that she said she saw quote a bad man in the house and she said he had a hammer in his head. The bad man in his head.
Then she said it was an axe in his head that he had. She also described the man's face because they said well what color was he? Because they're getting a description.
Was he big?

Was he short?

Was he fat?

Was he tall?

Is he white?

Is he like him?

Is he like me?

And she described his face as, quote, many colors.

He's just super diverse.

That's what she's all about.

Yeah, she's like, he was a man of many colors.

That's what he was.

You're not going to get me.

Not me.

I'm not going to HR tomorrow. Fuck that shit.
So the detective had their own interpretation of this. They decide that Sarah was not seeing a man in the house, a bad man as described.
She was just seeing her dead mother covered in blood, and that's the many faces and the acts in her head christ meanwhile she said she saw a bad man walking around yeah which is her mother wasn't ever walking around she never got up so this dark thing to to right see too and say that's what she's projecting that's fucked up so it seems to me like probably she saw a bad man and also saw her mother and is just conflating them together because she's three. She's just mixing the shit up all together, but she probably saw both, I would imagine.
Then it comes out, there's an article in the newspaper and everything saying this is a cursed house. That's the problem.
It's the house's fault. It's practically poltergeist over here.
That's the problem here. Because Kathy is the third person to die in this house since 1977.
Is that right? The second person to die in that bedroom exactly where that bed was, by the way, too. But the reason is it's not like somebody, they were murdered or anything like that.
There was an elderly couple who owned the house at the time they died of asphyxiation there in 1977 yeah the wife was found dead in the exact same bed in the exact same placement of the bed and everything in the bedroom whereas her husband was found downstairs in a chair dead the police found that they were overcome by fumes of their car the wife had gone out shopping home, and left the car running in the attached garage and killed them both. I've never heard of that before.
I've heard of that a lot, actually. On accident? A lot.
Yes. It happens.
It's more common now, actually. Really? Because cars are quiet now.
Very quiet. And they have the buttons and not the keys.
So you used to take your keys out and go unlock your your door i know that motherfucker's off that way yeah now you press the button there's no keys you go so some people forget to press the button the cars are quiet they're not all jerky like a 1981 buick or anything so yeah this happens it's so common now that this happens and it's crazy too how far your key can get away from that car and it stays running still goes it it still goes running. As long as it doesn't go into gear and try to take off, that'll shut it off.
But if you go into your house, into your kitchen, leave it on the... Yeah, I left a car running in my driveway for like an hour and a half on accident.
Yeah, it happens. Yeah.
But not in the garage garage. Luckily, yeah.
Yeah. But that's the thing.
It could very easily happen. Obviously, you can still hear it.
Because you're still breathing. Yeah.
Your whole family hasn't been killed, so that's good. So that's a very, that's a big risk out there right now.
That happens a lot. So February 20th now, this is when the autopsy's done and Jim goes back to Michigan.
And he spoke to investigators again and agreed to another meeting with investigators the afternoon of the 20th but when the time came Jim and Sarah already were gone back to Michigan again so they've gone back and forth to Michigan several times the medical examiner concluded shockingly that the cause of death was an axe wound to the head great police I very rarely think that I can do medical things because I'm an idiot but yeah i could have probably found the cause of death there one injury and she's not one injury and she's not oh and her whole brain is bisected by an axe yeah i'm gonna go with axe to the head yeah probably what's going on here but i mean she wasn't poisoned beforehand or anything like that well i mean she tried to but she did yeah yeah and basically they they find that the uh with her food with her goddamn dinner they find that they think she died around from 6 30 to 9 30 a.m okay which that's not that's one thing in like crime technology and medical technology that has not improved the best they can still give you is a three-hour window. That's the best they can do now to this day, 45 years after this.

They're going to end up having to find some enzyme that our body secretes during the death that wasn't there.

Well, how will we know if it was when it got in it?

That's, I mean, the factors are so hard to tell.

Wow.

So a neighbor of the Krausenak said that she heard a moaning sound around one or two in the morning, the morning of the killing. No one's allowed to fuck in this neighborhood, by the way, apparently.
Why are you listening to everybody fucking, lady? I'll tell the cops about it. Yeah.
And then followed quickly thereafter by a dog barking. Yeah, well, he didn't like it.
And the cops go, the Krausenex have a dog. Okay.
Which, it's a suburban street. You know how many people probably have a fucking dog on the street? Probably 80% of the people on the street have a dog, I bet.
Just saying. So this is not, you know, real exclusive to them.
So the authorities, though, they cannot prove that Jim had been home at the time of the murder because the time of death is put at 6.30 to 9.30, and we know he left for work at 6.30, and he showed up without any brain or blood on him or anything like that, and he wouldn't have time to clean up. They don't really have anything they can do here with Jim.
Their hands are kind of tied. So they talk to Jim again, and Jim says that Thursday night before the murder, the family ran errands.
Him and his wife had dinner, had some wine. They were in bed by midnight.
I was in bed by midnight. I think Kathy went to bed at about 11.
So they said they were unable to confirm that he spent the night in bed with his wife. They couldn't confirm that, they said.
They said, we didn't find the normal things, hairs and things you would expect to find on his side. So he's not shedding.
So what? Leave the guy alone. Yeah.
There's also no goddamn fingerprints anywhere. So the family, he said that he kept saying, I left for work at about 6.30 a.m., returned to 5.
There's Kathy at 10 to 5. So I don't know what to tell you.
They said that the autopsy shows her body was slightly warm to the touch and in full rigor when they got there. The body temperature and an examination of her organs prompted the medical examiner to,

you know, give the time of death between 630 and 930.

And we'll find there's a various estimates of this later on.

They said this is Krausenex later on.

His people say from the initial stages of the investigation, the time of death was a paramount concern to the investigators. It was largely indisputable that James had left his home at approximately 630 a.m.
and spent the entire day at Kodak. Can't dispute that.
He showed up. There's other people there.
So we know when he got there. They said if the cops said if the time of death were before he left for work, obviously would be inculpatory on the other hand if the time of death included the time when he already left for work it would exculpate him so there you go the stomach contents and this is a big deal the autopsy shows kathy's stomach contents you'd think it would just be gross there's all sorts of shit that doesn't belong together mixing around it a volcano in there.
Her stomach was completely empty. How'd she do that? And her blood was free of alcohol.
I'm more impressed. Well, I mean, that takes a while, but if you can do it.
That just indicates passage of time. Yeah, passage of time.
And your body obviously stops digesting if you're dead. There you go.
There you go and uh they they estimated then that you know that could mean a later time of death even they also said that her not only is her stomach empty um her bladder is completely full oh which they said would indicate that she had a full night's sleep for her stomach to empty and her bladder to be completely full this probably didn didn't happen at one in the morning. You know what I mean? It just wouldn't happen like that.
So that's another thing. Now they said they have no evidence against Jim, no clear motive, but God damn it.
Are they suspicious of him? Sure enough. Super suspicious.
There's no evidence though. So they cannot arrest him.
They cannot arrest anybody. And this case goes cold.

Oh.

Goes cold.

Freaks the neighborhood out.

I mean, this is like, in their minds, some crazed lunatic came to their neighborhood,

broke into someone's house, and put a fucking axe in their head.

And that could happen to any of them.

So this is typical suburban panic here after this.

But, you know, they just, that's it.

They don't know what to do. Jim and Sarah move out west.
they move to a couple different places they'll end up in washington for a while they're in michigan as we'll talk about um yeah they said that uh they uh they hired a lawyer also jim's family and uh told the lawyer told police that anytime you want to talk to jim i mean i'm there too you've talked to him 10 fucking times and you've got nothing and you're not going to railroad my client, basically. So they said that the condition also for an interview would be no statement made by Jim could be used against him in any way, which is not how they do interrogations.
And no one's going to agree to that. So and the detective, we weren't willing to do that because we still had too many unanswered questions.
That's basically, if they didn't think he did it, that's a way for the lawyer to find out what they're thinking. Because if they didn't think he did it, they'd be like, fine, great.
We don't think he did it. We just need information.
But if they say no, no, no, then that means that they're suspicious of your clients. That was a way to suss out how they feel here.

So that's it. He doesn't talk to them anymore after that.
They don't want to talk to him with the lawyer. I don't want to anyway.
No. So shortly after now, during the investigation, one of the things that made them very suspicious of Jim was that shortly after the murder, police learned that Jim had not completed the final portions of his doctorate

and had lied to both Lynchburg College and Kodak about that. OK.
OK. So they say that they think their big fucking theory of this case is that Kathy became.
She found out about this and lost her mind. that sound relevant does that sound probable plausible

yeah that doesn't sound like what would happen that sounds like the if your spouse and you told

them that they'd be like oh well how do we save your job would be first how do we do this because

you know this is how we pay bills and eat and shit so yeah and eat weird foods that make me

shit weird so please help me out here so i don't know what the fuck is going on here. Kathy, usually your spouse isn't like against you, like your job.
If you get in trouble at work, your spouse doesn't, you're not in trouble with them too. They're usually on your side.
That's the point. Yeah.
You fucking married these people. So they don't think so though.
They think Kathy became aware of the lie, freaked out, and Jim had no choice but to murder her while she slept. Which really seems like a stretch for me.
And then head on off to work. Then head off to work and act like nothing happened all day.
Then come on home for the podiatry appointment. It's a very weird shit here.
They really, really, really, really want to talk to Jim, though. February 20th, 1983.
There's a newspaper article about this, and Jim says he'll talk to the press, but he won't talk to the cops.

yeah Jim says that he wants to forget that night completely that whole day when he came home he said he's trying to put it out of his mind and he said that um he's refused to talk to the police

since last March he said I understand the police have their jobs to do. I appreciate that, but it's too difficult for me to talk about it.
That's what he said. He was at this point working at his father's carpet store in Michigan when the press are talking to him.
And they said he's neatly dressed in a blue blazer and red silk tie. They said his eyes became filled with tears as he begins to tremble when asked about his wife's death.
He says, I just want to put it all behind me now. I'd really rather not discuss it.
It's hard enough for me to deal with. I don't see how other people would want to hear about it.
He said, it's been my decision, my policy, not to talk. I'd rather stick to my policy.
Store policy. Sorry.
Gotta talk to the manager, man. I can't override it.
Fuck, can't do it, man. Gotta talk to my dad.
He's the one who owns it. So they said that neither the lawyer nor the police will reveal the conditions at the time for an interview, which we found out later and I told you about.
They said the police, though, in their investigation have many unanswered questions they believe

only Jim can answer.

One of the homicide detectives said, we don't have the privilege of talking to him.

We'd still like to talk to him very, very much.

He's a primary witness.

He's allegedly the last person who saw his wife alive.

We'd like to know more of what transpired the preceding day that night, what happened

the night before, which we have a general idea because they went to three different stores and they were doing shit. So they believe that interviewing Krausnick can help lead them to an arrest, but they're unwilling to conduct an interview under conditions.
They said there's no law, obviously, that states an individual has to talk to the police. You don't have to talk to anybody.
So the only way they can force him would be to subpoena him to testify before a grand jury. They said in New York State, however, an individual who testifies before a grand jury is given immunity from prosecution in that case unless they waive that right.
So if they want him to test, if they want to talk to him, they got to subpoena him for a grand jury and at that point they can't charge him with anything or use anything he said against him now it's all complicated so yeah so they said we've elected not to subpoena mr krauseneck because that like automatically gives him immunity they said we don't want to give him immunity in the case just in case they also said they wanted to have a child psychologist talk with sarah but jim't allow it. Because you can twist anything

from a kid. I mean, you can twist a kid's words.
You can make a kid believe something that they,

there's a lot of tons of, you can, you can push a kid into thinking anything and saying anything.

That's the problem with that. So I don't think I would let my daughter do that either without

having, you know, my people there to help out, you know, that, that happens a lot. They said a little more time spent with her, and we probably would have been able to get more information, but as time passed, it certainly wouldn't have been beneficial to the child's welfare to pursue questioning.
They think she probably forgot. They said the case is open, and they're pursuing active leads.
The one cop said, I was very optimistic in the beginning. I'm a little pessimistic now, but this case will never be closed.
It will remain open. There's always a chance that someday this individual may slip up.
Meaning the killer here. So, yeah, this is, and like I said, while this is going on, it is complete fucking panic in the neighborhood.
Complete panic. The people in the streets are talking to the cops or talking to the press.
And one resident said, we just want to forget the whole thing and go on with our lives. But they said, this is a tragedy that rocked our community.
When you see the figure of a female lying in bed with an ax in her head, you don't just want to walk out of there and forget it ever happened. So they said local hardware stores are selling deadbolt locks and security systems and police stations are flooded with calls, not with information, with questions of have you arrested anybody for that yet? Get them.
Get them. Let's go.
So they said it was just a brutal thing and they're all terrified. Now, at the time Jim goes back to michigan they still own the house oh okay so a young couple in august of 1982 this is fucking a few months after this happened they leased the house from krauseneck with an option to buy is that right we'll go shit 200 bucks off the murder house fuck it let's do it wow that's a couple that's looking for a bargain right there that's just that's a that's a couple on budget that that's the bargain hunting yeah they looked around for murders that took place and they were like there we go once they get the blood out of the master i think this is going to be beautiful we could do this so yeah they said they were working out a deal to buy the house from him because i mean jim just wants rid of this place basically a psychological profile of the killer is sent for basically they go to quantico if you've seen mindhunter this is exactly what they were doing this is the profiler department here and uh so they have a profile they won't release it or say anything about it.
They just say that the detective said it's a piece of evidence that I have in case this case comes to trial. So they're going to keep it.
And if it tends to match up, happens to match up with a suspect later, they'll use it in trial. But if they put it out now, then that would be bad if it doesn't match up to the person who actually did it.
So they're just gonna sit on it so um jim and jim and sarah had moved to st claire michigan kathy's buried there jim worked for his father's store uh he gets remarried in 1986 oh but is divorced nine months later so whoops he was just trying to find something to latch on to somebody you know somebody somebody told he somebody about and then eventually they were like look it's it's enough you got to get beyond this or he just married somebody that he didn't really like because he wanted to get a female figure for sarah and he was trying he's trying to rebuild his family basically you know trying to make make it out of something then they end up moving to washington state jim and Sarah. Oh, all the way out West near his sister and brother-in-law and his parents also

bought. trying to make it out of something.
Then they end up moving to Washington State, Jim and Sarah. Oh.
All the way out west, near his sister and brother-in-law. And his parents also bought a home in Washington with plans to retire there.
So it's just going to be a, they're going to move their whole brood from Michigan out to Washington, basically. And so the case, though, little progress.
The police, they still keep doing things. They travel back to St.
Clair, Michigan in 1984 and 1985. The latter trip was trying to get an interview with Sarah, and that was unsuccessful.
They said no. Then in 1986, a DA named Howard Relin consulted the Monroe County Medical Examiner, Dr.
Nicholas Forbes. Forbes estimated that depending on the rate the body cooled,

that she could have died as early as 5.55 a.m.

Who knows?

They're like, can you give us maybe 6.30 is tough.

If we could get it back to 6, then we could put another suspect in here.

But he said there's no precise way to determine time of death.

This is all a big guessing game. So they said at this point, James is the only suspect.
And they determined that his guilt could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt just by saying that she could have died as early as 555. They have no other evidence.
So no physical evidence. So the case is very, very cold now.
They kind of just give up on it got colder colder it's it's cold as a cold as a fucking brighton night in february so they kind of put it on the shelf basically yeah i mean those cases are always active if someone comes forward but there's no one actively working it probably um 1988 the matter was reviewed periodically apparently probably once a year they do a sweep through cold cases just to say they did it, basically. So in 1988, the Brighton police sought to educate younger officers in the case details as officers working the case originally had started to retire now.
So they need to get everyone familiar with it. The file was also updated as Brighton police learn new information such as when Jim changed residences or got married.
They would note that in the file as well. They said leads occasionally came in and were investigated, but there was never anything useful that came.
So 1991 comes around. Nine years.
That's a long time. It's a long fucking time.
They've never made an arrest.

They've never even established a fucking motive.

Even for Jim, they don't have a motive.

They didn't have a bunch of insurance or anything like that.

They weren't fighting.

They weren't about to get divorced, fighting over the kid.

Literally no reason.

And also, it's not like he had a girlfriend they found out and they were together a week later.

He didn't have a girlfriend.

There's literally zero reason to murder your wife with an axe here.

So that's what's a little bit weird.

So family members in Michigan by 1991 are complaining to the press,

to the police, to anyone that will listen,

that the investigation is targeting Jim still without any evidence.

Nine years later they won't leave this poor fucking man alone,

is basically what his side's saying.

So Krausenek never spoke publicly about anything since 1983

when he talked to the cops.

Now they talk to him in 1991 here, sitting outside Seattle.

1991, sitting in Seattle, I assume, in a flannel shirt,

fresh from a Soundgarden show. He's just sitting there.
He's only 39, so maybe. Tired.
Tired, real tired. He's been washing all night.
It's been a rough one. Yeah, it was a Pearl Jam Soundgarden double bill.
It was really tough over there. Holy.
So he says still he has no theory about how or why his wife was killed. He said you wrestle with that for so long, and finally you just give up trying to figure it out.
There's no logic in it, he said. He said, you know, hopefully.
There's no statute of limitations. He said, hopefully they'll find somebody.
Maybe. And he said that the only reason he agreed to discuss this case with the newspaper was he thought maybe an article would jog someone's memory or something, and they would you know, find something.
They talk about that. He hasn't allowed Sarah to be interviewed without his consent, which, you know, he's she's a minor, so she can't.
So she said that he does say that Sarah, who was 12 at this time, did have independent memories of her mother's death. She does remember it but yeah.
He says

I think Sarah knows what happened to her

mom. She was there that day.

It's not something we talk about very

often. I think she has her own way of thinking

about it. She's had to figure out her

own way of dealing with it.

Yeah, that's tough.

Now Kathy's sister, Annette,

the one that stayed with them for a year in Virginia,

she's a social worker in Detroit and she has ideas about who it is. Yeah.
She says, quote, I think it was just some crazed psycho, either mistaken identity or high on drugs, who broke in and probably doesn't remember to this day what happened, so he'll never confess. Yeah.
She said, Kathy has no enemies. She led an almost perfect life.
There was no reason for anyone to kill her true and relatives and this is this is interesting not only Jim's relatives but Kathy's relatives also complain that the investigation seemed to focus only on Jim and they don't believe he did it so they're like you're wasting your fucking time and her dad's gotta feel so guilty because he's the one that told him to put shoes on. Yeah.
I mean, if he didn't put shoes on, none of this ever happened. So she says, this is Annette, says, I still believe that the police needed someone to point a finger at to get the general public off their back.
I'm speaking on behalf of my whole family when I say we're still behind Jim 100%. Wow.
So that's the Schlosser family. That's great.
But the detectives said that they're upset that the family hasn't cooperated fully with them. Uh-huh.
He said, I guess my big, this is a ridiculous statement, by the way, because it's nine years later. Quote, I guess my biggest disappointment in the whole case is the lack of participation by the victim's family they have never banged on my desk hollered

at me wanted something done do we have to you're a fucking homicide detective yeah you got you get a paycheck you need cheerleaders too you put the files up there and you're like whoever comes in and yells at me i'll go investigate that case next the fuck are you talking about this is a self-motivated fucking business here.

I don't know, man.

C.D. Lamb has chicks dressed in really sh**.
next the fuck are you talking about this is a self-motivated fucking business here

cd lamb has chicks dressed in really short skirts and pom-poms making his day what if she didn't what if she didn't have any family then what you just go hey fuck it cool it's a freebie for us throw it on the shelf and never look at it again fuck these people what are we talking about yeah it's fucking crazy so uh annette schlosser says quote would it make it bet would it make the police feel better if we went down there and pounded on the door is that their way of telling us you're protecting jim right which is basically yes yeah asked if he resented the way the police have conducted their investigation on everything jim said quote maybe they'reed, but who knows? Maybe that's part of their job, which is very reasonable. It's a very reasonable statement.
Jim said he was working in the lumber industry at this point, and he said the killing has changed his priorities. He said parenthood has become the most important thing in life.
He said that was kind of Kathy's job before, and now it's kind of my job. Well, it was kind of your job then, too, and still is, is really the way it works.
He said, I don't think about it often, but that's something I think about that I owe to her, okay, is to take care of their daughter. Yeah, I would say so, Jim.
Other family here, you know, they said they're sad. Kathy's family talks about this.
Kathy's brother-in-law said it would certainly help just to finish kind of finish things. And her sister Annette said, of course, I want justice.
And I'd want to see that person go through the same kind of cruelty that he or she put Kathy through. But I think if the killer was to come up now, it would make it very difficult.
I don't know if it would be better or worse. I want to whack him in the head with an axe.
Well, I think it's been over 10 years, so they're like, you know, the wounds are healing. Yeah.
Is it going to just make it, is it going to help? It's not going to help us much. And it's just going to be now years of this and court and appeals and, you know, there's going to be a lot of shit.
So who knows? They're thinking maybe it's better if it just all goes away and we try to forget it.

Sure. 1997, Jim meets his current wife, Sharon.
He talks to her. An old friend of his, actually, known her for years, named Sharon James.
They were at a trade show. They ran into each other.
And they date from 97 to 99 and get married in 1999 now from 1992 to 1999 2000 a lot of things change number one jim gets remarried and all that kind of thing kathy's sister now has completely changed her mind oh completely changed her mind from 50 from 100 behind him to how much behind him zero percent oh zero absolutely okay. Absolutely.
Now he's 100% against him now. She now says he had motive to commit murder.
Yeah. Which I'm still wondering about that.
They said that she and her family believe that Kathy discovered her husband had lied to her as employer, and that's what caused the whole thing. Sure.
She said, my sister Kathy was all about education yeah yeah way more than way more than feeding her daughter and all that kind of stuff it's you know way more than the rest of the stuff in life she just cared that you had a doctorate that was it she was all about social status she wanted the best for her and her family and we believe that when she found out Jim didn't get his PhD phd he was confronted and i think you can take the rest from there can you very easily yeah really wow right from there yeah from a fight about well i'm getting it and it's fine and kodak's gonna keep me and we can keep our lifestyle and pay our bills to i'm gonna murder you it was a huge stretch embedding it drop you figure yeah kodak wasn't even as that mad at him they didn't care no right he's gonna be yeah you have to kill her worth of mad jesus christ 2005 comes around okay it has been 23 fucking years now long time yeah entered um this one guy we're gonna talk about here. This is fucking funny remember a current affair yeah that shit at the end well in 2000 2005 there was a current affair

too oh was there yeah because they got rid of a current affair and then they were like people

really are clamoring for a current affair again so and uh they said that the mysteries were the

cornerstone of their show yeah and they said that this show this case fit their show perfectly

I'm sorry. an affair again so and uh they said that the mysteries were the cornerstone of their show and they said that this show this case fit their show perfectly the producer said it was the awfulness of the crime and the lack of any understandable motive or scenario that would explain it yeah it's like an unsolved mysteries it's interesting so the enter mark henderson the new Brighton police chief he looks like a meathead

of the highest order. He looked like he played high school football, hit his head a lot, went to community college for six months, and then joined the police force, and somehow now he's chief.
And his main quote is, duh, that's what he looks like. Gave out a lot of tickets to get this job.
Oh boy, be totally wrong but he looks dumb as shit that doesn't help so he is watching ain't help no jesus christ so the producer of the episode actually sent the episode to the new police chief of brighton yeah try to get some i don't know get a quote from him or what so it was at this point that the the fbi was preparing a cold case collaboration with local police to tackle on long unsolved crimes all over the country yeah so the current affair two segment they said provided a tight synopsis of the whole thing you know they're good at putting that shit into 15 minutes. So anybody who doesn't know anything about the case can get caught up real quick with that.
They said he was the only one who really did something with it, meaning Henderson. Henderson was delighted because it basically laid out a lot of the story.
He's like, I don't even have to read now. Good.
They handed me a file, and I was like, there's a lot of words in this, you know, and I put it down. They got the pictures and everything.
I said, give me anything with more pictures. And he said, there's pictures of the scene.
And he was like, I need pictures of, like, people. I don't know nothing.
I can't read these names. Who are they? This is odd.
Oh, geez. Is this the guy? Should I tackle him? No, no, no.
You want to talk to him. Sit him down.
Interview him. So I should tackle him.
Yeah, just tackle him. I think tackling will send a bigger message.
I think that he'll realize that we're on to him then. You know what I mean? If I tackle him real good, he's going to know then.
Up until then, he won't know, you know? I have a lot of questions. This former chief of the police here, Eugene Shaw, who headed the department in 1982 and was chief for 22 years, kept parts of the police vial on his desk.

Some nights after reviewing the files or receiving an occasional tip,

he would make a cassette recording at home about the unsolved murder.

So he's kind of kept a good case file.

So Henderson, Meathead Henderson, reexamines the case

along with Brighton police investigators,

and they enlist the help of the district attorney

also to incine investigators so they can have more people looking at this.

Okay, so they are hot on Jim's trail here.

Almost got him, yeah.

Almost got him.

Then in 2014, that was 2005.

Now we're in 2014.

Yeah.

Nothing happened of it.

There's a guy named Ed Larrabee, Edward Larrabee.

He's 59 years old in 2014. He's been in prison since 1994.
My God. Yeah, he's serving two life sentences for sexual abuse, rape, and attempted murder.
Pretty good guy. Yeah, he's one of the worst guys ever.
The Department of Corrections confirms all of his charges. He is career rapist he's called why do they know here break-in entering rapist that's what he does he breaks into suburban homes and apartments and rapes women and they think kill some of them too they're trying to pin murders on him he lives a five minute walk from jim and kathy's house that where he lived in 1983.
Five-minute walk, not even drive, right there. Now, while Ed is in prison here, this is for all the shit we talked about, he is sent to a medical center in 2001 after complaining of chest pains.
One of the two, then he does this in July of 2001, by the way.

While one of the two corrections officers assigned to guard him left briefly for the

restroom, Larrabee took the nurse's call cord, wrapped it around correction officer

Patrick Keeley's neck and attempted to strangle him to death.

That's what a good guy this is.

He's in the hospital in prison for chest pains.

As soon as he sees an opportunity, he tries to strangle one of the fucking officers to

death.

Thank you. Hmm.
That's what a good guy this is. He's in the hospital in prison for chest pains.
As soon as he sees an opportunity, he tries to strangle one of the fucking officers to death. Is that right? This guy is a problem, obviously.
So during the struggle, the officer managed to free himself, but sustained injuries, obviously. So he was then charged with two counts of attempted murder in the first degree, one count of escape in the second degree as well.

Wow.

That is crazy. So they tried to present psychological, psychiatric evidence to this whole thing.

The trial court granted his motion to hire a psychiatrist to evaluate those aspects of

the case that you feel are relevant to this, possible defenses that would be available.

Okay.

Now, we'll talk about this. They said that he goes to see a psychiatrist and does all this at trial he admitted that he had placed the call a cord around the officer's neck but claimed he had only done so to facilitate his own escape not to entertain and try to kill the guy oh i was just trying to scare him I was just trying to strangle him unconscious so I could walk away happy.
Yeah, that's not a good thing. He said he was motivated to escape because his life was in danger after he was identified as a snitch who had cooperated with corrections authorities trying to locate weapons at the facility.
He tried to get some extra fucking privileges,

and now they want to strangle him.

So anyway, he said that the prison administration

had received anonymous notes threatening Larrabee,

so he was placed in protective custody

after being stabbed by another inmate,

but the threats of violence and harassment continued.

So this is the thing.

By 2014, I'm just going to give you an idea of who we're dealing with a rapist and a psychopath and just a a guy who's a real problem yeah in 2014 he's dying from als so karma works sometimes sure does gave him the worst most painful horrible way to fucking die for a guy who absolutely deserves it that's good so at So at this point, obviously, he's a career criminal. He has been arrested and considered a criminal for rape and attempted murder, all this type of shit.
While he's dying, he is confessing to things that he did, and a lot of them, and it's all checking out, all the shit he did. He says he killed a woman named Stephanie Kupchinsky, who we'll talk about, which he did kill her.
She was definitely dead, and he definitely killed her. Oh, boy.
He also writes a written confession saying he killed Kathy Krausenek. Oh.
Lives a five-minute walk away. Okay.
Okay. Now, the authorities, though, say, no, we don't buy it.
They don't believe't believe him they don't believe it they said that he mischaracterized her as a brunette so that's the only reason that's it that's yeah that's the one fatal flaw meanwhile this happened 30 years ago over 30 years before this and he's done a lot of horrible shit since then and it was early in the morning, the curtains were probably drawn, and her blonde hair could look darker. Who the fuck knows? Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. 30 years before this and he's done a lot of horrible shit since then and it was early in the morning the curtains were probably drawn and blonde hair could look darker who the fuck knows yeah also he thought he sexually assaulted her as well and they said he didn't sexually she wasn't sexually assaulted because she was sleeping the whole time so that it can't be right he's got to be lying okay so they said at the scene they found no evidence of abuse.
So they said they do not take, they take no action with Ed Larrabee. Meanwhile, he absolutely insists that he did it.
He describes the house. He describes breaking in with the mall.
He describes that there was a kid there. He describes everything.
Like he fucking, seems to me like he went in to probably try to rape her. Right.
Heard a fucking kid stirring and said, oh shit. Gotta go.
Fuck this. Yeah.
You know, because he's never done anything to kids in his criminal record. So maybe he said, oh fuck, I don't want to have to kill a kid.
Right. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.
This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect.
He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.
I was meant to sow terror. He's awoken the people to a true issue.
Listen to Law & Crimes Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
What if everything we thought we knew about justice was wrong? In This Is Actually Happening's new series, A World Beyond Revenge, we explore a radical idea that justice can be about healing, not just punishment. Through five powerful stories, we meet people who've experienced unimaginable harm and those who caused it as they come together to seek something radical.
Healing. From a man tortured for a crime he didn't commit to a woman who misidentified her attacker.
These stories will change the way you think about justice, forgiveness, and the possibility of a better world. Follow This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to This Is Actually Happening ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. no matter what scenario you paint it's much more believable than the husband did it then the husband with no motive did it and no reason to otherwise there's a economist from kodak yeah or the or the rapist attempted murderer lunatic who lived a five minute walk and it gets worse dude there's more evidence for it too so it gets even worse here it's crazy now the Stephanie Kup kubczynski that he admitted to killing here um this was in 1991 he said he murdered her uh he provided details that would and he ended up actually being charged with that murder oh and several other crimes he admitted to too they were going to charge him with but he died before anything happened because he had als and was dying so it didn't matter anyway didn anyway.
Didn't matter. Now, Ed Larrabee had a horrible reputation, even in prison, as a violent lunatic, obviously, as we've described here.
One of the detectives who investigated him said Larrabee hunted women. He was a psychopath.
Before dying in prison in 2014, he was locked up on a total of 32 years on charges that ultimately included attempted murder, robbery, and his sick specialty, rape. But all too often, Larrabee was released back on the streets.
And they said, and every time he was free, he would rape again. And he liked to laugh at women and humiliate them.
Oh, boy. He's a great guy, this said Larrabee.
So you have this guy who's a fucking raging psychopath living five fucking minutes away and saying he did it why would he admit to this out of the blue out of the fucking blue because she was already dead because her husband did it yeah he came into rape and was like oh wow he even said i killed her with an axe yeah he even said i put an axe in ax in her fucking head. Absolutely.
So it's pretty goddamn gross here. There's a woman named Rachel Rear.
She is Stephanie Kupchinski's stepsister. And she wrote a story called Catch the Sparrow, which is about this whole thing.
Stephanie was a 27-year-old music teacher and violinist when he killed her, which is fucking crazy. In 1991, he was freshly paroled after serving a sentence for robbery.
And he came back to this area and he got a job at the Newcastle apartment complex, which is where Stephanie lived. And he he later on said to the cops, too, well, they were stupid to hire me.
Yeah. I wouldn't have hired me.
She went missing in July of 1991, Stephanie. Her car was found at the airport a few days later.
In 1998, seven years later, her skeletal remains were located along a creek in a remote area off Route 104 in the town of Murray in Orleans County. Larrabee was always a suspect.
He was a maintenance worker at the apartment complex where she lived, so that means he had keys to people's fucking apartments. He had served three stints in prison for rape, sexual abuse, and armed robbery.
Why would you give this guy keys to everybody's apartment? What the fuck are you people? Wow. that is the most irresponsible hire in the history of the fucking world and he had just been released eight months before the death before the murder so did they get him on like monster.com like the actual monster.com they got him on fucking perverted rapist.com I believe believe that would be.
Wow. They got him on violentrapist.org.
That's a .org, though. The original monster.org was just monsters.
It was just bad people. Just looking for murderers and rapists.
I'd like to hire a rapist. Where do I find one? Now, the cops say Larrabee was just seeking to be moved to a hospital before his death.
So that's why he said it. So it doesn't matter that he said he killed Kathy, even though all the other shit he said they found to be true.
That one's not true, though. Sorry.
Not going to do that. So James' lawyers, James Krausenek's lawyers, say, what about this asshole? Leave me the fuck alone.
This guy's a fucking dickhead. In 1982, by the way, this is the other thing.
He found out through the case files, his lawyer did, that in 1982, the Brighton police tried to question Larrabee about this murder because he lived five fucking minutes away and was a prime candidate for this. But he refused to talk to them.
So they just and concentrated on jim we got we got nothing on him except for that he's a piece of shit crazy um they said that larabee said he couldn't remember if kathy was in bed or out of bed when he struck her with the axe and um he said she was naked and also said she had brown hair so they said well it well, it couldn't have been you. I mean, he got the murder weapon right.
He got the murder. And he got the exact location of the house right, too.
He said it's on this fucking street right here because he said he jogged that morning, as we'll talk about. He said he jogged in a ski mask and was just looking for places to break into and rape and steal.
That's what it was um so they said that you know krausenex lawyers are like wouldn't 32 years of past time maybe muddle this guy's shit plus he's on a shitload of medication and als and all this shit wouldn't that be anything so no they said no not at all wow uh the defense says that the brighton police

knew about larabee larabee since 82 and did nothing to determine his whereabouts the morning of the murder he wouldn't talk so they just gave up wow that is fucking crazy now 2014 ed larabee dies, which is great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But.

Now, Ed said, by the way he he fucking says tells everybody that he won't admit to anything he didn't do he said i don't want to be accused of shit i didn't do i did i did bad things but don't fucking pin other people's bad things on me that was a big thing for him Ed wasn't the type of guy to say he did a murder he didn't do.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, there is honor amongst them.

Yeah, for him.

Well, I guess he claimed to have committed over a dozen homicides

in a letter he wrote to police, which seems that tracks.

Yeah, that's a lot.

If you'll do what you did with Stephanie, you'll do that a hundred times

until you get caught.

Yeah, yeah. And if you get away with it, you're going to get better at it.
Absolutely. Yeah, that's how it works.
So they said that the cop, one cop who got the letter said, I received so many letters from prison and have to be somewhat selective in what I decide to pursue. Well, I don't know, open cases.
Let's try those. So in response, I asked him for some proof.
He did not bite and accuse me of manipulation, but he wanted to set one record straight that he had no conscience. So this is not because I feel guilty.
Yeah. Yeah.
Also, any claims that police had been expert sleuths in solving the homicide should be discounted. He said that he confessed because he wanted something in return.
He wanted to die in a hospital, not in prison. So he was confessing.
Larrabee wrote, quote, I am not. I am what psychopath, what psychiatrists call a sociopath.
I can assure you for better or worse that I am not burdened by more morality, ethics or remorse. and I certainly do not possess a conscience that needs to be cleansed.

That's what he said.

He said, the cop said, when I learned, Larry Lowry said, when I learned I was going to die, I initiated contact offering cooperation of value.

So he's saying, listen.

I did all this.

I did this shit.

I'll tell you what I did.

April 2015, the Krausenek case is reopened and the FBI gets involved. Now that Ed's dead.
Ed Larrabee's dead and we can sweep that under the floor. So this is under direction of Chief Linebacker Mark Henderson here going, FBI, can you help us please? He did a thorough review of the case including a travel to interview potential witnesses, persons with knowledge, suspects, all that shit.
In June of 2015, Chief Henderson attended a meeting of the FBI Buffalo Cold Case Group, which sounds like a terrible band. Everybody, we're the FBI Buffalo Cold Case Group.
That sounds terrible. I wouldn't go watch that.

Terrible bad. And presented Krausenek case to the group.
After a Q&A period in which several ideas on how to proceed were discussed, the entire case file was given to the FBI to be digitized. So Chief Henderson contacted the Krausenek family to let them know that they reopened the case.
So, yeah, the district attorney agreed to assist in the investigation, and the DA personally participated in selecting evidence to be sent to Quantico. And she said, we're looking to see if there was an outside contributor, if we could justify or if we could identify a suspect.
We needed to get the truth, so we're trying to test as many items as possible to see what we could learn. And then, you know, we would direct the investigation in that direction.
Okay. Now, yeah, I guess that makes sense.
They won't, but they're just, now they can test things for like touch DNA and shit like that. It's a lot different.
So anything they still have, but how many items are you still going to have on file? There's not going to be many. I mean, Jesus Christ.
So April of 2016, New York investigators pay Jim a visit, a surprise visit to his home in Gig Harbor, Washington. Beautiful.
He now lives by the water. He's got a boat.
He's doing great. He had the shoes.
Now he's got the boat. Now he's got it all.
Yeah, he put the put the shoes before the boat it's like the cart before the horse you don't want to put the shoes before the boat but you know what you put you put the shoes out there in the universe a boat comes back to you that's how it works right you gotta have the shoes to get the you gotta dress for the job you want james yeah what if you get the boat and you don't have any shoes to wear on it? You're fucked.

You're going to come on this boat and not dress like a captain?

Who do you think you are?

What are you, no hat next?

Give me a fucking break.

So one of the detectives asked Jim outright if he had something to do with his wife's death.

And he said no.

And the cop said, I think you did.

He goes, well, I didn't.

I said I didn't. And they were like, they came to an impasse there fuck he's again i thought maybe if i just surprised him and asked him he wouldn't you know he wouldn't have a chance to think about it would just say yeah i did i mean no fuck jesus damn it no so that is pretty wild so the fbi is involved still and uh the brighton police chief, Mark Henderson, said the purpose of this review is to bring justice for a young mother, a young person that was murdered and to bring closure to the family.
Duh. Yeah, that's his exact quote.
So we by the way, he's probably still the chief. We got to stay the fuck away from this area because we this guy guy will have us arrested post haste is it brighton it's brighton police brighton yeah we're staying away from brighton far away from there boy so uh investigators re-interviewed everybody they traveled to three different states all this shit uh one of the cops said we're now in the phase where we're going to take the evidence and ship it to Quantico.

So that's what they're doing here.

And the FBI said we were able to provide analytical and forensic expertise.

And like I said, the working group was formed to help police departments in cases like this.

So, yeah, that's what they're doing. One of the guys investigating said, I'd say the last three and a half to four months, 100% of my time is dedicated to this.
We're not wasting time here. We're making some good progress.
I think the public needs to know that, and I'm very optimistic as to what the outcome of this case is going to be. 2017, Kathy's mom dies.
Oh, no. Her and her pierogies.
She's buried in a pierogi casket. God damn.
That's what it is. Actually, they just encased her in a pasta thing like a pierogi.
She's the potato now. 2018, the authorities contact a pathologist to try to back up their claims.
Great call. Yeah.
Yeah. The thing is, there's been a lot of doctors and pathologists who's looked at this, including FBI doctors, pathologists from the Brighton Police Department at the time, who was a very well-respected pathologist.
By the way, this wasn't some dipshit small-town person. Actually very well-respected.
So it's been looked at a bunch of times. But they need someone who will say what they want them to say.
Oh. and there's a one guy who fits that description perfectly who will say anything you fucking pay

him to say because he's a hack, complete fucking loser, hack, piece of shit, money-hungry fucking scumbag, and that's Dr. Michael Bodden.
Love that. Love him.
Yeah, you might know him from that stupid TV show he had. Yeah, Autopsy.
Yeah, where he acted like he was very important and acted like he was acting for half of that fucking show, which is what annoyed me about it.

This guy is a bought and paid for hack.

Okay.

In my opinion, I'll say, just to make it like that.

But he is.

So he used to be a respected guy who did good work. And then he just at one point said well fuck it i need money so we all do yeah when he was a young new york city medical examiner he confirmed the autopsies of men shot during the 71 attica riot he worked on the jfk assassination okay that one's to look for right i don't no, to look for, like, tracks of the wounds and shit like that.

He worked on Martin Luther King also.

Yeah.

So this is all stuff he was doing when he was a legitimate guy.

Yeah.

Then later on, after he became a bought-and-paid-for hack, I'm going to say post-TV probably did this to him.

Yeah.

When he really liked attention.

Yeah.

In 2007, he testified on Phil Spect specter's behalf attaboy i don't know if you guys have known seen anything about the phil specter case we'll do a bonus episode on it didn't seem real uh it is really obvious that he killed her no he fucking killed her much of a conspiracy nope two people in. One of them shot and killed.
The other one comes out with a gun in their hand. And the other person's blood all over him.
And the other person's spatter all over him. Okay? So pretty fucking cut and dry.
Anyone who saw anything about that went, wow, I don't care how much money he has. He's going to prison for this.
This is worse than OJ. Wall of sound.
Don't care. You've got blood spatter on your dominant arm yeah i don't yeah magical mystery tour my fucking ass don't give a shit about this this whole case is a magical mystery fucking tour so he during this phil specter case bodden sought to provide an alternative an alternate explanation for blood on the victim's jacket okay when asked by a prosecuted this is what a hack he is number one bullshit hey he's just doing this for money number two when the prosecutor because he's testifying for the defense obviously when the prosecutor asked him if he had any conflicts of interest in this case he said quote none that i can think of not one it was later revealed that his wife was one of specter's main attorneys.
You can't do that. No, but you can, but you have to fucking disclose it.
You have to give the jury that away. That's my point.
You can't just say... He doesn't, because he's a fucking bought and paid for hack.
You know who else he testified for? Who's that? OJ. Oh, well...
Now, that's fine if you were testifying for OJ. What he did, though, was total.
I mean, I don't know how much he had to be paid for this because what I mean, this stretches the credulity of any human's imagination here. This is what a hack he is.
He claimed first that Nicole Brown was still standing and conscious when her throat was slashed, which we know isn't true. We know she was knocked down

first. The purpose of this

claim was to dispute the theory that Brown

was the intended target.

Like she came out and just discovered

it and got her throat slashed and she fell down,

rather than she was the initial point of the attack.

And she wanted to break it up.

Exactly. The prosecution argued that Brown

was murdered first and the intended target

of the attack she was because the soles of her feet didn't have any blood on them despite the large amounts of blood at the crime scene and that she was unconscious when her throat was cut because she had very few defensive wounds. At the subsequent civil trial the following year, he then disowned that claim.
oh bond did yeah that's what I mean whatever you pay him to say even if you said he said the opposite

last year

he'll be like

nope

this is true now

they paid me to say this

but I found oh bond did yeah that's what i mean whatever you pay him to say even if you said if he said the opposite last year he'll be like nope that this is true now they paid me to say this but it's fucking crazy he disowned the claim and admitted it was absurd to think that someone would stand still without their feet moving while their throat was being slashed and not fighting back but he had testified to that in open fucking court under oath under under oath the year before. Also in the OJ case, in order to make it so the time of death for them was a little bit later to put OJ outside the window, he claimed that Ron Goldman had gotten his jugular vein slashed and severed and still fought the assailant for 10 minutes.
Wow. Okay.
I've been a bouncer. Yeah.
I've been whatever. I've seen a lot of fights.
Yeah. I have never in my life seen a street fight last 10 minutes.
That's a long time. They don't last 10 minutes.
No. They don't.
No. A riot barely lasts that long.
Two men fighting does not last 10 minutes. It doesn't.
I'll go to the point of I've seen a lot of fights that once somebody has any blood leaking out of them, it's over. Yes, that's a thing.
That's a different thing. I mean, when there's no knives involved, it's just punching.
And when there's other people around to stop it, too. When there's blood coming from somebody's face you stop this is i mean this was a sustained attack to murder somebody yeah but for 10 minutes you're able to fight back 10 minutes bleeding severe shooting blood out of your jugular that's that's pure pure hackery because that just lines up with oj's alibi that's just bullshit he just said how long do we need yeah you could fight for 10 minutes that's That's it.
That's complete hackery. because that just lines up with OJ's alibi.
That's just bullshit. He just said, how long do we need? Yeah, you can fight for 10 minutes.
That's it. That's complete hackery.
Bodden claimed at the subsequent civil trial, he initially denied making that claim. Oh.
Then was confronted with a video clip of him saying the exact fucking thing at trial. Oh, yeah, well, and who's this saying this? Then he disowned it and said he must have misunderstood the question.

I don't know what the question is.

But the Goldman's attorney alleged that he said it because the defense paid him to do so, because that's who he is. He also alleged that Bodden knowingly gave false testimony because he knew that Ron Goldman's blood was found inside Simpson's Bronco, despite Goldman never having an opportunity to be in the car.
after the trial Bodden said

testifying for Simpson

was a mistake

and his reputation

and credibility

never recovered and his clientele and his cult consulting practice all but vanished. Well, don't be a fucking hack then.
It's also good that he, uh, that clearly aged him because he looks worse than Ron Jeremy now. Yeah, he does.
And he should. Yeah.
He spent his life lying, not fucking. So so he should or not raping or whatever the fuck ron jeremy got technicalities or some shit i don't know evidently he's an innocent man i don't know oh very innocent i'm not defending that man no no he just looks better than boden at this point by the way the jurors in the oj case yeah several of them cited Dr.
Bodden's testimony as one of the main

reasons they said that they acquitted him.

Is that right?

He fucked it up.

Yeah, because he's supposed to be a respected guy.

Wow.

So that is ridiculous.

Oh, by the way, he collected $165,000 payment for that.

Whoa.

To go up and say that bullshit.

In the early 90s.

In the mid-1995. That's great money's great money that's a shitload of money yeah so that's that's who he is who bought him he also testified for uh he he took money from jeffrey epstein's family he's just a great guy hold on he's trying to say that jeffrey epstein didn't kill himself he's trying to say that jeffrey epstein epstein didn't kill himself so the family can sue oh my god what an asshole if you pay him he will say anything he's the reason for all this epstein didn't kill himself shit fucking no i mean that's conspiracy theory anyway but that's just you know that anyone will say that but he's contribute oh he absolutely does yeah he'd be happy to as long as you had give him some money so october 2019 dr bodden reports his quote i'm going to use everything in quotes his findings here um because his credibility is fucking shot that completely shot so court papers in the krasnick homicide note that the formula uses, the formula of time of death, uses a rate of one and a half degrees temperature decrease per hour from the time of the rectal temperature reading, recognizing there will be variations such as ambient temperature and body mass, and they adjust for that.
So the deputy Monroe County medical examiner, Dr. Evelyn Lewis, who, by the way, just died now, so she can't come defend her work because she just died.
She conducted the 82 autopsy here. Krausenek's defense attorneys here, just attorneys, contend that the prosecutors should have told grand jurors the earlier time estimates did not, like Dr.
Bodden's, narrow the time frame of homicide to before 6.30. Basically, Dr.
Bodden's the only pathologist on earth who looked at this and said, oh, it was before 6.30 a.m., the only one. He said it could have been as early as 9.30, but I think it was between 3.30 and 6.30.
That's his fucking thing. Shit.
That's what he said. He's the only one of that.
Bodden also did not tell grand jurors of the differing conclusions. So they sat him up there and he just said, this is the time of death and that was taken as fact.
And a grand jury, you don't get to present defense. So it's just the prosecution and they just put out what they want to put out to get an indictment.

Because if they if they would have brought all the other pathologists work in there, then the jury would have had to decide who was right. Whereas they didn't do that.
Just brought one guy in there. He said on the stand that he but here he thinks it appears that Kathy died around three thirty a.m.
So the prosecutors say, well, Jim was home at that point. and in the report he wrote that heat loss for Kathy Krausenek was likely one degree per hour because she was heavily clad and covered by a comforter and an electric blanket, which, by the way, we find out the electric blanket was not on.
Yeah. But, you know, James.
But he says, you know, that'll let you like a Yeti cooler. Yeah.
That's how it is. Yeah.
Fucking wow. So that's what he says.
Now, then there's the neighbor of Kathy's saying she heard a moaning sound around 1 or 2 a.m., followed quickly by a dog barking. And they said, well, there you go.
That's what it is. Dr.
Bodden wrote in his report, the timing of that report is consistent with Kathy's body temperature, the state of her rigor mortis, and her stomach contents, which is complete bullshit If she was killed before that, she'd still have food in her stomach and her bladder wouldn't be full. That's the point.
She was killed at 1 a.m. There's no way you're digesting 10 p.m.
shrimp by 1 a.m. It just doesn't happen.
And she would have alcohol in her system still. And so it's fucking ridiculous.
So defense lawyers here for Jim challenged the differing formula of the time of death and say that Bon's misrepresenting the issue of her stomach contents, which can also formulate the time of death. Bon credited the work of Lewis, the original pathologist, then, quote, misrepresented her conclusions regarding the gastric contents of stomach as they relate to time of death.
He just picked and choose words he wanted to use on the stand. The contents of her stomach indicated she was killed four to six hours after her last meal.
Now, that's what he said. Now, while the original pathologist said her stomach contents were, quote, quite empty and devoid of any food, Bodden said in his report that a fluid found in her stomach was indicative of some remaining food, even though no one else had ever seen this before.
Wow. He said, so that means she was killed earlier.
They also talked, the defense talked about her full bladder and all that. And he said, doesn't matter.
Huh. Okay.
November 2019, after it goes to grand jury, Jim is indicted and arrested. Is that right? Yes, they arrest and indict him.
By the way around. Okay.
The Brighton police chief at this point, a different guy, David Cathaldi, said, we believe in the timeline of events, speaking with witnesses, got a new guy, James Krause next timeline that he provided along with all the other evidence will establish that James was home. James was home at the time of the murder.
That should just say, Dr. Bodden says this.
We have nothing else. Cause that's all it is.
We trust him. He's got a New York accent.
We trust him. He doesn't even does he? I don't know if he he yeah he does he sounds just like yeah he's from new york i've never watched that shit because he looked like a fucking tool he just looked like such a douchebag standing there that picture of him yeah over the table that they drain people on that douchebag pose he looked uh he sounded he's very new york uh but he he uh in the in the show in the first one, he just seemed very New York.

Yeah, he just seems like a hack.

He's the Matt Reif of murder.

Yeah, yeah.

This guy.

It's true. It's just sad.

And this Cathaldi guy, he looks like he's never heard a podcast or heard that they exist.

So I think we're all right.

It's probably 75.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The FBI takes credit, of course.

You know, if they put any work into this, they want some credit.

They say that forensics and DNA analysis played a key role in James's arrest and subsequent charges.

There is no DNA analysis.

None of that.

That's completely untrue.

None of that comes up.

They don't have any evidence of DNA or any evidence that it's him whatsoever.

Matter of fact, both axe handles had not a speck of DNA on them. Well, that's not good.
The one at the door and the one used in her head. Neither of them had anything.
That is fucking crazy. The FBI special assistant says, I hope this case serves a couple of purposes.

One, it's a step toward closure for the victim's family. And two, just as importantly, because the years go by, just because years go by doesn't mean you can stop looking over your shoulder.
We're coming for you. We're going to get you.
We're going to hire a hack doctor and make some shit up on this particular case. So pre-trial here, the district attorney insists that she has absolutely no doubt that Jim killed Kathy.
Wow. That's incredible.
Cause I have a lot of doubts. No doubt.
Um, defense attorney said there's really no evidence that Jim killed his wife. Another attorney said that his client is nothing but innocent.
Mr. Krausenek has been cooperative.
As I said, from the time this incident occurred. Even during court, he came into court on his own and was nothing but respectful.
And we look forward to addressing these allegations in court. So he is set for trial June 2nd, 2020.
Okay. That didn't happen, obviously.
Nope. That got delayed.
Yeah. So they never got to do that.
COVID delays the trial until 2021. That's a while, yeah.
And in the meantime, Netflix made a movie, quote, based on this story that is not at all based on this story. At all.
Here is the description of the movie from Netflix. An artist relocates to the Hudson Valley.
This is nowhere near the Hudson Valley. This is the, this may as well be the Shenandoah Valley.
Yeah, I live in the Hudson Valley. Yeah, this is the Ohio Valley.
It's closer to the Ohio Valley than the fucking Hudson Valley. Wow.
And begins to suspect that her marriage has a sinister darkness, one that rivals her new home's history. Oh, so they got the old lady curse.
Yeah, they went up with that angle of the curse of a home, and it has 2.6 stars on IMDb, so it's not very good. Fascinating choices of writing a show.
That is crazy. So now Kathy's father, who, by the way, is 93 years old at this point.
The guy that loves shoes, hates bare feet. The guy that hates bare feet.

He says he plans to travel from Michigan to Rochester to see this trial.

Oh.

Doesn't care how old he is.

In his 90s.

Yep, he says, I won't miss a day of it.

He says, I'm going to go hell or high water.

I want to see him with the cuffs on.

I don't even know what that saying means, but it sounds good. Hell or high water?

I don't know. Come come either bad scenario i guess either a horrific flood or just fire fire that dries all the water up one or the other so 2022 is the trial for jim which is crazy because it's 40 years later that's what that's unbelievable and they're going by one guy's fucking estimate of time of death.
That's the only evidence they have. To me, 40 years, unless you have a DNA strong piece of evidence, or Sarah comes forward and says, okay, fine, I saw my dad kill my mom.
I don't want to hear about it anymore. You don't have anything.
This is crazy. Sarah is there, by the way, fully way fully supporting him sitting behind him walking in with him so um the court found no prejudice that ed larrabee is unable to justify or testify for the defense because the defense said we got a guy saying he fucking did it and he's not available to testify they said the evidence at the hearing showed that in 2014 larrabee was aware of his illness was aware it was terminal and was making confessions to anyone in law enforcement that would listen in order to gain concessions of a burial outside the prison and other concessions such as a tombstone.
Investigators were told by the New York State Police that Larrabee was even confessing to murdering persons that were known to still be living. Although he made at least one legitimate confession in the opinion of authorities, the of stephanie kubchinski they said that um perhaps they said that this case had this case been brought in 82 or 86 or at any time before larabee became terminally ill he would have appeared and they don't think he would have appeared in court and confessed well no because he's why the fuck we confess that jesus christ so yeah they said they going to do that.
The defense also argues that the significant delay in this whole thing, you know, 40 years and all, has prejudiced his client's ability to defend himself against the charges because everybody that can witness on his behalf testify for him is dead. Yeah.
The pathologist, the original cops, Ed Larrabee, anybody who could possibly help him is dead. So they said, you kind of just, you wait it out until all the witnesses on the other side are dead and then you can charge the guy.
That's not right. So they point out that the original pathologist, Dr.
Evelyn Lewis, passed away in 2018. Also, two of his coworkers who gave statements to police saying he was perfectly normal that day and totally fine, they're dead too.
And that he needed those people to go. I don't know.
He seemed fine at 7 a.m. Which is crazy.
If you just murdered your wife, he'd be distraught. And he'd have to be an amazing actor to go from being fine all day to then coming home and being trembly and crying.
You'd have to be a great actor. And he seems like a dork.
He doesn't seem like an actor, but who knows. The defense argued that the original pathologist's testimony would completely undercut Dr.
Bodden's reliance on her autopsy findings as to stomach contents. Also, they cite police interviews with now deceased Eastman Kodak coworkers stating that Jim acted perfectly normal during during the day of February 19, 1982, when they met with him.
They also point out that the Brighton Police Department Sergeant Edward O'Grodnik passed away in 2011. He could have testified to the observation, as found in his police report, that the electric blanket over Kathleen was in the off position.

So that completely ruins Dr. Bodden's thing because he said the electric blanket is the main reason why he said that she was the time of death was different.
OK. Now, the defense also cites a death investigator, death of investigator, Tim or Tom Schrader, who passed away in 2005.
The defense contends that he could have shed light on the Brighton investigation of Ed Larrabee, a person the defense asserts was a likely suspect and should have been more thoroughly investigated. The defense also cites the death of former Brighton police chief Eugene Shaw.
At the time of the murder, he met with investigator Schrader after Schrader's attempt to interview Ed Larrabee in 1982. Also, the death of Larrabee himself and of Dr.
David Barry, whom the defense alleges administered chemical castration drugs to Larrabee as a condition of his probation at the time of the murder. So they're saying at that point he couldn't have raped because he had chemical castration.
That's why we know he did it and he couldn't have raped her even if he wanted to. There it is.
Yeah. They also said that the sergeant could have testified that he found the blanket in the off position.
The people have agreed to stipulate to this information, which reduces any prejudice toward the defendant, the judge said. But you're going to have stipulation or a person saying it.
It's different. The person saying it is more.
They said the state contents that a despite a vigorous and thorough investigation, prosecutors harbored sincere concern that there was a lack of quality physical evidence connecting the defendant to the to the crime. The people argue that the prosecution did, in fact, exercise good faith in their decision

to defer the prosecution for 40 years.

The people argue the court should evaluate the decision to defer prosecution based on

the information available when the decision was made, that investigators in the 80s had

absolutely no reason to believe that deferring the prosecution and keeping the case open

as a cold case would not result in the discovery of new evidence. So basically they're saying we couldn't have made this case in 1983.
We couldn't have made this case until Dr. Bodden wanted to buy a summer home.
That's when we can do this case, when he really is trying to feather his nest egg. Yeah.
We found out he's taking money and we paid. Yeah.
It's fucking ridiculous. So they said, though, they found no significant, the FBI found no significant evidence of any third party being in the house forensically.
Okay. So that means that even though they didn't find any evidence that James did do it, the lack of evidence that anybody else did, it means he must have done it.
It means he had to. Wow.
Jim's expert disagrees with Dr. Bond, obviously.
Yeah. So this is Dr.
Catherine Maloney, a deputy chief medical examiner of Erie County, did some past autopsies of Kathy and Bond's report and looked at all of that. Yeah.
She wrote in a February letter to defense lawyers that there are no new scientific findings that would make Dr. Bond's determinations accurate as opposed to the 1982 conclusions.
She looked over all the tests and said, I see what you did and I see what you did. And that the 1982 autopsy, unlike Dr.
Bodden's report and grand jury testimony, conforms to generally accepted principles of forensic pathology. Not some shit he made up, basically.
Some general ones, yeah. that's pretty crazy now uh jim says the state's twisting their alley their their evidence they said testimony before the grand jury that kathy's sister telephoned around 10 p.m and was told by jim that his wife was asleep and she said that was unusual because she wouldn't sleep that early she goes to bed at 11 o'clock not 10 o'clock okay so they're saying that by him lying to her then that's a that's evidence but then the 1982 phone records show that the call was placed at 11 21 p.m not 10 p.m when she said so she went to bed right on time right on time they said that is exactly when your sister goes to bed, isn't it? She said, yeah.
Also, former colleagues from Kodak, that's hard to say, colleagues from Kodak, said that Krausenek told the grand jury that Krausenek had acted agitated and more weird when she, on February 19, 1982, offered him tickets for the Shrine Circus the next day.

This testimony contradicted what she told the Brighton police in 1982.

She changed her story.

At the time, she said he didn't act unusual at all.

Forty years later, when they're telling her, look, this guy's guilty, she goes, yeah, he acted weird that day.

Yeah, I offered him tickets and shit, and he was being real weird about it.

Fucking crazy.

So the lawyers for them, for everybody here, they're fighting it out here. One of his attorneys, Jim's attorney, said their burdens to demonstrate that there was due cause to wait 37 years to bring this indictment.
Krasinek's attorneys have asked for a singer hearing at which they'll argue. You have to do it in a very melodic voice.
That's the thing. It you gotta do it you gotta see if there's no evidence no new evidence that justifies the delay in the murder charge the Supreme Court the letter to a Supreme Court justice said I'm not sure that you've had a case like this.
They also bring in an expert shoe witness. He testifies that the footprint found inside the trash bag was from a boat shoe.
And they said, could it be from this pair we have in this picture? By the way, don't show the tread at all. Could be completely smooth under there.
We don't know. And he said, yes.
Sure it could. It could.
Could be from my shoe. We don't know if know if it is but it could be the shoes were not tested to see if they were a match back in the day though why not nice which tells me they thought it was probably ed larrabee i think and then they were like well we can't get him so wow evidence said the killer wore a boat shoe type of footwear as did james krausenek and police claims that the killer would not have worn such a shoe on a snowy, wintry day.
Time of death also, again, there was a memo pad discovered in 1986 that said the medical examiner had indicated two potential times of death, between 6.55 and 8.55, and then 6.30 to 9.30, which obviously contradicts with the... Yeah, it ruins everything.
So they said revisiting the case with new technology, the Brighton Police Department came to the opinion the killings happened before 630. It's not new technology.
It's Dr. Bodden pulling shit out of his ass.
Then one of the days of the trial, jurors hear from numerous members of the Brighton Police Department, including an investigator named Richard Corrigan, who found a pamphlet for a local marriage and family counselor in James's vehicle.

So they're saying the marriage was in trouble, and that's why he did this.

He needs a therapist.

Now, the defense team said that proves nothing at all.

They said that it was found in the car, buried in in the back seat and the floor and they said it could have been a pamphlet distributed on his car when they first moved there while the house was closing they were staying in motels he could just you know where they hand those out yeah yeah that's true yeah under windshield wipers of fucking people staying at motels in won't fuck you anymore here exactly talk to that's where people go but also he could just be a good guy who picked up trash in a parking lot i was like i'll throw this away later yeah who knows that's what i mean it could have been anything doesn't there was no evidence that they ever called a marriage counselor they called the people on that thing no one ever contacted them they never They never went for any appointments, never told any of their friends.

Kathy never told her sister or other friends

that they were having problems.

None of that shit.

They found a pamphlet and said the marriage was in trouble.

He's fucked.

Never mind.

All the evidence.

We have this.

So a neighbor who lived near them,

Eileen Marin,

said that she saw James come to her door that evening,

drained of color.

The defense argues that's a strong piece of evidence to claim that, you know, he came home and learned that his wife had been murdered. They also bring up testimony from another neighbor, and this is, to me, everything, testified to seeing a suspicious and unusual jogger in the area that morning around 7.25 a.m.
as she was leaving for work. She said the jogger was, this is crazy, not known to her and wearing a ski mask and running at an extremely slow pace.
Never seen him. Yeah.
Stalking. Stalking, yeah.
Hunting. Crazy.
And that's what he said he was doing that morning at Larrabee was pretending to jog that's what happened so wow

um that's crazy so i i don't even know how the hell you can i mean if you put these two people

in front of you yeah and said which one you think did this ed larabee or jim krasanak

holy shit i'm probably picking ed 99 and a half times out of 100 yeah that's part of it

then they put Dr. Bodden on there and he tells his bullshit.

And,

um,

Thank you. I'm probably picking Ed 99 and a half times out of 100.
Yeah, that's part of it. Then they put Dr.
Bodden on there, and he tells his bullshit. And he says that his final diagnosis is severe chopping injuries to the head and brain.
Thanks, Doc. Thanks a lot.
He said it takes at least 12 hours after death to reach the level of rigor that she was in. And in his opinion, that would mean that Kathy died somewhere between 9 p.m.
and 3 a.m. Now he's going all the way back to 9 p.m.
Six-hour window. Six-hour window now.
But that window only has Jim in it. That's the Jim window, yeah.
They said, which the prosecutor said, that means that she died before James went to work, according to his opinion. And he says it's important to have someone with Bodden's level of experience on the stand to take the case.
You've all seen him on TV, haven't you? Yeah. They said to us, it's very important.
He's obviously renowned. You hear the cases he worked on.
He was hired by the U.S. government to examine JFK and MLK Jr.
So just some of the things you've done, he's done. You can't match that.
Can't do it. I would be like, can I introduce this OJ shit then? Just credit this fucking idiot? Yeah.
Saying that he testifies and then denies that he testified to that in the next fucking case? Said you can't deny it. Well, here's a way to deny it.
So in the closing arguments, the defense challenges Dr. Bodden's determination, suggesting that the best perspective on the time of death was the original medical examiner.
They argue Dr. Lewis had the best perspective to determine the time of death, the best to make the best to make the facts.
But interpretation is another matter, Dr. Bodden said in his response.
So, you know, the facts are all there. Yes yes but it's all how you interpret them uh the lawyer then said his opinion is substantially different than dr lewis's his testimony pivots on body temperature if you take body temperature out his position is completely unfounded it's by no means an exact science i think dr bodden was clear on that but dr bodden in his experience, is familiar.
This is the prosecutor said in his experience is familiar with how those factors blankets individuals health affect body temperature. No one else is, though.
Just him. He's the only guy.
so the prosecutor the defense attorney said that the fact that dr lewis the original doctor is not alive they said we think it's a fatal challenge because if the prosecution proceeded with this

in a timely manner, Dr. Lewis would be here to defend her autopsy, which is evidently defendable.
And they waited for 40 years. She's dead now.
She can't defend it. Then they bring Dr.
Bodden in from out of town. Yeah.
And they're going to do the small town fear thing. Here he comes from New York City coming in here trying to tell us small town folk how to act.
Yeah, this guy's been to Brooklyn, you guys. He's been to Brooklyn.
People. People.
It's a big deal. He went to a Knicks game once.
Think about that. Have you been to Yankee Stadium? Oh, man.
He goes on to say, fingerprints were not on the axe, the mall, the point of entry. DNA from the axe excludes James and Sarah.
We can't really nail that down. No.
He says that it's written in the context, it was written in the context that he was dying, meaning Ed Larrabee's confession, about to face his enemy. And there are some things in the statement that are wrong, but some are consistent.
The notion he wipes down the axe with a bath towel. That's one of the things he said he did.
It was wipe down the axe handles with a bath towel. The prosecution says, very simply, if the jury believes Dr.
Bodden's testimony, which we believe he's a very credible witness, then that means James Krausenek killed his wife on that day. They said the only reasonable conclusion is that James K.
went to his garage, grabbed the axe that he had used over and over to chop wood, walked up his stairs, and killed Kathy while she slept. He made it look like someone came in, then he went to work.
That's all we've got. That's it.
They said, you've heard some officers. They were saying the burglary appeared contrived.
A gold necklace hanging on the door, cash on the dresser. What kind of a burglar doesn't take things that are sitting out in the open? That's kind of not committing aglary it's a great point that's good point too but again that doesn't make jim no have any more evidence against him as the problem so the verdict comes in here and um obviously um this comes in the judge explains to them there's no probably guilty there's no maybe guilty just guilty or not guilty they find guilty of second degree murder.
Get out of my life. I swear to God.
That's crazy shit. It's ridiculous.
He might have done it. Don't get me wrong.
I don't fucking know, but it doesn't seem like it at this point. So sentencing, Sarah speaks during sentencing.
Really? And she says, my mother's poor fucking Sarah. I can't say poor girl.
She's like 45 years old at this point, but still, it sucks. It's awful.
She said, my mother's killer got away with her murder. My father's life has been taken by a failed justice system that convicted him of a crime he did not commit.
And then Kathy's dad testifies during the sentencing. He says, and Jim, I hope you live to be 100 years old and enjoy your new home, jail.
Hope you get no shoes. Hope you get nothing.
No boat shoes for you. Hope you're on a boat with fucking combat boots on.
See how you like that. So Sharon, this is Jim's wife, said that, you know, you got to, you know, this is crazy.
Justice isn't being served and all that kind of thing. And Sarah said, the justice system failed my parents, myself, both sides of my family.
It's also failed this community. Jim got up.
He read a note in which he, it's a long note. He reaffirmed his love for Kathy.
He said, I love my wife. And, you know, she was everything to me.
And I would never hurt her. And he said, in closing, I did not murder Kathy.
I love Kathy with all my heart and my soul. And the jury said, you, sir, may fuck off 25 years to life.
What the fuck? Yeah. That's, wow.
So, Kathy's parents now, they say the Schlosser family said they've had no communication with Sarah for years until today.

Not at all.

They're expecting some now?

Yeah, this is Aunt Annette here.

She said, I told her when I walked in, I said, Sarah, I love you no matter what happens.

And she said, thank you.

And now we pray that Sarah will come back to us and be a part of us because she has no family now.

She's been brainwashed for 40 years. I don't think that's going to come together too soon.
And then she said this, Annette, how horrible she must feel right now. But let's give her some time and we'll be in touch with her.
Okay. Yeah.
So he is sent to Clinton, which is real horrible. Dannemora is Clinton.
It's a bad place. It's a really bad place place it's known as Little Siberia in New York prison system because it's cold in the middle of fucking nowhere hard for people to visit yeah it's crazy shit they also say the prison walls and watchtowers loom over the main street of the village which exists only because of the prison that's one of those towns that's how a lot of towns started out in New York like that.
Like Ossining started out just because Sing Sing was there. And then it became a big suburb.
So that is fucking wild. Then the prosecutor said, I can't imagine a place more unlike Krauseneck's home in sunny Arizona because he's got a house down there too wow so 2023 comes around they're they they file an appeal here obviously they file an appeal immediately then in 2023 james dies in prison oh the poor bastard 71 he is not used to that life he got up there he was in that shit life for a year and he died jesus what's worse than that yeah it's a it's one thing if people are in prison for 40 years but when you haven't had a normal life and then you go to prison in your late 60s that's not great you're 70 years old so yeah he dies at 71 barely he was barely in there two years no good so the thing about this is for jim i mean it doesn't help him any because he spent his last days in prison, but according to what I like to call the Aaron Hernandez rule.
Oh, the old Aaron Hernandez clause. Yeah, the fact that his appeal was in process of the time of this means that he's now technically innocent.
This vacates the conviction. He gets a proper burial.
if you die while your appeal for that crime you're in prison for is still in the midst, it wipes out the conviction. Just like Aaron Hernandez, this guy's technically innocent.
That's terrific. His conviction was erased and his indictment dismissed because he had a pending appeal.
I love it. Interesting.
The Monroe County District Attorney's Office supported this while Krausenek's family wanted the appeal to continue after his death. They said, no, no, no, no.
We want this to play out in court that he's fucking innocent, not that you just say it. And the one guy said, quote, Jim Krausenek is now technically after death managed to escape conviction.
His family isn't happy with that. They wanted a real review of the case.
Interesting. Appellate judges declined to, they said, meanwhile, the question of whether the conviction would withstand an appellate challenge has gone unheard and unconsidered.
Appellate judges declined to hear the appeal, deciding that New York precedent firmly establishes the posthumous dismissal without further litigation. Like, he's fucking dead.
We're not wasting money on this. Done.

Now, the house itself is considered a three-bedroom, three-bath now.

I don't know what they changed it.

I'm not sure.

2,057 square feet. It's at 33 Del Rio Drive in technically Rochester because that's the same thing.

Sold in 2023 for $372,000. Not even that much.
Yeah. Not even that much, actually.
That's pretty good. Not bad.
Unless a murder ruins the fucking price, you know what I mean? That'll screw everything up, yeah. Maybe that's what they did, remodel after a murder.
Have to, yeah. Made a bigger master bedroom, not one of the bad.
Yeah, that makes sense that makes sense probably that's what people do so it's more sellable but that is bright in new york everybody don't go that is you'll be framed for murder you could be framed for murder or have to watch a man fart while he makes pizza one of the two it's not good either way the result is not great leave your boat Oh, God, do not bring boat shoes to this town.

You'll be in cuffs before you fucking know it.

So there you go.

This is one of the shows we did for a live show this year.

Yeah, that's right.

And it was a lot of fun to do live.

And we hope you guys enjoyed it.

I put more detail in.

I found a lot more stuff.

The live show, we don't have two hours and 40 minutes to do it.

So you guys would be asleep in two hours and 40 minutes.

So at a live show, it's weird. It'd be like 11 o'clock at night and be like, Jesus Christ, I got up for work today.
So, you know, that's good. So we do it now and can add some extra detail, some extra context to it.
Hope you enjoyed it and hope you enjoyed the live shows this year. Thank you so much for coming out to those live shows and seeing us.
Speaking of that, I would like to read off a list of live shows.

First of all, if you like the show and you want other people to know about that, please,

and we beg you, please tell the world about it.

Get on whatever app you're on and give us five stars and help us out a lot.

Head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com.

Get your tickets for live shows.

2025 live shows are live and available. Here we go.
Let's go down the list february 7th in pittsburgh yes get those tickets right now that is a it's a big fucking theater let's let's make it let's make a showing not to not to put pressure on you but basically we look at things and we look at how things sell and um if that's a half empty building we ain't't coming back to Pittsburgh. So if you want us there, fucking buy tickets.
The next night in Columbus, February 8th, May 16th in St. Louis, the pageant, beautiful theater there.
May 17th in Chicago at the Riviera. Oh baby, bring me home.
I love it. Not that I'm from Chicago, but I like Chicago.
It's a great place. September 6th, we are in San Diego at the Observatory.
September 7th at the Irvine Improv in Irvine, California. September 19th, we are, oh, I can't give that one out yet.
That's coming out soon. That's our mystery one.
You'll understand exactly why when you hear where it is and when our tickets went on sale here. It's in the Midwest, so be prepared.
Be prepared here. It's driving distance to Grand Rapids, which is the next day.
Grand Rapids, Michigan. People seem super excited about that.
October 17th, Portland. Back in Portland at the Newmark.
Can't wait for that. The 18th, we are in Seattle, which is fun.
That is Seattle at the Moore, which is a beautiful fucking theater. That's where you go see cool, fancy people, and we're going to be part of that.
Then at the Moore which is a beautiful fucking theater that's where you go see cool fancy people and we're going to be part of that then on the December 12th we'll be in Philadelphia back at the Fillmore love that place and then December 13th ending it all out in Washington D.C. for one there by the way those are all Friday Saturday shows except for the Irvine Improv, which is on a Sunday, because comedy clubs are twats,

and they want you to fucking do two shows in a night.

Yeah, they want you to do a entire fucking weekend.

And we're not doing that.

No, we're not doing it.

So there you go.

You got us on a Sunday.

Sorry about that.

You treat it like being just,

they want me to do two shows.

I'm not doing two shows in a night.

I'm not doing two shows.

I can't do it.

That's exactly what it is.

That's the exact conversation we had with our agents

about two shows.

You just can't do it. It's all fucked up.
So thank you so much for that. And thank you for buying tickets.
Shut up and give me murder.com. Get them quick.
Cause they go fast, especially the good ones. They go real fast.
So get those tickets and come hang out with us. A lot of beautiful places, beautiful venues this year.
Also, in addition to shut up and give me murder.com, head over to patrion dot com slash crime in sports. Get all your bonus materials.
Holy shit. There's so much anybody.
Five dollars a month or above. You get the whole back catalog.
New shit all the time. Hundreds of episodes you've never heard before.
Bonus stuff. New ones every other week, including this week.
We're obviously one crime in sports, one small town murder. You get it all, baby.
For crime in sports this week, we are going to talk about personal ads again, back by popular demand. Let's hear what people were looking for back in the newspaper days when you'd just be like, I'm going to find a person.
Let me put an ad in the paper. Find that out.
Find out. Then for small town murder, we are going to talk about the West Memphis Three.

And we'll do a few episodes of these that will spread out over time with them.

And we'll break it into sections.

This is going to be, how the fuck did this even happen?

What'd you do?

We're going to talk about that.

What happened?

How did this lead to this point of even having to make a goddamn documentary? Never mind three of them.

It's like walking into a kitchen and somebody just, there's cake all over the floor. You just go, what'd you do? I didn't even know we had cake.
What happened? Didn't even know there was cake and you've ruined it. Why is it like this? So we'll talk all about that and we'll talk about more definitely.
That's patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, which is going to happen in one second here.
Also, you definitely want to follow us on social media

at Small Town Murder on Instagram,

Small Town Pod on Facebook.

Find us, hang out with us,

keep coming back for more and more.

That said, Jimmy, hit me with the names

of the most wonderful people in the world

who would never, ever hire a hack pathologist

to frame us for murder.

Jimmy, hit me with the list right fucking now.

This week's executive producers are Jennifer Yates, Larry Butterfast. Happy birthday, Lairbear.
Happy birthday, Larry. Thanks for that, Jameson, bro.
Jake Young, Jordan Bennett, and Simon, they're moving back to England. Did you know that? Are they really? They are.
Oh, shit. We won't see them anymore.
No? We'll see them once in a while. They come down from Canada all the time.
Yeah. That's all right.
They're going to pop over to a couple before they go. Different weird accent.
That That's fine. Courtney Jadalee.
Jadalee? Jadalee. Jadalee.
Jadalee. I'll bet it's Jadalee.
Yiddalee. Yeah.
Erica Gerstenberger's sister, Sabina. I don't know her last name.
Erica didn't give that. Maybe it's Gerstenberger.
Well, I think Erica's married. We don't know.
We don't know. Also, Angie Pennington, Aaron Stevens, Christine Lewis, Ashley Williams, Tyler and Brittany

Jones, and Crystal My Purdy Newland.

Thank you all so much.

You're fantastic.

Thank you.

Other producers this week are Linda Maroney and Harry Balzac.

Oh.

Probably not.

I'm sure.

You get it.

Could be.

Or Linda's Harry Balzac.

I don't know.

Maybe it's Linda. She's got a nice sack on her.
Good for you, Larry. Linda.
Larry Ballsack will call her from now. Linda and Harry is Larry.
All right. Peyton Meadows, Janice Hill, Natalie Austinbaugh.
Happy birthday. Happy birthday.
Jenna wanted us to tell you. Julia Reynolds is holding space, James.
I don't know if you know. I'm annoyed by that fucking i don't even know what it means it doesn't mean a fucking thing and people have now begun saying it and i want to choke people when they say it it's the dumbest fuck i'm holding space for that you sound like me now fucking kick you uh roxanne ewoks hanging out with me too much i'll fucking kick you probably ro Roxanne with no last name.
Ewok with no last name. Sassy.
Apron Springs. Oh, strings.
Got you. All right.
Angelica Garpland. Seedorf.
Lacey Ward. Derek 89.
Claudia Berry. Nina with no last name.
Jason Ogden. Aziz.
Kadeem. Oh, Aziz with no last name.
Kadeem Hunt is another person. D-N-T.
D-N, not M. Renee Linton.
Hannah Goodman. Danae Upshaw.
M-C-1-1-8-Z. Paul Simon.
Jail. Jail.
Jaji. Paul Simon.
Very nice. Jaji Jaji? Is this the...
Did I not press enter and Jaji Jaji is another person? I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine.
Carrie Stewart. Rebecca with no last name.
Michael Pettit. Jessica Keefe.
Christopher Cox. Sinclair with no last name.
Kelsey Lang 810. Bill The Strand.
Nicole Huff. Lori with no last name.
Bailey Gallops. Shellis.
Shalee Turner. Renner.
Shalee or Shellis? Are any of these people holding space though, Jimmy? I think all of them are holding space for us. I'm so glad you said that, by the way.
In real life, Jimmy says shit like that all the time. On the show, he lets it slide off of.
In real life, he's like, I will fucking kick that person and that's why I hang out with him and he come on the show and I sound like a psychopath and he's like, yeah, that's crazy, man. I'm like, where the fuck are you? Where are you? It's just when people say things in my head i know can't take it we talk about it all the time well this is our private conversations are could you believe this fucking asshole those are every conversation we have sorry bane ross john would know last name amberley menjay menge amberley minge maybe amberley and her minge i don't know both of them amberley might be a dude.
She's bringing her minge with her. That's nice.
Who knows? Rose Bloom, Kristen S., Molly Crawford, Rena Dutt, Megan Bussing Todd, Kaiser Soze, Travis Hoffman, Jamie. He's coming out of hiding.
Yeah. Jamie Amo, Amo, Amo.
Delaney Ellison, I think. Maybe Delane.
I don't know. Captain Zod.
Joe Lynn. Julia Thompson.
Archanti. Archanti Hill.
Nicole with no last name. Joyce with no last name.
Jennifer Gasser. Deanna Katz.
Helper with no last name. Ali with no last name.
Mama Red. 89.
Michelle O'Coin. The Leaf Man.
The Leaf Man. 77.
Bernadette Danner, Shane Carl Rosini, Bernadette, Charmaine,

Laura Edward, Nicole Winkler, Jablues, all right, Gary Kida, Kida maybe, Jake Yeager,

Angelo Leonardo, Leonardo, Brian Atkinson, Liv the Kid, Francesca Curley, Curie, that's

what that is, Austin Duncan, Lisa with no last name, Cat P, that's fantastic. Beatriz Roas, Carrie Grooms Harvey, Joan, oh, don't do what that means.

Mimi did something for Aver and P.

Ollie with no last name.

Michelle Phillips.

Jacob Scrivener.

Scrivener.

Vane Ferry.

Suzanne Moore.

Joel Jolie.

Lair Fitzger.

Pfizer.

Shannon North. Pridge with no last name, Rach Adry, Zaneb, Zaneb, Esbahani, holy fuck, Zaneb, Jeff with no last name, Holly with no last name, Jamie Burns, David Gilbert, Brian Halyard, Jared with no last name, Lori Taylor.
Sean LaBeouf. Delis Gribben.
Chantel Johnson. Meredith Collins.
Liz Wilson. Ryan with no last name.
Rachel Kanig. Audra with no last name.
Sophie Warren. Blades.
Lindsay Ickes. Tatum Thompson.
Annie McCormick. Alyssa Polselli, Brenna Botsford, Aileen Quach,

Monica Wemus,

Harrison Ecott, Megan Alvarado,

Rob Davis, Mary Peters,

Amanda Neese, M4 CEO, Brian Smuck,

Brenda Hugh, Crystal with no last name,

Ashley Pasek, Gabby with no last name,

Stephanie with no last name, Alex

McCoggin, McCoggin.

McCoggin what? What do you put in your Coggin? That's it. That's the last name.
Alex McCoggin. McCoggin Alex.
All right. Heather Jeter.
Raymond. Remy.
Remy V. Maxim Dinov.
Timothy. Timothy.
Tiffany. Morovia.
Nicole Ware. William Jackson.
843-230. Grayson.
Sydney Tobias, Naomi Oleson, April Capaccio,

Monica Noakes, Danny Lee Tedder, Anna with no last name,

Amy Ninja, Erica Davis, Christy B, Chrissy B,

Jenna Fortune, Sharon Mokum, Jessica Eastman,

Brian Murphy, Sheila Jaggard, Adam Vines, Dave with no last name Eric Sohn, Rashad Stanford, Mel with no last name, Calista Begley, Jacob Parker, Jessica with no last name, Danica Schoenfeld Chelsea with no last name, Lauren Secco, Nate Thompson, Brittany Ernst and all of our patrons we love you Thank you so much everybody You. You fantastic, wonderful fucking bastards.
We love you so much. We can't wait to come out and see everybody this year.
And thank you for being patrons. And thank you for enjoying the crazy content we put out on there.
You're awesome. Fuck yeah.
We appreciate everything you do for us. Thank you so much.
And if you want to follow us on social media, very easy to do that. Shut up and give me murder dot com.
Drop down menu. It has all

that shit. Get in there.
Keep hanging

out with us. And until next week, everybody,

it's been our pleasure. Bye.

Bye. If you like small town murder, you can listen early and ad free now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr.
Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients. This was not an operation that was performed.
This was attempted murder. And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare.
With Wondery Plus, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love.

Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.
No, for sure he did it. Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime.

Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today.

Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before.

With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.