Lynlee Renick

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Speaker 6 A renowned Missouri snake breeder is found dead.

Speaker 11 He got killed by a snake.

Speaker 10 By a snake.

Speaker 4 It could have been a snake that's loosed in the facility. The facility has somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 snakes.
It's a little unnerving.

Speaker 2 He is on the ground in the barn, covered in blood.

Speaker 6 Until investigators find something more sinister slithering about.

Speaker 13 There was legitimate concern, concern and we have to vet all the information that we get to get to the truth.

Speaker 6 To get justice for this father of two, investigators must sort through potential motives.

Speaker 2 He was very successful. He had cash around all these valuable snakes.

Speaker 15 There may still be investors in Frank Grenett's past business that were still upset with the family.

Speaker 6 But ultimately, the source of the venom is found close to home.

Speaker 8 We began to learn that their relationship wasn't quite as good as she said it was.

Speaker 13 We kind of operated under the guise: if you have nothing to hide, you hide nothing.

Speaker 10 She says, I'm gonna leave and learn.

Speaker 14 She covered her actions and lied countlessly.

Speaker 14 She was not willing to walk away.

Speaker 6 Nestled in between St. Louis and Columbia, Montgomery County, Missouri is a quiet stop along I-70.

Speaker 6 But on June 8th, 2017, at 6:36 p.m.,

Speaker 6 911 operators receive a frantic call from 29-year-old Lindley Rennick that shatters the calm of the otherwise peaceful summer evening.

Speaker 3 Okay, hold on just a second, Marley. Get somebody there.

Speaker 6 Hysterical, Lindley passes the phone to her brother-in-law, Sam, who says they just found his 29-year-old brother, Ben, dead at his rare snake breeding facility, Rennick Reptiles.

Speaker 10 What may have happened?

Speaker 4 He got killed by a snake.

Speaker 10 Like a bad snake?

Speaker 3 He raised his

Speaker 3 large 500-pound snake. Do you know where the snake is? I don't know where the snake is.
Okay, so he's not breathing at all.

Speaker 10 No, he's cold. He's in blue.

Speaker 14 In that moment, I think I was in a state of shock, probably from that and some time after.

Speaker 6 As Montgomery County first responders rush to the scene, they are on high alert.

Speaker 4 When we got the call, that there was a man dead. It was suspected that it could have been a snake that's loose in the facility.

Speaker 4 The facility has somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 snakes, so it's a little unnerving not knowing exactly what you're going to walk in on.

Speaker 6 EMTs and deputies arrive at Rennick Reptiles.

Speaker 2 This is a large barn, two different stories. Concrete floor with rows and rows and rows of plastic bins.
And in each and every one of these bins is a different snake.

Speaker 6 Sam Rennick directs them to the facility's entrance. They proceed with caution to the back of the barn where they find his brother Ben.

Speaker 2 Ben is on the ground in the barn, covered in blood. His face and his skull looks deformed.

Speaker 4 The MT went checking for signs of life. When they rolled the body over, underneath the right armpit was a shell casing.

Speaker 6 It's clear to investigators that this kind of damage wasn't caused by a snake.

Speaker 8 He'd been shot in the back several times and then ultimately shot in the back of the head.

Speaker 4 It was at that point they realized that there was no doubt it was a homicide.

Speaker 6 Investigators with the Montgomery County Sheriff and Missouri State Highway Patrol arrive on the scene. They find Sam and Lindley outside, both having just learned that Ben's death wasn't an accident.

Speaker 14 I thought that perhaps he was attacked by one of the snakes, but the coroner let me know that this was not a snake attack, that Ben was in fact murdered by a gun. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

Speaker 14 I didn't believe it. Everyone loved Ben.

Speaker 4 Lindley was wailing and screaming and things in the car. I got her to calm down enough to where she understood what I needed and asked if they could get her down to Montgomery County for an interview.

Speaker 6 Born in 1987, Ben Rennick grew up in Montgomery County, Missouri on a 40-acre family farm with his brother Sam.

Speaker 14 It's unique growing up on a farm. I think Ben might have been 12 years old when he got his first snake.

Speaker 18 I would go to his house after school, and his family was just always super warm and welcoming. The nicest people he could ever meet.

Speaker 6 Despite the idyllic country setting, Ben's childhood was far from perfect.

Speaker 14 Ben and I were young children. My mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.

Speaker 14 Ben and I, we took care of ourselves, took care of each other.

Speaker 6 In 2008, when Ben was 21 years old, his mother ultimately lost her battle to cancer.

Speaker 4 My mother was a fighter.

Speaker 14 She stayed in stage four for 15 years.

Speaker 14 She taught Ben and I a lot. Resilience, self-sufficiency,

Speaker 12 love.

Speaker 6 The loss devastated Ben's family, especially his father. In 2012, four years after his wife's death, Frank Rennick took his own life.

Speaker 14 It was tough seeing my family struggle as much as they did. But my father loved my mother more than anything.
He had the farm set in Ben's name as a sole owner for a number of reasons.

Speaker 14 One of them being I was getting divorced, and I didn't need to have any of those assets in my name.

Speaker 6 On their own, the young men looked toward the future.

Speaker 6 For Ben, by around 22 years old, he knew what he wanted.

Speaker 14 He really wasn't aiming towards college after school.

Speaker 14 He went full-fledged with his reptile business.

Speaker 6 Ben converted a barn on the farm into a world-class snake breeding facility.

Speaker 8 We will hopefully be able to produce

Speaker 11 some fire, tiger, titaniums.

Speaker 10 that are also about my hope.

Speaker 14 Ben was really going for the designer pet aspect of the snake breeding. He was looking for the genetic patterns that nobody else had or that were rare.

Speaker 6 As his reptile business was taking off, 24-year-old Ben reconnected with an old friend, 23-year-old Lindley Joe Gallatin.

Speaker 14 Ben and Lindley went to two different high schools. You know, she was familiar with him and they got together.
She was sweet, she was bubbly.

Speaker 6 Born in 1988, Lindley grew up in nearby Wellsville.

Speaker 6 Like Ben, Lindley also knew what it was like to lose a parent.

Speaker 14 Her mother was ill in her early life and had passed. Her father took very good care of her.

Speaker 6 After graduating from high school, 19-year-old Lindley attended massage school.

Speaker 2 The day that she was supposed to sit down for her board exam is the day she found out she was pregnant.

Speaker 2 Lindley Rennick has a son with a man.

Speaker 2 And essentially, Lindley is left to raise this child on her own.

Speaker 6 When she started seeing Ben in 2011, the relationship moved quickly.

Speaker 14 Lindley and her son moved into the house that he built out in the family farm and Ben kind of went right into fatherhood. Soon after that, they had their first child together.

Speaker 6 Lindley temporarily set her own career aside to help Ben grow his business. We are at the beginning of our hatching season.

Speaker 2 Lindley gave up a lot of her time as well to help Ben. Lindley was very deeply a part of the business.

Speaker 18 Ben was a successful snake breeder and 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.

Speaker 6 In 2014,

Speaker 6 Ben and Lindley married.

Speaker 14 You know, Ben was really happy to be finally married to Lindley and start her life together.

Speaker 6 By 2016, two years into their marriage, with the reptile business booming, the happy couple was ready to attempt another venture. Lindley opened a Sensia spa in nearby Colombia.

Speaker 14 Benton did make some large investments in the spa initially to get things up and running.

Speaker 6 With With two successful businesses and two beautiful children, Lindley and Ben had it all.

Speaker 14 They worked together on building her a business and they looked to be in a good position to be successful. It was a happy time.

Speaker 6 But on June 8th, 2017, their promising future comes undone when Lindley and Sam find Ben dead inside the the snake barn.

Speaker 8 The early information that Sam had given was he believed it to be a snake, but that was quickly ruled out by DMTs on scene through the presence of gunshot wounds in Ben's body.

Speaker 14 I did talk to the police. They took me in and I had to drop my two children and Ben's two children off of this poor babysitter and ask her to hold them.

Speaker 6 With Lindley and Sam on the way to the station, investigators head head inside the barn and take a careful look at the crime scene.

Speaker 8 There were some shellcasings that were underneath Ben's body, but we also discovered divots.

Speaker 6 The small indentations in the floor show that Ben was shot several times after he hit the floor.

Speaker 8 Those divots matched up directly with him being shot while he was on the ground and those bullets traveling through his body and striking the tile below him.

Speaker 6 It's clear that whoever killed Ben wasn't leaving until they were sure he was dead.

Speaker 8 We found four or five shell casings. With the damage that was done to Ben's body, we took that to account.

Speaker 13 There was legitimate concern, and we have to vet all the information that we get to get to the truth.

Speaker 6 Coming up, did a family feud turn deadly?

Speaker 2 She said maybe it would be better for their family to live elsewhere. This doesn't go over well with him.

Speaker 6 Or does the key to solving this case lie in another long-buried secret?

Speaker 14 My father mismanaged that company and he had affrauded a number of people out of investments.

Speaker 6 On June 8th, 2017, Missouri investigators are on the scene at a rare snake breeding facility where owner, 29-year-old Ben Rennick, has just been found shot to death inside.

Speaker 4 The concern about a snake on the loose that could have caused this was squashed when we found the shell casing and realized he had been shot.

Speaker 6 The coroner determines Ben was shot eight times from behind. With the majority of the bullets coming after he hit the ground.
He likely died within two hours of the call to 911.

Speaker 4 The way Ben was found looked like he had just been doing his work and been interrupted.

Speaker 6 Investigators consider whether Ben was shot in a robbery gone wrong.

Speaker 13 There was no per se gated security that would prohibit or inhibit access to the facility. So it was just open door.

Speaker 13 Ben had large amounts of cash in the facility at different given times. And so there was a theory that maybe this was a robbery that went bad.

Speaker 6 With the hope of learning more, investigators head to the station and turn their attention to the 911 callers, Ben's wife Lindley and his brother Sam. They start by interviewing Lindley.

Speaker 2 Lindley said that she spent the day working in Columbia at the spot. What time was the last time you spoke with him?

Speaker 10 3.45. He said he's so good for kids tonight.
Or do I need to?

Speaker 10 I said, I need you to. I'm not going to be able to leave right now.
So this was a text conversation. Yeah.

Speaker 6 As Lindley prepared to head back home around 6 p.m.,

Speaker 6 she made an alarming discovery.

Speaker 2 The school had called and said, Ben hasn't shown up to pick up your children.

Speaker 6 Unable to reach Ben, Lindley says she rushed to get the kids and head back home.

Speaker 10 I got home and I tried to call Ben and he wasn't answering. He's never forgotten them.
So it's kind of gave me a bad feeling.

Speaker 19 So I was like, okay, well, you guys sit in the car.

Speaker 10 And I walked in the facility and this is kind of walking around looking for us.

Speaker 10 And then I saw him laying on the ground. There was a lot of blood.

Speaker 9 There was something bad.

Speaker 19 They just threw herself out.

Speaker 8 The first person she called was Sam Rennick, not 911. She called Sam because he was already on the property.

Speaker 10 He couldn't understand what I was saying. And Sam got there.

Speaker 19 And he was like, what's going on?

Speaker 19 Is it Ben? And I was like, yes, it's Ben.

Speaker 12 He went inside.

Speaker 6 Still considering the possibility of a burglary, investigators ask Lindley about her husband's business.

Speaker 11 Did you see anybody you know

Speaker 10 being upset with

Speaker 10 that ain't that

Speaker 10 wholesaler?

Speaker 10 I don't

Speaker 10 know whatever you have to do to make your customers happy.

Speaker 8 Seems she was very forthcoming.

Speaker 15 She wanted to help.

Speaker 15 Was there any family issues?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 From there, dad shot himself. The way that everything was set up,

Speaker 10 Ben and I actually own all of the property. Sam kind of basically just went to Ben and he was like, you need to give me half of the property.

Speaker 10 But I was like, you know, I can't jeopardize my family and this business.

Speaker 3 And so,

Speaker 20 you know, he just said a lot of like really hurtful things to Ben.

Speaker 6 After learning of Ben and Sam's rocky relationship, investigators are eager to sit down with Sam next.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 Probably the easiest way to do this is just for you to tell us in your own words

Speaker 6 what occurred.

Speaker 6 About 6.45, Lily calls, screaming.

Speaker 10 She's hysterical, and I find him. And when I find him, at first cafe,

Speaker 10 he got killed by a f ⁇ ing stink.

Speaker 12 So I don't really know what I'm looking at, but I did talk to the coroner and don't even shut up.

Speaker 4 I couldn't have imagined something like that happening

Speaker 4 in my wildest dreams.

Speaker 6 With Lindley's claims in mind, they asked Sam about the family farm.

Speaker 17 I thought I was going to turn the farm is 80 acres.

Speaker 10 Were you surprised when I was left to then?

Speaker 11 Well, yes.

Speaker 17 It wasn't an equal uh

Speaker 17 uh inheritance, but uh

Speaker 11 it is what it is. Life's not fair

Speaker 11 But I can't afford the farm.

Speaker 4 That's an expensive place to live

Speaker 6 Uncertain if Sam is holding back investigators quickly cut to the chase Sam, did you have anything to do with the death?

Speaker 10 No

Speaker 10 anything at all?

Speaker 10 Nobody was anyone that would

Speaker 10 That would kill him. Everyone really liked him and was nice.

Speaker 8 We seized his shirt from that day. We did a download of his phone.

Speaker 13 The decision was made to polygraph Sam to see if he had any knowledge or involvement.

Speaker 6 As Sam's polygraph is being scheduled,

Speaker 6 Investigators ask Lindley to meet them back at the farm.

Speaker 8 We actually had had Lindley do somewhat of an inventory on the snakes.

Speaker 12 She didn't believe any snakes were missing.

Speaker 6 They find no proof of missing cash either.

Speaker 2 Nothing is stolen. Nothing looks obviously broken into.
Robbery gets taken off the table.

Speaker 6 Days later, Sam takes the polygraph.

Speaker 8 Sam Merna came down to Jefferson City and submitted to a polygraph examination.

Speaker 8 And he passed the polygraph test. He deeply cared about finding a resolution to this case.

Speaker 6 Investigators are also able to confirm Sam's alibi.

Speaker 8 He wasn't able to physically be there when he was at work.

Speaker 16 We confirmed that a couple different ways.

Speaker 6 With Sam ruled out and robbery off the table,

Speaker 6 Investigators press Sam for a new lead.

Speaker 6 Although he continues to insist that his brother didn't have any enemies, he admits that their late father did.

Speaker 14 My father started his own PEFU company in Montgomery County. He had mismanaged that company, and he had frauded a number of people out of investments.

Speaker 2 In 2012, a federal grand jury indicted Frank Rennick on fraud charges, essentially that he was taking investors' money, not putting it into the business, and essentially paying off previous investors to the company that he was running.

Speaker 2 Shortly after that federal indictment came out, Frank Rennick committed suicide.

Speaker 8 There may still be investors that were still upset with the Rennick family. That was a path we were going to have to go down.

Speaker 6 Investigators obtain a search warrant. and start looking at Ben's social media accounts for any potential threats.

Speaker 4 So there were some thoughts that it could be tied to to that in some way, that there could be someone angry at the family or wanting to get revenge for what had happened to them, some money they had lost.

Speaker 4 That was definitely looked at.

Speaker 6 Investigators find nothing from social media to back this theory up.

Speaker 6 However, they do find evidence of a marriage in turmoil.

Speaker 8 Lindley and Ben communicated with Facebook message just as much as they did with text.

Speaker 8 I read through all the Facebook messages on both their accounts and Ben gave an idea, although he never specifically would say it, that she was cheating on him.

Speaker 8 He would bring up concerns about her being on her phone or her going to the bathroom with her phone.

Speaker 8 I had started to put together that Lindley having an affair.

Speaker 6 Coming up, out of a hunch, detectives find a fact.

Speaker 8 They met on a dating site.

Speaker 6 And the secrets don't stop there.

Speaker 2 Ben was having to front a lot of bills. This created a really big wedge.

Speaker 6 Hi, I'm here to pick up my son Milo.

Speaker 7 There's no Milo here.

Speaker 10 Who picked up my son from school?

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Speaker 1 I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection.

Speaker 4 You don't understand. It was just the five of us.
So this was all planned.

Speaker 10 What are you gonna do?

Speaker 2 I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.

Speaker 4 I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people killing each other.

Speaker 5 All her fault.

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Speaker 6 Weeks after the murder of well-known snake breeder Ben Rennick,

Speaker 6 Missouri investigators are combing through Ben and Lindley's social media and text messages when they find evidence of a tumultuous marriage.

Speaker 8 I had 20,000 plus pages of Facebook messages and then all of their text conversations.

Speaker 8 We began to learn that her and Ben's relationship wasn't quite as good as she said it was.

Speaker 13 We kind of operated under the guise: if you have nothing to hide, you hide nothing.

Speaker 13 It kind of makes you suspicious on what else she's withholding from investigators.

Speaker 6 Detectives decide it's time to speak with Linley again.

Speaker 8 I was candid about it and I asked if she was having an affair or a romantic relationship. And that's when she explained to me that she was seeing someone else.

Speaker 8 It was a local person there that helped her with her business from time to time and that they would meet approximately twice a month.

Speaker 2 He was a marketing professional that was trying to help the spot named Eric Bremer.

Speaker 15 She stated at that time that was the only affair she was having

Speaker 8 and she apologized for not telling about it the first time.

Speaker 6 Following the interview, investigators check in with Eric.

Speaker 8 He had an alibi, he was on a trip with friends, and from that point forward, we didn't believe that Eric was involved in the homicide.

Speaker 6 Curious if Lindley's affair with Eric might not be the only one, they subpoena her phone records.

Speaker 8 I've spent a lot of time going over those, and there was a pattern that had developed with her and an associated phone number.

Speaker 6 Investigators trace the number to 34-year-old Brandon Blackwell.

Speaker 8 I traveled to Brandon's work and had a candid conversation with him and he explained to me that they'd met on a dating site.

Speaker 8 Bran was very open and honest and forthcoming with me about his relationship with Lindley. He conceded that they had started a sexual affair.

Speaker 15 It turned out it was just three days before the murder.

Speaker 6 But like Lindley's first lover, he also offers up an airtight alibi.

Speaker 8 He worked for a secure power plant type company. It was very easy to determine if he was at work.

Speaker 6 On June 19th, 2017, 11 days after Ben's murder, Investigators request that 29-year-old Lindley come back in so they can ask to look at her texts.

Speaker 8 She consented to that. I found text messages from the day of the homicide with her and a Mike H.

Speaker 8 They talked the whole day of the murder and then they hadn't talked since.

Speaker 3 Who's Mike H?

Speaker 9 Michael Humphrey. He is a client I actually used to work on.

Speaker 20 It was just kind of a random out of the boy or my manager Ashley had asked me if I knew anybody who did car audio work.

Speaker 9 I was like, well, I do.

Speaker 13 Lindley actually talked about him. Michael used to work at a business that installed stereo equipment.

Speaker 20 He had mentioned that he had heard one of the spa advertisements. He wanted to get a massage, so started talking about coming up that way.

Speaker 9 Ashley really wants work done on her car.

Speaker 2 Ashley Shaw is the business manager. She's a very organized person who is trying to keep this business on track.
She's very close with Lindley.

Speaker 10 Is there anybody we've talked about today that you know what absolutely wouldn't have had anything to do with what happened to Ben?

Speaker 9 I mean, I think most of the people that we've talked about today were already

Speaker 9 taken to deal with it.

Speaker 8 She seemed slightly taken aback with us asking more questions about Michael and I realized I needed to learn a little bit more about Mike. I was able to set up a meeting with Michael.

Speaker 6 On July 17th, 2017, Michael arrives for his interview.

Speaker 11 Okay. Like I said, we're talking about Lindley.
And I kind of just want to know how y'all know each other.

Speaker 11 We dated way back when and stuff.

Speaker 10 How'd y'all get hooked back up this time?

Speaker 11 They actually were driving through one day there to Treader Park and see me.

Speaker 10 How long have it been?

Speaker 11 Like seven years probably since I've seen her, yeah.

Speaker 2 He also says Lindley had come and reconnected with him because Ashley Shaw wanted some stereo work done and he decided why not.

Speaker 4 There's plenty of places to go to get car stereos put in and some boyfriend you haven't seen in 10 years that you knew could do it. Nothing about that was making sense to me.

Speaker 6 Despite their suspicions, investigators release Michael and concentrate on the messages between Lindley and Ben.

Speaker 8 A lot of that was them fighting about money or the relationship.

Speaker 8 We learned that Lindley was not paying her business loan on time. She owed an electric company $5,000.
She owed an architecture firm about $5,000.

Speaker 8 And Ben was just starting to learn through emails with her bank.

Speaker 2 Ben was having to front a lot of bills for Lindley's spa.

Speaker 2 And this created a really big wedge between the two.

Speaker 6 Investigators question if the couple's money problems could be a motive for murder.

Speaker 6 Then suddenly a call comes in from an insurance agent handling the Rennick policy.

Speaker 8 The investigative specialist from the life insurance company asked if Lindley was a suspect in the case, and I stated that she was.

Speaker 8 And because of that, they were holding that million dollar life insurance policy.

Speaker 6 The agent claims Lindley began trying to cash in on the million-dollar policy within hours of Ben's death.

Speaker 8 And that, I think, was a red flag for her that was called in in less than 12 hours. It was very suspicious.

Speaker 6 Even more damning, in the months since Ben's murder, Lindley has been busy trying to cash in on more than just the life insurance.

Speaker 14 Quickly after the murder, she decides to sell that farm and Ben's business, his snake business.

Speaker 2 Sam Rennick does try to step in and stop this sale, so they have to go to court to figure out all of these assets.

Speaker 6 On October 5th, almost five months after the murder, investigators tell Lindley they need to talk to her again.

Speaker 8 I explained to her a polygraph may be some way for us to exclude her as a suspect.

Speaker 6 Lindley agrees.

Speaker 2 This is maybe Lindley's fifth or sixth interview that she's done at this point.

Speaker 2 She takes a polygraph test, and Lindley fails this polygraph test.

Speaker 9 Following the polygraph, she locked her up.

Speaker 13 We believed that Lindley had something to do with it. We just hadn't gotten to the point of having probable cause to arrest anyone in the case.

Speaker 6 Over the next few months, Lindley continues to fight Sam in court over the sale of the farm. She also goes public with her relationship with Brendan Blackwell.

Speaker 14 We started seeing Lindley's social media accounts pop up with another man.

Speaker 14 And then very quickly after that, we found out that she was pregnant.

Speaker 6 Coming up, a witness comes forward.

Speaker 2 Police get a call from an inmate. He has got some information to share.

Speaker 6 And a twisted tale unfolds.

Speaker 10 I turn around as soon as the first shot rang. I ran out the door.

Speaker 6 Months after Ben Rennick is gunned down inside his snake breeding facility, his murder remains unsolved.

Speaker 6 And the primary suspect, his wife Lindley, remains a free woman.

Speaker 14 Lindley entered a relationship with Brendan Blackwell almost immediately at the time of the murder. Brennan was married and had two kids.

Speaker 8 He left his wife, and him Lindley had a child together.

Speaker 6 As time passes, investigators keep an eye on Lindley. She eventually prevails in her court battle with Ben's brother Sam.

Speaker 14 We had the farm farm set in Ben's name as a sole owner, but when he passed, it went to Lindley solely. I lost.
A farm that my family had spent 40 years maintaining.

Speaker 14 We could have never imagined losing the farm in that way.

Speaker 2 In 2018, Lindley goes through with the sale of the Montgomery County property. for about $740,000.

Speaker 6 But Lindley isn't as lucky when it comes to Ben's life insurance payout.

Speaker 2 The life insurance payment is never made to Lindley.

Speaker 6 That same year, Lindley relocates to Columbia with Brandon and her three kids.

Speaker 2 Brandon and Lindley's relationship was marked with a lot of fighting. In 2019, Lindley says that she's had enough with this and gets a restraining order taken out against Brandon.

Speaker 6 In a stunning turn of events, authorities catch a break in January 2020 when Brandon is arrested after violating that order.

Speaker 13 Brandon Blackwell was in the Boone County jail.

Speaker 13 He wanted to talk to one of us.

Speaker 8 Bran explained that it took some time, but eventually she would tell him a little more and a little more.

Speaker 6 According to Brandon, the week prior to to Ben's death, Lindley made the first attempt on his life.

Speaker 8 According to Brandon, Ashley Shaw, her coworker, helped her obtain narcotics, in this case Percocet, and come up with a plan to poison Ben.

Speaker 13 They crushed up Percocet pills in a

Speaker 13 protein shake, but that attempt failed.

Speaker 6 Ben's Facebook messages support Brandon's story.

Speaker 4 We discovered something on the Facebook messages about Ben getting very ill from this protein shake.

Speaker 6 Brandon tells them that when the Percocet didn't work, Lindley came up with another plan.

Speaker 13 She reached out to Michael Humphrey, an old boyfriend, and asked him for help.

Speaker 4 Brandon Blackwell should not have known those facts unless he was told by Lindley.

Speaker 6 Two days after the interview with Brandon, authorities arrest Michael Humphrey.

Speaker 6 Tell us how you got involved in this.

Speaker 10 Like, they came rolling to my house one day. She said that she was having some different issues

Speaker 11 with her significant other.

Speaker 10 You know, he would

Speaker 10 hit her and,

Speaker 10 you know, get out of control and threatened her already.

Speaker 8 Lindley had spun this tale of domestic violence and domestic abuse. Michael believed this.
Michael wanted to help. He had brought her the gun to her spa in case she needed it.

Speaker 6 Then, two weeks later, she asked Michael to go with her to see Ben.

Speaker 6 She

Speaker 10 says, I'm going to

Speaker 10 leave him.

Speaker 10 I just need to go and get my stuff and make sure that he doesn't, you know, flip out on me.

Speaker 6 But when they arrived, Lindley revealed she'd brought the gun with her.

Speaker 10 I go out there and initially she she tries to hand me a gun and I kind of just shoved it back at her like that like whatever

Speaker 10 and we walk up he you know introduced himself I introduced myself and everything

Speaker 15 they entered the facility Michael said he was barely in the doorway at the front of the facility when he started the first here shot

Speaker 10 Turn around as soon as the first shot rang, I ran out the door. I've been how many shots since she fired.

Speaker 10 I heard probably another

Speaker 10 one,

Speaker 10 maybe two, I don't know.

Speaker 10 And by the time I'm standing by the car, I'm saying her, what the f just happened, you know what I mean? And she's like, we gotta go, we gotta go.

Speaker 8 He confirmed that Lenley was the one that had shot Ben. He wanted to tell us what happened to the gun after the murder.

Speaker 6 That same day, investigators arrest 29-year-old Ashley Shaw. Shaw.

Speaker 2 While she's waiting there, her attorney shows up.

Speaker 2 And they both say, we will tell you that story if you give us that immunity.

Speaker 2 And they get the agreement in place, and Ashley Shaw tells them everything that she knows.

Speaker 6 Ashley says she agreed to help Lindley because she told her she was in an abusive relationship.

Speaker 13 She's telling these people she's having troubles at home, and she's soliciting them to help her get rid of her husband.

Speaker 2 Ashley Shaw says that she was the one that got the Percocets. She was the one who also helped find Michael Humphrey for this as well.

Speaker 2 She was right there with Lindley the entire time to try to set all of this up.

Speaker 6 When Michael and Lindley traveled to the farm, Ashley stayed behind at the spa to help establish Lindley's alibi.

Speaker 4 Lindley left her phone and asked Ashley to actually make correspondence or text on the phone to make it appear that she'sn't to spy.

Speaker 8 She starts sending texts to Ben, texting and calling that she was worried. She kept asking him to pick up his phone, but he didn't because Ben was dead.

Speaker 6 On January 16th, 2020, over two and a half years after Ben's murder, authorities finally have what they need to arrest Lindley.

Speaker 13 Lindley was arrested at her residence in Columbia.

Speaker 14 They promised me that someday we would get there and despite my doubts at times, we did.

Speaker 6 Coming up, will a last-minute development seal Lindley's fate?

Speaker 8 We rushed to the lab and realized that we had the murder weapon.

Speaker 6 Or will Lindley continue to evade justice?

Speaker 2 Lindley takes the stand to tell her side of the story, a side that she has not told anyone yet.

Speaker 6 Over two and a half years after her husband is gunned down inside his exotic snake breeding facility, Ben Rennick's widow, Lindley, is finally arrested for his murder.

Speaker 6 But she refuses to make a statement.

Speaker 14 It took years to make an arrest. It was a long process, and that was tough.
Murder was not something we thought Lindley would have even been capable of, so we were surprised.

Speaker 6 Ashley Shaw, Lindley's co-worker, is granted immunity after agreeing to testify against Lindley and her co-conspirator, Michael Humphrey.

Speaker 6 As his trial begins in October 2021, Michael claims he didn't pull the trigger.

Speaker 2 The way the law is is that you don't have to be the one that pulled the trigger. If you took part in it and you knew about it, you are just as guilty as the person that pulled the trigger.

Speaker 8 Michael is ultimately convicted, first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Speaker 6 As prosecutors turn their attention to preparing for Lindley's trial, they are contacted by Michael's attorneys.

Speaker 8 Michael's team of lawyers said that he was able to give specifics about where the gun was. Following that interview, Trooper Schaefer and I found it was in the attic underneath some insulation.

Speaker 15 We rushed it to the lab and realized that we had the murder weapon for the case.

Speaker 2 Michael agreed to testify at Lindley's trial in exchange.

Speaker 2 They would remove his first degree murder conviction and instead give him a second degree murder conviction and sentence him to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Speaker 6 In December 2021, 33-year-old Lindley Rennick goes to trial. In a surprising move, Lindley testifies on her own behalf.

Speaker 2 Lindley takes the stand to tell her side of the story. Lindley Rennick tells the jury that it was Michael Humphrey.
that pulled the trigger.

Speaker 8 She was there. She didn't know this was going to occur

Speaker 14 but michael and ashley testified to the contrary this was wildly premeditated she tried to poison him first he didn't die she covered up her actions all the way until the arrest and lied countlessly she was the one to pull the trigger

Speaker 6 Prosecutors argue that Lindley's claims that Ben abused her are unfounded.

Speaker 6 And her true motive is crystal clear.

Speaker 14 I believe that greed is what killed my brother. Lindley's greed.

Speaker 14 She knew that the farm was in Ben's name, and he just took out a $1 million life insurance policy.

Speaker 14 The truth is that Ben was going to find out that Lindley was having multiple affairs and mismanaging the finances at her spa.

Speaker 14 When that happened, Ben was going to walk away, and she probably wasn't going to get much.

Speaker 14 She was not willing to walk away from those assets.

Speaker 6 After a four-day trial, the jury begins deliberations.

Speaker 8 Lindley was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder and received 16 years in prison.

Speaker 14 We're happy that she was sentenced to the 16 years that she was given.

Speaker 14 However, my brother's life is worth a lot more than 16 years to those children.

Speaker 14 All the lives that were destroyed by this, by these actions.

Speaker 14 It was not just, not for us.

Speaker 2 How can we have such disparity in this? I think for one, it breaks down on the argument itself. For Michael Humphrey, the argument was, it doesn't matter if he's the trigger person or not.

Speaker 2 He was there, he knew about it, and he didn't say anything.

Speaker 2 But for Lindley's, it's much more specific. You have to believe that Lindley was the one that shot and killed.

Speaker 2 And some jurors were maybe thinking that maybe it wasn't Lindley that pulled the trigger was enough for them to pull back on their punishment.

Speaker 6 Following the disappointing sentence, Ben's loved ones attempt to move on

Speaker 6 while keeping Ben's memory alive.

Speaker 12 For me to try to imagine that somebody would want to kill Ben was was just kind of unbelievable.

Speaker 18 A little bit surreal, you know. It still is that way.

Speaker 14 He would have had a long,

Speaker 14 beautiful life to live. And that was stolen from him.

Speaker 5 Those kids deserved a father.

Speaker 14 And they were denied that.

Speaker 15 And the ripple effects of his murder will span generations.

Speaker 6 In February 2022, Lindley sued Brandon Blackwell, claiming that he lied to police about her confession.

Speaker 6 Lindley is set to be released for the Women's Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center in 2038. She will be 49 years old.

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