Suze Adams

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Speaker 1 A free-spirited beauty falls for a smooth-talking chef.

Speaker 12 He had a silver tongue and he can be nice.

Speaker 14 He was a nice-looking man. Very good-looking.

Speaker 1 She just thought he was her soulmate.

Speaker 1 But the events of one summer night send their future up in smoke.

Speaker 9 It was the whole home being engulfed in flames.

Speaker 6 I could hear her screaming, help me, help me.

Speaker 3 Oh, it was horrible.

Speaker 15 Someone really meant for somebody to die.

Speaker 9 They thought it was perhaps tied to his gang relationships.

Speaker 12 The only thing that I could think of is why would somebody think that I would do this?

Speaker 1 As investigators dig deeper, they find a crime ignited by passion and stoked by jealousy.

Speaker 9 It was a love triangle.

Speaker 4 She hated her and she wanted her gone.

Speaker 18 Instead of saw Bill's hat.

Speaker 15 They go to find her and no one knows where she is.

Speaker 19 You can't really get much more devious than that.

Speaker 21 I think something happened.

Speaker 22 I don't know if she pushed you.

Speaker 9 This was cold, this was calculated, and this was callous.

Speaker 1 Tucked far from the lights and sounds of the Golden State's biggest cities is the quiet town of Turlock, California.

Speaker 15 Turlock is a medium-sized city in the Central Valley of California, which is the agricultural heartbeat of the state.

Speaker 9 It's a rural community. People know each other.
You have farmers that live out in the outskirts of town and they still make deals just on a handshake. It's pretty safe.

Speaker 1 But on June 18th, 2004, while most Turlock residents are sound asleep, Gracie Olson gets a call just before 4 a.m.

Speaker 6 I was sleeping on my couch and my phone rang and it was my brother.

Speaker 25 And he says, open your door and look out your front porch.

Speaker 6 Your friend's house is on fire.

Speaker 6 I was just like, oh my God.

Speaker 1 It was just unbelievable.

Speaker 6 These bright orange and yellow flames.

Speaker 1 The residence is home to Gracie's friend, 43-year-old Christina Salt and her family.

Speaker 6 I hollered at my son and told him, Jonathan, come on, Christina's house is on fire.

Speaker 2 So I just left the phone.

Speaker 6 When I came around the corner, I could hear her screaming,

Speaker 3 help me, help me. Oh, it's horrible.

Speaker 6 And it just got worse.

Speaker 3 It was the most awful.

Speaker 11 Awful scream.

Speaker 1 When firefighters arrive at the scene, a young man rushes to them.

Speaker 15 Joey, the young man in the street, tells firefighters that his mother is inside.

Speaker 15 And she's trapped by the fire.

Speaker 1 Joey believes his mother, Christina, has taken refuge in a bathroom. He points firefighters to the bathroom window.

Speaker 20 The window was small.

Speaker 26 It would have been pretty hard for her to get out of that window and to climb out.

Speaker 9 She was yelling for help, but she's being burned and for someone to save her.

Speaker 6 It was like a nightmare. You're going to wake up from it, you know, and there was no waking up from it.
It was real.

Speaker 1 Born in 1961, Christina Soult grew up in San Francisco.

Speaker 3 My grandparents were artists in the Bay Area. They lived a very bohemian lifestyle.
They were very active in the counterculture and my mom was part of that.

Speaker 13 She was a little bit quiet, a little bit reserved. She was good at art.
She liked to do calligraphy.

Speaker 13 She was real, real good at it.

Speaker 1 In high school, Christina fell in love with a classmate, Kevin Vanick, and things moved fast.

Speaker 27 They were high school sweethearts.

Speaker 3 She was at the class in 1979.

Speaker 27 She was pregnant with me when she graduated, and he proposed to her. They got married when they were both 18 years old.

Speaker 1 But their young love soon burned out.

Speaker 3 They were married until I was two years old and then they divorced in 1981, I believe. Shortly after, she met my stepfather and they got married.

Speaker 1 Christina's second marriage to Vince Lopes brought her a stepson, Michael.

Speaker 13 I had to have been 11 or 12, roughly. She didn't look at me as her stepson.
I was her son. She didn't, there was no step about it in her eyes.

Speaker 14 She was good at loving everybody. She always made you feel special.

Speaker 1 In 1987, Christina and Vince welcomed a son, Joey.

Speaker 13 She was a devoted mom. As I got older and I wasn't around as much, her time was devoted to my two younger brothers.
She made sure that they were taken care of as best as she could do.

Speaker 27 We didn't have a lot of fancy amenities, but we spent our Sundays listening to records.

Speaker 3 And she taught me a lot about music and the love for art.

Speaker 1 While she found success in motherhood, Christina's marriage was a different story.

Speaker 13 roughly 1992-ish. She wanted to try and make things work, but there was no working with him.

Speaker 3 She loved my stepdad, but eventually they just grew to where they couldn't be around each other and they got divorced.

Speaker 17 It hurt her,

Speaker 13 but she was a strong woman and she was able to say, I can do this on my own. I don't need you.
There was times I was closer with her after the divorce than I was with my own dad.

Speaker 1 After her second divorce, Christina looked forward to a fresh start for her and her boys.

Speaker 3 We moved to Turlock, California. My mom worked in downtown Turlock.
She was a waitress. She was beloved by her clientele.

Speaker 3 She worked, it seemed like every day, to make sure that we were taken care of and she absolutely loved us.

Speaker 1 Soon after moving to Turlock, Christina met a smooth-talking, good-looking cook named Fortino Godoy.

Speaker 3 My mom started dating Fortino about the time I was a senior in high school.

Speaker 27 He was a cook at IHOP and Terlock and other restaurants.

Speaker 14 He was a nice-looking man. He was very good looking.

Speaker 27 He was from Mexico. He had a silver tongue and he was very convincing when he wanted it to be.

Speaker 1 After two failed marriages, Christina wasn't eager to rush into a third. However, she did believe that Fortino was the one.

Speaker 1 She just thought he was her soulmate, you know, she was badly in love with the guy. But after over a decade together, Christina began to wonder if Fortino felt the same way.

Speaker 6 They had been together for a long time, but I think maybe at the beginning he did love her. But then he was just using her.
It was just, you know,

Speaker 6 a place to have a roof over his head.

Speaker 10 She'd do his laundry.

Speaker 28 She'd do anything for him.

Speaker 23 She was trying to keep him at the home.

Speaker 29 and be her steady boyfriend.

Speaker 10 And he was more of a kind of come and get what he wants kind of guy.

Speaker 3 She started realizing that, you know, maybe this wasn't the right guy.

Speaker 31 Fortino had been living with Christina and then simply said, I'm going to the store to get a pack of cigarettes

Speaker 31 and never came back. She was really upset at that point.

Speaker 1 With her love life up in the air, Christina channeled her energy into babysitting her only grandchild.

Speaker 3 She was a very avid grandmother. She had my son whenever she could.

Speaker 3 She would take him around town, do activities, go to the grocery store, go to the park.

Speaker 1 Though Christina loved being near her family, her stagnant relationship with Fortino inspired her to make a move.

Speaker 3 She was making plans to move to Las Vegas, where her brother lived, to become a waitress because the job market was way better there.

Speaker 3 She was making arrangements to move out there.

Speaker 1 Tragically, in the early morning hours of June 18th, 2004, a fire at Christina's home threatens her future.

Speaker 1 Firefighters struggle to reach Christina as her home goes up in flames around her.

Speaker 14 She was screaming inside the bathroom, get me out of here, help me, help me.

Speaker 19 There was just no way for them to get to her.

Speaker 23 with the smoke pouring out of the window.

Speaker 5 It was a whole home being engulfed in flames.

Speaker 9 And it was such high, intense heat that they couldn't do anything.

Speaker 26 She's screaming, and then she goes quiet.

Speaker 1 Minutes later, firefighters tame the blaze enough to enter the bathroom, where they locate Christina, deceased.

Speaker 32 She was laying in a fetal position and with her back to the door.

Speaker 9 and had a towel over her face.

Speaker 6 It was really heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 She gave so much.

Speaker 1 You know, she was a giver.

Speaker 30 She didn't deserve it.

Speaker 14 It made me sad for Chris that she died in such a violent death.

Speaker 1 Coming up, fire investigators find disturbing evidence at the scene.

Speaker 15 There was no way out. Someone really meant for somebody to die in this fire.

Speaker 1 And a Pandora's box of leads bursts open.

Speaker 13 It could have been a retaliation type thing. Maybe they came back to get revenge.

Speaker 26 It was a little unusual to have this many suspects.

Speaker 1 June 18th, 2004.

Speaker 1 Firefighters in Turlock, California have just recovered the body of 43-year-old Christina Salt in what remains of her fire-ravaged home.

Speaker 9 You could see where the smoke had gone out from the windows because there's the darkening of the window sills on the top portions of it as the smoke was billowing out.

Speaker 1 For investigators on the scene, the first order of business is determining the cause of the fire.

Speaker 23 It can be anything.

Speaker 15 It can be electrical problems inside the house that had been smoldering for a while and then all of of a sudden they erupt.

Speaker 1 As investigators carefully examine the scene, they quickly spot clues on the back porch that indicate the fire was no accident.

Speaker 33 The back door was a fairly newer door. It was metal.

Speaker 17 That outside metal was completely burnt and warped and the paint was completely burnt on it.

Speaker 34 just ash.

Speaker 28 And you could clearly see a pattern of what looked like an accelerant was splashed on his door.

Speaker 1 Investigators find a similar pattern on the front porch.

Speaker 9 They were able to determine that there are two points of origin.

Speaker 9 The fact that the fire on the porch was a similar type of accelerant used in the back door, again, pointed to the fact that it was not accidental.

Speaker 1 With arson determined, detectives with the Turlock Police Department joined the investigation.

Speaker 11 I got called early and that there was a suspicious fire and a woman had died.

Speaker 1 As firefighters brief detectives on the morning's events, they reveal this is not the first time they've responded to a fire at this address.

Speaker 28 About three months earlier, fire department had responded there for a fire on the front porch.

Speaker 9 During the previous fire, The victim, Christina Sultz, and the son, Joe Lopes, were able to escape through the back door. And it was the middle of the night.

Speaker 28 It was three o'clock in the morning, and it was contained to the front porch.

Speaker 13 It was kind of up in the air how it happened. Was that an accident? Was it intentional? It was just kind of what happened here.

Speaker 1 At the time, arson investigators concluded the fire was accidental.

Speaker 13 My mom, she had just shrugged it off. She didn't seem suspicious of anything.

Speaker 10 The porch had coffee cans used for cigarette butts where they had done a lot of smoking out there, and they couldn't determine how the fire had started.

Speaker 28 They assumed maybe it was an accident.

Speaker 4 But now, three months later, now the whole house is burned down.

Speaker 1 Whoever set this fire was determined to make sure both exits were blocked by flames.

Speaker 29 There was no way out.

Speaker 15 Someone really meant for somebody to die in this fire.

Speaker 32 I would say 75% of the home was destroyed.

Speaker 30 The back porch kitchen was still somewhat intact with just

Speaker 28 everything in there was destroyed by soot.

Speaker 9 There were no surfaces or items that they could fingerprint at the house because of the charring that had occurred.

Speaker 1 At daybreak, patrol officers searched the surrounding area and make an intriguing discovery.

Speaker 28 During the neighborhood canvas, there was in a garbage can in the alley, there was a plastic like Ziploc bag that had a strange smelling liquid, like an accelerant in the bag.

Speaker 9 They found the baggies with what appeared to be rosemary, as well as what appeared to be alcohol inside of it.

Speaker 1 Outside the crime scene, detectives speak with Christina's 17-year-old son, Joey.

Speaker 34 But he was distraught. He was, you know, beside himself.

Speaker 29 He just listened to his mom die a terrible death.

Speaker 1 Joey tells detectives that before the fire, everyone in the house was sound asleep.

Speaker 18 Christina and her grandson were sleeping in the bedroom on her bed.

Speaker 9 There was a family friend in Joey Lopes' bedroom, and 17-year-old Joey Lopes was sleeping on the couch in the living room. He was the one who actually noticed the fire first.

Speaker 28 He wakes to the front window being blown in.

Speaker 19 and smoke and fire pouring in that window and across the ceiling over his head.

Speaker 34 He jumps up, fire, starts yelling at everybody.

Speaker 16 As they're heading out the door, his mom is just wearing a t-shirt.

Speaker 10 She hands the baby to Joey, said she's going back to put on clothes. He tried to convince her, no, no, no, we got to get out.

Speaker 19 And then she left and went back towards her bedroom.

Speaker 1 Joey, his friend, and the toddler all escaped through the back door. As the flames grew in intensity behind him, Joey Joey realized his mother hadn't made it out.

Speaker 32 They get out into the back.

Speaker 29 He's waiting for his mom, calling for her, and now smoke is pouring out of the back door, making it impossible for him to get in.

Speaker 9 He actually burned his hand on the doorknob trying to get back inside because it was so intense. And so he couldn't go into the home.
He couldn't do anything to help his mom.

Speaker 13 He had all those emotions of not being able to help his mom. And he was in a bad place mentally because of that.
It did affect him.

Speaker 1 Joey tells detectives he fears it's possible the fire was set with the intention of killing him, not his mother.

Speaker 9 He hung out with the gang crowd and he started to spend more and more time with them.

Speaker 1 Joey says that he'd recently quit hanging out with gang members and had even cooperated with police on a gang-related investigation.

Speaker 10 He was always on edge because because he was kind of a marked snitch.

Speaker 13 It could have been a retaliation type thing. Maybe they came back and were trying to get revenge.
Where part of the fire was set, his bedroom was right there. It kind of made me wonder.

Speaker 1 To investigators, the theory is plausible.

Speaker 32 They think that's their job to go to put in work for their gang.

Speaker 11 and to raise their status in the gang.

Speaker 29 And nothing would do more than towards that goal is to hurt a snitch.

Speaker 1 Joey also offers up a second suspect. He tells detectives there's a possibility his half-brother, Mike Vannek, could be behind it.

Speaker 23 He said, hey, my brother, Mike Vanick, he's been kicked out of the house.

Speaker 20 He has slept in the carport in his mom's car.

Speaker 10 and thinks that his mom owes him money for something.

Speaker 1 After speaking to Joey, investigators have several leads to sift through.

Speaker 10 He was kind of all over the place.

Speaker 29 We got local gang members.

Speaker 10 Now we got the victim's own son.

Speaker 11 It was a little unusual to have this many suspects.

Speaker 1 Of Joey's theories, one especially stands out to detectives.

Speaker 11 Joey had said a few weeks prior, he was told by a neighbor or friend, hey, these guys who they knew, local gang members, were parked down the street watching his house.

Speaker 17 He named who they were.

Speaker 1 During their initial conversation, Joey provided detectives with the name of one particular gang member. Investigators have no trouble locating the man.
He's already behind bars.

Speaker 28 He was in custody.

Speaker 30 He ended up getting picked up for something else.

Speaker 29 Went and spoke to him at the county jail and went over why he would be at odds with the victim's son.

Speaker 34 And, you know, he didn't know anything about the fire and said he didn't know anything about it and was innocent.

Speaker 32 And I think he even said he didn't have any reason to be at odds with Joey, and we weren't able to connect him with all our cohorts.

Speaker 1 With the gang theory ruled out, detectives turn to their next suspect: Christina's son and Joey's half-brother, Mike Vanick.

Speaker 3 I was called to the Turlock police station

Speaker 3 and they sat me down in a room.

Speaker 3 I told them everything I knew.

Speaker 1 Coming up, detectives make some troubling discoveries.

Speaker 9 They each knew that he was dating both of them.

Speaker 20 She starts asking questions like how to make a Malta cocktail and how to make a pipe bomb.

Speaker 1 And a search warrant yields an interesting find.

Speaker 9 There was rosemary bushes there.

Speaker 8 Friday on NBC. To succeed in the world of junior college cheer, you need to be an elite athlete.

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Speaker 2 On the night before Halloween in 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was murdered, but police failed to make an arrest. Until, in 2000, her one-time neighbor, Michael Skakal, was arrested.

Speaker 2 He was also a cousin of the Kennedys. The Kennedy connection is the reason that most people know about this case.
But the deeper I dug, the more I came to question everything I thought I knew.

Speaker 2 Search Dead Certain the Martha Moxley murder to listen now, wherever you get your podcasts, and follow to get new episodes every week.

Speaker 1 Within 48 hours of the horrific death of 43 year old Christina Solt, detectives are now sitting down with her son, Mike Vanick.

Speaker 3 They wanted to know where I was at, what I was doing.

Speaker 3 I didn't know why the house was on fire. I didn't know who did it and that I was working.

Speaker 1 When confronted about being kicked out of the house, Mike admits he was angry. But he tells detectives he blamed the landlord, not Christina.

Speaker 3 The landlord told her that I couldn't live in her house. I didn't have any place to go, so she had a car parked in her

Speaker 3 carport behind the house, and she said, if you need a place to sleep, you can sleep in that car.

Speaker 1 Mike also points out that Christina was babysitting his three-year-old son at the time of the fire, and he would never put his son in danger.

Speaker 3 I called my mom and told her that I can't watch James, my son, this weekend. Can you watch him for me? And she was, yeah, it's no problem.
Those are my days off.

Speaker 1 Throughout his conversation with detectives, Mike maintains his innocence.

Speaker 3 I was very scared. And the only thing that I could think of is,

Speaker 3 why would somebody think that I would do this to my mother?

Speaker 3 I love my mom to death. And I just, I couldn't understand why somebody would do this to her because she was so nice.

Speaker 3 Everybody that she knew loved her, and it just boggled the mind.

Speaker 3 I had no idea.

Speaker 1 Detectives end the interview with few reservations over Mike's sincerity.

Speaker 23 He was very cooperative, and I believe he had an alibi.

Speaker 1 Having cleared Mike, detectives have gone from two leads to none. Then, the day after the fatal fire, they get a mysterious phone call.

Speaker 28 The caller is anonymous.

Speaker 32 It's a mail saying, I work next to Susie Adams at AJ's Cafe, and she bragged about setting the fire.

Speaker 1 Born in Kansas City in 1959, Susie Adams was raised by struggling parents. Susie described them, they were kind and generous, but they had financial troubles.

Speaker 3 They were fairly poor.

Speaker 24 She got picked on a little bit for that.

Speaker 32 I think she had kind of a rough life and

Speaker 24 internalized these things her whole life.

Speaker 1 Expecting she would have to fend for herself, Susie dropped out of high school and began working in a restaurant.

Speaker 25 She was a good cook.

Speaker 9 That's how we met.

Speaker 24 We were working in Kansas City at a really, really, probably the best restaurant in Kansas City.

Speaker 25 She just wanted to be happy, kind of lived life, and she was kind of a mix between a 60s hippie chick and a 70s punk rocker.

Speaker 1 In the mid-90s, Susie made the most of her unencumbered existence and left Missouri on a whim.

Speaker 25 She had just left her life at Kansas City behind and gone off with two friends to kind of live as gypsies on the road.

Speaker 1 By 2000, Susie planted roots in Turlock, California, and eventually landed a job as a cook at AJ's Cafe.

Speaker 1 It's at AJ's in June 2004 where detectives are eager to question Susie about her relationship to Christina Solt.

Speaker 10 We went to AJ's cafe.

Speaker 28 The owner's there and we talked to him and asked about Susie.

Speaker 16 Does she work for him? Yes.

Speaker 23 He said, yes, she does.

Speaker 1 Though Susie is off that day, detectives quickly discover that Susie and Christina knew each other and their relationship was tense.

Speaker 9 It was a love triangle and Christina and Susie were dating the same guy.

Speaker 1 Susie's co-workers name a local cook, Fortino Godoy, as the third member of the love triangle.

Speaker 9 Fortino had been dating Christina for about 16 years, and Susie had been dating Fortino for about four to six years. Fortino would pretty much ping-pong back and forth.

Speaker 9 They each knew that he was dating both of them.

Speaker 1 About a year earlier, the tension between the two women intensified when Susie became pregnant with Fortino's baby.

Speaker 31 Fortino went, lived with her, got her pregnant, and then once she was pregnant, he went back with Christina, the victim. Susie just had the child and immediately gave it up for adoption.

Speaker 24 Susie didn't want to be a mom.

Speaker 25 She's not fond of babies.

Speaker 24 I know that.

Speaker 14 And I think that's what started the feud between Susie Adams and Chris.

Speaker 1 But instead of getting angry with Fortino, the two women focused their fury on each other.

Speaker 9 Two days before the fire, Christina went into Susie's restaurant and ate there, and that enraged Susie.

Speaker 1 Susie's manager points detectives to one of the cooks, David Gene, who worked the closest to Susie. Investigators get a feeling David might be their anonymous tipster.

Speaker 19 His first words are, how'd you know it was me?

Speaker 11 I said, well, we're detectives. That's what what we do.

Speaker 10 So he just goes ahead and tells us everything.

Speaker 9 Susie said after the first fire that she was the one who did it, but to not to tell anyone.

Speaker 13 And David wasn't sure quite what to make out of it.

Speaker 9 The reason being was that Susie would often exaggerate things and tell lies.

Speaker 1 Susie's bizarre claim was followed by other concerning comments.

Speaker 23 She starts asking questions like about how to make a Maltop cocktail and how to make a pipe bomb and these sort of things.

Speaker 28 And it just,

Speaker 28 she's really weird. Why is she talking like this?

Speaker 29 And he kind of blew her off as something that Susie would say.

Speaker 1 But with Christina dead after an arson attack on her home, detectives take Susie's words very seriously.

Speaker 1 Detectives leave AJ's and head straight to Susie's home, armed with a search warrant. They find Susie eager to share her side of the story.

Speaker 9 She downplayed that there was any type of animosity between the two of them. It was just a war of words.

Speaker 1 Susie tells detectives, if anything, she was the one who had reason to be afraid, not Christina.

Speaker 9 She went on to explain how she was being harassed by Christina, that Christina would call her, would text her. She went on to explain Christina would follow her,

Speaker 9 and whether it was rightfully or wrongfully, Susie just felt paranoid about Christina always being around.

Speaker 9 Christina Salt, she bullied Susie for I don't know how long.

Speaker 17 Susie was calling me during the period that she was being bullied.

Speaker 25 I could tell that Susie was kind of distressed.

Speaker 1 Susie tells detectives that she and Fortino were at her house sleeping when the fire broke out.

Speaker 28 She didn't waver from the fact that she was home asleep and didn't know anything about it.

Speaker 1 Following the interview, police carry out the search of Susie's apartment.

Speaker 9 They found in the porch area of her apartment that there was rosemary bushes there, that she was growing rosemary, and it was, you know, similar to the rosemary that was located at the crime scene.

Speaker 1 However, the presence of the common herb isn't enough to indicate Susie's involvement in Christina's death.

Speaker 28 I have rosemary in my backyard.

Speaker 10 Nothing unusual about it at all. So there's really no way to link that together.

Speaker 15 The police really don't have any physical evidence to tie her to that case other than that she had some rosemary.

Speaker 9 The officers felt that Susie wasn't really involved with the fire and they had no other reason to believe that there was more to it than what Susie was saying.

Speaker 1 Susie agrees to schedule a polygraph to clear her name.

Speaker 1 Detectives next turn their attention to the link between the feuding women, 44-year-old Fortino Godoy.

Speaker 15 The boyfriend that was the central problem between these two women could have wanted out of this situation. He could have wanted the two women to, you know, the fight to stop between them.

Speaker 15 Maybe he was sick of it.

Speaker 1 Coming up, exposed secrets set off red flags.

Speaker 9 He had a family down in Mexico.

Speaker 1 And a suspect re-emerges with a shocking admission.

Speaker 17 I couldn't take any.

Speaker 1 An investigation into Christina Salt's death has revealed that Christina's boyfriend, Fortino Godoy, was also seeing Susie Adams.

Speaker 9 The two ladies are fighting over the same guy.

Speaker 1 With Susie claiming innocence, detectives track Fortino down for an interview.

Speaker 34 He did know about the fire.

Speaker 16 He said he learned about the fire and he drove by the house and saw the house was burned and he was very sad and teared up about that she was gone.

Speaker 1 Fortino claims he spent the night in Susie's bed.

Speaker 19 He's dated both women and he was currently with Susie.

Speaker 20 He gave the alibi that Susie was sleeping with him all night and at her apartment.

Speaker 1 Fortino also reveals he had other priorities in life beyond the tumultuous love triangle.

Speaker 9 Fortina had a family down in Mexico. He was sending a paycheck to his wife down in Mexico and his family.

Speaker 1 The interview with Fortino leaves detectives with more questions than answers.

Speaker 1 They decide to head back to AJ's to speak to Susie.

Speaker 9 The investigators, you know, wanted to question her more.

Speaker 15 They go to find her. She picked up her check on Friday.
She didn't show up for her next shift, and no one knows where she is.

Speaker 9 It started to paint a picture that perhaps Susie was more involved than she was letting on.

Speaker 1 Susie's behavior has landed her at the top of the suspect list. When search efforts fail, police fear she may be gone for good.

Speaker 35 I was able to get the case to a certain point, the investigation to a certain point where the work wasn't done, but we didn't know where she was at, but she was our main suspect.

Speaker 1 About a week later, on July 2nd, Susie unexpectedly shows up at the Turlock Police Department.

Speaker 3 I get a call from one of my partners saying, hey, Susie's here.

Speaker 30 He informs me she's cut her hair and she's blonde, and she's telling us that she just got back from Mexico.

Speaker 15 Susie tells the police that she hadn't been on a vacation in quite a long time and thought it was time to go then.

Speaker 1 Though the trip seemed sudden, the fact that Susie is sitting in the police station is a positive. Detectives schedule her polygraph exam for August 4th, 2004.

Speaker 1 When the day of the polygraph arrives, Susie sticks to the story she initially told police.

Speaker 15 Fuckino picked me up

Speaker 22 and

Speaker 22 I bought some beer

Speaker 22 and I made potatoes and

Speaker 22 potatoes and tortillas. I made something to eat, I know that.
And then we went to watch the movie moment, and we both of us fell asleep.

Speaker 17 And the polygrapher gets her complete statement, basically the same thing I got out of Susie when when I interviewed her, and then proceeds to ask these very pointed questions.

Speaker 21 Did you plan or conspire with anyone to set that fire at Christina's house on June 18th? No.

Speaker 21 Were you personally present at Christina's house on June 18th when that fire started? No.

Speaker 21 Do you know for sure what was used to set that fire?

Speaker 34 No.

Speaker 1 The skilled polygraph examiner calls Susie's bluff.

Speaker 21 Now, what's that say right there?

Speaker 1 The assumption indicated

Speaker 21 probability of deception is greater than 0.99. That's the highest score.

Speaker 9 At that point, that's when Susie Adams' demeanor changed.

Speaker 21 I think something happened. I don't know if she pushed you

Speaker 21 to the point that you couldn't take it anymore and you acted out and you did something.

Speaker 21 I don't think you meant for this to happen for her to die.

Speaker 17 Did you, please?

Speaker 9 That's when she started going more extensively into the harassing behavior.

Speaker 9 And that's also when Susie Adams said Christina went to her place of employment two days prior to the fatal fire and sat in her restaurant and ordered food almost to antagonize and poke at her.

Speaker 9 And that inflamed Susie Adams.

Speaker 22 Kept calling me an ugly bitch and stuff like that.

Speaker 22 Just

Speaker 22 everything.

Speaker 22 You just couldn't take it anymore.

Speaker 21 Did you go over there by yourself or was somebody with it?

Speaker 22 I was by myself.

Speaker 18 I took rosemary and dried it. I've been soaked in and rubbing alcohol for over a week, if not more.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Which made it very flammable.

Speaker 9 This is the most unusual type of murder weapon.

Speaker 9 Never seen any type of murder in which rosemary was used. She had learned when she was in the Girl Scouts that if you have rosemary soaked in alcohol, it acts as an accelerant.

Speaker 5 She thought that was very clever.

Speaker 21 And then what did you do? I mean did you just spread it around or what did you do with, you know, I just did it

Speaker 22 in the front of the house, in the middle of the fire.

Speaker 21 So now you've done the front. Then what do you do?

Speaker 22 I did the back too.

Speaker 21 And then what did you do?

Speaker 22 Did it go, whoosh?

Speaker 17 Whoosh it did.

Speaker 16 While she was walking home, she could hear the fire engines and sirens head into the scene.

Speaker 19 She went upstairs to her apartment, crawled back in bed with Fortino, and went to sleep. Fortino had no idea.

Speaker 21 And he didn't know you'd left.

Speaker 1 When asked why she did it, Susie is forthcoming.

Speaker 9 Susie Adams said she'd been pushed and that she snapped.

Speaker 18 It's just all filthy. I couldn't take it anymore.

Speaker 1 However, Susie claims the fire was meant to scare Christina, not kill her.

Speaker 21 So you didn't mean for her to die, you just wanted her to leave you alone.

Speaker 21 When did you hear that she hadn't gotten out of the fire?

Speaker 18 The next morning.

Speaker 21 It's like you didn't know it until

Speaker 21 how'd you feel then?

Speaker 3 I felt horrible.

Speaker 1 But detectives listening in aren't buying it.

Speaker 9 Susie's motive was to get rid of the competition. This was a love triangle, and Susie wanted to get rid of the other lady.

Speaker 17 The polygrapher got done, informed her she was under arrest, and we took her to jail.

Speaker 1 For Christina's friends and family, news of the arrest is a bittersweet reprieve.

Speaker 3 Every emotion possible hit me. A sense of relief, a sense of joy that they found the person that killed my mother.
Also, a sense of anger. Why would somebody do this to such a nice person?

Speaker 1 Coming up, Susie changes her tune.

Speaker 9 The defense strategy was maybe it was self-defense.

Speaker 31 She made the decision to go back into the house.

Speaker 1 By May 2007, prosecutors are prepared to hold 48-year-old Susie Adams accountable for the 2004 murder of her romantic rival, Christina Soult.

Speaker 9 The trial started May 16, 2007, and Susie Adams was facing one count of first-degree murder, a special circumstance of murder by arson.

Speaker 9 She was facing two counts of arson, and she was facing three counts of attempted murder.

Speaker 1 Despite her full confession during her polygraph, Susie pleads not guilty.

Speaker 1 When she takes the stand, Susie claims she was a victim as well.

Speaker 9 She described, you know, I'd be walking to work and here comes Christina driving up, following me, yelling out, Susie Q, you know, I'm going to get you Susie Q, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 11 So she said she was afraid of her.

Speaker 31 The threats from Christina were coming on almost a daily basis. Then they started increasing in severity.

Speaker 9 Phone records were looked into, and it was confirmed that there were calls from Christina

Speaker 9 to Susie Adams.

Speaker 1 There was a long period of just harassment and that's hard to live with. Threats and fear over a long period of time really do affect a person.

Speaker 1 Susie testifies that on the night of the fire, Christina bombarded her with death threats just before midnight.

Speaker 31 Christina was calling Susie and threatening her, and that when she was done with Susie and Fortino, that either one of them would be able to walk. Four phone calls, one after the other.

Speaker 31 They were really just a few minutes apart. It bothered her so much that she got up and grabbed some of her rosemary and walked over.
She did these fires as a warning.

Speaker 9 Susie said it was self-defense. She didn't have the specific intent to kill, but just to scare Christina.

Speaker 1 Susie's attorney also argues that Christina played a part in her own death when she turned back to retrieve her clothing.

Speaker 31 She was able to very easily get out of the house, very easily survive all of this, but she made the decision to go back into the house.

Speaker 9 The defense was saying how Christina, that her priority should have been to just run out of the house.

Speaker 31 I asked for a lesser of attempted voluntary manslaughter. I mean, I wasn't going in and saying she's not guilty.

Speaker 31 I'm saying she did some things, but let's convict her of what she's guilty of.

Speaker 1 But prosecutors argue that Susie had many other options to stop the harassment than setting a potentially deadly fire.

Speaker 5 She had the opportunity to call 911 if she felt that she was being threatened at the moment or that there was going to be harm to her at the moment, but she didn't.

Speaker 9 She just decided to take matters into her own hands.

Speaker 1 Prosecutors argue that Susie planned and executed a cold-hearted murder.

Speaker 9 She had soaked that rosemary for one week prior to going over to the house to light it on fire. It shows the premeditation.

Speaker 9 Susie Adams had to walk a mile and a half from her home to the victim's home during this mile and a half walk, and she had time to reflect about whether she should do it.

Speaker 4 She not only set the front porch on fire, she set the back porch on fire as well and tried to eliminate any escape, which was diabolical.

Speaker 19 I mean you can't really get much more devious than that.

Speaker 9 This was cold, this was calculated, and this was pure evil.

Speaker 1 On May 29th, the jury announces its verdict.

Speaker 9 And the jury deliberated for two days, and they came back guilty on all counts

Speaker 3 when the verdicts were read she was calm and showed no emotion when they said they found her guilty of all charges we all screamed and cried and we thanked them we screamed thank you so much in july she is sentenced to life without parole

Speaker 1 What began as two women competing for the attention of one man ended in the ultimate tragedy.

Speaker 9 Christina's death could have been prevented by realizing that Fortino wasn't worth it. If they had known that, perhaps they would have realized that he wasn't worth killing over.

Speaker 10 She hated her and she wanted her gone. She wanted her dead.

Speaker 9 She could have chosen to do the right thing, but instead she chose evil and she chose to carry it out.

Speaker 3 She's still trying to get out. She's still still trying to defend herself.
And I'm just like, let her rot because she took away my support system. She took away my

Speaker 3 one person that took care of me. When nobody else, nobody else was there but mom.
I would take my mom's place in a heartbeat. She didn't deserve what happened to her.

Speaker 3 She...

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 a genuinely nice person

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 13 i've made it my mission in life to make sure that her memory is never forgotten i don't know that you ever get over a death whether it's from natural causes or like this you learn to move on but you never get over it i lost a great woman

Speaker 1 The relationship between Susie Adams and Fortino Godoy ended following Susie's arrest. No evidence was ever found connecting Fortino to the crime.
In 2008, Susie Adams appealed her conviction.

Speaker 1 The appeal was denied.

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