#539 - Human Snakes - New Florence, Missouri

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Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. This week in New Florence, Missouri, an exotic reptile dealer is found dead,

and it's assumed that one of his enormous snakes is the culprit until an investigation reveals the lies of some much slimier people in his life.

Welcome to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.
Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo.
I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another wild, crazy adventure known as Small Town Murder. We have a crazy story.
If you listen to the intro, you know that. There's snakes and weird stuff going on.
Very crazy story. Before we get to that, I do want to say, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com.
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There's like 100 tickets that they've been holding. We're going to release those and then you can buy them and that'll sell out because I know we've had a lot of people saying that.
Let's get that going. And also October 30th virtual live show.
Oh baby, just like a regular live show except you are wherever you feel like being that has internet on this planet. And we will be in costumes because it's Halloween.
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Give that a shot. Yeah, we've had some wild stuff lately.
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Be nice. Yes.
In addition to that, when you're listening to Crime in Sports, then when that's done, switch over to your stupid opinions and give that a listen. We have a special Halloween edition here that's going to be very funny with a haunted house and all this good stuff.
So can't wait for all of that. That said, disclaimer time.
You're listening to a comedy show, everybody. Now, the murder part is 100 hundred percent real there's no anything you know no details being made up to make it funnier or anything like that it's just we feel that a murder story is told a little easier with a few jokes mixed in there that's all it is i otherwise it's a little too dark for us and it becomes a little weird so yeah yeah lighten the mood a little bit.
But you've got to know what to make fun of. And we do.
That's the thing. What you do is you never make fun of the victim or the victim's family.
Why would you say that, James? Because we're assholes, but we're not scumbags. See? There you have it.
That's how that works. Pretty easy.
That sounds good. It's very easy to do.
I don't know why people can't figure it out of how that works. But, oh, well, if that sounds good to you, you're going to hear one crazy-ass story.
If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever go together, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you're in the wrong place.
Maybe give it a shot, though, because it might not be what you think. You don't know.
What we're mainly saying is no complaining later. So there you go.
That said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back. Let's all clear the lungs.
And let's all shout, shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.
Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do that.
Let's do it. We are going, well, we just got back from there, but we're going back again to Missouri.
Here we go. We just did a Kansas City live show.
Thank you, Kansas City and Oklahoma City. You guys are so nice.
Terrific people. Very wonderful audiences, and we just had a blast.
Thank you guys so much for coming out and filling those theaters up. Thank you.
Great stuff. We are going to New Florence, Missouri.
New Florence. Old Florence.
Nobody wants that.

That's in Italy.

I mean, that's a little life.

This is New Florence.

Yeah, we know.

East Central Missouri, where I assume people from the old Florence said, let's put a New

Florence.

Is there any room in East Central Missouri?

Okay.

Let's start it up here.

It's about an hour 15 to St. Louis, about two hours and 40 minutes to Kansas City.
So it's right in the middle of those two. We've driven that path.
Yeah. We've passed by the exit for this place, I'm sure.
And it's about three hours and 45 minutes to Tallapoosa, Missouri, which is our last Missouri episode. Too many knots tied.
That was a messed up episode. I don't even want to get into it because it'll take me forever, but it's a crazy episode.
Check it out. This is in Montgomery County, area code 573.
The motto here is, they're really digging deep for this one, the crossroads of east-central Missouri. I didn't know we needed a crossroads for land that's the middle of nowhere.
It's the middle of nowhere. Yeah, there's a crossroads in East and one in Central.
This is East Central. East Central Missouri.
Very specific crossroads we got here. Really qualifying the motherfucker out of it.
Not that. No, no, no.
Go past that crossroads. You're going to find about three crossroads before you hit this crossroads that we're talking about here.
East Central Missouri. History of this town.
It was first named Florence, not for the city in Italy, but for Florence Lewis, who was the daughter of the first settler. Yeah.
She's hot. He came in.
She popped out, and he was like, I'm going to name my baby and my town Florence. Everybody's Florence now.
I love it. The post office for New Florence has been in operation since 1858.
So there's been people here for a long time. Matter of fact, they found evidence of human habitation here from 10,000 years ago.
So people have been here for a long time. They did a big archaeological excavation at Graham Cave and the river down near there and found ancient site.
It's got to be close to the Missouri. Anything near the Missouri, I'm sure people have been there for thousands and thousands of years.
The difference is, though, thousands and thousands of years ago, sometimes rivers and creeks have different paths. Oh, they were different places.
Yeah, not like the Mississippi, but like a smaller tributaries and stuff. Even the Mississippi.
I'm sure there's turns that it made that it didn't make before. Yeah, I mean, just shit shifts and things like that.
This area is commonly associated with German-founded towns here, established by immigrants. They had a town called Rhineland.
So Rhineland is, I mean, there couldn't be more on the nose than that we're german is what that says yeah might as well be called be called a beerville you know that's so with an eye that's uh established by immigrants in the mid-19th century um but also a lot of people came here from kentucky and virginia oh yes this is like they're going on the Oregon Trail. We're heading west, everybody, and they're like, this is about far enough.
East Central Missouri. I'm tired.
The wagon tongue done broke. We're here.
That's it. We're out of food.
So the southern part of the county is more closely associated with the German immigrant type people, and the northern part is more associated with what they call Missouri's Little Dixie region. What is that? Earning Montgomery County the nickname Gateway to Little Dixie.
It means a little piece of the south right here in Missouri for you, is what that means. Yeah, that's frightening.
A little bit. Now, some reviews of this town.
Here we go. There are no reviews of this town.
It's a very small town. But the only thing in this town I did find a review of, and that's the Love's Travel Stop store.
Is that right? This is, if you don't know, if you're not from the United States, a big, giant truck stop store. Right.
If you're on the highway. There's a subway and a DQ there.
We stopped at it and had a few cheeseburgers on Saturday. That is their chains that they marry together across that section of the country.

Dairy Queen and Subway, hand in hand, like peanut butter and jelly.

So 4.3 stars it has here, this loves, which isn't bad, actually.

It's on 482 Tree Farm Road in New Florence, open 24-7. Gas price is pretty affordable right now premiums only 350 so not bad so here is a review from mom oh mom tell me all uh four stars very clean and well stocked there's no easy way to open the bathroom door if you're in a wheelchair well.
I'll bet that's the truth for all of them. For any bathroom door.

Yeah.

Dog park is small but sufficient.

More than half of it is grass during our September trip.

There will be shade in a few years when the tree grows more.

The tree.

There's one small.

The tree grows more.

But a bench would be nice.

Yeah.

That would be nice.

You can sit while your dog sits.

Under the sapling.

Right in the shade under the tree. The shade of the tree.
Next up, five stars. These new loves are outstanding.
This is a new one. A new one, apparently.
Roomie and clean bathrooms. The whole place feels so open with their new layouts.
Friendly staff, too. Right.
They're just happy to see people. They're in the middle of nowhere.
There's also a small fence dog park. The turnoff to the parking lot from the highway off-ramp is quick, so watch out for that.
And then one star here from Whitney, highly irritated that every loves we have stopped at across Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri do not sell 12, 15, or 18 packs of soda. They expect you to buy 20-ounce sodas.
Get what the program loves. You haven't found a Walmart in that track? I'm trying to put one of those helmets on and put two cans in it, and you guys are messing the whole damn thing up for me.
Don't you know how these people roll? Yeah, they never passed a Walmart, Superstore, nothing like that. How many states did they say? Three.
Oklahoma, Kansas. Yeah.
They can't find a 12-pack of soda. Only 20-ounce bottles.
You blinked and missed Topeka. You would have found it.
I promise. One star from April.
Ever since this gas station has opened up, us residents that live off Highway 19 have had our properties damaged because the Loves refuses to put up directional signs into their gas station for car and semi-truck drivers to follow.

They pass up the entrance and quickly find any private driveway to turn around in.

It's causing 18-wheelers.

That's not great.

It's causing so much damage to our properties.

And today I was almost ran over by a foreigner truck driver on my own property. I wasn't even in his country.
This has to stop. The loves.
OK, it's we got too many dumb people. If you can't if you can't see the gas station.
Yeah. Signs aren't helping no but those some of them have the long kind of road off the high it's not just turn on into it there's a long road and apparently there's no signs telling you which which lane to take and you end up in a neighborhood which i would think why have an off-ramp going one way to the loves parking lot the next the next way to a neighborhood? That doesn't seem right.
Right, but I don't know. They say, because this has to stop, because of this gas station, it has caused several accidents on our highway.
I wouldn't visit this gas station if it was the only gas station within 20 miles and I was about to run out of gas. I will walk for gas.
I'll push my truck all the way to the next one. Holy shit.
The bathrooms are disgusting and parking lots are just as dirty if you live right there why would you use that bathroom yeah why have you used that why would you use a bathroom that's 50 feet from your house when you have a bathroom in your house okay never mind that have you ever been in the bathroom at stores no you know why because i live down the goddamn street i thought about i'm like nope been in there 700 times never once but i don't even know if they have a bathroom to be honest with you because i've never even asked they must but i don't know i don't even i've never crossed my mind if i had to pee i'm like i'm gonna drive the quarter mile to my house and pee so people in this town. Very small.
It's a crossroads and that's about it. More male than female, which is strange, about 52% male.
Median age here is just above the national average, but not too far off. It's 41.
The children, there's a lot of zero to four-year-olds and a lot of 60 to 64-year-olds.

So people stay fertile a long time in Missouri.

It's just a lot of grandmas popping kids out here, apparently.

Family here, it's a little more over the national average for marriage.

It's about 53% married.

A few more people are single with children, but a lot of the stats are pretty normal for the rest of the country.

Racial breakdown here, 90.8% white, 0.7% black, 1.1% Asian, 6.6% Hispanic. And let's see here.
We have cost of living, 100 is regular in the rest of the country, average. Here it is 77 out of that.
So that's not too bad here, I would say. Median home cost, $150,900.

They're fire sale. They're giving it away.
They're extremely affordable, yes.

That's the thing. But the problem is you have to

use the bathroom at the Loves. That's part

of it. No bathrooms.

So if we've

convinced you, damn it, you want to live

by a truck stop and not much else, we have

for you the New Florence, Missouri Real Estate Report. The average two-bedroom rental here goes for $810, which is about a third under the national average.
That's pretty cheap. This one here, it's on 0.27 acres of land.
There is an RV on the property that looks like it was parked there in 1972 and allowed to return to nature. There's definitely animals in there.
A quarter of an acre, and they've got an RV on the property too. They said there's a van on the property.
It just looks like a little meth van. That's where we cook our meth and that's it.
They say at Pinnacle Lake, this is the ad here, Pinnacle Lake, wooded lot on a cul-de-sac street near, very close to the North Gate entrance. The property lays rolling slash sloping.
Would make a great camping lot. In other words, it's going to be a pain in the ass to build a house here.
Oh, yeah. You're going to have to level this motherfucker.
Order older electric service on property, unsure of condition. Old camper.
Old camper of no value. So, basically, we're going to sell you this with garbage on it that you need to clean off.
We're going to sell you something that's going to cost you money to get rid of it. This whole thing, $8,500.
Under $9,000. Yeah, and probably a grand to get rid of that fucking camper.
Someone's got to haul it off, yeah. Then there's a four-bedroom, two-bath, actual structure, 1,832 square feet.
It's on 4.42 acres, so that's a pretty big lot here. Big deck on the front.
Real weird, though. It's yellow.
The house is like a pale yellow with weird red accents on it. It's an ugly-ass house.
Who would do that? You have really got to paint this house. It's a McDonald's.
It's so ugly. But $269,900 for a big house on a big lot.
That's not too bad. And a few five-gallon pails of paint.
You're going to need that. Yeah, you're going to have to definitely hit up a Home Depot on that one here.
So here is a five-bedroom, three-bath, 3,200 square feet. Now you're talking.
It's a nice house. It just looks like a nice house inside.
Everything looks like it was done in about 2012. And everything's in very nice condition.
It's on 17.90 acres. Holy, almost 18 years.
Big old property. $559,900.
Not bad. Wow.
Big house, big lot, not too shabby. Yeah.
That's pretty good stuff here. Things to do.
Oh, baby. The Missouri Goat Festival is here.
Oh, no. Finally.
I've been wondering when it was. I mean, we go every year.
I don't know how we're going to. What the fuck do they do to them? The Goat Festival here.
Oh, they diddle them. They pet them.
They kiss them. It's pictures of people hugging goats and eating food is what it looks like.
Okay. Hopefully not goats.
Yeah. Could you imagine? He's a cute little guy.
Let's eat him. Eating a gyro right in his face.
Right. Take that.
That's right. Exactly.
You better watch your behavior here. Yeah.
So experience the joy of spending a day with your goat at a unique fall festival. Do you have to bring your own goat? It sounds like BYOG.
BYOG activity we got going on here. They don't have goats provided you can't rent a goat for the day to hang out with no rent a goat you don't have that enjoy live music delicious food and fun activities for both goats and humans okay how the fuck do you tell if a goat's having fun? They seem to just eat cans and shit.

I don't know.

If they're jumping around.

They always look like they're having a good time.

They do.

They really do.

Activities, costume contests.

I hope not for the goats.

Yeah, there is.

Goat parades and more.

Demonstrations of goat milking, cheese making, and soap making.

This place is exciting. Soap making out of goat stuff? There is live entertainment, though.
Yeah, what is that? We have Vernon Kolbush, K-O-H-L-B-U-S-C-H, Kolbush, Vernon Kolbush. We also have Posey Hill performing.
And then by the looks of it, because her picture's on here, I believe the the headliner is ruby lee okay that just shows the back of her head with a super fringy like 70s dolly parton jacket that says ruby lee and stitching on the oh wow oh yeah you got an embroidered it's embroidered as shit and there's like little flowery things around and it's super invested in some etsy jacket that great. She definitely did.
Either that or someone's very crafty in her family. There might be that.
That's it. Then there's also the Montgomery County Fair.
77th year with the same theme, by the way, they said. What? That is where small town charm meets big time fun.
Big time fun. Big time fun.
Not big town fun small town big time that's right we have lots of amazing there's entries in the quilt contest you got to get those in yeah uh the heart household arts contest why not i didn't know that was a thing um we have the summer games in the livestock arena i think that is an if I'm not mistaken. Oh, boy.
We have a Little Mr. and Miss contest.
Of course, the Queen of the Fair. You've got to see who's the Queen of the Fair, obviously.
Well, if we're going to judge the little types, we'll judge the gals that can take it, too. Dino Encounters.
Okay, that's impossible. Apparently they have dinosaurs here.
That's going to be interesting. A livestock judging contest.
So that doesn't sound like the livestock are having the contest. It sounds like the judges are.
Are livestock. No, yeah.
Like they're going to judge you on your livestock judging. You judge the livestock and then people judge your judging, I think is how that works.
The goats tell you whether or not you did a good job.

Bah.

He doesn't like us.

Shit.

The Super Farmer will be there at 8 o'clock.

Oh.

That's a band, I think, by the way.

Oh, it's not just a guy in a cape that grows corn?

I'm the best.

He shows up with, like, an ear of corn the size of a goat.

There's also Mickey Scott will be performing at the beer tent stage. I know what he does.
I bet I have an idea of what he's doing. There's a junior poultry show, a junior rabbit show, a junior goat show, a junior sheep show, a junior market steer show, a junior hog show, a bail throwing contest.
Yeah, see how far he's going. Some strong farm farm people in there on that a kid's foam party which sounds like it's going to get out of control and horny and weird i don't like that at all the kids are gonna have their dicks out after a while that's no good you don't want that mickey scott's gonna take the stage for a second night oh yeah get after him mickey third night you're gonna you got uh chloe hoker playing live music.
So once Chloe's in there, everything comes together, I feel like. And then Friday and Saturday, the weekend, obviously the big days here, the Sheep and Goat Open Show.
You got to have that. That's a big one.
They're going to have karaoke, laser tag. There is nothing that this festival doesn't have basically.

Everything from laser tag to goat petting.

It's just they don't give a shit.

Karaoke.

You know, I want to watch children judge animals.

There's a boy on like Instagram or whatever

that is really great at talking about tractors and shit.

He knows them.

He's amazing. I love that kid.
i'd watch him tell me all about goats i don't want to hear that fucking kid listen you little fucking train drone weirdo he's so so fucking boring he doesn't that kid's a creep i'm sorry that kid's a fucking creep he knows every deer man yeah he's gonna i don't trust that kid as far as I can throw him. He's weird.
He's weird. I don't like him.
I love listening to him. I'm talking about John Deere.
The fucking weirdest thing to see him. I just want to, I want to free him.
I want to free him. Stop being your little fucking dad's drone robot.
Go get something of yourself. I want to like give him like a punk album or something.
Like he needs, he needs to get the fuck out of the farm for one day just to expand his horizon. In his mind, all there is in the world is tractors, and that is disturbing.
All he is is a Xerox copy of the grown-up that shot his load in his mom. That's it.
That's all it is here. In this show, they have a diaper derby.
How do you do that? That's following the baby show. I don't like that at all um then we have cricket alley performing live music also mac watts kaylee green and caleb austin yeah performing and russo and co these are all your bands sure the last one of them do country i can't imagine there's going to be a there's there's's nothing else.
I'm honestly shocked that Ludacris isn't here because he's at every other county fair we've ever covered. Or Nelly.
Or Nelly. One of the two here.
You've got to have one of the two. Crime rate in this town.
What we are interested in here. Property crime, slightly below the national average, but pretty close to it, actually.
For a town of 800 people, it seems a little out of control. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault.
The Mount Rushmore of crime is about one-third of the national average. So pretty low, though, two-thirds under the national average.
So not bad there. But the property crime.
I mean, when you see a goat, you just got to take it sometimes. You know, I get it.
I get it. They're so cute.
They're so cute. You just want to pet their little heads.
I get it. So the fainting ones i get it thank you once get out of here that's crazy i have to take him home and nurse him back that's fucking hilarious so that said let's talk about some murder here we go let's do this uh while my voice holds out i am extremely ill and have been for a couple days so i'm happy to be getting through this here this is the country this this is what got me this is what ensickened me is this area of the country right here

so let's start out on june 8th 2017 okay june 8th 2017 there's a young lady named linley L-Y-N

Lee

Lynn Lee

yeah that's her name

or two yeah Lynn Lee okay so

L-E-E Lee, L Y N Lee. Oh, yeah.
Lynn Lee. Yeah.
That's her name. Or two.
Yeah. Lynn Lee.
Okay. So our L E E it's E E.
So Lynn Lee here, Lynn Lee owns a spa. Okay.
And where she does massage therapy and stuff like that. That's what she owns here.
Waxing. All sorts of shit here.
Now it's getting to be late afternoon and her husband's supposed to pick the kids up from a school or whatever, from a babysitter or whatever it is here. So she gets a call at her shot, her spa saying her husband never showed up to pick up the kids.
So she's like, God damn it. You know what I mean? Now I got to leave.
Where the hell is he? What's going on here? So she goes and picks up the kids. And then she went to where he works, which is his own business as well, to look for him.
And this is at about 6.36 p.m., a 911 call comes in with Lindley hysterical on the phone saying that she just found her husband lying in a pool of blood in his place of business. In his place of business.
Oh, at the shop. At the shop.
Now, the Missouri State Highway Patrolman said, we got the call that there was a man dead, and the dead man's brother arrives at the scene. His name is Sam.
The dead man's name is Ben. Sam is the brother who shows up.
And is Lynn Lee, is that her first and last name? No, it's Linley is her first name. L-Y-N-L-E-E, first name.
Her last name is Renick right now. That's her married name.
And this is her husband here, and his name is Ben Renick on the ground. So Sam says, my brother's skull was crushed.
Oh, no. My wildest dreams, I would have never imagined someone would hurt Ben.
So with Linley right there, Sam takes the phone and is talking to 911. And he says, quote, it must have been a snake.
A snake? Which even on this show, that's a strange thing to tell 911. But the reason he's saying that is because Ben's place of business is his reptile breeding center.

Oh, it's not just a pet shop.

No, he has thousands of exotic snakes.

He has giant, huge pythons and boas that are fucking 10 feet long.

And, I mean, yeah, if you're looking for an exotic, crazy snake, this is your guy right here.

Wow.

So with all these snakes, they figure a snake got him and crushed him. Beat the shit out of him.
Must have coiled up on him and squeezed him until his head popped is basically what they're thinking. So he said it had to have been a snake.
So the cops come. They're not real comfortable.
It's bad enough. I mean, there's a dead body in there ew gross but there's a shit

load of snakes and they don't know which ones are out they're you know and they're normal people can get out yeah these aren't snake people so there's like they're like we're not fucking going in there with all these snakes on the loose this is crazy shit yeah so one of the cops said it was suspected that it could have been a snake that's loose in the facility and the facility had somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000

snakes. Loose?

They don't know. Maybe.
Who knows how many are loose, whatever. He said, so it's a little unnerving not knowing what you're going to walk into.
You don't know if there's going to be giant pythons hanging from the rafters, hissing in your face. You have no idea what's going on.

Hey, everybody.

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Now back to the show. So on the body cam of the officers here, because it's 2017, you hear one officer say, quote, I don't care if it's a five inch long snake.
If something tries to bite me, I'm going to light its ass up. I'm going to fucking shoot these snakes.
This dude was like, I don't give a fuck. If it's a garter snake the size of my pinky i'm shooting yeah there will be slugs fired in here so the other officer then you hear this officer same one looking around at the snakes he just goes holy shit like he's like this is crazy and the other officer said something got him so watch your ass they're going in like there's like 10 terrorists inside like back to back with their guns out like pointing them all around and shit they're ready to all these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking plane i'm telling you right now they need samuel to come help them so the first responders here they're they're they're like this is crazy what are we what fuck, man? So the one officer says, who is he? And the second officer says, Ben Rennick.
And the guy says, oh, okay. And the first officer, he's way more concerned about the snakes than a corpse at this point.
He says, quote, can we make sure there's no snakes around the victim before we go over and take a look at him? That's what he says on the body cam. And the second officer says, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine.
So this is hilarious. The coroner shows up.
They're standing there. They don't just have Jimmy.
They don't just have their service weapons out. They have shotguns out.
they're standing there with shoddies ready to just start fucking bucking rounds off at whatever moves. Blast and spray shots at whatever.
I know there's bird shot and buck shot. Y'all got any snake shot? I could really use some.
I know. I need some snake shot.
We've come up with it before in the show. So the coroner says he walks in to this insane scene.
This is Dave Colbert. And he says they're holding shotguns in their hands.
There were guns out. You could just feel the anxiety amongst everyone there.
Crazy. You can leave.
I mean, every noise they're like turning around pointing guns at it

like that that's serious so they said but no one knew you know whether this sick fucking killer

could be lurking somewhere and pop out and you know get all three of them together and squeeze

them who knows and that's the thing about snakes too is that people think like if it doesn't have

a rattle they are so quiet they're super quiet they're real quiet they move real deliberately

I'm sorry. And that's the thing about snakes, too, is that people think if it doesn't have a rattle, they are so quiet.
They're super quiet. So quiet.
They're real quiet. They move real deliberately.
Those are assassins, man. Also, they're sneaky.
I don't know if you've noticed. It's kind of a cliche at this point.
That's their, yeah, snake in the grass. Snake in the grass.
They hide. So let's find out about what the fuck we are dealing with in this insane scene.
Because this is a wild scene, man. How's it set up? Let's see.
Let's find out everything. Let's talk about a young lady first.
We'll talk about Lindley first here. Her name is Lindley Jo Gallatin.
That's her. Lindley Jo.
Lindley Jo, which is very Missouri. She's from a small town of Missouri.
Incredibly country, yeah the way she puts it quote in between two really small towns that's what she said which is wellsville and middletown which are both very small so she doesn't even live her town so much smaller making it not a town in between to we can you want to go to town and it's fucking wellsville that's going to town. So she is Lindley Jo Gallatin.
She's born. She's born in 1987.
And she grew up with her mom, Brenda, and her dad, Lindell. And she has an older sister named April as well, growing up in Montgomery County.
So around here in the same county, but not in New Florence here.

She is a cheerleader in high school.

Lindley is?

Lindley is.

Lindley's a very attractive young lady, too.

That's the other thing you got to say.

She is a cheerleader in high school.

At one point, I think it's her senior year or her junior year, she is an All-American cheerleader.

I knew they had All-American football players, but apparently the cheerleading squad gets it, too. You can certainly let her in that shit.

Thank you. All-American cheerleader.
Oh. I knew they had All-American football players, but apparently the cheerleading squad gets it too.
Yeah, I mean, you can certainly let her in that shit. Yeah, so she got to go to Florida to perform at a college football halftime show.
Oh, wow. As part of the All-American cheerleader spectacle that they were putting together.
She was very into cheerleading, so much so that she even had the requisite eating disorders and depression that comes along with it as well. Very into cheerleading is what I'm saying.
She throws up for it. Yeah.
She really puts it in there. So, no, she does.
As a teenager, she has some eating disorders, some depression. I don't know.
And we're joking around, but I mean, that happens to so many. But that's dead serious, man.
I mean, depression for everybody, but eating disorders, especially for young women, that's a hard thing to overcome. You don't fit in that uniform.
As I say, especially if you spend all of your, you know, not your waking hours, but what you do is in a tiny skirt. That might make you a little more, you know, whatever.
So her senior year, she didn't even want to go to school her senior year. Her mom arranged it so she only had to get two credits, I guess, so she only had to do two classes.
So basically, her senior year, her mom arranged that she could just come in after hours and do those two classes and not even have to go to school proper during the day. Whenever everybody else goes home, she can pop by? She comes in and does a one-on-one thing with the teachers and gets her homework and goes home and that's that.
So she has a boyfriend in high school. Her boyfriend's in a band.
Of course he is. Of course he is, yeah.
She, now Ben, who is the dead snake guy, she meets him in high school. Ben is in the same band with her boyfriend.
Ben is the drummer in this band. Oh, yeah.
But they didn't go out or anything like that. They just knew each other from the social circle of the band and all that kind of thing.
So she graduates from high school. She ends up doing massage therapy classes in 2006.
That's what she wants to do for a living, is massage therapy. During this time, she meets another man here named Michael Humphrey, and we'll talk about him in a minute here, but during massage class summer break, which I didn't know that this was like a...
You got a break, huh? I don't know. It was like a full...
I figured it would be a semester, if nothing else, not a whole course. I thought it was like a six-way course.
Yeah. So she met that Michael Humphrey on a group outing with some friends, and they go out for a little while,

on and off,

but it doesn't really work out.

So later on,

she ends up meeting a man named Josh,

and she hooks up with him,

and in 2007, March of 2007,

the day before her 19th birthday,

she finds out she's pregnant.

Yeah. And at the same time, not only is it the day before her 19th birthday, she finds out she's pregnant.
Yeah. And at the same time, not only is it the day before her 19th birthday, it's also the day before she's supposed to take her state boards for massage therapy.
She's got to go take her exams. With a little bit of pressure.
A little bit of pressure. So she said the night before when she's supposed to be studying, she was a little bit overwhelmed with the fact that she was pregnant.
So it didn't really work out. She ends up failing the exams the next day.
Oh, no. Comes close, but failed here.
But she tells Josh that she's pregnant, and he was so excited that he was pulling out of a parking lot when she told him that he backed into a light pole. He was so excited.
He didn't even realize what he was doing. She didn wait till that shit was in park come on now she said you in reverse or at least be driving at a steady pace yeah be clipping down the road with uh with a nice song on before you break that news she said that was hilarious and he laughed he backed into a pole and laughed about it so now josh in addition to not being a great parking lot driver he's apparently not a great driver on the highway either as we'll find out here oh while she's pregnant josh goes off on a saturday afternoon with some friends to the lake of the ozarks there yeah okay there well uh partying definitely yeah probably drinking yeah well on the way back home josh gets in a very bad car accident.
Oh, no. And severely injures several other people, including people in his car and people in another car that he got in an accident with.
His fault. His fault.
And apparently he must have been on something because he ends up going to prison for this. And I'm talking not for a year, for many years he's sent to prison.
Ten years, yeah. So that's pretty much it.
She has no further contact with him. He doesn't inquire about how his child's going to do or anything.
He just goes to prison and she just goes, well, that's that and it's over. See you around Josh.
That's it. If Josh wants to see his kid, he's going to have to file some paperwork, basically.
And do his time. And do his time is the other thing.
So early 2008, January, her son is born. So her son is born.
And 2009, she retakes her exams. And she starts working as a massage therapist, which is all she wants to do.
She starts working at a place called Natural Connections as a massage therapist. And she's starting to get her life together now, too.
Which is, this is good. I mean, and she's only, what, 22 at this point? Young lady, yeah.
22, single mom. And she got a job doing what she wanted to do.
She then gets her own apartment with her son. So she's gotten it together.
22, that's impressive. It's hard to take care of yourself at 22.
Never mind someone else too. And a child will hasten it, yeah.
Oh, it'll make it rough. So she also starts seeing Michael Humphrey again.
He is the guy that she saw pre-Josh. No, no, no.
That's the high school guy. Michael Humphrey's a guy she met while in massage therapy school.
Got it. Dated for a little bit and whatever.
Now, they're going to date on and off again here. It's an on and off thing.
They're both really into drugs together. They like doing pills together.
Lindley and Michael. Lindley at this point says she was very addicted to prescription painkillers.
Loved them. And Michael was also really into prescription painkillers.
And it makes it really easy because guess what he does for a living? Is he a pharmacist? He sells prescription painkillers. Yeah, that'll do it.
Just didn't go to school for it. He'll give them to you no matter what.
In a parking lot, he doesn't give a fuck. So he's a drug dealer is what he does for a living.
So we got a drug dealer and a chick who loves pills. That's a match made in heaven is what that is.
Oh, God. Match made in hell.
Or hell. Either one.
In this area of Missouri, that's called a match made in heaven, I believe, here. Yeah, that is a jackpot on Tinder.
So holy shit. So they're really into it, and they're doing pills together, and they're on and off and fighting.
And she said she would go back to him. And part of it was that he had a bunch of pills.
So that was part of the fact they kept getting back together. 2010, she starts working at a new job in Columbia, Missouri.
And she said one day she dropped her son off here. I won't give his name because I think he's still a minor.
So I don't want to give that away. Or close to it anyway.
Doesn't need break his balls anyway leave the kid alone basically yeah so she dropped her son off at school or whatever she does in the morning and she was working and doing a massage therapy appointment she said at that moment she stopped for a second and realized that she couldn't remember getting to work today she doesn't remember dropping her kid off she doesn't kid off. She doesn't remember.
So she's saying in her mind, she started to panic of, what if I didn't take my kid to school? What if I forgot him somewhere? What if I left him at the grocery store? What if I gave him away? Yeah, Love's parking lot. Yeah, we have no idea.
So she starts freaking out and says, holy shit, maybe I'm doing a little too many pills like this is great okay self-awareness she took that in as holy shit this is a wake-up call i don't even know where my kid is today this is fucked so she said at that point she went and picked her son up and she took her son to her father's house and asked her father if she could move back in with him. And she breaks up with Michael.

Okay. She took her son to her father's house and asked her father if she could move back in with him.

And that's and she breaks up with Michael.

Yeah.

OK.

And quits pills because she said she can't be the guy selling pills and get off pills.

So she decides she's going to completely wipe herself of that at all.

She said her dad went with her to the house to pick stuff up to make sure he couldn't talk her back into it or give her more drugs or whatever the fuck.

That's terrific.

Yep.

She said she had a real rough week with the, you know, detoxing the pills,

but then after that she was okay.

She quit them and she was better.

So good for you, Lindley.

Not bad.

She's done a lot at 23 so far.

No doubt.

You know, like, this is a lot.

She's already...

At 23, realized she had a problem and then took course in action to fix it. And kicked it and relationships and she's had a career and a lot of stuff going on here.
In 2011, she is on Facebook. And you know how Facebook, not so much now, but back then, 2011, 2012, people used to constantly post those quizzes, basically.
band first concert and they'd have this

long thing now it's only like 80 year old people that do it but yeah and back then everybody used

to do friends in it exactly and that's exactly what they did back then and that's what she did

and through this post uh remember ben the drummer who right from high school well he saw this post

and commented on it and they went back and forth on a couple comments. And then, next thing you know, he sent her a message, and they started talking to each other.
That way. Just how's your life? How's everything go? You have a kid.
That's cool. All that shit.
I wonder if that is what that post was geared for. Yeah, it is.

That's exactly what it's geared for.

It's efficient for entertainment.

Yeah, that's why people posted that shit.

So people would then talk back to them and I guess that's engagement.

I post things that I'm like, people won't respond to this.

This is good.

I'd like them to just take what I'm saying and you don't have to fucking, you don't need a comment really.

And also if you write a joke.

You don't even have to like it really.

Yeah.

I don't care.

It was... just take what I'm saying and you don't have to fucking do your I don't need a comment really you know just and also if you write you don't have to like it really yeah if a joke is written and it's obviously a joke I don't need you to fucking tag it or no try to try to make it better or I also don't need you to explain the thing that I'm saying I don't understand because that's not the point of a joke i love don't explain uh why this exaggeration is ridiculous because that's the point it's a fucking that's how jokes work so oh that's annoying so ben ben renick here r-e-n-i-c-k renick uh he's born same year 1987 same age her, same grade in school and everything.
They start talking. They start dating.
She says Ben treated her really well. She felt comfortable with him.
He was a nice, easygoing guy, gentle. They're into the same kind of music.
They both like to read. They're both into horror movies.
They're the same kind of nerd, which is what you're looking for. Whatever you're nerdy about,

you want someone who's nerdy about that too.

So this is an Oz fest couple.

It's an,

yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So the other thing they were kind of connected with is they both had

mothers that died from diseases young.

Oh my God.

Cancer and other things.

So they both had dead mothers at this point and they're only 23,

24 at this point.

So I mean,

that's a tough one.

So they,

they were,

they,

you know,

Thank you. cancer and other things.
So they both had dead mothers at this point. And they're only 23, 24 at this point.
So, I mean, that's a tough one. So they were, you know, kind of connected over that.
Also, he treated her son very well as well. That was the other thing that impressed her.
She said one night, the first night that they stayed over at his house, you know, her and the son, she said, I'm going to go read him. She said Ben set up the spare bedroom for him and had it all nice and had a bed set

up for him.

And so she said, I'm going to go read him a story and put him to bed.

I'll be back.

And she said Ben went in there and helped out with the reading and was sitting with

him.

And she said it was just very endearing to see that he had a caring side like that and

a paternal side, basically.

So she's super impressed here.

Now, Ben, a little bit about him.

He graduated Montgomery High School in 2006.

He lived all his life on the same property.

It's a 72-acre farm, big block of property here that his dad owns.

It's not a quarter-acre property.

No, no, no.

It's 70-something acres.

Yeah, you get lost there.

There's multiple houses on the property. It's a big property.
We'll talk about his dad. He's a very interesting guy.
So anyway, this guy, the property abuts the Danville conservation area, which is must mean that nothing can be built on it. So that's even more rural property there.
She describes Ben as career driven and very analytical. She said, he's very into that.
He's very good at socializing, but he doesn't prefer it. He's not into that.
He prefers to be with the snakes. If anything, he likes, he likes to do his business.
She said his relationships with other people are very transactional, like business stuff or whatever, but not, not a ton of friends that he hangs out with and talks to all the time and that kind of shit. So she said he enjoyed playing the drums and liked collecting horror movie props.
That's what he was into also. Now, a neighbor who lives here named Mike Scarlett, he said that he knew Ben from a very young age.
He said he was a real good, friendly kid. Matter of fact, he's the only kid that grew up around here who wanted to help me.
All these other little bastards. I said, can you help me shovel a driveway? What'd they do? They threw things at me.
They yelled at me. They called me names.
Ben picked up a shovel. He's a good kid.
They shoveled everything but the driveway. Threw all that snow into the driveway.
The other kids. And then Ben would come, shovel it all off, and say, apologize.
He's a good guy. Now, his parents are Frank and Kim, and his mom died from cancer.
That's how this goes. Now, Frank is a character, Frank Rennick.
Here we go. In 1992, one of the houses on their property exploded.
Yeah. And I'm talking fucking exploded like a goddamn action movie.
Kaboom. Fucking roof flies off shit everywhere.
Wow. They said that the neighbor said a washer and dryer and all kinds of junk crashed into his yard when the home exploded.
Holy. These properties are not right next to each other.
Right. So this is, we're not talking about, like you said, quarter acre lots.
This is, this shit got distance. They launched a fucking, you know how much power it has to be to launch a washer and dryer? You know how fucking heavy a dryer is? It's so heavy.
It takes two guys. To lift it.
Now imagine if you were going to toss it hundreds of feet into the air and, like, down the street. How the force that would take.
That takes, like, a backhoe or a front end loader or some shit. Fuck.
The newspaper that reported on this said that insulation was still falling down an hour after the explosion. An hour? An hour.
That's how high. I guess it went into orbit, for Christ's sake.
How long would it take? Yeah, I guess that shit comes down like feathers. Yeah, if it goes up 10,000 feet, I guess it would take a while to fall.
That's all I could think. An hour? An hour.
It was still insulation raining down for an hour. Floating for an hour.
Jesus. That is crazy.
So the sheriff here, the chief deputy of the sheriff's office, Steve Meyer, said he heard it from miles away. He was miles away at the sheriff's department and said, I thought it was an earthquake.
That's how big of an explosion it is. Miles away, they felt the ground rumble.
That's... Gas leak, right? Well, yeah.
We'll talk about it here. Now, no one was hurt in this thing and no one was arrested the renick family had been staying in st louis that night they were away from the house conveniently for them yeah he said the fire marshal determined gas plugs were taken out of the gas line really yeah you know like on purpose like that they don't just come out someone has to take out.
So that's very interesting, possibly an insurance thing. Right.
Those are like threaded or something. Let's not suspect Frank yet.
Frank might be a real upstanding cat, you know what I mean? We don't know. We don't know.
Let's find out what he does. He opened Spectrum Pet Care in 1996, and it sold natural and organic pet foods and treats.
He formerly owned the Bow Wow Dog Food Company, which was purchased by ConAgra. Oh, he's doing great.
He's got a game here where he starts small companies, sells them to bigger companies, starts another company. That's what he does.
So he's a very smart guy and a good businessman. Right.
Makes it a conglomerate. 2012, about Frank.
Now, this is fucking wild. In June of 2011, Missouri securities regulators said that Frank Rennick, Ben's dad, had been selling unregistered securities for years.
Okay. And had misled investors and used Spectrum money for satellite TV services, vehicle payments, medical care, and at a cruise ship company.
So he's embezzling money from investors is what that is. That's what that's called.
So Frank was president of Spectrum Pet Care, Inc., a manufactured pet food. And the indictment here, because Frank is going to be indicted, alleges that Frank sold over $7 million in investments in Spectrum, including stocks, bonds, and promissory notes to over 250 investors in Missouri and other states.
That is – wow. This is a crazy Ponzi scheme is what he's got going on he's just selling he just tells people i'm selling you stocks i'm selling you stock in my company and then other when other people invest he can pay off some of that like a dividend to that person make them think everything's fine the indictment says that between 2006 and may 2011 renick induced investors to invest substantial amounts of money in Spectrum by making false representations about Spectrum's financial condition and how the invested funds would be used.
He also told investors that their investments would be used to purchase equipment and fund operations. They said some of the funds were used for the business, but he used substantial portions to repay existing investors and to pay for his personal expenses completely unrelated to the business.
You know, a Ponzi scheme. Exactly what it is.
Bernie Madoff, same thing. Smaller scale Bernie Madoff.
The indictment alleges that investors lost millions of dollars as a result of this scheme. So he's indicted by a federal grand jury on three felony counts of mail fraud.
Now, if convicted, each count of mail fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. This is hardcore fuck you white-collar crime here.
And fines of up to $250,000. In determining the actual sentences, a judge is required to consider these guidelines, which provide recommended sentencing ranges.
The case was investigated by the Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So FBI and the post office.
Yeah, yeah. And that's how it goes.
So Frank, while this is all going down, he is fucked in a big way. And this isn't something you can talk your way out of.
There's a paper trail fbi and mail fraud you don't want these these are the worst charges oh investors have you know sheets that they've been sent that have just total bullshit on them so it's uh-oh not good you can't lie to investors so what frank does here to get himself out of this is he shoots himself in the fucking head and dies whoa Whoa. Done.
He goes, I'm not going to, I won't go to prison. And he blew his fucking brains out.
So now Ben has no parents. No parents.
They're both gone. So Sam, who is Ben's brother, Ben's older brother, said Ben found him.
He found his dad, too. Oh, shit.

He fed him to a snake.

It was crazy.

He was like, it's almost time for the boa to get fed.

That snake still hasn't eaten to this day.

Oh, boy.

He's still full.

He said Ben found him.

He came and got me, and we went there together, and it was a tough day.

He said there's a lot of people that lost a lot of money due to my father, he said.

And this is only like two years after the mother's death, too. So Ben's gone through it here, Ben and Sam.
They've had it tough. So at this point, somehow, I don't know why, but Ben ends up getting all the property.
Even though they're brothers. It makes no sense.
Sam didn't get shit out of this. But Sam does live on the property in another house.
So he got a little place to stay. He got a little bit.
And so Ben builds a house on this property for him to live in. And Lindley and her son move into this house on the property.
He says, come move into this house. So now it's a little homestead they have here.

Or big one, I should say. It's 70-something acres.

So Sam would run the property

basically after that. You know, he would

kind of take care of everything here.

One of the neighbors said, both

boys seem like good kids. Both have

young families, nice kids. So

that's what the neighbors said when they saw them.

There you go. 2014, we have Lindley and Ben get married now.
Yeah. They're going to get married.
Sam said, quote, they had a beautiful wedding. It was beautiful.
A small family event. It was very special.
Okay. So now he's going to be a stepdad.
He's going to be a stepdad, and he's going to're going to have their first child oh shit so this is moving along progressing you know what i mean this is doing great so here's what they do for work as we know ben is into reptiles and has a pretty big business and we'll talk about exactly how successful it was because it was very successful booming heomin. He is super into snakes always, basically.
Wow. He ran renic reptiles out of a building near his home on the property.
Not bad, yeah. He specialized in breeding designer pythons and sold them all over the place nationwide.
Now, a video tour of the business that he put together for his own advertising purposes shows him handling all kinds of snakes. No, he's not like ew okay okay just put it in my hand okay he just picks it up he's like yeah this guy here he's grabbing him by the face he's real comfortable with snakes super comfortable yeah he's very well aware of what's poisonous and what's not and he's good yeah terrifying is what that is so yeah he said these things are just very very amazing he says about snakes on the video these things are just very very amazing i feel like maybe he should have written something down before he went on perhaps yeah he's like i'll go live and i'll have it i'll just i'll do it on the day don't worry is what he said and they were like o'reilly now everybody thinks they can do it live you didn't you didn't write uh write it down did you You prepared nothing? I got it.
I've got it. It's all right here.
In my dome piece. I don't write it down.
I keep it in my head like Jay-Z, and then I just spit my verse. That's how it works.
It's more organic. Yeah, it comes out better that way.
So Ben converted the barn on the farm into the business. That's how it worked.
And Sam said Ben had his first snake at a very young age, and that became somewhat of a passion for him. It became a hobby to build into a business, and he was very good at what he did.
Another person says Linley found Ben's passion interesting. She thought it was cool that he was into something.
I mean, shit, why not? I think it's attractive when someone's into anything. It's kind of cool yeah especially if they're good at it could be anything when they when they know a lot about when they know what they're doing yeah whatever it is that they're doing it's pretty interesting i don't care what it is doesn't you know what just that they're something um she would work day and night helping ben with his snakes handling them cleaning them sorting them so linley would she jumped into sorting the snake so she has to be very okay with snakes because She's going to be handling them, cleaning them, sorting them.
So Lindley, she jumped in too.

Sorting the snakes.

So she has to be very okay with snakes because she's going to be handling them quite a bit.

One guy here, one of Ben's friends, said Ben was a successful snake breeder.

He was kind of a pioneer in that whole industry. He was definitely very well known in the snake breeding community, like I would say worldwide.

Pioneer in 2017. I didn't think of pioneer anything no except for podcasting maybe back then other than that there wasn't much to pioneer crypto or fucking uh inventing something i don't know that snake breeding they've been breeding snakes since the fucking beginning of time yeah since egyptians i are we talking about so yeah she but he's she says this guy says he's like a worldwide rock star there's so many niches out there that we have no fucking idea about none a snake breeding rock star rock star is what he's called and we've never heard of him or we just go it was snake breed or creepy that's all we say weird yeah so they said the unique color combinations and patterns he produced because he would crossbreed snakes and put snakes together that he thinks would fucking look cool or whatever related yeah he said that that was a big deal he created designer pets that could sell for upwards of $100,000 each.
Did he create the golden doodle of snakes? I think that's what he's doing, basically. He's breeding snakes.
He's a useless, hypoallergenic, weird dog. Hey, everybody.
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And now back to the show. So she said, or his friend said, Ben was doing stuff nobody had ever seen before, and he had a lot of worlds first over the years.

Here's a snake with two dicks.

Look at this.

It's a snake with legs.

Ain't that something?

Here's a snake that can run.

Ben, that's a lizard. Ben, that's a bearded dragon, and you know it.

Don't.

It is not. Look at the tail.
It's a snake, I and you know it don't it is not look at the tail it's a snake i tell you just say i'm the first i've seen an iguana before damn it why you gotta always discourage me from doing things it's a snake with fucking legs god damn it i made it look at it he's fast too look at him go god Ben. You're insulting my intelligence.
I've read a book before. I watched.
My grandmother gave me a subscription to Ranger Rick. Thing is, you don't know about snakes, though.
See? Are you the snake rock star? I didn't think so. Me? Snake rock star.
Trust me on this one. He's got legs, and I made them.
There you go. All right.
It's not an iguana. Goddamn right it's not an iguana.
I could sue you for libel for that. This is my livelihood right here.
That's not a snake. That's a skink.
Yeah. So Ben says in the video, welcome to the basement of renic reptiles.
We keep particular pythons, blood pythons, white lip pythons green anacondas what the fuck is a blood python i don't know i think it's red probably is what i would okay yeah i don't think it yeah i don't think it it lusts it lusts for blood that's what it is yeah it only eats blood you have to feed it blood you have to take the rabbit blood out of the rapid you gotta drain it and then you put it in one of those hamster feeders yeah and the late the snake will hit the hit the low ball you gotta make a deal with a butcher shop to get their extra it's a lot yeah i'll take two pounds of pig blood please and like a bucket of blood i could have please and trying to work on either so the the butcher's like are you either are you working on a carry situation or do you have a python which one do you have a python are you shooting a movie i need to know which because really if it's a carry situation there's a couple specific models of buckets you're going to want for this it's going to work best and also some paperwork you're going to need that yeah they even show him bare hand picking up a snapping turtle yeah that's That's insanity. I won't go in any body of water if there's a rumor a snapping turtle might be in there.
Bite your dick off. There's a southern chef on Instagram that goes into the bayou, James, and picks up, like, fucking 50-pound snappers.
That's crazy. I hope it takes your fucking leg off.

I hope you pick it up backwards.

They'll take a finger, those things.

I hope you mistake a tail for a head.

Pick that fucker up backwards.

And it circumcises the motherfucker out of you, you son of a bitch.

You lousy son of a bitch. Playing with turtles?

Jesus Christ.

So they say that one guy here who is Phil Goss,

the president of the United States Association of Reptile Keepers, which exists, by the way. People have paid money and paid their dues to do this.
They get a lapel pin for that. He said good cooks don't always make good restaurant owners.
It's the same with animal lovers. But Ben, on the other hand, not only had a passion for snakes and had a care care for them he carried that into being a very good business person as well so yeah just liking snakes and being good at making them fuck doesn't mean that you know how to put together a business you know what i mean it's just you're into that could be totally different so remain with them doesn't make money yeah we're good at this and terrible at business we're good at making a show we're We're terrible at the business side of it.
That's how it works. Yeah.
We're just like that. He said he was one of the most professional minds in the reptile community.
He represented himself well. Had extremely healthy animals.
Very good. They said that Rennick really tapped into the growth of the reptile business popularity that's just been blossoming.
And they said 5% of U.S. households have reptiles as pets.
5%. Which isn't a lot.
That's not a lot at all. Which he chalked up to anything from requiring less maintenance than dogs and cats to they're non-allergenic.
So if you want a pet, you don't want to pick up shit. Well, 300 million people, 10% of 300 million would be 30, so 5% would be 15.
15 million people? 15 million. And it's actually like 330 million.
So we'll say like, say 18 million people have a rough time. And if you do it by household, averaging how many people are in a household, probably about 6 million.
There you go. Exactly.
Six million houses would probably, about that.

There we go.

We figured it all out.

Not bad math, James.

Sure.

We did that pretty quick for a couple of idiot comedians.

It's not bad.

But he said that reptiles have become more domesticated and are bred mainly in captivity

now.

He said a lot of people are more open to having a bearded dragon or a ball python as a pet.

I'm not having any pet that sounds like it goes after your balls especially a giant snake you tell all your friends be careful that's a ball python everybody walks into your house covering up their fucking dicks stay out of the other room that's right i got an asshole boah in the back. You don't want him coming anywhere near you.

Asshole boa.

So they actually ball up like that white snake fucking pendant cover?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what ball pythons do.

They just go into a ball.

They look like a big knot.

It's a bizarre snake.

I thought all snakes did that.

No, they coil, but those things like ball.

Well, I guess I've seen like when you watch, I've seen garter snakes like in my yard breeding. Yeah.
Yeah. And they kind of ball up, right? They're in like a, yeah, they're in like a knotted, twisted, and it's like a big moving, twisted, knotted thing.
It's fucking weird. Yeah.
It's really weird. And they have two little hooks on the back of them, and they lock those together to fuck.
It's the creepiest thing. It's creepy.
I guess it's better than a dog dick just stuck in something yeah at least they hook together and then you don't even see the snake dick yeah no i didn't see any snakes at all it gets in there so uh he specialized in the ball pythons which is one of the most common pet snakes in the industry it's considered a smaller species a big ball python's about four and a half feet long you know small jesus tiny and so fat james i've had two oh yeah they're huge and fat yeah i thought you hated snakes you're just before i i do and i i got into them for a minute okay for for a minute because i thought that i thought the women liked snakes And the women that like snakes, I don't like. That's what I learned.
I was just going to say. They scared the shit out of me.
Those are frightening. Those are a tougher breed of lady than you're looking for, I think, knowing you.
It's a gal I'm not capable of taking to dinner. No.
Well, no, she's going to whip an iguana out of her purse at some point or something you never know what she's gonna have packing she wants to go to a place that has bugs so she can bag up the crickets and feed her fucking snakes and all it's weird shit oh he also had a type of albino green anaconda and retric and reticulated pyons, which very rarely exceed 20 feet. 20 feet? That is enormous.
Enormous. That's a huge one.
Very rarely. Fuck.
One guy here of central Florida, he lives in a guy named Brian Enslin, said he bought his first baby snake from Rennick in 2010, and since then he bought about 10 more he got real into snakes 10 snakes he's got 11 snakes all together holy he said customer service goes a long way so he keeps coming back to jared to ben because he's such a goddamn you know snake guy here with the snakes he's a charmer boy a snake charmer he is so He said the snakes were shipped through an overnight mail service. He said still he had the chance to meet Rennick twice at a convention in Daytona, Florida.
Rennick mentored him on how to help build up his own side business. He said he helped me quite a bit along the way.
If I had questions, he's one of the big names in the industry. He's dealt with a lot of people.
Ben is like a big, literally the reptile industry he's known the world over. Ben Rennick.
Everybody knows who he is. So that neighbor again who said he's the only one that would help me with my shit there.
Right. He said that this guy graded the Rennick family's long driveway in the winter and fixed their lawn equipment in the summer.
So he was a handyman on this property too he said a few years ago ben finally persuaded him to step inside the snake house this guy was not into snake he was in vietnam but snake scare him shoot at me all you want i don't give a fuck put me face down in a jungle but don't come near a snake in a fish tank. I don't want to see it.
I can be in a room with a snake, maybe two snakes. How about 3,000? No.
Too many snakes. That can overtake you.
Right. So this guy said he knew I didn't like snakes.
I told him I'd go in and look one time, and that's all I did. Probably shit his pants in in there too.
This guy did say that Ben was organized. He worked hard and that there seemed to be a regular stream of delivery trucks passing by.
Bringing him shit, taking snakes out. He seemed to say- Oh, bringing him mice.
Said the business seems to be thriving. Yeah.
So in 2016 now, so she helped him get his business going. Lindley did, would help with the snakes.
And I assume to set that up has got to be a lot of work. Oh, my.
Now, she's been to massage school, obviously. And they have some money now.
So she decides she's going to open up her own spa massage parlor or whatever the fuck. She's going to do her own business here.
Those gals can make some money, man. I'm telling you.
So two people in this couple, both with their own businesses that are thriving. She opened a business called Essentia Spa in Columbia, Missouri.
And Essentia, I have no idea. And her friend Ashley Shaw was the spa manager.
She hires a friend of hers to do that. And Sam, Ben's brother, said, I know that when she started her spa business, it's just something that she had always wanted to do, you know, that empowered her quite a bit.
Yeah. To have her own business, especially to have your own like building where you have.
Right. It's one thing to run a business from your house or whatever, but to have a building where you have like tables set up and a sign up and people come in and sit and wait and that there's a certain pride to the whole.
You got a spare set of keys that are just business keys. Yeah, there's a certain something to that.
So Ben's brother also, like I said, lives on the property, Sam. Sam said, we lived out there together and raised our kids out there together.
He said, we went fishing on the weekends. You know, we were close.
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, him and his brother live on the same property and why not country shit hell yeah country shit by 2017 the business of reptiles is fucking booming baby really it is bumping uh he is shipping snakes around the world to you to the uk to japan traveling to reptile conventions all over the u.s.
and when he walks in, they're like,

oh shit, that's Ben Rennick.

That's the, I mean, he makes,

he makes all sorts of weird shit we never thought of.

It's like when Robert England shows up to Comic-Con.

Yeah, that's exactly, oh man, oh God, Jesus. It's like, yeah, or when fucking Shatner

would show up to one of those Trek-y things that they do.

Star Trek things.

So enter Dave Kaufman, and Dave, by the way is d-a-v but it said dave stop it absolutely that's that's some snake guy shit right there that's the thing see to me every guy every guy who's super into snakes is like dave navarro that's who i feel like i feel like so are the girls yes exactly less attractive less attractive versions of dave navarro we're like because if dave navarro wasn't a real handsome guy you go christ he looks like he smells yeah he's also kind of androgynous i don't know he could be yeah you could be a gal that looks like dave navarro you know you can but, you look dirty. You look like you've been sweating a lot

and haven't really taken a shower

and your leather pants have been on for days at a time.

Can't tell if that's dyed hair or if it's just soot.

It could be soot.

Is your hair greasy or did you put product in it?

I can't tell.

That's what Dave automatically when I think.

That's DAV, though, Dave.

Stinky dick Dave.

Okay, Dave Navarro wannabe with your fucking snakes.

Dave with no E.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

So Dave Kaufman here, he talked to 48 Hours, the TV show, when they talked about this story.

And he was showing the 48 Hours correspondent.

This picture, by the way, is fucking hilarious of this 48 Hours correspondent, Peter Van Sant. It was like an older white-haired guy and at one point there's a shot of him standing there talking to this Dave with the 48 Hours guy with a giant python wrapped around his neck like eight times.
And he's like, just having a normal conversation. It's fucking ridiculous.
So it's a reticulated python is what he's showing him. And Dave said, Ben loved these snakes because of how, because how can you not love these snakes? That's what he said.
He loved these snakes because how could you not love them? He said, I mean, when it really comes down to it, they're big, they're beautiful,able what person purse what the fuck i mean it could be if you wanted to make it into one shoes a belt whatever really whatever you want i assume yeah but i mean is the next word sensible what are you talking about they're big beautiful and personable sounds like he likes like fat girls that's what he's into he's like i like. Let me tell you something.
They're big. They're beautiful.
They're more personable, honestly. You know what I mean? They want to talk to you.
That's what he sounds like. I'm Dave.
I'm Dave. Without an E.
No E. This is my brother Scott with one T.
One T. It's S-K-O-T.
That's how you spell his name. He very cool with a k and one t how the fuck is that so dave said she's gonna go right over to your shoulder and try to go on the cage behind you let's see if i'm right and then the snake kind of goes over the starts going over the correspondent but then wraps around his neck and he goes nope she's nope she's gonna wrap around you i'd be like nope you're gonna take this motherfucker off me right now or i'm gonna beat it to death with my microphone get this fucking thing off my neck before i kill it i'm gonna cut it in half i am gonna take swear to god dude i'm gonna open this fucking thing do not so that's yourA-K, to come take this off of me.

Jesus Christ.

Get Peter with only one E to come over, please.

E-T-E-R.

Yeah, that's the one.

Get him to come over.

We need him.

So the correspondent said, it's my new scarf.

And DAV says, there you go.

I won't call him Dave anymore. He's dav disable a american veteran so dav kaufman is also a snake breeder and a documentary filmmaker who travels the world tracking rare and exotic reptiles for his youtube channel you know a complete tool shit back a complete fucking tool a guy that goes and disturbs wildlife for fucking likes and views fucks with them yeah the crocodile hunter without the charm the crocodile hunter without the excitement of an australian community yeah yeah it's just the excitement of an australian is all it is with no preservation of if he didn't walk up to animals and go, oh, look at it, people wouldn't have fucking cared about him.
He was like, oh. He was so excited.
People were like, this must be interesting. Look how jacked this guy is.
He just grabbed a raccoon by the tail and drug it out of the woods. And then threw it at his four-year-old and said, catch, would you? Oh, this one's angry.
Give it to God day. Watch out, Kay.
All right. R&R.
So Dave here, DAV, sorry. He says Ben was so successful, he realized that if he sold off a portion of Rennick Reptiles, he could make some real money, like take in a partner, but for a good amount of money.
This is like going public if it was stock. You know what I mean? Sure.
Yeah. So Sam, his brother, said Ben had planned on selling the majority of his ball python collection for my understanding.
It was about $1.2 million. He has a million dollars in fucking ball pythons not even 30 years old yet this guy too wow about 30 at this time he said things were going to be very good for my brother and linley they received their at least their first payment that sam knows about of at of 200 000 toward the the full full sale of all of his pythons a 800 to go.
A portion of his Pythons. So June 8, 2017 is the day that this is all leading up to 2017.
Lynn's at her spa. Kids didn't get picked up.
Fuck. She goes over there to look for him.
Holy shit. He's on the ground in blood.
She calls 911. She calls Sam.
Sam gets there before the cops because he's on the property obviously.

And there they are. And he's saying you know, my brother's skull

was crushed in my wildest dreams. I would never

imagine anyone would hurt Ben. And all

the cops are scared and then we're back to where we were.

Okay, so

yeah, at one point they're

there and

Lynn says, because they

think something's a snake and Lynn says, that's not a snake. what is it and sam says that's a snake honey which is funny it's a snake honey like patting her on the head meanwhile she knows all sorts of snake shit more than sam so she says that's not a snake and it wasn't a snake it was something else on the ground like a snake so no dummy that's a pencil so right away yeah death by snake is what they're thinking so when they just hadn't ran away when they finally get a couple of cops in there with a with balls that are willing to fucking actually go near the body without being afraid of a snake they fucking pick the body up and they find shell casings underneath his body.

Uh-oh.

That's not.

A snake's one thing they have a very hard time doing.

I mean, I know he's a great snake breeder, but I doubt he bred any that have use of their hands and can fire a gun probably.

That would be very difficult for them to do. Yeah.

At least to aim it.

It would be tough.

So one of the cops that was there said he'd been shot in the back several times and then ultimately shot in the back of the head. And that's why his skull looked all fucked up.
They thought it was crushed by a snake, but it really. It was shot.
It was shot. He had a big hole in the back of his head.
And the county coroner here said someone being killed by a snake is not something that happens every day, especially in Missouri. And it didn't happen today either.
Nope. He said when I saw that shell casing on the shelf just above his head, there was one must have flown up.
I knew this was not from a snake. This was something much more heinous.
I knew that this was a homicide at that time. Yeah.
So they take Ben away and determine that he was shot six times from behind and once in the head you shoot somebody six times does it matter? it's not a shotgun? no no no a handgun a pistol and they said likely died within two hours before the call so sometime that morning this happened so they said one bullet was from a gun that was pressed against his head. It's a contact wound.
I mean, a fucking right up against them, which is more like shot in the back six times. He falls.
Boom. Let's make sure.
Make sure. So Sam said, quote, he was shot in the back almost exclusively.
I don't think he saw it coming at all. Ben had such a future ahead of him.
You know, he was 29 years old. He was almost 30.
A lot was lost. Ambushed.
Ambush, as that crazy fucking Restaurant Impossible guy says. That's the craziest show ever.
First of all, that guy's nuts. He's like, I'm like Gordon Ramsay, but bigger.
Look at me. I'm meaner and bigger.
Is he Scottish? No, he's like a British ex and he's like an ex-British military guy and he's jacked. He has huge arms and huge pecs and he's this big guy and he comes in mean and he's like, what are you doing over that? But this show got bad over the years so then they did a season called restaurant impossible ambush they just runs in and doesn't where other people yes where other people would like put them up to it so they would hide in a parking lot like a quarter mile away be like here we are and there's like a tent and all this production shit he's like we're getting ready right now to go over and and ambush these people and tell them that the restaurant's terrible and then they show up like screeching in the parking lot slamming on brakes gravels flying everywhere he jumps out bursts through the door and he goes ambush ambush ambush and the people are like what the fuck is going on what's happening right now they're like what the fuck you can't run in a restaurant ambush you can't run in any business maybe I'll just say this is a robbery especially if you're a gigantic crazy foreigner you can't ambush people are like what the fuck is happening right now it's the craziest show I've ever seen in my life imagine John Taffer just kicking in a restaurant door and going, shut it down! Shut it down! Before anything, Adam Bush, and the people are like, what the fuck? And he's like, do you want my help or not? And they're like, I didn't call you here, what are you talking about? I don't know who you are! They do, they say, they go, why are you here? What's going on? Your friend told me your restaurant's terrible and I'm here to fix it.
And they're like, why did my friend say my restaurant's terrible? Who said that? What's going on? It's the craziest show. And then he yells at them and browbeats them into finally going, well, I guess you can fix it if it's that bad.
He'll go, make me food. And they bring it out and he goes, Gordon Ramsay will take a bite and go, no, that's not good.
Yeah, the texture's bad. Right.
He'll take a bite and he'll go, bleh, like that. He'll go, blah.
And he'll like spin it and go, it's terrible. He'll make noises.
He does. Ambush.
And then he'll just start going crazy. Every like five minutes, I want him to just shout, ambush out of nowhere.
Anyway, so that's a big fucking tangent. Wow, I've never heard of it.
I'm going to have to watch it. Look it up.
It's hilarious. Just one episode.
It's so funny. Bar rescue against your will.
Against your will. Forcible bar rescue.
Bar rescue, the bar that doesn't need it. Forcible kitchen nightmares is what it is.
Yeah. He makes Gordon Ramsay seem like just a calm, chill, laid-back, nice British man.

So who could have done this?

Who?

Who could have done it? Right away, Dave, D-A-V, I should say.

D-A-V, I'm going to call him.

D-A-V.

Like the dog that they call D-O-G.

Yep, exactly.

D-A-V.

That's where it came from.

He said, so the first question that I asked was how many snakes were missing.

Oh, yeah.

This could be a robbery.

These are very valuable snakes. Yeah.
Snake napping got wrong is what this is he said that he said a facility like ben's attracts a lot of bad people you know snake people they're weird well at least you would have told me that before i invested in these guys i got into this shit before i had six heat rocks in my bedroom god damn it i'm joking i got fucking tanks everywhere. What am I supposed to do with this shit? I gotta eat lamps.
My room's so hot. It's so hot in here.
You have no idea. I keep my air conditioning on like 61 and it just does not keep it up.
It smells so weird. It's got like a pungent, musty smell.
I don't like it. I'm finding skin everywhere.
The shit's just strange. Snake piss stinks.
Oh, it's bad. He said a lot of people see these snakes not as these beautiful, amazing creatures that they are, but they see them as dollar signs.
So the snake people help out the family. An online auction to raise money for Lindley and the baby quickly raises $11,000 the day after he is found dead.
Wow. Yep.
One guy chipped in $6,000 for a $5 auction item just to help out the family. Yep.
They said, quote, this is someone who helped, said, quote, I think the world of Ben and his wife Lindley, they've always been exceptional folks in our industry. I'm pretty devastated by the loss of Ben.
That's a guy who runs Reptile Report, which is a news website and a reptile shipping service as well. The Reptile Report, everybody.
I know you check all your news. Do you make sure to check Reptile Report? Get the app on your phone so you can make sure to keep up with all the latest? Holy shit.
Maybe snakes do have legs by now. We don't know.
We're not on reptile report. Yeah.
So investigators are looking into the theory that Ben's murder may have been a robbery gone bad, but they figure out based on his inventories and stuff, because he keeps meticulous records of everything. Of course, yeah.
There's no snakes missing. Nothing got away.
All the snakes are accounted for here, so they don't know. It didn't make sense.
So one of the investigators said they had to start looking at the people close to Ben because it's not a robbery and he doesn't have any beef with strangers or anything. So the cop said, we definitely didn't want to exclude anybody from being a possible suspect.
I didn't know if Sam was involved. Didn't know if Lindley was involved.
They're the ones who called us. Maybe they're fucking each other.
We don't know. I mean, you never know with this shit.
So police talked to Lindley, and they sit her down, and this is from a video of this. They say, do you have any questions for us? And she said, well, what happened? And they said, we don't know yet.
And she said, what? I mean, mean what do i do which is a really fair question because that's you don't expect that you don't know what to do what do i do do i call a single mom of two now this is a second time yeah something tragic as fuck has happened yeah away with my my baby daddy once and also what do i do do i call a funeral director do i call a coroner? Do I call... Who do I talk to? Do I need a lawyer or an undertaker? What do I need? Or both.
That's the other thing. So he said, what do I do? And the cop said, lean on your friends and family.
And he said, could you see anybody you know being upset with Ben to the point where this may happen? And she said, no, he has no enemies he's a fucking snake guy for christ's sake lean on your friends and family not our problem bitch answer these questions i mean i don't know whatever you gotta do take some pills i hear that helps find a cold and cow's answer i don't know ask your family fuck friends and family you know people who give a shit about you not me i Fuck off. I know.
I can't help you here. So they talked to her.
They described her as very forthcoming. Her, the main thing she talks about here, her only, they said, anybody you think could possibly do this.
And she said, I'd look at my brother-in-law before I'd look at anybody else. Sam.
Sam. She said that, you know, it's, it's, I would look at him.
She also agreed to do a gunshot residue test just to clear her out of the mix here. Um, she said that Sam may, might have a motive to kill his brother.
She's like, I can't think of anyone else that would have a reason to. So they asked, was there any family, family issues? And she said, um, like between Sam and Ben, yeah, there was issues.
Yeah, Ben got everything. Sam got nothing.
And that's what it was. She said that Ben's plan to possibly sell the property where they all lived.
He had talked about it. And she said that Sam was upset about it.
She said when their dad shot himself, the way that everything was set up, Ben and I actually owned all the property. Yeah.
She said that Sam kind of basically just went to Ben and he was like, you need to give me half of the property. And Ben was like, no, I can't jeopardize my family in this business.
So, you know, he just said a lot of really hurtful things to Ben, which this is very normal for this to happen. I mean, it's complicated.
And if you're going to will things to people, fucking make it even or else you're going to torment these people forever. You're going to cause so many problems that will never go away.
Yep. And you think you're doing someone a favor when in reality you're just causing issues.
So also, if you get anything from a family member take it and shut the fuck up because i've never gotten a goddamn thing my whole family's dead but sam he didn't get anything apparently all he got was you can stay on this property that's not yours now which is so bad i guess not but if you own 70 acres and it was your dad's, why the fuck does Ben get it all? Why don't I get 35? Yeah, something. Yeah.
So one of the cops said Sam was a heavy suspect after hearing that. Sure.
She said they said the seed was definitely planted early that he had something to do with it. They said that another person here helped Lindley quickly.

Lindley asked for help to deal with the property and everything like that.

So they wanted to sell and downsize Ben's 3,000 reptile stock of animals, which included the pythons that could fetch more than a million dollars. So the police talked to Sam.
Okay. They're going to talk to Sam here.
And now Sam has no idea that Lindley has said anything to the cops about any beef between him and Ben at all. So Sam wondered.
They said, do you know anybody that could be upset with Ben? And Sam said, honestly, I'm wondering if this might have been an act of revenge for somebody with my father. Because he pissed off a lot of of people he said he stole millions of dollars from a shitload of people so when you got a lot of people in there one of them could have snapped and came and fucking killed my brother you know what i mean how dare you thrive on this property that i should have been able to sue your father for and perhaps that guy doesn't know that the dad is dead and it's coming back to get the dad and just shoots whoever comes near him.
Who the hell knows?

So that's what he said.

Sam said, we were concerned, however, that someone could have been upset enough and waited and done something like this.

And he said, maybe they waited so it didn't look like it was them.

I'll wait a couple years and I'll do this.

So Sam agreed that – they said, were you upset that your dad didn't leave you any of the property?

And Sam said, of course I was. Yeah.
Wouldn't you be? Jesus Christ. He said, you know, he left it just to my brother.
He said, quote, it wasn't an equal inheritance, but it is what it is. Life's not fair.
He said, I can't afford the farm. That's an expensive place to live.
So he said at the same time, I couldn't afford it anyway. If he gave me it to me, I would have had to sell it because I can't afford to keep it up and the taxes and everything else so he said i guess you know it was for the best basically they said are you willing to submit to a shotgun or not shotgun a gunshot residue test the cop fucked it up and he said yeah anything you want you got it sam said so he said he understood why police would focus on him and Lindley because they're the closest to him.
And he told the investigators, they said, what about Lindley? You think she could be involved? And he said, I can't imagine a scenario where Lindley would be involved in this. It makes no sense.
Yeah. He said that that makes no sense whatsoever.
Sam said, I didn't think that Lindley would be capable of a murder like that. So Sam tests negative for gunshot residue on his hands yeah and he said i provided them you know everything i had my cell phone the shirt off my back my alibi as to where i was when the murder happened i gave him i gave a polygraph i jizzed in a cup yeah i did it all basically so yeah they confirm his alibi and all of his many myriad of fucking testing that he's up for.
And they decide that he's not a suspect, Sam. No, sir.
Not a good suspect. Far too cooperative.
No. So they said maybe the reptile community people.
But the reptile community people are just helping. They're just doing nothing but helping.
The one person here, they did an online auction after that of donated snakes and raised more than $40,000 for Lindley and the kids. Wow.
That's fucking great. And, uh, they said, uh, 48 hours asked DAV Kaufman here, you guys banded together and you got thousands of dollars to Lindley to help her during her time of crisis.
And he said, tens of thousands. Yeah.
We raised tens of thousands of dollars to help Lindley and the kids. So the police go how do we don't know what to do here so they start looking through like ben's social media accounts and his computers maybe he maybe he's having an affair and somebody's husband got pissed off and came and killed him who the fuck knows yeah because otherwise there's no way that the way everybody's describing their life there's no one that would be willing to kill him nothing.
Nothing's been taken. It's not a robbery.
It wasn't even made to look like a robbery, so it doesn't make any sense. So through Facebook messages, they found out that Ben had been writing messages to Lindley talking about her cheating on him.
Really? Lindley's been cheating, apparently. And he's confronting her via Facebook Messenger? Which is a strange place to do it.
You live together, you guys. Hey, every couple does their different things, you know what I mean? We like to sit out by the woods have a glass of wine, they like to fucking yell at each other on Facebook, who knows? So, 11 days after the murder, the cops are like, let's bring Lindley in again here.

I mean, because they're not saying she did it, but maybe her boyfriend killed her.

You know, like he might have said, I want Lindley all myself.

I'll kill the husband.

It just opens up a whole other Pandora's box of shit here.

Right.

When you cheat on somebody, you bring another person in and there's a new suspect.

Pandora's got two boxes.

There's Pandora's box and Pandora's box of shit. That's a totally different box that you don't want to open.
It's an ugly box. Yeah.
So 11 days after the murder, she sits down and talks to him again. And the cop said, so have you been talking to anyone or did you have a relationship? And this is when she admits it because they know.
And she says, Eric, A-R-I-C, Eric. Of course it is.
Of course. He sounds like a man with snakes too, Eric.
Yeah, sounds like a nightmare. So they said, how often did you guys hook up? She said, maybe like once or twice a month.
Every two weeks. That's a lot.
She admitted she'd been unfaithful. And they said, it was, or was it just sex? And she said, yeah, it was just sex.
And they said, did he think about it the same way? Did he think it was just sex, or did he think you had a relationship going? She said, yeah, no, he knew it was just sex. This was a sexual relationship.
So they end up going, we'd love to have a chit-chat with this fucking guy to make sure he's as casual as you are. So they do, and they check his alibi and he was on a trip with friends at the time of the murder.
Like eight people saw him and he wasn't even, wasn't even in the state. So impossible that he did it.
So they're like, fuck square one shit. So then they look at there's problems with bills.
They learn through Facebook messages. Again, they communicate all of their major problems through Facebook Messenger, which is a strange.
I guess that's how they hook back up again. So it's our format.
That's all. It's our platform.
We love it. I open that app and I just think of you.
I just get you all warm and fuzzy. So also they learn through these messages that Lindley was having trouble paying her business loans and owed thousands of dollars to people.
Vendors and banks and things like that. Paul Mitchell, Vidal Sassoon, they're all coming for their piece.
They're coming for your ass. That's the thing.
You don't want to fuck with Vidal Sassoon. He will come for you.
Goddamn. That fucking kangaroo on the Aussie thing.
He'll come for you. He said, Ben was having a...
Paul Mitchell, forget it. He's a bad man.
He's a bad man, that Paul Mitchell. She said, Ben was having to front a lot of bills for Lindley Spa, and this created a really big wedge between the two, said one of the cops.
Yeah. So they said, after we started to find out about...
This is a cop talking. after we started to find out about boyfriends, the shape, said one of the cops.
So they said, after we started to find out about, this is a

cop talking, after we started to find out about

boyfriends, the shape the spa

was in, how much money she owed,

it just started pushing Sam to the side

as a suspect.

So then they find out the insurance

agent that was handling the life

insurance policy also contacted

the police. Really?

After learning that Lindley was a suspect,

they decided to pause paying

the $1 million life insurance

Thank you. insurance policy also contacted the police.
Really? After learning that Lindley was a suspect,

they decided to pause paying the $1 million life insurance policy that he had.

A million?

A million he had on him.

So the police,

the agent told police that Lindley had begun trying to cash that policy

within hours of the death.

She was on the phone with the same day,

the same day. She was on the phone with insurance.
When you got to bury somebody, you're going to need that money now. Fuck, dude.
That's crazy, though. A million dollar life insurance policy and within hours of- Within hours.
You can't do that. So then they found out that Lynn Lee was also trying to sell the farm and Ben's reptile business the week of the murder.
Really? Like, two days after the murder, she's got the farms for sale, the fucking reptile business is up, let's go. She's trying to cash the fuck out.
Then they interview someone here. They're like, well, who the hell does she hang out with that might know anything about her? Well, how about that manager from the spa? From her's her friend ashley shaw let's talk to her she's an employee and a close friend and maybe she's confided in ashley some shit so she does and ashley says i mean this is in a police interview i mean i'm sure that you know she was having an affair and they say uh-huh and ashley affairs, actually.
Oh, she's horny. She is a horny one here.
So Ashley said that Lindley had been seeing another man named Brandon Blackwell, who she had met on a dating website. This isn't even right.
She went on a fucking site to find other people to bang. It's not even like they worked together or they ran into each other through mutual friends.
She was like, I need different penis. Let me look through this site.
That's the only reason to look through a dating website. Yeah.
Since I've been with Sarah, I've never, honestly, I've never honestly ever before looked on a dating website anyway, but there'd be no reason for me to look at a dating website. I don't even know how they operate.
No fucking clue. Ever.
Thank fuck for that. That's all I have to say.
Couldn't be happier that I sidestepped all of those. You know that over 60% of people now meet through dating apps? 60% of couples are together through? Right now.
Wow. 60%.
It used to be up until 15 years ago, and for 100 years before that it was 60 friends and family would meet yeah would introduce you you know oh dude yeah yo she's got a friend that's sick yeah yeah you will get's all get together having a party come up that's how people used to meet and get together and now or they don't now they're like hey he talked to me or fucking. You can't go up and talk to someone now.

They're like, ew, what are you doing?

You didn't even send me a fucking instant message first.

This is crazy.

What's wrong with you?

You didn't DM me first?

What the fuck?

You didn't even request this yet.

You just walked up.

This is crazy.

Yeah.

So they talk about this, and she said she met him on a dating website.

She said Lindley was hooking up with Brandon before Ben's murder.

She said, I know Brandon was like a really short time before that.

Thank you. this and she said she was met him on a dating website she said linley was hooking up with brandon before ben's murder she said i know brandon was like a really short time before that you know like the day before yeah then they find out about more affairs they check linley's phone records to look for evidence of other shit and they find a number report belonging to brandon blackwell that came up frequently that's the one she was talking about so So they talked to Brandon Blackwell.
Sure. Sit down, chief.
And the cops said they had started a sexual affair, and it turned out it was just three days before the murder this happened. They started an affair.
So she just... She slept with a man three days before her husband was murdered.
Yeah. Well, a new guy.
She was already fucking another guy. So she just began banging for the first time three days before.

Now, Blackwell has a rock-solid alibi, though, during the time of the murder.

That's the thing.

But the weird part is, while this investigation is going on, and they're talking to Blackwell,

and they go, well, he's got a rock-solid investigation, all of a sudden, Lindley goes public with her relationship with Blackwell, and they're boyfriend-girlfriend now.

Oh.

Real fast, this happens.

Everybody is aware of it now.

Yeah, on social media and everything.

There are pictures of them together.

Brand new.

Yep, and Sam, Ben's brother, said, we started to see Lindley's social media accounts pop up with another man.

And then very quickly after that, we found out she pregnant what this linley is fertile she is fertile she's

so far she's as we know that we know of she's fucked four people and three of them have

impregnated her so it's that's that's crazy she's just taking loads without any sort of

apparently caution wow caution to the wind here my god that's a tough game to be playing

That's right. She's just taking loads without any sort of caution.
Wow. Caution to the wind here.

My God.

That's a tough game to be playing.

That's a real tough game.

So I don't know.

This is going to be her third kid.

She said, Lindley entered into the relationship with Brandon Blackwell almost immediately after the time of the murder.

Brandon was married and had two kids, by the way.

So they're wrecking multiple homes here also. That's the other problem.
Everybody's a fucking disaster here. So then they look at more Facebook messages, and they discover Facebook messages between the Ben and Lindley, those ones, and they said that the spa's losing money and all that.
One Facebook message, by the way, one was sent to Lindley just hours before he was murdered, and that was this. This is the one he sent to her hours before that day.
No more lying. No more keeping things from me.
No more not paying people and thinking it's okay to pay later. In other words, he caught her for all of her lies that she's been in, except for the affairs.
But no more lying. No more keeping.
This is all the business stuff they're talking about. Never mind if he finds out she's banging a couple other people, he's really going to be upset.
72 hours ago, she was screaming some other guy's name. Fuck yeah.
So a stupid name too. Four months later, this is four months after the murder, they bring Lindley back in to talk to her again.
Because they're like, we can't get past her. Everybody else clears except for her.
So they said, will you take a polygraph? And she said, no problem. You got it.
Take a polygraph. So in there, they said, how did you think after the polygraph? They said, how do you think you did, Lindley? And she said, oh, I think I did well.
And not quite. They said, quote, so the results of your polygraph show that you failed

the test uh-huh when i asked you did you shoot that man you were you were deceptive yeah that's kind of the only question we were real concerned about is did you shoot him yeah that's the one that we cared about yeah and that's the only you fucked up on that one pretty bad she said i can't Explain why I just failed that, but I didn't kill Ben.

I don't know why I...

I mean, and some people, when they say, did you shoot that person? Your shit might part rate might go through the roof because, you know, who knows? But she said, I can't explain it. So I don't know.
I don't know. Then they ended up getting her phone records and saw text messages they found between her and Mike Humphrey.
Remember Mike Humphrey, the pill dealer from back in the day? She's talking to him again. God damn it.
Okay. Lindley told the cops that Mike was Mike Humphrey, a client she used to work on as well as an old boyfriend.
The cops said, quote, they talked the whole day of the murder and they haven't talked since. What? He said, a little bit of a red flag when we see that, when we see them then separate.
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So they interviewed Michael Humphrey, and he claimed that they reconnected because Ashley Shaw, the business manager, wanted some stereo work done, and he could provide that service because he installed shit like that so they asked linley about mike humphries and they said listen we know you've been talking to this guy we know you've been talking to michael humphrey by the way we know he's your ex-boyfriend by the way we also know that he's fresh out of prison on drug charges as well so we know all of this you know we know you texted and called him numerous times including well, really up to and including the day your husband was murdered and then not at all after that. So we'd like to talk to you about that.
Lynn says, oh, he was coming in for massages. Yeah, penis massages is what those are.
Different kind of massage is what that is. You know, dick balls, that whole area.
I really miss. The Sean Watson massage.
You know, that know that massage yeah we call it the travolta around here the crap they're all the same all the same shit so um he was coming in for massages and the officer said yeah but the thing is that right there is very suspicious that you haven't talked to him since.

She starts crying at that point.

Oh, no.

Breaks down.

Great.

It looks bad.

It looks bad.

But she continued to deny her involvement, even though they broke her here.

She said, I don't have anything to do with this.

Yeah.

And they said, there's so much circumstantial evidence in this case against you.

It's mind boggling is what they tell her. And she i need to get my children and she gets up and they go well i'll walk you out yeah they don't have enough to arrest her so they have to let her leave that's it just bully her all the way out it's i'll walk you out yeah you fucking bitch that's right yeah go pick your kids up teach them what a fucking liar looks like and, you scumbag.
You fucking hooah. Look at you.
We don't believe a word of it. What do you got, four or five more boyfriends out there, you fucking skank? That's right.
And she's like, will you leave me alone? I'm a mother. I'm a mother.
So that's what she does. She leaves the office, and that's that.
They move on. There's nothing more they can do at this point.
Blackwell leaves his wife, Brandon Blackwell. Lynn Lee has a court battle against Sam because she wants to sell the farm, and Sam's like, you're not selling my family farm.
My brother barely had it. Now you have it.
She won, though. She won the court battle.
She owns it. So the farm sold for $740,000.
Yeah. So she moved to Columbia, Missouri with Brandon Blackwell and all of their children.
A whole Brady bunch. He's got two, she's got three.
So it's damn near a Brady bunch here. Sam said, I lost a farm that my family spent 40 years maintaining.
We could have never imagined losing the farm in that way. Yeah, just some to some chicks that your brother was married to for a couple of years.
So they said that, you know, just I guess just weeks after the murder, her spa business was failing. Lindley sold the property, closed up shop in her in her spa business and fucking took off.
They said, quote, okay, so she was there one day and the next day she left and then never came back, which is goddamn crazy. This is a woman named Beth Mayberry says that who's described by 48 hours as Beth Mayberry works at that same location.
But she was just one more true crime buff in Columbia, Missouri, riveted to to a case without a conclusion and they asked her how much is this renick case talked about around here and she said it's a lot a lot it's every day there's 800 people here we ain't got much else to talk about here they say and what do people say what do they think and betts said crazy it's crazy and people did start to wonder maybe linley did it maybe she had someone do this it became a question i would fucking hope so 2018 is when linley and brandon's baby is born okay let's add another one to the mix here so 2019 still no arrests two years later and sam said i wasn't sure what to didn't. He thought it would never be solved.
Yeah. So they said he was just left completely uneasy.
He said it was very, very tough knowing that someone was out there and that it essentially gotten away with murder. I was concerned for my own safety.
And without an arrest, you know, everybody is concerned at this point. So DAV Kaufman said, quote, so when the case goes cold, we would all connect with each other asking if anybody had some information on what was going on.

They form like a phone tree, you know, like a snaking, you know, said it was frustrating.

It was frustrating to have all this time pass and not have a culprit in custody.

He said that he said the fucking creepiest snake person thing that could ever be said, quote. It was frustrating to have all this time pass and not have a culprit in custody.

Then he said the fucking creepiest snake person thing that could ever be said.

Quote, humans do things other than what you would expect.

Snakes do not.

What?

Yeah.

He's trying to say why snakes are better than people type of thing.

It's not like dogs.

Yeah. It's not that.
No. We don't deserve's no we don't deserve snakes it's a shame we outlive snakes is it a shame snake doesn't care about you at all and would just wants to eat shit and move on but still you know it's like a person so lindley is acting weird they say here um sam said about lindley's, quote, we wanted to be as understanding as possible.
However, in time when she refused to talk to us or allow the kids or even receive my brother's belongings, we knew something was wrong. Yeah.
She said, I just want nothing to do with you people. 2019 here.
Shocking. Her and Brandon's relationship not going so well.
Is it rocky? Surprising here. Okay.
She took out a restraining order against him. Oh.
And in 2020, he was, January 2020, he was arrested for violating the restraining order. Sure.
Of course. She alleged he'd become threatening and that they had broken up.
She got an order of protection and he was then charged with violating that order and stalking her, and he denies the charges.

Oh, he's a stalker.

Okay.

She said that Blackwell was threatening to accuse her of murder in the application for the order of protection.

That's what she said.

Why did she say that?

We'll find out.

January 2020, he's in jail, and when people sit in jail, they really want to get out is the thing. They want out bad.

Yeah, they really want to get out is the thing. They want to have some epiphanies in there, too.

They'll grasp for straws and snakes and whatever else they could find to get the fuck out of somewhere.

So they go to talk to him because he asked his father to call the cops and have them come talk to him.

So they said, we're investigators with the highway patrol.

I'm here because you used to be dating Lindley.

Your dad gave me a call today and said that you wanted to talk to us.

And Brandon said, yeah, my main concern is getting out of that cell right now.

He's straight up.

He's like, how do I get the fuck out of here?

Yeah.

So they said, now you're coming to us when you're in a pickle.

So, and he said, right. So basically you need a whole lot of bargaining power because you're the one who's fucked, not us.
You get it. You know.
So he told investigators that Lindley's spa was in financial trouble. Ben knew his wife was withdrawing money needed to keep it going and had the financial means to take her children away from her is what brandon said

they said he described linley's confessions to him saying that when they would talk about it she would put their phones in a separate room to make sure nobody was recording anything or eavesdropping or yeah you know you accidentally said siri call the fucking highway patrol or some shit. Siri, call homicide

detectives. Anyway,

so that

is... You know, you accidentally said, Siri, call the fucking highway patrol or some shit.
Siri, call homicide detectives. Anyway, so that is, I hope that didn't fuck anything up with my phone.
It's across the room. I'm going to have homicide detectives on my phone after I just said that.
So he said about her that they would put the phones in the other room and then they would talk about it and he would ask her to tell it again. apparently the plotting to kill ben took place at the phones in the other room, and then they would talk about it, and he would ask her to tell it again.
Apparently, the plotting to kill Ben took place at the spa in the shopping plaza, in the Cherry Hill Shopping Plaza in Columbia, Missouri. He said that Lindley planned it with a co-worker and also called up Mike Humphrey, obviously, your scumbag pill dealer boyfriend, ex-boyfriend.
And he would come to the spa for a massage sometimes anyway. So this Brandon Blackwell says that Lindley told him the week before Ben was murdered that she tried and failed to kill him.
This wasn't the first attempt to kill him. This is fucking crazy.
Okay. According to this, according to Brandon, Ashley Shaw, the co-worker, spa manager, helped her obtain Percocets, which doesn't seem like with Mike around you'd have to look too far for those.
And come up with a plan to poison Ben. That was the original plan.
They were going to overdose him with perks? Jesus Christ, what a brutal way to hurt somebody. He said that they whipped up what he called a toxic shake for him he said quote he was given a protein drink one night that was laced full of enormous amounts of narcotics and somehow lived through it but the plan was for that to be the last day of his life and lilly gave it to him and all that kind of shit she said and they said well you how do, how do you know? Did you hear this from someone? And he said, my information is out of the horse's mouth.
She fucking told me face to face. They said after they crushed up 15 Percocets and put it in a milkshake or some kind of shake.
That's not enough. People have fun with that.
Well, not me. Yeah, people take 30 of those in a day.
Yeah, but if you're not used to taking 30, that's a lot.

15 might, yeah.

You could already.

It also depends on the strength of them.

They could be small perks.

They could be big perks.

The other thing.

God damn it, 15.

So Blackwell tells police that Lindley reached out to Michael Humphrey and asked him for help.

Okay.

Now, while they're doing this, by the way, they're trying to match this up with Lindley's phone and text records to make sure this all matches up.

And Brandon's not just talking shit to get out of a jail cell.

Sure.

So when the pills failed, Lindley turned to Michael Humphrey. He said they drove to the farm.
He had gloves. He had a firearm.
The plan was for him to do it. They get there and he hands her the gun and says he doesn't feel comfortable doing it.
I barely know the guy.

You know, killing is such a personal thing. You know what I'm saying? Who benefits from this? Yeah, I don't know why I'm doing this.
Here's a gun for you. He says he's uncomfortable.
It's something that she's got to take care of. She walks in with the gun and just shoots him a bunch of times.
And then, according to him, Ashley Shaw comes back into the picture now. They said that Brandon told police that Ashley was in on it immediately from the start of the planning.
She's been there on this conspiracy the whole time. Really? Whole time.
Yep. So they obtained a search warrant for everybody's Facebook accounts and all that, and they confirmed the story of the protein drink messages between all these people.
Oh, my God. They also confirmed that Ben knew of his wife's financial problems.
On the day of the killing, Mike Humphrey picked Lindley up at the spa, and the employee, Ashley, sent her text messages from her phone, which remained behind. Oh, okay.
So it looked like if they checked the tower, she's still there, which is smart. That's a smart move, which remained behind along with Humphrey's phone to cover their movement.
So she would say he came in for a massage that day. That's what we were looking at our phones.
We were both there. So the evidence at the scene indicated that Ben knew his killer because where he was found, how he was killed, nothing was stolen.
He turned his back to someone in his own business and trusted them. So that makes perfect sense.
They said it was initially, the plan initially was for Humphrey to kill Ben while basically, Lindley was going to say that she brought Mike over there to look at the snake barn. Hey, check out how cool it is.
But then, you know, he was going to shoot her. Now, anyway, he also they also said that Mike had told Lindley that he didn't do it because if she changed her mind and regretted it later, she didn't he didn't want her to be mad at him later for shooting her husband.
He watched the killing, picked up a couple of the shell casings, missed more of them though. They felt like three of them under his body and one on a shelf by his head.
So very bad at picking up shell casings. And then the two of them, Lindley and Mike, returned to the spa where she showered, get the gunshot residue off of her, and her coworker bagged up her clothes.
Mike took them out and got rid of them and disposed of them. Holy shit.
This is a fucking plot. Yeah.
I mean, the mafia has less organized hits than this. This is crazy.
She took a shower. She took a shower to get it.
This was planned down to we don't want our cell phones to be right like that's that's a big plan so they arrest mike humphrey yeah and they said that linley to mike had they said why did you do this and mike said well linley had spun this tale of domestic violence and domestic abuse ben's been beating her raping her all his shit so i figured i would help and uh this cop said michael believed this michael wanted to help he brought her the gun to uh to her spa in case she needed it that was what it was he was and that's what ashley said too like here in case your husband comes after you again now mike's story here is uh that's his story um he said that um you know that he told linley uh Police, Lindley asked him to go with her to see Ben. And she said that she said that she was leaving him.
This is what she told Mike. I'm leaving Ben and I want to pick up my stuff.
So will you come with me to make sure I'm safe? Okay. When they arrived at the snake facility, Lindley had the gun with her.
He said he had previously brought it for her in case she needed it. Humphrey, though, claimed Lindley tried to hand him the gun and he said, I don't want the fucking gun.
It's your husband. You want him dead? Shoot him.
So when Ben opened the door, he said that he turned around to walk back in and that's when she shot him right there. Humphrey said, quote around as soon as the first shot rang i ran out the door i heard possibly another one maybe two and by that time i'm standing by the car asking her what the fuck just happened you know what i mean and she's like we gotta go we gotta go he left out at least four more shots too by the way so january 16th 2020 lley is finally arrested really they're going to arrest her um yes now she claims she enlisted humphrey to accompany her to the snake breeding facility where she planned to break up with ben the day that he was killed and ben freaked out so um d.a.v.
kaufman said they asked him what was this like for you to find out it was her, this woman you've been trying to help for years and everything. He said, disbelief.
I thought they got the wrong person. No way.
And Sam said, it took us years to find out that Lindley was lying and that she was living a double life. Sociopath.
If you look that up, Lindley's picture will be sitting right there with it. Definition.
I've heard that a lot. So should we look? I think we should.
I don't think it's there. Let's see.
Sociopath. Let's see.
Image. And sociopath isn't really a medical.
It's not really a thing that exists either. It's more of a catch-all.
It's a lot of. Not? No, it's crazy.
It's a lot of posters. Not a strawberry blonde chick? No.
No. No crazy it's a lot of like uh posters with a lot of strawberry blonde chick no no so weird sociopath versus psychopath that's no it's a whole bunch of that that's interesting but not there's there's a strawberry blonde girl uh patrice patrick oh gain oh it's a book it's a little girl however though yeah yeah i don't know what this woman looks like but i guarantee you this these are not her not her hyperbole james hyperbole hyperbole hyperbole see what happens so she said uh sam said linley stood to gain millions from the death of my brother between the life insurance the sale of the snakes and the family farm she would inherit it was significant it took a lot a lot of time just to process the lies that were given by Lindley.

So Ashley gets arrested.

Ashley Shaw from work gets arrested, too.

She's been in a murder plot.

And they said to Ashley, now is the time, Ashley.

She's a chick named Ashley up for murder, so they're like, listen, chick, which side

do you want to be on?

They said, you're either on Team Lindley or you're on Team Missouri. And Team Lindley's going to jail.
They're going to prison for first-degree murder. So which side do you want to be on? And she said, I'd love to be on Team Missouri if possible, if you have an extra roster spot for me.
Missouri seems to be recruiting pretty hard. I'm in.
You seem to be good here. Yeah, I like i like the engineering department you know so she said but they do make a deal for her to get prosecutorial immunity though okay i want immunity before i'll say shit and they go well she was the least culpable of anybody so fine she told the officer she agreed to help linley kill ben because linley said she was in an abusive relationship she said said that she's the one who got the Percocet and helped find Michael Humphrey again.
Wow. So, yeah, she, uh, that's wild, man.
She said, yes, we did make a fucking, a smoothie, a poison smoothie. And, um, you know, Ashley kept saying that, uh, Lindley kept telling her that Ben had abused her.
She said, quote, she asked if I could get any thing, any prescription pills or anything with the amount that could help her kill him.

And so I got her perk.

It was Percocet.

I'm pretty sure that.

And then there was, I think, 15 of them is what she said.

Mashed him up in a blueberry smoothie and had him drink it.

And he had a great Friday night. He said, ugh, acai is disgusting, and he threw it away.
God, why do people eat that shit? So when Lindley and Mike Humphrey were at the farm, she also helped to establish an alibi for Lindley, sending texts and correspondence on her phone to make it look like she was not only at the spa, but actively playing with her phone. Unbelievable.
Dick with my phone while I'm gone. Now, according to Ashley, after the shooting, Lindley claimed Michael Humphrey was the trigger man.
Yeah. That's interesting.
But she says a few days later, Lindley changed her story and admitted she was the one who did the shooting so Lindley no Lindley told Brandon Lindley told Ashley and that's what Mike says too so I'm gonna go ahead with Lindley did the shooting here that's fucked up man yeah real fucked up it's one thing to get someone else to do it but to shoot your own husband five six times in the back and then go up to the head and boom. That's a fucking cold motherfucker right there.
Well, a man that stood nearby. Yep.
That's fucking scared. So Ashley said, and she said, oh, no, once we got there, I was fine to do it.
And so he handed me the gun and I did it. She was cold as fucking ice, which isn't good.
She could do it. And then she was like, oh, yeah was like oh yeah i can do it i could do this so they said after the murder was she ever remorseful at all and ashley said never not once they said she ever seemed sorry and she said never no she's happy scare you to thrill why the fuck are you still hanging out with her yeah this is i'm not hanging out with you anymore i think is the this goes.
My God. So Lindley's attorney says that they argue that the state's case isn't based on the truth, but based on the fearful, coerced testimony of Ashley Shaw.
That's all it is. She was just scared.
They said they told her you're either on Team Lindley or you're on Team Missouri and Team Lindley's going to jail for first degree murder. Who the fuck wouldn't? Yeah.
So they said, you know, how would that affect her? And the attorney said, this is Lindley's attorney, said, well, if Ashley Shaw ever wants to leave that interview room for the rest of her life or for the indefinite future, she's going to change her story and tell them what they want to hear. So the other defense attorney said it was only after that threat that she changed her story and implicated Lindley Rennick.
Well, yeah, when she found out she's in trouble. Well, why else would she tell him? She found out she's in trouble and that we're going to give you no punishment for this.
Yeah. So, I mean, we'll give you immunity.
Well, fuck. Might as well.
Right. Let's chat.
Screw it. Yeah.
Why not? So October 2021, Mike Humphrey's going to trial. He's the first one.
The prosecution says that Lindley fired the gun and Humphrey was in on the plan. Prosecutor said that he was in on the plotting, provided the weapon and helped knock off the husband.
That was all that. The murder weapon's never been recovered, by the way.
Is that right? His defense argued that Humphrey had been lured to the snake farm by Lindley,

who claimed she wanted protection when asking ben for a divorce linley had then surprised him pulled out a gun shot her husband so they said they painted him as kind of a a thought this is a her lawyer said they painted him as kind of a fawning suitor of this pretty blonde petite snake salesman that's how they painted like this poor guy doesn't know what he's doing yeah so there's i mean they have a lot of evidence on him because he admitted everything he told gave him a whole rundown of what he did and what happened so they can either be convicted of first degree murder second degree murder even the prosecution says he didn't pull the trigger it was lindley okay yeah Jury deliberates for five hours to figure out what they're going to give him. That's quick, yeah.
And they find him guilty, obviously, of first-degree murder. Yeah, I guess so, right? Yeah, well, sentencing comes around, and you, sir, may fuck off life without parole.
Oh, my God. He is life without.
I mean, I guess he's lucky it's not death in Missouri. Listen, if I'm getting life without, I want to get my money's worth.
Like, I would want to hate the person and have fucking killed them myself. To get life without for this is like, this is a ripoff.
I could have cut his head off and went bowling with it, for Christ's sake, I would have got the same amount. Truly, yeah.
This is crazy. I didn't even kill this motherfucker.
So he gets that. Sam, the brother, says, Lindley is a manipulator, and I truly believe that that man was manipulated into where he is right now.
He's like, I don't even blame him. That's her.
That's who I fucking blame. Yeah.
Right afterwards, though, after he's convicted and sentenced, his lawyers go to the prosecutors and says, he'd like to have a chat with you guys about something. So he agrees to cooperate with the state at this point, testify against Lindley, and bring them the murder weapon if they redo his sentencing.
I feel like I degree. Yep.
I want second degree and a smaller sentence. And it's not like 10 years.
They're talking about life with parole. He wants second degree and life with parole.
I'll do 25 as long as I can get out at the end. As long as there's some light at the end of this fucking tunnel here.
So he now admits with this, he admits that he

provided the gun that Lindley used

like she said and

he also tells them where they can find

it which is where his

girlfriend's mother's attic.

Get out of here.

That's where the murder weapon's been this whole time.

Not in a river. Yeah.

Not in a field. Not buried somewhere.

We'll break down somewhere.

In an attic.

Keeping all that forensics nice

See you next time. in a river yeah not in a field that buried somewhere break down somewhere in a grandma's attic keeping all that forensics nice with the humidity in there really nice and warm nice and warm in there um humphrey then helped police track down the weapon and he agreed to testify against her at trial his conviction is lowered to a second degree murder and parole is now back on the table for him.
So now he's second-degree murder, life with parole. So he said, leading them to the weapon, giving the statements about Lindley, he'd get a lesser sentence.
Instead of life without parole, he'd get life in prison with the option of parole, and he'd get second-degree murder. So December 2021 is Lindley's trial.
Now they got Mike to testify against her. This trial's wild.
What was he paid in this? Anything or just? No, anything.

Nothing?

Nothing.

Oh, my God.

Happy ending.

I don't know.

This guy's a fucking idiot.

He's an idiot.

He had sex with her, you know, seven years ago.

So now he's still doing it.

Yeah.

Fucking moron.

This guy's an idiot. So December 2021 is her trial.

Finally.

The prosecutor said the defendant, Lindley Rennick, shot her husband, Ben, eight times, killing him. We're going to come back and ask that you find her guilty.
The prosecution paints her as a cold-blooded – they paint her, as they say at one point, she's as cold-blooded as one of her husband's snakes. Right.
You knew they were going to compare her to a snake approximately 7,000 times during this trial. She's a snake in the grass.
She's a slitherer. That's it.
Snuck up on her prey. All that shit.
She's a killer who shot her husband, Ben, then went about her daily routine as if nothing happened. That's what she did.
You know. She said she goes to the school, picks up her two children, and drives them back to the place where she knows she's going to find their father's dead body because she killed them.
She left it there. She left it there.
Now, the defense here, they say that Lindley and Humphrey went to the snake farm to talk to Ben about divorcing his wife. And Lindley heard – Lindley was taking the trash out.
And she heard several gunshots as she was taking the trash out and they said that yes she did lie and cheat on Ben but that doesn't make her a killer I mean come on her defense attorney said she is not planning a murder she's planning a divorce that's what this was all about all this set up you know what I mean obviously you want to try to poison the person before you divorce them. He and then they point the finger at Michael Humphrey.
They say Michael Humphrey took it upon himself acting completely independently to take Ben's life. They're saying she.
Yep. He asked, can I go out there and look at this farm? And then, you know, boom, shot him up here.
He said there's so many aspects of Ashley Shaw's story that are simply not credible also. And the defense attorney says, Lindley Rennick has zero ability with a gun.
She has no interest in guns. Is that right? Doesn't know dick about guns, so how's she going to do this? Ashley Shaw gets on the stand, and the prosecutor says, you two actually attempted to kill Ben Rennick.

And she said, yeah, I do.

I did.

We did with the Percocet.

And he said, do you regret it?

And she said, absolutely.

It was the biggest mistake of my life.

What's she going to say?

No.

Yeah.

The only thing I regret is I didn't put enough fucking perks in that thing.

He should have been dead.

I regret that I could only afford 15.

Yeah.

That's all I had.

So the first plan, she tells the jury about the Percocet shake there.

And she then said that they sought help from Michael Humphrey.

And they said that he seemed promising because, quote, Lindley said he had a prior record of being in trouble.

So she thought he had a history and that maybe he knew people that would take care of this for her. She knows murderers and such.
Ashley said Michael was going to come to the spa and they were going to go together to her house to his business to kill him at home or at work. She says after the murder, Lindley returned to the spa to wash herself off and get all the gunpowder residue and shit.
Kind of like Jason Williams in the crime and sports went for a dip in the pool afterwards. So the prosecutor said, so Lindley goes back there and she tells you to do what? And Ashley says to give her a shower.
She asked me to scrub her body and her hands really well. You can't scrub your own body.
She she went in there it was like rub my tits will you just scrub them rub me yes no did mike at least get to beat off to this this is i was gonna say did mike get to watch this at all because that would have been something anyway a post-murder fucking a post-murder girl on girl shower that's there's got to be a porn where that's involved in it right certainly if it's not porn it's in a there's a horror movie something something yeah the guy just whacking it in the corner just fucking tugging so um then ashley tells the jurors what linley told her about what really happened so because she she confided in her ashley said she said that michael got too nervous or didn't want to it. And so he handed her the gun and she actually killed him.
She said that she put the gun to his back, to the back, to his back and shot him several times. Um, but they said that, um, the defense says she made all that up to avoid prison.
This is all made up cross examination. They said, how are you able to be so calm when you're being questioned about murders that you evidently claim to be so involved in how is that ashley yeah and she says i don't know i'm fucking cold man yeah they mean right now in court yeah yeah maybe she's just not afraid of public speaking you ever think of that this isn't a big deal to a lot of people i don't know man if you weren.
So why would she be nervous? Yeah, that's my point. I wasn't there.
I didn't watch it. She told me about it, and I'm having no penalty for this.
I'll tell you anything you want to know about this shit. Don't give a shit.
Yep. And then they asked her why she and Lindley had talked about murder at the spa in a public place, because they're like, you didn't actually do that.
And they said, as soon as someone hears you, you guys could go to jail, right? And she said, I don't know. So all these aggressive questions, she literally just answers with, I don't know.
It just takes all the steam out of them. So then they said, you don't know because you guys never tried to kill Ben.
Isn't that right, Ashley? And she said, that's not true. Yeah, we did.
Yeah, we definitely tried. They go, well, let's bring up Mike Humphrey here.
They display a set of texts that Lindley had sent to Michael Humphrey, who had obviously already convicted, trying to corroborate that the two were orchestrating this whole murder plot. And the texts show that Lindley sent to Humphrey asking whether he was making a trip to Columbia that day.
When he was delayed by car trouble, her text became more urgent. At the same time, she was texting her husband about routine household and personal matters.
While that was going on, she's asking Humphrey, are you on your way? Where are you? What's going on? And they keep going back and forth. Humphrey has testified that he met her at the business.
About 3.45 p.m., they drove out to the farm. His last text message to his wife, by the way, Ben's, to Lindley, was, do I need to get the kids? Now, at 4 p.m., a text message was returned to him telling him to pick up the kids.
Then an hour later, another text was sent to him saying, I'll meet you and the kids at home. But the school called Lindley at 545 to tell her no one had picked up the kids.
And that's where this all started. So at that point, they hold up a gun and they say, now, what am I holding, Michael Humphrey? And he says, that's my gun.
yeah it's a pistol he said that's uh that's what your gun is right they said that's what your gun is and he said yes what a weird question that's what your gun is yeah yeah this is your gun yes he says i heard a shot come out which is a weird way to put a shot come out yeah so i kind of ducked a little bit and I looked through down. I looked down through through there and she was at the end of the corridor or whatever you want to call it posted up like this with the gun like pointing.
So he said that he saw with his eyes Lindley fire shots at her husband in the snake facility as he was running to get outside away from her.

He saw her shoot.

Yeah.

She had a gun out.

He tried to take off and she shot him in the fucking back.

That's wild.

So they said, would it be fair to hear that you heard several after the initial shot?

And he said, yes.

They said, what happens next?

She runs around to the passenger side of the car and starts screaming at me to drive, drive, basically.

Like a fucking getaway from a bank robbery yeah drive drive drive holy shit during cross examination they uh make a point to point out that humphrey was under the influence of methamphetamines at the time of the murder let's throw some meth into this whole thing and they noted that the gun appeared to be Humphreys and remained in his possession.

So what the fuck?

Basically.

Right.

Lindley's friend and family,

friends and family testify here.

Brittany Bishop was one of her friends.

And by the way,

there's another woman named Rachel Hunt who worked at the spa,

who also knew about the plot,

who ended up getting immunity to,

in this case,

she wasn't quite as involved as Ashley,

but she told a bunch of people about this. This isn't just one person she told and they're turning on her.
This is everybody she told. What the fuck is she doing? She thought that everybody likes me and I'll have a bunch of money and they'll all just kiss my ass.
That's what she thought. And she told them all that she was in this abusive relationship and they all bought it.
They all bought it because, yeah, why not? I mean, maybe she was.

We don't know.

Maybe it was.

I don't fucking know if there was any abuse there or whatever,

but there's ways of going about it other than this is what we're saying.

So Bishop here, Brittany Bishop, a long-time friend,

lifelong friend of Lindley, said that Lindley is a quiet and meek person

who's more of a follower than a leader,

and she's never seen Lindley handle firearms or be violent in any way, shape, or form. She said that she called Lindley after hearing about the snake attack that happened to her poor husband there, and Lindley was hysterical when she answered.
She said she was just in hysterics, going crazy. Bishop stayed with Lindley at the Rennick household in the days and weeks after the death to help take care of her and help, like, feed the kids and stuff because she's such a mess.
And the snakes. There's so many snakes.
So many snakes. She said, quote, she was a wreck.
She acted as though her whole world had fallen apart and it just had. We were having a hard time getting her to eat and drink.
We had to force it on her. She's so depressed.
They said that she never thought Lindley could have killed her husband. And she said that she was a person which Lindley could confide.
And, you know, she didn't hear anything about it. She said, quote, this is what Bishop.
Yeah, he said, quote, you were wrong about her to Bishop. This is the prosecutor.
She lied about all the affairs she was engaged in which was true she never told this girl about that so April Shaw here she's going to testify obviously and they're talking about she's talking about how for Lindley how Lindley was acting after the death because they recall her to the stand he said she said she was very distraught. She wasn't drinking, wasn't eating well.
We were having a hard time getting her out of bed or doing much of anything, said April Shaw. And now Shaw is an infusion nurse specializing in patients with bleeding disorders, such as, unfortunately not being shot eight times,

that's not one of the disorders she can handle,

such as hemophilia.

That's how April met Lindley

because Lindley's father was getting treatments

for a genetic disorder that causes this,

and that's how they met,

so they became friends there, April and Lindley.

Lindley never shared with April about her affairs,

her presence at the snake breeding facility around the time of her husband's death or her, or her spa's financial issues. Under questioning, she said she was not expected to be the kind of friend for Lindley that knew more details, intimate details of her life.
They said that the argument made it, the defense attorney made an argument that the person not eating also could be stress-induced, such as law enforcement investigations surrounding the circumstances of a spouse's death. This could be normal.
So her dad testifies that his daughter is not a violent person. And while does not have extensive experience with firearms, he has seen her shoot a gun before.
She knows how to shoot a gun, knows how to operate it, knows how to aim it. He's done it with her.
Dad's kind of fucking you over right now. He said when she was young, he wanted his daughters to understand the weight of a gun.
In this case, it was a .22 caliber rifle that he taught her with. And that this did not inspire an interest in guns for Lindley, but she had handled guns a couple of times.
He also testifies that Lindley was in complete shock the day of Ben's death and in the days and weeks after Lindley was seen to briefly and quietly cry under her father's testimony or during her father's testimony. The father said she was gone.
I'd never seen shock so bad before. After the husband died, He described his daughter as a woman who just went through the motions of daily life after her husband died, sitting and staring on the porch for hours.
Just catatonic. So through questioning, through him, they argued that Linley has lied to her father, citing her extramarital affairs.
So they're like, you really don't know anything about your daughter, correct? Do you know that she was having a bunch of affairs? No. Do you know this? No.
Do you know this? No. Then why would she tell you shit? You don't know anything.
He even said, these are things she keeps from you to the father. Lindley has to testify.
She has no choice. What else are you going to do? She's got so many people saying that she's guilty, she's fucked at this point.
So, she testifies

on her own behalf.

By the way, if you want to see someone testify

on their own behalf horribly,

look up the Sarah Boone trial. That's the

suitcase lady.

She's the worst testifier I've

ever seen in my life. It's amazing.
I am so

glad that's happening right now and you get

to just watch it as it occurs. Oh, it's amazing.

It's so good live. It's amazing.
So, Lind you get to just watch it as it occurs. Oh, it's amazing.
Oh, it's so good live.

It's amazing.

So Lindley says that on her own behalf, I'm telling the jury, Michael Humphrey pulled the trigger, not her.

Oh.

That's what she says.

Somebody else.

They said, Lindley, was there ever any other occasion where an argument with Ben turned physical?

And she said, oh, yes.

Oh, all the time.

She said, Ben and I had been arguing at the house, and he grabbed my arm and pushed me into the refrigerator and was like, I'm not done with this.

We're going to be right back. Ben turned physical? And she said, oh, yes.
Oh, all the time. She said, Ben and I had been arguing at the house, and he grabbed my arm and pushed me into the refrigerator and was like, I'm not done with this.

We're going to finish it now.

Oh.

She tried to walk away, and he was like, no, no, get the fuck back here.

She never filed a police report about this alleged physical abuse, but she said it was

all the time.

Yeah.

And Sam said, abusive is not a word that I would use with Ben.

He was very kind, very loving. Well, sometimes people who are kind and loving also can abuse their spouses.
That happens too. Yeah, kind of.
They think that they're being kind and loving while they're doing that too. Behind closed doors is a, there's a phrase for a reason.
You know what I mean? Right, right, right. So then came her, not that I'm saying he did do it, I'm just saying that you can't.
You're right. You wouldn't.
You don't know. So then came her chance to explain why she asked Michael Humphrey to accompany her that fatal day.
That's a good one. The defense attorney had Lynn run through her personal family history, education for massage therapy.
And I watched all this and it was so funny. She started talking about her history and the prosecution's like, objection.
I watched the video. They're like, we don't, this isn't isn't this doesn't matter at all fuck but it got it got overruled and so then she just got to tell her whole story and it was pretty fucking funny so the defense attorney um had her run through everything like we said and her marriage and all that um talk about humphrey um linley said she ended her relationship with humphrey in late 2010, looked him back up again about a month ago, according to the testimony.
Lindley said, quote, hey, my marriage is falling apart. Will you please just go with me just to make sure, like, you know, I'm safe and I can get some stuff and go.
She also has a father, mind you. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Ask your dad. It's so long yeah ask your dad what the fuck are you talking about your boy your drug dealer boyfriend from seven years ago or he's gonna that he's the most reliable male figure you can come up with give me a fucking break so by the time she had decided to broach the topic of divorce she didn't know who to turn to she said because her father had divorced and he had strong opinions on divorce and extramarital affairs.
Well, if he was really beating the shit out of you and raping you, I think you'd go to your dad and go, hey, my fucking husband's beating and raping me. Can you help me get out of the house? I doubt he'd go, no, you need to stick with that, sweetheart.
I frown upon divorce. Yeah, I don't, I'm not into divorce and you've been having affairs.
You deserve it. Go back there and get beat.
No, he's not going to say that. So she said that she just wanted someone to support her when she went to talk to Ben.
So the topic of old boyfriends came up, and that led to her reconnecting with Humphrey because she figured he might be tough because he's been in prison. So Ben had become more aggressive, she said, and argumentative.
So Lindley said she wanted someone for moral support and physical support. And, you know, they've been fighting alleged physical and sexual abuse and the stress associated with all of this.
Lindley was worried what mood he'd be in when she broached the subject of divorce. So she said this is why she relied on Humphrey.
She said, I wasn't at the facility to kill my husband, but to ask for a divorce.

Oh.

Yeah.

And she served him with eight fucking shots is what she served rather than papers.

They said, did you ask Michael to help kill your husband?

And she said, no.

He just made that up so he can get first degree murder charges.

Why would he make that up?

So they said, set the scene for me and the jury. So give it your all here.
Lindley acknowledges that she took some trash from Ben to throw away. She entered the breeding facility where she saw Humphrey and Ben finishing up washing their hands.
She couldn't really hear what they were saying to each other. And she said she was thinking more about what she would tell Ben that she how she would tell him about the divorce.
Lindley says quote I walked up right behind right behind Michael and then she does a big exhale to it's even in the like the transcript for exhale so big. Michael turned around and I saw a gun in his hands and then I heard shots ring out and I screamed and I ran outside and then I heard more shots go off and everything just went numb.
And I remember staring at the trees. Again, another transcripted exhale.
And then Michael running out of the facility and pushing me toward the car and telling me, have to go Lindley get in the car we have to go now yeah you know the opposite of his story she claimed to be in shock they said well why didn't you tell you the truth of the investigator she said oh I was in shock that's why I didn't even know where I was yeah she then said this is fucking wild. I understand what that means and how this looks.
What? I just, I don't know how to fully express that I never wanted Ben dead. She described disassociating while on the return trip to the spa.
She's totally disassociated. So completely detached when she got to the police.
She alleges that her work friend there, Ashley, was the one that set up and bathed her, and she didn't even know what she was doing. She basically stripped her clothes off and just walked her catatonic corpse into the fucking shower and bathed her.
Come here. You look sad.
Let me wash your tits. Come here.
Ashley treated her like Joanie treated a horse in Deadwood.

Yes, exactly.

Rubbing under their tits.

Come here.

Let me take care of you.

Imagine if you walked into my house.

I thought you looked sad, so I started stripping your clothes off and taking you to the shower

to give you a good scrubbing for no reason.

Dragging a sponge with us down the hall.

Yeah.

Don't worry.

I got this wisdom.

Don't worry, buddy.

I got you covered, man. I know what you need.
I don buddy i got you covered man i know what you need i don't know what happened but i know what you need i don't know what the problem but i know the remedy i know how to fix it though she said lilly said she didn't want to believe what just happened happened the reality set in when she returned to the breeding facility and located Ben's body. She then called Sam.
He came over. They checked for a pulse and to see if Ben was breathing, thinking he may still be alive.
That's awfully wishful thinking with a fucking contact wound to the skull. Lindley's hands, like we said, were tested and they didn't come up with any gunpowder residue because she showered.
Lindley said regrets not telling the officers then and there that she'd been at the breeding facility when Humphrey did this, basically. She said, I should have told the cops this right now.
She said about a month after Ben's death, she returned to the distraction of the men she had an affair with, just to have a distraction from how sad she was about her dead husband. I needed to get some strange just because I was so sad about my dead husband.
I needed penis from someone else. Wow.
Wow. She said, I hid behind the story that I never left the spa, and I regret not telling the truth from the start.
So she said, yeah, I eventually told my version of everything to Brandon Blackwell. She said, yeah, I was in a relationship with him.
I had a child with him. The relationship went sour, and I took out protection orders against him, which he violated multiple times.
She said, I do regret lying. She said, I was just trying to run from the truth of what happened.
I regret lying. I just didn't want consequences for my actions.
I just didn't want them. I just wanted nobody to know.

I just wanted to spend the money and not go to jail.

Does that make sense?

Is that a thing that people did?

And not have him in the house.

You know, she said, I lied a lot, and I understand how that looks.

I stuck with that story and never let go of it.

So on cross-examination, the guy comes up and he goes, you were interviewed by a bunch of cops, correct? And she says, yes. And you lied to them every time.
Yes. But deep down in that heart of yours and in that brain of yours, you know who killed him, correct? And she says, yes.
They said, and then any time the police asked, she said, any time the police asked me who I thought, I just told them Sam because she was trying to get out of it. Then she starts crying and looks up to Sam and says, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry, Sam. I killed your brother and made the cops think you did it.
Sorry, my bad. Oh, that's cool.
I tried so hard to frame you for your brother's murder. No worries.
It happens. It's like the third time someone tried to frame me for a family member's murder.
I get it. the prosecutor says why should these jurors believe you now you want these 12 people to believe you correct and she says yes and the guy says i bet you do and that's all he has to say i gotta go so sam's reaction to her testimony is this quote her trying to apologize to me on the stand and garner sympathy with the jury didn't sit well with me.
There's no low too low for that one. No kidding.
She is, wow, just a mean person here. Closing arguments, prosecutors here, they say all she's done is deflect and lie throughout the investigation.
After all the marital problems to financial issues, attempted poisoning led to this elaborate plan. He said this was preplanned.
We know she offered Humphrey money and encouraged him. Even if she had done it all by herself, she'd still be guilty of murder in the first degree.
Yeah, I think she'd be more guilty than at that point. He said of all the statements of the prosecution, witnesses were backed up by other evidence.
All of our evidence, other people have corroborated it. Her testimony was not backed up by any supporting evidence, any corroboration from anybody else.
Her actions after Ben died were only to bolster her alleged alibi. Her story changed from the investigation to a different version, specifically the ones that you're hearing now.
Why didn't she call 911 when she started to worry about not hearing from Ben? Well, you don't call 911 because your husband doesn't call you back. He might have dropped his phone and broke it.
Don't call 911. No one does that.
That would be crazy. Don't be fooled by what the defense wants you to believe.
Believe the evidence. Okay.
And then he starts singing the Doobie Brothers, What a Fool Believes. And then they make him stop, though.
What a fool believes. They're like, that's enough out of you.
We get it. So the defense attorney here in a moment says that in a moment of indescribable trauma, Lindley made bad decisions.
This is really just about bad decisions.

That's her decision to lie.

She's not a violent person, and even prosecution witnesses said that.

There was no plan for murder, just plans for divorce.

You don't do favors for first-degree murder.

It's like that guy would have had to get more than just a favor.

Help me out with this.

You do favors for helping plan a divorce.

That's what you do. That's what it is here.
It's like helping someone move, not killing someone. Lindley has no proficiency in using weapons.
Well, it doesn't take a lot of proficiency to shoot somebody from six fucking inches away in their back. There's not a lot of proficiency needed.
Anyone could do that. One of the snakes could almost do that.
For sure. Not quite, but almost.
It might only take two. Two of them.
You hold it. I'll fucking pull the trigger.
I don't know how they would rack it, though. That would be really hard.
If it's a revolver, you're missing. If it's a revolver, I could see this happening.
You know what? Whole new fucking theory of the case now. I have come to a different conclusion.
Yeah. So they said that if the investigation into Lindley was so strong, why did investigators have to resort to threats of jail for her co-conspirators because that's what you do to come it's how it works man it's life have you ever seen an interrogation before dummy she's hoping the jurors have never seen one if they've ever this is 2021 if they've ever watched an episode of the first 48 they go yeah that's how you get people to talk dummy whole thing yeah um why did why did they believe the word of a boyfriend who has bits and pieces of the story brandon blackwell who's facing stalking charges in relation to linley he's just mad at her because she filed charges against him that's what they're saying people who want to know that what the truth is would not do what these police officers did linley renick did not know Ben was going to die that night.
The lack of evidence has proved that. Okay.
Jury goes to verdict. They deliberate for 12 hours.
Golly. I don't know what they're talking about for 12 hours.
And again, it's first degree murder, second degree murder, blah blah blah down the line. They find her guilty of second degree murder.
Really? Yes. That poor bastard really got fucked, didn't he? He got fucked good on second.
Oh, wait till you hear her sentence. Oh, man.
So they said this is fucking wild. The jurors decided that she did not deliberately kill her husband with quote cool reflection no she tried to kill him once then planned a better way went there with a gun and shot him you don't get any more pre-planned than that and did it for money like that's as first degree as it gets that's really fascinating it is sam during the sentencing said she really believed that she was going to get away with all this,

and she really believed that she was going to get what she had planned after murdering my brother.

In other words, all the money.

So he says she put the children through this experience.

Here I am covered in my brother's blood, attempting to comfort the children despite them asking me if their daddy is dead.

This poor son of a bitch. Tears and blood and horrible.
There are a lot of victims in this case. The web of devastation travels far, and he also asked that his brother's remains be returned to their family.
I don't want her to have his fucking remains. They're ours.
She's got them. So he says, thank you for this opportunity and may Benjamin Rennick rest in peace.
Now, life in prison is still an option on second degree murder. I think it's life with parole at that point.
But it's still life. The judge says, and this is the jury's decision on the sentencing, the judge cannot override the sentence in any way, shape, or form here.
You, ma'am, may fuck off 13 years in prison for the murder and then armed criminal action, which is another charge, another three years.

Consecutive.

16 years they give her.

Holy shit.

16 years.

The judge was, like, noticeably livid about this shit. He pissed he was you guys you did it wrong yes he you if he could have he would have taken that jury in a room and given them the fucking business the way you people are useless let me tell you something wow sam was real frustrated you could see him be like what the fuck the judge fuck out of my life and the judge said the same thing the judge looked at her and said quote you're awfully lucky ma'am now you just wow you snowed these fucking jurors somehow you're gonna get that you're gonna get out in your 40s and my 40s weren't too bad so they're saying like you're not gonna know when you're 90 and crusty you're gonna have a have a fine life.
He said, I just hope that you don't kill again. That's it.
Good Christ. She will only have to serve 12 years in prison before she's eligible for parole.
Oh, my God. 12 fucking years from then.
Sam said, I mean, we were happy that she was sentenced to the 16 years she was given. However, my brother's life was worth a lot more than 16 years.
Those children, all the lives that were destroyed by this, by these actions, I begged the common person to watch the trial again and ask themselves if my brother's life was only worth 16 years. 16 years is why I'm here today.
The kids lost their father, my babies, and Ben's babies, and I'm here to take care of them for the rest of my life he says so you can this is all on online to the whole trial court TV has a thing where it's every day's breakdown and you can watch just her testimony or I recommend watching her testimony because it's terrible so what about uh old fucking DAV the snake the snake man here he said what happened to Ben was a tragedy that absolutely did not have to happen, and yet, Ben Rennick lives on. In a way, he would surely have loved celebrated with a new breed of snake named just for him.
And Dave, I've done this, babe. I made a new snake, and it's called the Rennick Ghost.
He made a new breed of snake, Dave. The ultimate snake, man.
Looking around for a breed that he could fuck another one with, and he made a new snake. How much do you want to bet this guy walks around with a big burlap sack with a snake in it, like Jake the Snake Roberts? I'm the snake, man.
What's it called? The Rennick Ghost? The Rennick Ghost is the snake. What the fuck is that? He said, and what ghost is, is a slight reduction of black's color.
It gives the snake a ghosty appearance to it. So it's like, ooh, like lighter than it should be.
And that is just such a testament to what Ben meant to this community. And he now has a mutation of a snake named after him.
Hey, everybody, I'm going to say this're dead you don't have a chance to say this if i drop dead under crazy circumstances or anything please don't mutate a snake for me just don't even bother i'm good you don't have to i gotta see what it looks like it you don't have to fucking frightening they're all what fucking python isn't frightening they're all frightening james it's got like a fucking stripe that comes up between its eyes to the back and it's like it's like an albino uh ball python kind of and it's so scary that is creepy looking right boy oh boy so the 48 hour says you miss your friend don't you yeah i'm i'm fucking snakes what do you think he said every simple every single expo that we would see each other at there's a vacancy there that will never be filled again yeah no there's a one less weirdo snake guy not that ben was a weirdo but there's less weirdos there it's like an albino with like yellow it's crazy that's fucking interesting so what does linley do from jail she sues brandon blackwell stop it for what i swear to god for you're gonna shit when you hear this for defamation you're murdering twat what yeah you're a fucking murdering fucking cunt how's's that? Sue us. There's no, you can't.
For defamation. That's hilarious because there's been defamation cases that have gone to court and people have said, you've done so much, there's no way anyone could defame you.
That's where she's at. Who was it that was a famous person that they told you? It was a famous person.
They said, you're undefamable. You can't be defamed because you're such a fucking loser.
Was it Lenny? I can't remember who the hell it was. It was Lenny.
It was Lenny. It was Lenny Dykstra.
They said, you have been such a disaster. There's no way.
You can't be embarrassed because you've embarrassed yourself enough, which is a great discord decision, by the way. Lenny Dykstra, that was.
So anyway, in the lawsuit, Rennick accuses her ex-boyfriend, Brandon, of making false and malicious statements to law enforcement officers that implicated her in her husband's murder. Hilarious.
She's the only one who's not in prison, I guess, and doesn't have prosecutorial immunity. She's upset.
Wow, that's fucking crazy. The lawsuit claims his statements were false and made maliciously for the purpose of causing injury to her reputation.

Oh, my God.

They were made for the purpose of getting him out of jail.

Right.

And if you get to stick it to your ex a little bit, I think that's probably just a cherry on top.

According to the lawsuit, they've subjected her to arrest and eventual incarceration, criminal prosecution, and the loss of custody of her children, all for a false statement he made. What about all the other people who made these statements? She's suing him for $25,000 for punitive damages and court costs.
Yeah. Wow.
The Columbia attorney who followed the suit said Rennick is trying to hold Blackwell accountable through this legal action. She said she wants to preserve her right to hold him accountable in some form since the state did not call him to testify at trial.
So they have this is crazy. And they also say this could have an impact on the child custody at one point at some point in the future because they have a kid together, if you remember.
2022, they want Lindley barred from any inheritance from Ben's ship. Yeah, yeah.
A court-appointed administrator of Rennick's belongings asked a judge to stop Lindley from getting any part of Ben's estate because she's trying to. Yeah.
They said they wrote that their daughter should be named to a sole heir of the estate, meaning Ben and Lindley's daughter. Doing so would put her one step closer to finally closing out the court's supervision of the estate.
They're trying to just get it over with. Right.
2023, Mike Humphrey is going to appeal. Really? I don't know what he's appealing.
Yeah, he's appealing. Special public defender said that in only that is only point that Brandon Blackwell should not have been allowed to testify at Humphrey's trial because he testified at Humphrey's trial, but not Lindley's.

Blackwell told Missouri State Highway Patrol investigators that Lindley Rennick told him about the shooting when they were dating.

Blackwell claimed that Lindley recruited Humphrey to help her get a gun and all that shit.

They said the courts can't allow statements made about a defendant's possible participation in a crime after the fact without that person being present when it's made. Hearsay is what they're saying, essentially.
So they said Mr. Blackwell's testimony that Ms.
Rennick told him everything that she and Mr. Humphrey did was inadmissible hearsay, and it was not in furtherance of the conspiracy, and there's no evidence that Mr.
Humphrey was present when Ms. Rennick made it to Mr.
Blackwell and acquiesced in its making. Even without trial counsel objecting to the testimony, the trial court should have recognized its inadmissible nature and taken action to correct it.
And they didn't. So they say, get the fuck out of here.
Keep going. This is crazy.
Yeah. Then Lindley appeals too.
Oh, for fuck's sake, Lindley. She appeals.
This was in 2023. She appeals.
Somehow she filed a notice of appeal on like November 2nd, and then by a month later, she asked that they pull it back. They don't want it.
She doesn't want it anymore. The Columbia attorney, Carol Jansen, declared that her client had asked for a voluntary dismissal of the appeal.
I guess they're not ready for it yet is what that might mean. We'll bring it later.
We've got shit we've got to. If you got one bullet left, you can't just shoot it off willy-nilly.
You got to fucking hold it. So there you go, everybody.
That is New Florence, Missouri. She's a special kind of twat, man.
Special kind of, like a twisty, snaky kind of twat. Terrible.
Scaly. Yeah.
Slithery. Kind of a twat.
I hate her so much. Like a kind of twat that just eats a whole rabbit and has it sit in their stomach and just look big and fat.
Like that kind of twat. Like a worm with a backbone.
Oh, my God. Scary shit.
So there you go. Hope you liked that episode.
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Give us five stars. It helps tremendously.
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Yeah, you do. Tickets for live shows.
Austin, Texas, you are up next. Hey, let's do it.
Get in there. The other show, Phoenix Show, was sold out the first day they went on sale, so that's not going to work.
But Austin, you can come to that. And we're going to release.
We didn't realize that Terrytown has 100 tickets left for like the last four months and we're like how come no one's buying the last hundred tickets and then you go on the website and it says sold out because we need to release those tickets so we're going to go ahead and release those out to you guys when do we do that and I don't know when we're going to release them but you can keep checking in Boston as well get your tickets there maybe by the time you hear this they'll be released we're. We're not sure.
Fingers crossed. So do that.
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Patreon's hilarious. For crime and sports this week, we're going to talk about the Vince McMahon documentary, which is insane.
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I don't know how you, we'll find out how they decided, but I think we knew the outcome ahead of time. So feels like it.
yeah. Absolutely.
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and you get a shout-out at the end of the show, which happens right now.

Jimmy, tell me the names of the people who would never, ever, ever murder us

and pretend a snake killed us.

Hit me with them right now.

This week's executive producers are Majan Emilio, I think.

I hope so.

I hope that would have been good.

If you nailed it, great.

Fingers crossed.

Julie Delvecchio, Abigail Gathered, Claude Cavallo. Claude, thank you so much.
I hope you meant to do that. If not, please let us gladly send whatever back to you that you didn't mean to send.
Thank you so much. Chelsea Morgan, Faith Steveson, I believe, and Paul Roost.
Paul, how have you been? We love Paul Roost. Also, other producers this week, Liz Vasquez.
Thank you, Liz. Good to see you this week.
Peyton Meadows, Gary Howard, Diane Helmendoller, Janice Hill, Sharon Jones. She just started Deadwood.
You're going to love it. I'm jealous.
Good for you. Help me with the fucking fall.
Andrew Wellmers. Andrew.
My fucking fall. How you been? I got that good.
That was good that time. Pretty damn good.
Who's going to help with the message? You can help me with my fucking fall. My fucking fall.
BRB, I don't know.

Be right back.

Be right back, bitches.

I hope you stick around.

Thank you.

Lacey, Lacey, Lacey BP, Haley Robertson, Heidi Kalleher, Jesse Moline Johnson, Vicky C, Christina

Reed, Lisa Koch, Orko, Chris Beck, Laley Grant, Jasmine Cronbeck, Mary Albright's

big alien dick, Jennifer Holtman.

It's big, James.

You got to.

It's got to be massive.

Oh, golly.

It's crazy.

It looks like two.

Two Jen.

Two Fingers Hokomodo.

Jennifer Holtman.

I said that.

Amy Merritt.

Allison Niebuhr.

Benjamin A. Brady Simmons.

Benjamin Hayer also. Brady Simmons.
What the fuck is going on? Everybody's named fucking Benjamin now. Oh, goddammit.
Lindsey Scott, Robert George, Kyle Harris, Chris Fry, Aaron Welch, Caitlin H., Megan King, Danielle Lex, Catherine Greger, Neelu Roffson, Johnny Neelu, I missed you. Kirsten Van Ness, Jilly Bean, 6886-343-Denver3.
Wow. That's a lot of fucking numbers.
Lori. Lori K.
Erica with no last name. Jan or Jan.
D. Roos.
Lynn. Okay.
Lynn Armo. Hems and Sizzies.
He said, okay. Let me gird my loins for this name, boy, because it's going to be a rough one.
Going into battle now. Veronica Vasquez.
Emily. Emily.
Emily. That's an interesting way.
Savannah. Savannah Gann.
Can't. What is this? Canoe.
Canoe? It's a name. Thomas Phillips.
Colleen Larson. Tyler J.
Travis Mount. Amy.
Amy Barnes. Nikki Zazady.
Cody V96. Julie Pace, Brady with no last name, A, B, and C, Sarah Gusecki, Vicky with no last name, Skylark Purcell, Sharon McGregor, Nicole Mercada, Picard's mistress.

All right, Picard, good for you.

Po Q, Pacu, Ivan Richard. Ryan with no last name.

Shannon Adams.

Jacob Sigley.

Matt Simone.

Stephen Cole.

Lisa Weiss.

Jenna Ward.

Cammie Salyer.

Angie Pennington.

Nicholas Mergu.

Mergu?

Mergu.

Mergu?

What is that?

Bo Glover.

C and K.

The letters C and K.

Jun Yun. Mansfield.
Tiffany Udenjaya.

Udija, Udenjia.

Udenjia.

Udenjia.

My name is Sonato.

My name is Sonato.

My name is Sonato.

Nick Reed, Elan L.

L Kern.

Sandy Raymond, Antique Limited Edition.

Doug Teague, Albert Avila, Tyler Kulik.

These are fucked names, man.

You guys got fucked names, man.

Get your shit together.

Lynn Machino, Brad Shanburn, Mandy H.

Grant with no last name.

Haley Jackson.

Steven with no last name.

Jeremy Hayes.

Loran.

Loran Luthi.

What is that name? Sean Smith, Scott Veroni. Avs Gutters? What? Bikesh Garung? Michael Savage Leo? Sagvaglio? Fucking what? I like Savage Leo.
That's great. Amanda Call, Scott Rusling? Rusing.
Jaquette. Jaquetta.
Jaquetta Adawalo. What? Mamie Stansfield.
Danita Scott. Jason Newhouse.
Robin Purier. What the? Andrea Guzetta.
What is that? Todd Becker. Deborah Hevelin.
Hevelin. Lisa Smoot.
That's fucking easy. Bob with no last name.
Jen with no last name. Emily Davis.
Christy Phillips. Garrett Geisey, I think.
Steph with no last name. Jason Travis.
David Spear. Joopy? Is that a name? McKenna with no last name.
Douglas Weirich. Russ Mann.
Tammy Knox. Maria Taylor, Danny Sotil, fucking Andrew Hegel, Heigl, Higley, Samantha Timms, Brittany Parker, Elliot Natrika, I think, Abigail Walker, Lou Sassoli, Rhonda Herford, Courtney Ochoa, Audra Bodemer, Gloria D.
Jane with no last name, Tracy Smith, Tina Helton, Kimberly Swartwood, Julia Barons. I don't know.
Stephanie Channels, Kyle with no last name, Tiffany Shaddy, Shady perhaps, Robert Sweeney, Allison Ahrens, Angela with no last name, Summer Teed, Tyed, Thede. Thede.
What? Christ. Branly.
Branly. Schmelter, I think.
Monica with no last name. Schmelter, hardly know her.
Tyler Hyatt. Tomoto.
Tomoto Takashi Takahashi. Tomoto Takahashi.
Cool. That than anything.
That sounds like he invented a Nintendo game. I love him.
I can't even do it. Kurt Scheid, Sidney Engler, PAG, PAG2975.
Chelsea Harrison, Josh with no last name, Adil Ali, Benita Ruppe, Diz Hart, Alakona is with no last name. I don't know.
Robert Fiske, possibly Fisk. Carlton had the same name.
Charles C.R. Hannah with no last name.
All of our patrons, especially the easier names. You guys are the best.
Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, so much.
You magnificent sons of bitches. We love you more than we can fucking tell.
Thank you. You keep the show going.
That is wonderful that you do that. Thank you for the Patreon subscriptions.
People ask all the time, how does the money work? Does you get that? Patreon is what we get 100% of. If you want to support the show, that's a great way to fucking do it.
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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 and 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 health care system.

Listen to Law and Crimes Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus.

You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.