#552 - Too Many Dead Neighbors - Kerby, Oregon

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

Yay, choo-choo!

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.
My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host.

I'll see you next time. back to small town murder express yay choo choo oh yay indeed jimmy yay indeed my name is james petrogallo i'm here with my co-host i'm jimmy wissman thank you so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of small town murder express 10 pounds of murder in a two pound bag all aboard the murder train pulling away from the station here we go before we get started just want to let you know head over to shut up and give me murder.com not only can you get if you're listening before these happen tickets to the boston and new york live shows terrytown by the way is being filmed so yeah we're gonna use it for a bunch of different stuff so get your voice heard they're pretty close to sold out so you're pretty that's what i mean i don't.
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Get in there also because we're going to be announcing very soon here. Like next week, we're going to be announcing the 2025 tour dates, and they're going to go on sale.
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Thank you for buying them. So thank you.
We're real excited. We're going to go to a bunch of places we didn't get to this year.
Shut up and give me murder.com. Also, Patreon.com.
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This week, what you're going to get for Patreon is for crime in sports.

We're going to talk about this gross English football, soccer, sexual abuse scandal. It's pretty gross.
Think Penn State with a British accent. Penn State with T.
Think that. That's what we're going for there.
Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about this cult baby murder trial. Not really going to talk about the trial.
We're mainly going to talk about these people's insanity of their lifestyle. Polygamy and drinking pee.
And it's real weird stuff, weird stuff man we're going to talk all about all sorts of strange medical beliefs they have it's real weird we'll talk all about that and more patreon.com slash crime in sports that said i think it's time everybody let's do this i think it's time to clear the lungs. What do you say here? Let's all, arms to the sky.
Let's all shout, shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.
Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? All right.
We have to. We are going to Oregon this week.
Yeah. Out to Oregon, which is very nice.
And I think Portland is on our touring schedule next year again, which we love Portland, so that'll be fun. But we're not going to Portland for this episode.
We're going to Kirby, Oregon. Yeah.
Kirby with an E. Like a Nintendo guy.
A K-E-R, like Derby with a K. Yeah.
So Kirby, Oregon, Southwest, like extreme Southwestern Oregon near the California border. Coastal shit.
quite to the coast. It's inland.
It's very close to Cave Junction, which we did an episode there. That was the pollinator.
Remember that guy? Oh, yeah. The pollinator here, that's Cave Junction.
It's real close to that. Like their post office, I believe, is Cave Junction technically here.
So this is about four a half hours to Portland, if you take a straight shot up along the ocean. It is eight hours to Ontario, Oregon, which is our last Oregon episode.
It's literally as far away as two places could be in the state of Oregon. Eight hours across Oregon? Because one is, yeah, Ontario's at the extreme northeast, and this is the extreme southwest.
So it's just this long, long trip. That was episode 503, My Dead Mother Told Me To, which was obviously crazy.
You can tell by the title. This is in Josephine County.
Right. Which we've never heard before as a county.
Wyatt's wife. Population, and I don't know if this is seasonal or how this works, but it's anywhere from 201 to 628, somewhere in there.
Either way, real goddamn small. Yeah, it's a census-designated place.
It's not a big place at all and doesn't have a lot of municipal things happening. It's kind of like that sort of thing.
Median household income here, way lower than the national average. It's $69,000 in the rest of the country here, $37,219.
What's happening? Median home cost is $330,900. So how do those two things? It's got to be retirees, yeah? Some retirees, some people who kind of go out here to do their own thing kind of a thing.
It's a lot of, this is do-your-own- thing territory. This is a place you go when you're tired of people, essentially.
Which is kind of coincidental and ironic because that's the problem today that we have is people with other people that they try to get away from. A little bit of history here.
It's often listed in tourist guides as a ghost town, even though there's people here. Sure.
Because of the number of historic buildings left from back in the day, from the 1800s. They're just there.
Kirby came into existence in the 1850s. It was named for James Kirby, and there was a gold mining.
That's why they were here originally. It was northern California.
Yeah, it was northern California. They went up and— Who's Mr.
Kirby? James. James Kirby.
No, he's just a guy who was here. Oh, okay.
Just a guy hanging out. He had a business here, I guess, and came here early.
Important to the area. Important to the area here.
The original county seat was a place... They wanted it to be the county seat, basically.
Of course they did. That's what they were doing, because as we know, you've got to have those records.
That's the most important thing on the planet. Yeah, to have the records in your town.
We had no idea. The original county seat was a place called Sailor Diggings, which they eventually renamed Waldo, somehow a less attractive name than Sailor Diggings.
One of the polling places was listed as Kirby's Ranch when they were voting for this.

So I guess James Kirby and Samuel Hicks were partners in a general mercantile and supply business.

Hell yeah.

They were running a hardware business.

I know a couple of guys like that.

Seth and Saul and Deadwood, basically.

Then they called the town Kirbyville for the county seat race, and it was selected as the county seat in 1857.

They win the drawing.

Not anymore.

Then they changed it from Kirbyville to Napoleon because the county was Josephine, and they wanted Napoleon as the town.

Josephine, Napoleon.

Okay.

The new name was a stupid name and obviously not popular, being that you're thousands of miles from France. It's probably not going to be that popular.
And he's kind of a dick. And he's kind of a dick.
So they changed it back in the next legislative session here. They called it Kirbyville.
They called that years. And then finally, they just called it Kirby after a while.
They gave up. And then they lost the county seat to Grants Pass.
So there you go. That's how this went.
So this really hasn't gone well. They really fumbled everything.
Yeah. They started out with high hopes and it just all went downhill from there.
Shit did not work out. Reviews of this town.
There's only one review of this town that I could find because there's nobody here. I was shocked there was one review.
It's five stars, but yet it doesn't seem like five stars when you read it. It's weird.
Lived here my whole life is the first sentence. That says a lot.
it's five stars but yet it doesn't seem like five stars when you read it okay it's weird lived here my whole life is the first sentence that says a lot it's sketchy during the day and creep-tastic during the night both of those five stars yeah five it's not even nice during the day creepy it never gets better than sketchy that's fucking scary as shit sketchy anywhere from sketchy to creep-t Anywhere in that narrow window is what we're talking about. Creep-tastic kind of sounds like dangerous but fun.
Yeah, like, oh, look at them go. Like, crackheads are, like, having sword fights in the street.
You know, like, but good ones are, like, they're trained, you know, on guard. And they start going at each other.
They're having sword fights, but they're only using that roll inside the wrapping paper. That's it.
But they put like capes on and shit.

They really, really get into it.

Use the wrapping paper for the cape.

Obviously, yeah.

So they said, there are many lovely bridges under which to pump drugs into your veins.

That's nice.

And the friendly convenience store owners know that most of Kirby can't just drive into Cave Junction to get cheap groceries, so they price accordingly. It's okay.
Okay. It's crackheads and gougers now we're talking about.
Yeah, and there's gougers because people can't afford a car because they've pumped all their money into their vanes. Into their vanes.
Yeah, obviously. We've got a bus stop right in the middle of town, which is convenient, and you might even meet a homeless person or tweaker while waiting for said bus.
Pretty river view. That's great.
Five stars. How is that five stars? They said one thing positive.
Pretty river view. The last sentence.
Everything else negative. You might get a great river view as you stare at it and get a great story from a horrible human being.
As you watch a man pump $12 worth of meth into his veins. Things to do here.
The Acorn Festival. Okay.
Oh, boy. Now, what do you think happens at the Acorn Festival? I imagine there are chipmunks and chipmunks.
Dude, I'm laughing because that is exactly what I pictured. I thought this shit was going to be based around squirrels for some reason i don't know why alvin and the chipmunks sing the squirrels and turkeys and chipmunks and shit like that it's not though it's a family-friendly kid-friendly festival obviously of course now the acorn festival that's where all the tits are out everybody just gets hornyny going on there.
Balls out, everybody. Acorn Festival time.
It says, fun and educational event celebrating acorns. Okay.
Learn how to process acorn. You process them? Into what? Do they make acorn butter or something? Maybe.
I don't know. My woods is all fucking giant acorns.
I've never thought to process them. I just go, oh, the turkeys are going to love these.
It's from an oak, right? Yeah, a red oak. Well, any oak, but I have red oaks in my yard.
We'll gather them up and put them on the food pile for the deer and shit, and they eat them. I don't know.
I never thought to process them. Taste traditional acorn mush cooked in a basket.
Mush. What? Okay.
could you have any less attractive way to say something as we're making acorn mush in a basket in a basket's not the what i the thing i want to eat out of either acorn mush in a basket it's just the takeaway size of a trough yeah i'm disgusted by this. A scarecrow contest.

Couldn't say that for some reason.

With a $100 prize.

Oh, bigger bucks.

You're going to probably put more than $100 into the materials to make them.

Then there's an acorn feast and more.

I didn't know that you could roast.

I don't know.

Deep fry.

What do you do?

A basket weaver named Lena Hurd will cook acorn mush in a basket. I assume she weaved herself.
That's all I can imagine here. That's it.
And then there's also the Kirbyville Museum, which I read a review of it, and they said it's basically a house with some old shit in it, and it costs $6, and it's really not worth it. There's a saw blade.
There's that. They said it looked pretty neat, but they said $6 per adult, but they were nice to them anyway very friendly so that's good to know that said let's talk about some murder everybody shall we do it all right let's talk about a man first here uh donald lee easley e-a-s-l-e-y easley he's born in 1949 uh he is uh he was in vietnam Vietnam vet.
He did two tours, as a matter of fact. Went back? Went back, yeah.
Oh, boy. He's disabled at this point, technically.
I mean, I think he gets, you know. Sure.
It seems like everybody in this neighborhood is disabled. Like, not disabled like they can't do anything.
Disabled like that's their job is job is getting, they get a check. So, and I mean, I don't know if that's from war things or other things.
Because everybody's also an ex-truck driver here, which is another. Everybody's an ex-soldier slash truck driver in this town.
A lot of truck drivers are disabled by way of sitting on their fucking ass. It happens.
No, it's true. Yeah, they get all sorts of cardiovascular problems and clots and shit.
It'll fuck your deep vein thrombosis and shit. Oh, you will be thrombosed to the max.
Forget about your thrombosis. You have no idea.
All kinds of horrible shit. So Donald's an army veteran, two tours, disabled.
He's a little guy, too, 5'5", 130 pounds, little guy.

Wow.

Little tiny guy here.

Come, we'll start about 2009-ish, he's living with his elderly mother.

I believe her name is Clarice.

Their father, his father's been dead for years.

Yeah.

And so he takes care of his mother here.

So, you know, 2009, that would make him in that area 60. So she's got to be in her 80s.
So we're talking about an old lady here. And they live, it's a very rural area.
Now he's got a couple of issues with the law, but nothing major, well, until 2009. One is I found, this is crazy, I don't know what this means, violation of basic rule he was arrested for the golden rule was he not nice to somebody like what is that about he didn't puff puff give like he was fucking bogarted some shit I don't know what happened but that was in 1999 he lost some manners so it took him 50 years but manners went out the fucking window here.
Let that door drop on somebody behind him? I don't know. Then he was arrested for violating maximum weight limits.
He's 5'5". That has to be trucking, right? Yeah.
I would imagine. Yeah.
Didn't weigh, something like that. 2001.
Then in 2004, again, violating maximum weight limits. And then he was in trouble for failure.
What is this? Failure to carry PUC permit. Okay.
PUC regulates transportation industries such as taxis, limousines, charter services, and more. They also license trucking.
I think it's truck trucking so i think he was another trucking thing uh then he has some speeding problems a little bit in like 2007 but that's no big deal so the guy is it hasn't been like any kind of menace to society no he's just bending the rules so that he can make his cash which i mean every trucker if you looked at their oh god their log can't be perfect well if you're constantly, there's got to be some infractions. There just has to be.
You can't get away scot-free forever. You drove a few minutes over your fucking 15 or whatever it is they tell you you can drive.
Something, yeah. So he's living here with his mom, and his mom said he's terrific, the best guy you could have.
He takes care of her, takes care of the house, takes care of everything. In his 60s.
Yeah yeah he's doing just fine and uh i mean it's got to be healthier than her i would think so he's yeah but 60 and still managing that oh yeah that sounds terrible i don't want to be doing that but yeah a lot of yard work he's doing like a lot yeah like way too much 60s doing my own shit is going to be hard enough and doing somebody else's too that's That's a lot. Well, he lives with his mother, so he's just doing his.
Okay. He lives there too, so he's doing all the.
It's only one house. He doesn't have to go to his mom's house and cut her lawn too.
That would suck. Oh, Jesus.
Yeah. That would suck.
So everybody in the neighborhood says he's kind of the neighborhood watchdog. Okay.
He keeps an eye on shit. Sure.
You know, if there was some weirdo there, he'll tell everybody, everybody there's some weird guy over here he'll call the cops all the time on bullshit and which is annoying wait to hear how many times he called the cops in a five-year period you're gonna be i'm surprised they didn't come to his house and take his phone away like that's how many fucking times like give me that and smash it on the ground no this. Just abusing it.
You stop that. That is not okay.
So 2009 here, he's got a next door neighbor, right next door. The houses are not that far away, named Kenneth Vaughn.
Now, basically, they're fighting over a three or four foot area of property. This is mine.
No, it's mine. No, it's mine.
That's in between their houses. A fence is erected at some point later that we'll talk about.
Oh, wow. Because this property line is an issue.
Okay. Apparently, now Clarice here, Donald's mom, says that Kenneth, the neighbor, stopped taking his medications and he was crazy.
That's what she says. Other neighbors didn't really say that.
Like, half the neighborhood thinks Donald's an asshole and half of them think he's a good guy. There is no consensus as to whether Donald's a problem or his neighbor's a problem.
Everybody's like, well, I don't know. That guy's kind of an asshole.
Yeah, but that Kenneth's a good guy. And they all kind of go back and forth, which is odd.
So there's no clear good guy, bad guy scenario here. It's just two neighbors that fight all the time.
Their relationship has the town divided. It is.
The whole street's divided. Apparently, some people think that Donald is jealous of Kenneth for some reason.
So he's just jealous. I don't know if he's got a nicer truck or a, I don't know what he's got.
That's doesn't have to take care of his mom. I don't know.
They live in the same, they live next door to each other. So how, how much better can anyone else be than anybody else who lives next door to him? You know? Yeah.
Generally everybody's neighbors are about similar. Generally even.
Yeah. Yeah.
You might go's a nice car he just got i like that but you're not like i will kill that motherfucker that's fucking guy's got shutters instead of blinds look at him look at him with his fucking wooden shutters like he's what are those plantation plantation shutters the guy's putting up jesus christ why do we have why do we have blinds babe

this is bullshit look god look how poor we look god damn it so anyway in 2009 in november there is a apparently a an argument that they have in the side yard that escalates to the point where we're not sure who draws first. Oh.
But we're dealing with two armed men. Gunfire.
Having a gunfight in the yard. Wow.
But only Donald gets a shot off. But the other guy had a gun on him.
Okay. And had it out and everything.
Yeah. So Donald ends up shooting Kenneth Vaughn and killing him.
Oh, no. Kills him.
Shoots him to death. One shot? Several shots? We're not sure.
I'm not sure of the amount of shots here because this didn't get a ton of play because Donald ends up saying, well, he had a gun too. It's self-defense.
Okay. And in the end, it goes through the courts and everything like that, and the grand jury, they bring him to a grand jury to see if Donald's going to be charged, and the grand jury says that he acted in self-defense.
So we move along. Well, we move along when he shot his 60-year-old neighbor.
God damn. Self-defense moving on, okay? Okay.
So now the house is empty next next door which he was probably thrilled with she can't take care of herself yeah well no no i mean he's in the he stays with his mom oh okay kenneth vaughn's house is empty because he's dead shot okay yeah kenneth is dead so he's fucking dead and he's gone so donald's living there with his mom and then new neighbors move in god, they're going to move in eventually. Yeah, I suppose.
But that realtor better tell them. The guy that's selling this.
They don't. That's the thing.
They don't know for a while why that house is vacant. Is that right? They have no idea that, yeah, your new neighbor killed your old resident here.
So be careful. The estate that you're buying this from is an estate because the guy's dead.
Maybe don't worry about that three or four feet of property over here. We've settled that beef.
Yeah, that beef was settled with gunfire. So this is Laron, L-A-R-O-N, Laron he pronounces it, Laron Justin Estes, or E-S-T-E-S.
He's 59 years old, and he's got a common-law wife, I guess you could call it here. Her name is Barbara Hicks, and they say they're married, but they're not technically married.
They've been together forever. Now, Laren is also an Army veteran.
Oh, that should be great. Also an Army veteran.
He is a former, he's a trucker, and he's a former industrial welder. He's done hard shit.
War, trucking, industrial welding. Yeah.
This guy has lived a life. And at this point, he is also disabled, technically.
He gets disabilities as well. He fucking should be.
Yeah. He's done way more work.
in any five-year period of should be yeah he's done way more

work in any five-year period of his life he's done more work than either of us have ever done

with our hands like you know combined combined combined yeah obviously combined this guy's

laying down thick industrial beads of weld that's crazy impressive shit eight eight hours a day or

more or more yeah um so yeah laren you said he's a he's a trucker also as we'll find out and that

Thank you. Massive shit.
Eight hours a day or more. Or more, yeah.
So, yeah, Laren, like I said, he's a trucker also, as we'll find out.

So you would think they would get along.

And he and Donald, at first, they do get along.

Pals, yeah.

Oh, they get along.

Number one, they're both in the Army.

They're around the same age.

They did the same things.

So they start getting along. Like, I mean, the wife here,bara she makes strawberry jam from scratch and gives it to all the neighbors and you know everybody thinks they're nice people and yeah they hang he hangs out socializes with donald or there between the properties yeah they have a good old fucking time here um now he has some some criminal record as well here we'll talk about laran um we'll start in 2011 and go backwards uh 2011 possession of more than an ounce of marijuana i mean that's oregon that's oregon who you're in the middle of the fucking nowhere in oregon who gives a shit you should unless you have like a even if you have a garbage bag over i wouldn't give a fuck if you have a speedboat packed with it.
Go ahead. Knock yourself out.
But I guess over an ounce you're not allowed to have was the thing, the way it worked. Then in 2011, right before that, or this was the same day, I think he got pulled over is the problem.
Operating a vehicle without driving privileges. So just no license, just out driving around.
There's not allowed. Nope.
July 2011, operating a vehicle without driving privileges. 2009, failure to obey traffic control device, so blowing a red light is what that is.
Then in 2008, operating a vehicle without driving privileges. Again, he just doesn't have a license and drives.
He doesn't give a shit. Then 2006, criminal driving while suspended.
So I think they revoked it and he just kept driving from the sounds of everything. In 2004, assault in the fourth degree.
Not sure the details of it. How many degrees are there? I didn't know there was four.
That seems like a lot. That's a lot.
That's a lot of degrees. That's way down the line.
That's like, what is that? Spit? I was just going to say spit. Did he flick a booger at him maybe? I don't know what he did.
What kind of assault? Did he eye fuck somebody? Kick dirt on him like a manager who's upset with a call at home plate. I have no idea.
Got a gander at somebody's titties. Something, man.
It's weird. Assault in the fourth degree.
2003 in April, driving under the influence of intoxicants. 2001, speeding.
Then we'd see, I think when he was in his trucker phase, 2000, exceeding maximum speed for trucks. So I think that would be.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a rule there.
There's a trucker there. Driving uninsured in 1999.
1992, failure to use seatbelts. Whatever the fuck that.
Wow. 87 DWS misdemeanor.
I don't know what the hell that driving while. Driving while suspended? Maybe.
Misdemeanor. I don't know.
87. Shit-faced.
Driving while shit-faced. Is that bigger than influence? Yeah, what's worse? Influenced or shit-faced.
So that's, you know, these guys have both had their dumb, nothing big obviously. There's nothing in there that would give you a pause.
A lot of traffic infractions. A lot of traffic.
A lot of just kind of flouting of, I don't give a shit about conventional shit or whatever. whatever i'm gonna move to the middle of nowhere in a town with 200 people in it and live here and do whatever fuck it i'm not dealing with it anymore because he lived in cave junction before he moved here cave junctions a little bit bigger of a town not too much now um okay now the problem is once they start having beef Donald and Laren, it's over the same three to four feet of property.
Oh, God damn it. It's over the same.
Apparently, whoever the fuck shows the person who buys Laren and Kenneth's house what their property is.

They say it's in one place, and Donald insists that it's in a different place.

I mean, you can solve this with a survey.

Yeah, I don't think anyone's doing that.

It's more fun to just argue.

Is it?

No, that's what I mean.

These people are nuts.

They're all assholes, everybody.

Donald doesn't give a fuck now.

He thinks he's right because he went to court about it it uh and and they they justified him they yeah they let him go um apparently okay donald put up these security lights and this is before kenneth moved in these it was like a prison yard basically the whole house had crazy huge lights on the big Square ones. The big fucking spotlights everywhere.
Spotlights, yeah. So it was for his mom.
His mom was very paranoid about people coming to the house and whatever. So she wanted to be able to see the entire yard at night.
So they basically put these lights in so it was like daylight at their house at night. Now one of these lights would go right into Laren's bedroom.
Laren and Barbara's bedroom. And they couldn't fucking sleep basically.
They tried to put up like plastic over their windows but it was just getting blasted by these floodlights every night. Apparently they asked Donald could he please maybe point them in a different direction.
Do, do me a solid. I get the security, but one of them's going right in our window.
So can we please not have that? I don't give a fuck, just that one. Yeah, and apparently that didn't happen.
So Laren went over and just unplugged the lights one night. Which he couldn't, I can't take it anymore.
You laid there and you went, I can't not sleep like this anymore. And you went out and went, duh.
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I'm surprised he didn't shoot them out. So I was going to say, wouldn't a BB gun have solved this? That's totally.
Well, he's, don't worry. He has a BB gun and he'll use it later for other purposes now.
And this is, again, the same thing as Kenneth. Donald has his supporters in the neighborhood and Laren has his supporters in the neighborhood.
Who the fuck would support Donald on this? Even after Donald shot a guy, half the people were like, Kenneth kind of deserved it. So the people who are pro-Donald are still pro-Donald, and all the people that were pro-Kenneth have now moved their loyalty over to Laren.
That's how this has worked. So shit's fucked up.
Laren and Barbara, they were just so annoyed, they considered, why don't we just move? Yeah. But they looked into things, and they had just moved into their house, and they bought it, and it wasn they couldn't do it they would lose their asses so yeah you know it's just donald never thought of moving once he was staying there he's not moving shit so the apparently barbara says that and tells a lot of people this at the time and writes in in a journal too and everything else that apparently donald regularly would walk the property line back and forth like a century or some shit like like a like a rifle over his shoulder i picture like he's guarding night watchman yeah yeah a century he's a fucking as absolutely so they would and he would be yelling cursing and threatening to kill all the neighbors.
I'll kill all these fucking people because what she said, he'd be yelling because they would not be his friends. Oh, my God.
So he is really taken being left out wrong. You didn't invite him over for your barbecue.
This is how this is how he chooses to express that dismay is to walk back and forth full of people like him because we have a friend in oregon you and i yeah yeah who dealt with this exact same thing minus the the stalking and such absolutely they were aiming lights right at his fucking house yes i would lose my shit man it's so dude people who live in rural areas sometimes move to the rural areas like this like real i'm not talking i'm talking a 200 person town in the middle of nowhere they do this to get away from people but they buy a house still near other houses and then but they don't want those lights in their window it's like you're doing what you fucking hate yes you're being you moved here to be antisocial and now you you're going to be actually. Usually that other antisocial thing.
Yeah, totally. Now, Donald calls the cops constantly, too.
So he walks back and forth on the property line, yelling, screaming, cursing that no one wants to be his friend. And then he calls the cops.
Throughout about a five-year period here, a couple years with Kenneth and then coming up here with Laron, Donald called the sheriff's department over 200 times. 200 times.
That's several a month, man. Think about that.
That's so many. I swear to God, if I was a fucking sheriff, I would come to his fucking house and say, listen, unless somebody is dying, you do not call me or I'm going to come here and beat the shit out of you every time.
Almost once a week, man. Think 200 times.
That's ridiculous, man. That's an asshole.
I'm sorry. When you're calling the cops and saying, hey, it's me again.
Yeah. It's fucked up.
When you say hello and they go donald yeah that's a problem you know you yeah you can't you can't and they're taking the phone away going it's that fucking donald again jesus christ hey donald how's it going oh your neighbor's doing something big shocker okay can't believe it so donald even told the cops that i hope i don't have to kill this guy about Laron.

He said, I don't hope I don't have to kill him like I did with Kenneth. I hope that doesn't happen.
I hope he doesn't push it to that point. Hope he doesn't make me.
He told the cops that. So that's kind of a foreshadow that you don't really want to give the cops.
I hope I don't have to commit a fucking horrible felony. So 2013

is what I like to call

the year of escalation.

This is when it really...

2012, you got some lights

unplugged, people calling the cops, marching up

and down the property line.

2013 is when the gauntlet is thrown

down and it is like, listen,

Laren isn't taking...

Oh, there's several events. Laren isn't taking

Donald shit. Donald ain't taking Laren shit anymore.

So apparently

I'm not going to be a good one. and it is like, listen, Laren isn't taking, oh, there's several events.
Laren isn't taking Donald shit. Donald ain't taking Laren shit anymore.
So, apparently one thing that pretty much all the neighbors agreed on is Laren, they didn't like his junk pile. Okay.
He is redoing a lot of the house, Laren and his wife. Okay, yeah.
He's doing a lot, so he's pulling crap out and pulling junk out and doing stuff like that. He's

digging a koi pond.

How much room does this guy have?

Apparently a good amount.

A good amount of land here.

He's doing

all this and while you're

in a remodel, you have shit

basically. A lot of people

will have a dumpster brought to their house

to throw all the shit in so their

house doesn't look like the fucking Beverly Hill

I'm not sure. you're in a remodel you have shit basically yeah a lot of people will have a dumpster brought to their house to throw all the shit in so their house doesn't look like the fucking beverly hillbillies and or back behind the fence on the side somewhere like that fucking vanities and old tile he just has a massive junk pile in the yard wow it's just a massive junk pile that just grows by the fucking day.
And the neighbors are not thrilled about that. They're like, we have to look at Laren's shit junk pile.
Yeah. So that annoys everybody, and Donald especially.
Good God. Oh, he's right next door.
You're besmirching him for sure at that point. Now, Laren at some point also, there's an apple tree that is, I guess, somewhere near the property line.
We're not sure exactly where the tree falls on property. If a tree falls on a disputed property line, does anyone hear it? You know what I mean? Does it make a sound? It makes an argument.
It makes an argument. So apparently, Laren cut the apple tree down for no apparent reason.

It wasn't dead or, you know, he just cut it down.

Didn't want it.

It's on his property?

We don't know.

That's the thing.

It's kind of straddling, so we're not sure.

All right.

He cut it down.

The mom here, Donald's mom, super pissed, said it made nice apples.

Why did he cut it down?

So they had a huge argument over that.

You cut down my apple tree. No, it's my apple tree.
No, it's my apple tree no it's my apple tree okay um apparently donald would use his leaf blower at odd hours of the night that's instigating two in the morning you just go out with his leaf blower and the only reason to do that is to piss off your neighbors that's it this is the worst yard uh yard utensil on the planet. It's the loudest thing ever.
It's impossible to sleep through. Yeah.
Have you ever seen AP Bio with Glenn Howerton? Yeah. Okay.
When he's fighting with his neighbor, Christopher Lloyd, and Glenn Howerton's in there trying to mack on this girl in there and put a movie on and they're going to get it going going and then christopher lloyd's just in the front leaning against his car with his fucking alarm in his hand just turning it on and off all its eye he goes just testing out my alarm because they're in a big dispute and that's what this reminds me of it's just being petty pissing match yeah yeah doing shit on purpose to piss the other person off. Now Laren has dogs that bark

all the time oh second worst sound on the planet well yeah reason is when you hear what kind of their chihuahuas too chihuahua barks and they're so rapid not only that laren and barbara to get some extra income because they're on disability, social security, that sort of thing, they decided to start breeding and raising and selling chihuahuas for some extra income. So there's points where there's 30 chihuahuas over there.
Oh, Jesus God. Imagine that cacophony of 30 chihuahuas barking.
Slingshot and Drano meatballs can't be acquired fast enough. Oh, my God.
No shit. So, anyway, it's, it's, their piss is obviously Donald off a lot.
Yeah, there's got to be a conversation happening. Well, they also have pet problems we'll talk about.
Oh, my God.

So what they do, they didn't have the proper permits to be breeding chihuahuas. Of course not.
Now, when Donald calls the cops on them and the people come out, they find that they are in perfectly good conditions. They're not being bred in bad conditions.
They probably could have got a permit. If they're doing everything by the book, they just don't have a permit for them.
So the animals aren't't being abused or anything but still they're they don't have you have to have a permit to breed fucking chihuahuas yeah so there's that um so now you know donald's like haha yeah i got him in trouble right now laren doesn't like cats donald's mom has somewhere in the neighborhood of between 20 and 30 cats. Of course.
For my sake. Nobody's normal in this neighborhood.
That's the point. So she's got 30 cats.
That's being abused, right? That's too many cats, I would say, for anybody. You shouldn't, anyway.
I mean, you can gather as many as you want. You can many as you as you can hold out a can of tuna for as long as you want probably they can they have that many down at the humane society so you can do it you're allowed yeah so apparently only a couple of them are outdoor cats and oh god only a couple of them so that's imagine the litter boxes in there.
Hopefully. Hopefully the litter boxes.
Yeah. Now, what Laren would say, the cops, the cops, the cats keep coming.
It would be really funny if it was the cops for what I'm going to say. The cops keep coming onto my property and shitting in my vegetable garden.
It would be very different than the cats come over and shit in my vegetable garden. Yeah.
a guy in full uniform pants down squatting like somebody whole utility belt around yeah like holding it up by the belt that's what i figured so that's so laren and barbara would complain that they have so many cats they get into the garden and then donald and his mother would say that's not true. These cats don't go on your property.
Meanwhile, they're outdoor cats. They go wherever the fuck they want.
There's no, they don't know of a property line. Cat shit in my vegetable garden.
Your cats are coming in my vegetable garden. That's happening.
No other way it's happening. And he sees them too.
They see them wandering around their yard and shit like that and uh yeah so they would do that they get into the garden all the time um so this there's

no legal thing here so that just escalates the argument um uh laran at one point put up a giant

plastic like black plastic barrier yeah to block the light coming from the security lights

because unplugging it wasn't a permanent solution apparently yeah just got plugged back in i guess

Thank you. plastic barrier to block the light coming from the security lights.
Because unplugging it wasn't a permanent solution, apparently. Yeah, because it just got plugged back in, I guess.
So he puts up like 20-foot high black plastic, like a giant fucking wall between the two houses of black plastic. So they can see that.
Yeah. So then Donald installed another light that shined around that to get onto the property.
Yeah, just to be a dick. So Donald would start, he'd go out, he had a diesel truck that was very loud.
He'd go out in the middle of the night and just start it up and leave it running for an hour. Just an hour.
While he leaf blows probably. God damn it.
So they're obviously trying to piss each other off. especially Donald is definitely trying to piss Laren off.
I don't know if Laren's trying to piss Donald off or just retaliating when things get done. That's or trying to save his own sanity by blocking him out.
And that's what I mean. And that's the dispute in the neighborhood is whose fault this is.
And, you know, when there's two grown men involved here, this is grumpy old men taken to a fucking extreme.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you know,

those two were just

put a fish in the car

and they joke around

and, hey, asshole,

and, hey, shithead,

and, you know.

And break up the ice on his roof

so when he knocks

or slams the door

and all that shit like that.

Yeah, it all falls down.

He just ran the hose up there, right?

Yeah, he did.

Yeah, that's all.

Yeah, she sprayed the hose up there.

So they were doing, like, 12-year-old pranks. These people are trying to make each other's lives miserable.
Right. Someone then shot out Donald's lights.
There you go. And he suspected Laren did it.
No shit. Good guess.
Good guess. The guy who unplugged them and put plastic up to hide from them.
He probably lost it one night, couldn't take it anymore. Yeah.
So Donald calls the sheriff on Laren again. And Laren says, I'm going to shoot out the lights.
Prove it. Yeah.
There's no way to prove it. So that's that.
I mean, it's his word against his word. Who knows? Could have been anybody.
A lot of people pissed off at him in those stupid lights. Donald had 13 security lights aimed at Laren's windows at one point all just aimed at he was just going on amazon fucking buying oh that one's strong how many watts is that holy shit how many lumens let's get it wow look at that i could land a plane with that fucking thing awesome so um apparently someone don't know who wounded two of donald's mom's cats with a pellet gun.
Not killed them, but wounded them with a pellet gun. So obviously they blame Laren for that because...
And that's a dick move. You don't shoot people's animals with a pellet gun.
It's not their fault. They're cats.
They're going to go where they go. If they're let outside, they're going to go wherever they go.
And especially if there's nice soft dirt to shit in that's where they're gonna go shit there's no other way of avoiding you had a sandbox in your backyard it's just full of cat shit well the cat shit cats from everywhere will find it oh yeah oh yeah i remember in elementary school it was like that was before anybody went in the sandbox you better fucking sift that shit first and throw the cat shit out of it. Cause it's going to be in there.
Wherever there are little drag marks and a mound, there's shit beneath that. There's for sure shit.
I think in elementary school, there was like a little shovel by it, like a little plastic shovel to like get cat shit out of it. I think it was.
I think they learned to like one of those like rake things, like a, like a beach set. Like a beach set that comes in a bucket, basically.
It was like one of those next to it so you could fucking get the shit out of it. Pull the shit out before you go down the slide and land in a mountain of cat shit.
It's a giant mountain of cat shit. So, yeah, you don't do that.
You go after the people, not the animals for doing that. Laren denies harming animals because he loves animals.

He goes, I'm an animal lover.

I wouldn't shoot fucking animals.

I wouldn't shoot cats.

I got so many chihuahuas.

Look at all the chihuahuas I got here.

Now, who knows, too?

If they were letting the cats wander around the neighborhood, maybe the cats, maybe they were shitting in somebody else's idea.

I feel like none of the neighbors here are super friendly or whatever.

Maybe they might be friendly, but I feel like all of them are going to be standoffish when pushed. You know, possibly what it feels like here.
So, yeah, the animal control is called again about Laren not having licensing to breed dogs. Donald contacted the media and animal control to try to like the local media to try to shame Laren, apparently.
Animal Control took some of the dogs, and Laren was fined for ordinance violations, and he couldn't breed dogs anymore because now they were watching him. And he's got too many on his property at once.
There's probably a law for dogs, but not for cats. I don't know.
There's got to be a law for cats, too. I suppose, but I guess they don't bark, so you don't know they're there.
Yeah. But when it's feed time, it's so loud.
Holy shit. If you walked into a house with 20 cats, besides the smell, you'd probably see four cats.
Yeah. The rest of them would be hiding in places looking at you.
You might see four cats and 12 sets of eyes. Yes.
So, anyway, yeah, he gets fine, Laren. Apparently at one point there was some kind of argument and Donald's mom was outside and she was over on the other property and arguing.
So Laren sprayed her with a hose, which is the equivalent of spraying a water bottle at a cat to me. You like cats so much? Here you go.
I'll treat you like one. He hit her with the hose.
He hit her with the hose. So Donald came over, threatened to kill Laren for that.
Okay. Spray my mom with a hose.
Donald would talk shit about Laren every fucking where he could to everybody he could. He called not only the Sheriff's Department, Animal Control.
He called every government agency he could get to try to get him in trouble. He called the newspapers, the fucking television, everybody.
He called the EPA about a polluted well on Laren's property. He called the EPA, for Christ's sake.
I wouldn't even know how to get their number. I mean, I guess you could probably Google it, but is there a branch in every state? I don't know.
He said, hello, EPA? My neighbor's got a polluted well. Yeah.
Okay. And then at one point, I guess, someone removed a property stake from Laren's land.
Obviously, probably Donald here. By the way, the polluted well, the reason why it's still polluted is apparently the way it works is Laren would need to use Donald's property to get shit out of the well because it's the shit in the well.
But Donald won't let Laren use his property. So he won't let him use it, but then he'll call the cops on him and say it's polluted.
So it's important. Someone removed a property stake.
So a surveyor had to come out to redo it. And while the surveyor's out there, he goes, man, he goes, yeah, your neighbor, that's some kind of something there, huh? And he goes, oh, yeah, that guy's a pain in the ass.
He goes, well, hopefully you don't end up like the last guy. And Laren went, huh? They didn't tell.
Nobody told him. This is how he found out? Nobody, none of the neighbors, none of the fucking real estate agent, nobody said, hey, last guy who lived here had beef with him, he shot to death.
No one said that to Laren. So Laren was like, what the fuck? Are you kidding me? He goes, oh, yeah, oh yeah he shot this kenneth vaughn fucking shot him to death man he goes but he said they claim self-defense and all that so laran was a little scared puzzled yeah a little puzzled a little put off he didn't realize then right after that he receives a letter laran does from the VA hospital, the Veterans Administration Hospital.

Yeah.

It is from a psychiatrist at the local Veterans Administration Hospital.

Uh-huh.

Now, you ever gotten a letter from a psychiatrist at the VA before?

I haven't.

A cold letter from a psychiatrist is, uh, that's weird.

This isn't someone he's seeing or anything like that.

This psychiatrist is sending Laren a letter cautioning him that, hey, there's a guy named Donald who apparently is your neighbor. Basically, when he talks to me, Donald, because Donald goes there for therapy, he just threatens to kill you the whole time.
That's all it is. It's just, I'm going to kill that son of a bitch for an hour.
So you should probably.

He just left.

Of him.

Just.

Hey, motherfucking you.

That's it.

No, no.

Threatening to kill him.

Not just motherfucking him.

Talking about ways he's going to kill him.

Should I blow up his house?

Should I shoot him?

Should I do like.

So, yeah.

So much so that a psychiatrist actually has to go outside of the confidentiality to warn somebody about it yeah yeah i don't know if the proper thing is to warn the actual person or if you're supposed to go to the authorities with that but i'm not a doctor so i don't know yeah when you're when you're gonna harm others like that i and i mean if you're especially specific i think it's authorities i don't think it's. Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to send an unsolicited letter to the person.
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And now back to the show hey just to warn you um and this guy the psychiatrist though advised him to contact the police immediately to try to get a restraining order because he said this guy it's escalating your job that's i mean he told you they're gonna believe you he said but i would try to get well he but I would try to get a restraining order against him, he said, because he goes, this guy, it's escalating how much he's talking about you.

So just to let you know, you know, you got issues here.

Yeah.

So Lahren goes to the court to try to get a restraining order with this letter going, I got a letter from a fucking shrink saying, you know, this blah, blah, blah.

The judge wouldn't allow the letter from the VA into evidence. HIPAA? Is that why? Due to rules of evidence, I guess.
I don't know what those rules were. And psychiatrists couldn't be at the hearing.
They couldn't make it there. So the restraining order was denied.
Wow. So yeah, he can't get a restraining order okay so what he does instead is laran gets a big giant piece of plywood yeah and fucking writes the word murderer on it with an arrow pointing to fucking donald's house and he's got it on his own property he puts it like on his house with a fucking arrow pointing over there.
Murder that way. So I don't know.
Maybe that'll keep him from murdering me. So that seems like kind of angering the hive, I would think, but okay.
Certainly pissing on it. Donald extremely pissed about the sign.
Real mad about that. Doesn't want to be called a murderer.
Yeah, he reached out to the media again and asked for help. Hey, will you, you know, shame this guy? They're like, but didn't you kill your neighbor that lived there? Aren't you technically a murderer? I mean, you're a killer at least.
I mean, murder's a legal term. Yeah.
That's not really a technical term, but you killed him for sure. How about killer? Why don't we make a- Yeah, because murder is like a charge, is like a charge right yes murder is a description yeah exactly murder is a legal definition whereas killing is just you fucking person was alive and now they're not anymore you fucked that up so because of your actions yeah because of your actions then there's the fence from hell as they called it what is it okay no man's land out there some fucking barbed wire that's it and it's it seems like no one knows who put this fence up, by the way.
One side says the other side put it up. One side says the other side put it up.
Back and forth. They had to have contributed to it both, right? I think they're building it from both sides.
I really believe that that's what's going on. It's like the Berlin Wall.
There's different shit going on both sides of this shit the it consists of in addition to mainly black plastic but to hold the black plastic all together is uh pallets chicken wire barbed wire whatever shit they can find yeah to make a barrier basically a bunch of shit that if you crawled across it cut up. Exactly.
Yeah. Now, Lahren says Donald built it and it's on his property.
So he tells him, move that fucking fence onto your property. And Donald said, no, not doing it.
It's your fence. So Lahren started to fear for his life because he got that letter.
He's starting to get freaked out.

August 30, 2013, local police still haven't taken any action. They just come out there and they go, these two idiots again.
Cut it out, assholes, and then they get back in their car. A physical altercation breaks out here.
Apparently, they get into an argument. And Laren, this is according to documents here, grabbed Donald by the hair, punched him in the face, and kicked him in the head and the sides.
He beat the shit out of him, is what that is. What he did is win.
He grabbed him, punched him, knocked him down, then stomped him. That's what he did.
Kicked the piss out of the guy. Apparently, this caused pretty good injuries to Donald here, taking an ass whooping, and made him fear for his life, he said, Donald.
He was terrified now. Yeah, he lost the fight.
He's bad. He made a match is what he did.
For sure. When you're 5'5", a buck 30, you should probably not be starting physical altercations with people.
Reconsider things, man. With industrial welders.
Maybe not. Don't fight union

members. Yeah.
No.

And he's like, Laren's like a fucking hippie

too. He like smokes weed and he's

digging a koi pond. Right.

I don't think this is normal behavior

here. So an attorney

told Donald to get a restraining order and

they were basically, they got,

they ended up getting a restraining order. Donald did

against Laren because

they were successful using the elderly

laws because he was like 64 and Lahren was 59. So he wasn't that old yet.
I think he's a year younger than him. I think it's, this would be 60, in 2000, he'd be like 63 at this point.
I think he's a year younger than him. So that makes it.
That makes him three years younger than. Oh, is he? OK.
But there it's on one guy's on one side of 60 and one guy's on the other side of 60, which makes it. Meanwhile, one was a sophomore while the other was a senior.
What are we talking about? They both went to Vietnam. They're the same age.
They fucking ate in the same cafeteria. This is we's legal yeah we's legal so anyway this this he gets a restraining order and now it's even worse now so Laron wanted one couldn't get one Donald got one against him yeah and like we said the neighbors here are like Jesus Christ um you know this is nuts like The whole thing is crazy.
And like we said, the neighbors here are like, Jesus Christ, you know, this is nuts. Like the whole thing is crazy.
And they're starting to just blame Donald because they're like, OK, well, this is two guys in a row. Right.
And it's the same. Yeah.
Yeah. There's one common thing here.
It's a common denominator is one asshole, one asshole. So Donald started carrying a gun whenever he was outside of his house on the property so he wouldn't get beat up again he said yeah okay um there was different times where both of them were pointing guns at each other from over the fences making threats at each other okay september 7th 2013 okay now the fence is the issue.
The fence from hell. On this day, I guess Donald said that he was working on the fence on his side of the fence, working on it, while on a ladder installing more barbed wire.
Okay. Now, his mother, by the way, is in the house, even though she'll back up his story a hundred percent later, she's in the house.
Barbara Laren's wife here says that Laren had taken his truck over to the fence and was in the bed of his truck making repairs to his side of the fence. So they're both doing shit over there and he's using his truck as a ladder.
Apparently at the, out of nowhere, Barbara was outside. She heard a gunshot, and it was Donald firing at Laren as Laren was running away in the opposite direction.
Oh, my God. Yes.
Apparently, Laren was trying to tape over holes in the plastic and whatever. Now, Donald claimed that Laren was trespassing and called the police the police okay then he shot him three times while he was running away he shot laran three times in the back by the way from a decent distance he claims that the reason he did this is because laran he was just repairing the fence and out of nowhere like this is ridiculous ridiculous, dude.
This is like a fucking horror movie. All of a sudden, a hole burst through the plastic, and Laren came through the plastic to kill him.
He just, here he was. So he's like, oh, my God, my only recourse is to pull my gun.
Kool-Aid man, the fence. Yep.
He said he took his gun and he shot. He said he fired two shots in self-defense.
Meanwhile, he shot three times, by the way. So he definitely didn't fire twice.
Barbara said that Laren was attempting to abide by the restraining order. She said he was happy about the restraining order because that kept Donald away from him.
It's effectively the same thing as us getting one. Right.
It just kept us apart. So he said that he fell down.
He was reaching over. He fell into the fence from the bed of the pickup truck.
He said she said he fell into the fence. He didn't go through the fence.
He just fell into it. And that apparently set Donald off.
She said she had just walked away to get something from the garage and she said laryn was running away when she was watching him run away while three shots were fired and the third shot struck him good i guess i think he got shot twice though um yeah donald fired his weapon hit him in the back and laryn bled out and died on the property oh my god right there yep on the property neighbors yeah two and from the same fucking house donald's killed oh my god so um now barbara hicks the laran's wife saw the shooting and told investigators there was no fight there was no anything he fell into the fence and then donald, and Laren tried to run away, and Donald shot him in the back. There's really no— Yeah, you can't do anything about that.
A shot in the back is hard to defend. You know what I mean? Yeah, you can't.
There's no defense for that. So he had—Donald talked to the cops, obviously, and he told the investigators he was putting barbed wire along the fence when an intoxicated laran lunged through the plastic and grabbed his shorts okay like tried to take him back to like poltergeist through the tv gonna pull him into the other side here so i guess easily said at that point donald said i dropped my hammer and grabbed the pistol i was wearing in a holster and i just fired toward him i just didn't about it.
He said, if I didn't have a pistol, I'd be beat up, maybe dead, on his side of the fence. Oh, he's going to drag him over there.
He's going to drag me over and kill me over there. You know what I mean? That's what he has to do.
So this is from Detective Brian Scott, who's working this case. He said, Mr.
Easley's explanation for shooting Mr. Estes

is that he was defending himself after Mr. Estes grabbed him and attempted to jerk him

over the fence.

Okay.

Wow.

Ms. Hicks, that's Barbara, states that there was no altercation between Mr.
Easley and

her boyfriend prior to the shooting and that Mr. Easley stuck his hand through a hole in

the fence and shot Mr. Estes in the back

as he was attempting to get away from the property line.

Okay.

Wow.

That is wild.

The next day after the shooting, Barbara files for a stalking protective order against

Donald and she's granted it.

Okay.

He already killed my husband, so maybe now I get it.

So now they're thinking, do we arrest him or not?

He's not immediately arrested Donald.

Is that right?

I'm not sure. okay he already killed my husband so maybe now i get it so now they're thinking do we arrest him or not he's not immediately arrested donald is that right this shit goes on for like a month where they're trying to figure out what to do investigators said they needed to look at the situation and i don't know he's shot in the back yeah there's no that's open and closed period and it's not even on your property where you could do some kind of castle doctrine, stand your ground, all that.
He's on another property fleeing from you. Right.
There's not a lot of legal legs to stand on here for him. So they said because he shot in the back, that means that Laren was running away from him, not toward him.
His self-defense is really, it's hard to beat someone up as you're running from them. It's not good.
So he is arrested. He is charged with murder with a firearm and unlawful use of a weapon with a firearm.
So here's another strange stat, okay? This is crazy. Barbara, this is the fourth husband that's died.
She's a quadruple widow. Wow.
What are the odds of a guy shooting the second neighbor who also happens to be the fourth dead husband of somebody? What are the odds of that? Like, how often has that ever happened in this world, I think think you ever meet a woman and date her after three husbands are dead and then you move in to a house and the guy next door shot the guy that used to live in she's just bad luck fuck out of that relationship she's just bad out of that yeah it's not even it's not her fault she's just bad luck you're a jin Fuck off. I don't want to be around you.
No matter what. Wow.
She said, I'm lost. I'm lost without, I love him and I miss him very much is her statement.
Maybe I'll find somebody else. That is crazy.
So the investigators state from the beginning that the Vaughn shooting, the first one, Kenneth Vaughn shooting four years earlier, had not influenced the investigation at all. Although, would it not? You've got to take that into account.
It's too big a coincidence otherwise, you know. He's held on no bail here.
He's denied bail. Barbara said that the wait, she's got a little breath there, a sigh of relief that he's not going to be next door while this is going on.
She said, I'm very grateful to know he's not going to be released, that we can all rest easy. And yeah, she said that everybody for the week before he's arrested, she said that her and other neighbors she talked to feared for their lives, too.
Right. So, yeah.
Yeah. She said that she'll at least she'll feel safe.
She said it's in God's hands. It's in the justice system right now and he'll pay for what he's done.

So, yeah, she supported.

She came to all the court shit here.

Now, Est's mother and brother would also come there and, you know, watch everything.

They said this is her his mother.

This is Laren's mother.

There's a four letter word that describes Laren. What is that? L-O-V-E.
Yeah. When someone says that, you go, what? Which one? Which one? Is that shit? Oh, shit.
So the trial comes up, basically, and they're trying to – a lot of it kind of centers around the fence from hell, like a lot of this beef did before trial. Donald moved for an order to instruct the state to refrain absolutely from making any reference whatsoever about his involvement in a prior altercation with his previously shot neighbor.
Don't bring up my prior here, which resulted in the death that He argued that any evidence referring to that incident would be inadmissible because the evidence is too unreliable to meet the threshold for admissibility. Well, did you shoot him and is he dead? Pretty reliable.
Is he still here? Yeah, that the evidence is not relevant and therefore not admissible. I don't think there's any evidence on earth that could be more relevant than this.
And he did the exact same fucking thing, that the evidence is improper character evidence and admissible under, basically only if he takes a stand and makes character an issue, then it's admissible. That's a character issue, not a prior, is what he's saying.
All right. And the prejudicial effect of the evidence outweighing its probative value to the jury.
In other words, you don't let them know I shot another guy. Right.
Obviously. So the state responded that although the evidence that he shot Kenneth was not independently relevant, it was made relevant by the evidence that the defendant stated on a number of different occasions to a number of different people that Laren was at risk of beating the same fate as Vaughn.
Hope I don't have to shoot him like the last one. That makes it relevant.
The state said that without knowing what happened to Vaughn, the jury would not recognize the defendant's statements as threats to kill Estes. So you have to let him in.
The state argued that the evidence of the threat spoke to his state of mind and therefore were admissible. The court ruled that the evidence was relevant for the limited reasons articulated by the state to explain what the defendant meant when he told people what happened to Vaughn might happen to Estes.
There are going to be a bunch of witnesses come up. He said that same thing that's going to happen to that guy.
They don't know what that means. And further, the evidence that the defendant had made those threats was relevant to show his state of mind and negate his claim of self-defense.
Donald also moves at trial to introduce a range of evidence of Laren's character and his propensity for violence and aggression to show that Donald had a reasonable belief that he needed to shoot Estes to defend himself. The evidence consisted primarily of testimony from eight witnesses regarding Estes' reputation for violence and aggression and the witnesses' opinion of Estes' violent and aggressive behavior, as well as some evidence regarding specific circumstances of violent and aggressive conduct.
The court admitted some of the evidence, but ruled that Donald had failed to establish an adequate foundation to allow for the admission of most of the testimony regarding Estes' reputation and other people's opinions of his character.

Um, what the trial, they exclude an audio recording, the trial judge of a conversation involving Donald, uh, a neighbor of his and two un persons, in which one person stated she believed that Lahren had fired a shotgun into the air, and another person said that he saw Lahren with a pistol. Okay.
The court reasoned that absent testimony from the defendant about what he was thinking at the time of the shooting, it would be speculative to infer that the instances of Estes's conduct discussed on the tape bore on his belief so basically if you want to put that in you better get on the stand and tell them that that's what you thought we're not just going to put a tape in and let you not testify but but let you basically testify from an audio recording not going to do the judge said. So they also ruled that the neighbor could not testify regarding specific instances of conduct by Estes.
They apparently would have testified that she observed him possess and use a gun. Okay.
Also, excluding testimony from another witness that said that Laren had once tried to poke her with a pitchfork he's just a little devil that's all just he okay so that's so you know sometimes you gotta kill a guy sometimes you gotta kill a guy uh prosecutor said estes backed his truck up to the fence to make some repairs was standing in the bed of his truck estes had a gun. He started running, and he said Mr.
Estes was shot in the back

while retreating at a distance.

The defense would argue that when calling 911,

Barbara didn't mention that Laren fell into the fence then.

Oh.

They also, she was too worried about, can you get an ambulance here

so my husband doesn't die.

They also pointed out she had apparently stated that she heard Easley yell out Laren. Probably don't shoot me.
Put your gun away. They admit evidence that Donald shot his neighbor prior shot Vaughn like we said for a state of mind.
Barbara corroborated the evidence that Donald intentionally killed Laren. She testified that Donald started shooting at Laren through the fence, dividing the neighbor's properties after he slipped at the fence.
So, verdict comes up. I mean, you get some rural Oregon people.
They might go, I mean, shit, he beat the shit out of him last month. Who knows? Anything could happen.
Everybody should leave everybody alone. They find him guilty of murder.
Yeah, you can't do that. You can't shoot a man in the back.
Can't do it in the back. If he shot him in the front, he could have said anything he wanted.
Any story is feasible. If he's 30 feet away with a gunshot wound in his back, that's not self-defense ever.
You took the gun out. That got him away from you.
That's it. End of story.
Yeah. It worked.
You solved the problem. You don't have to use it every time.
Right. So during sentencing, he makes a rambling statement here.
He apologized to the family. He said, you know, not Barbara, though.
Nope. She can fuck off.
Not Barbara. And he repeatedly proclaimed his innocence.
Awesome. He stood there and he just rambled and rambled, blamed everybody else.
This guy's an asshole and this one and Barbara's a twat and my mom's got cats. All this shit here.
He accused Barbara of lying and basically, while he is asking for mercy, he is just talking shit about the victim and his one is victim's wife.

Yeah.

There are pieces of shit and all this stuff and everything.

So the judge said, well, number one, you're blaming everybody here but yourself.

Taking zero responsibility.

No responsibility.

And to that, I say you, sir, may fuck. Life in prison with parole.
No parole for 25 years. He's 65.
Yeah. So I don't think so.
90, come on. 90, yeah, I don't think so.
You might get out as you're dying in your 80s with that, you know, whatever they do now, geriatric consideration. He's also ordered to pay over $4,000 restitution to barbara as well which you know that pissed him off a lot that's a big deal yeah um yeah he appeals in 2018 basically it's all bullshit he's saying they should have let in that reputation and opinion of character evidence um they should have not let his in and they should have let more of laran's in is what he's saying.
That audio recording that was excluded saying they said that should have been in there. And also the specific instances of conduct of basically he wanted to bring in any time Laren ever told someone to fuck off in traffic.
He wanted to bring that person in and say, see how bad of a guy he is? And that really isn't relevant here. So his appeal is denied.
He is currently residing at the Two Rivers Correctional Institution. Near Two Rivers.
Which sounds lovely, but I'm sure it's not. Sounds beautiful.
Two Rivers, they come together? This is nice. He is in there for a long fucking time, obviously.
Like we said, he started his sentence in September 2014. 25 years from then, we're talking 2039.
He'll be dead. That's that.
That, everybody, is Kirby Oregon. Good night.
What a fucking wild shit that is. Holy Christ.
Neighbors, just chill. Everybody chill.
get along with each other ignore along man yeah just try to go i mean the lights i get it though it just escalates anyway if you like that story if you like any of our stories get on whatever app you're listening on give us five stars say something nice tell everyone get on social media tell your friends tell your neighbors when they're yelling at you go you should listen to small town murder cocksucker maybe we won't fight anymore maybe you'll understand why this is a bad idea for us to fight so do that hang out with us shutupandgivememurder.com tickets for live shows tarrytown couple left boston couple left new tour being announced very soon within this week when you're listening to this might already be up. So check that out.
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In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO 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. Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our healthcare system.
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