Marie Strickland

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Speaker 2 She was a small town girl who found true love with marriage number two.

Speaker 3 He was very sarcastic and humorous.

Speaker 4 She was infatuated with him. Everything was perfect.

Speaker 2 But this happy union comes to a sudden end.

Speaker 6 He got about eight feet from the garage and collapsed.

Speaker 8 A man laying in his driveway covered in blood. We didn't know what had happened.

Speaker 2 In a town where everyone knows everyone, the rumors run rampant.

Speaker 9 I could have pictured a jealous husband or something doing it.

Speaker 11 He said, I wanted him dead.

Speaker 2 Is this sweet country couple hiding a laundry list of secrets and lies?

Speaker 9 Caught cheating on the school bus.

Speaker 12 I want a divorce. I want you gone.

Speaker 13 She said, I'm afraid something bad might happen.

Speaker 15 Does that not sound suspicious to you?

Speaker 4 What would it take to push you to do that? He took the gun and tossed it in the Teleco River.

Speaker 1 It's just such a blur.

Speaker 2 October 11th, 2013, Teleco Plains, Tennessee. At 12.38 p.m., the peace and tranquility of this small southern town is ripped apart with a single 911 call.

Speaker 15 Marie Strickland had been running errands in town, came home and found her husband lying in the driveway.

Speaker 18 She's upset.

Speaker 19 She's distraught.

Speaker 8 We didn't know what had happened. We didn't know if he was breathing.
We didn't know

Speaker 8 if he had any signs of life. All we knew was he was in his driveway bleeding.

Speaker 2 Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy, Clint Brookshire, is dispatched to the scene where a long driveway leads uphill to a home and a freestanding garage.

Speaker 8 The residence and the garage were both on the side of a hill. A female sergeant, Marie Strickland, met me in the driveway.

Speaker 2 Marie tells him that her mechanic husband, 41-year-old Michael Strickland, had been working in his garage that morning.

Speaker 8 When I asked where the male subject was, she pointed toward the garage. I ran up there.

Speaker 2 At the top of the driveway, Deputy Brookshire finds Michael face down on the ground, just outside the door of his garage.

Speaker 8 It was almost like he had been running and just fell.

Speaker 8 There was a lot of blood.

Speaker 7 There was no movement.

Speaker 8 There was no signs of life at all. I asked if she knew what may have happened to him, and she said no.

Speaker 2 Deputy Brookshire radios for assistance.

Speaker 2 Within minutes, EMTs arrive on the scene and confirm what Brookshire already suspects.

Speaker 5 He didn't have a pulse. He wasn't breathing.
We had declared that he was deceased.

Speaker 2 As far as Michael's cause of death, that's less obvious.

Speaker 21 There was blood on him.

Speaker 21 You could see some blood around his ear and neck.

Speaker 22 We couldn't really figure out where it was coming from initially.

Speaker 22 But looking at his neck, we've seen a little piece of skin that was open that showed there was a wound.

Speaker 8 My thoughts are, okay, was he working on something? Was he working on a vehicle and it fell on him? Was he stabbed? Was he shot? What caused this injury?

Speaker 2 Was Michael Strickland truly the victim of a tragic accident? Or was his death the result of something far more menacing?

Speaker 2 For Michael and Marie Strickland, The quiet life they led in teleco planes seemed picture-perfect.

Speaker 2 But the road that led to their wedded bliss was a rocky one that dates back to their teen years.

Speaker 2 Warm and outgoing, Marie was one of the most popular girls at Teleco Plains High School.

Speaker 4 Marie was always an outgoing person. We had our own little clique.
We had about five of us that came together all the time, and we were probably the loudest and most outgoing in the class.

Speaker 2 Marie's best friend, Katrina, was always by her side, as was Marie's boyfriend, Ben.

Speaker 4 She wrote in my memory book in school, it has her and Ben, and she drew a heart around it, so I would say she was a little infatuated with it.

Speaker 5 Tipo Huckle High School Sweetheart.

Speaker 2 Like a lot of small-town high school sweethearts, Marie and Ben married shortly after graduation. In 1991, Marie gave birth to a daughter.
Motherhood seemed to be a good fit for Marie.

Speaker 4 Marie's the motherly top. That's what she comes off as.

Speaker 9 She was comfortable at home being a homemaker, helping with her daughter. She even worked at the little school, volunteered there.

Speaker 4 Marie put forth a attitude of everything with Marie was perfect, and she never dropped that. She always seemed to be so in control and so in charge of everything.

Speaker 2 Marie and Ben still made time for friends, especially Katrina and Katrina's husband, Michael Strickland.

Speaker 12 Katrina was Marie's best friend all through high school and after high school.

Speaker 9 I was married to Michael and one of Michael's best friends was Marie's husband, Ben.

Speaker 2 The two couples were tight, but after 11 years of marriage, the chemistry between Marie and Ben began to fade.

Speaker 9 Her and Ben had been having problems, you know, getting along.

Speaker 2 Friends and family figured the two high school sweethearts would find a way to patch things up. So it came as a surprise in 2005 when Marie and Ben announced they were getting a divorce.

Speaker 2 By that time, it was a fate Katrina and Michael had also suffered.

Speaker 9 I was kind of shocked when I heard that her and Ben had divorced. I guess because I always thought they were just, you know, had been together since high school.
They were going to last forever.

Speaker 2 Marie and Ben's divorce made for juicy gossip in their small hometown, especially when word got out that Marie was spending more and more time with her best friend Katrina's ex-husband, Michael Strickland.

Speaker 9 I don't know if they were seeing one another before anybody divorced, but Ben always had his suspicions

Speaker 9 that Mike and Marie were seeing one another before the divorce.

Speaker 2 By 2005, Marie and Michael were openly dating,

Speaker 2 which affected Marie's lifelong friendship with Katrina.

Speaker 9 After I saw them together, that just ended our friendship, you know.

Speaker 2 It was easy to see why Marie was so smitten with Michael.

Speaker 5 My dad's a big, strong dude. Like, he was a very big guy.

Speaker 3 He was very sarcastic.

Speaker 9 Good sense of humor. He was active, you know, sweet.

Speaker 2 Michael was equally taken with Marie. But Michael had a couple of other passions as well.

Speaker 9 Mike liked to do mechanic work on cars, drag racing, hot rods.

Speaker 12 He would fall off in his work, and that was his own little world, little piece of paradise.

Speaker 2 In addition to his mechanic work, Michael was also a dedicated parent to the four-year-old son he shared with Katrina.

Speaker 9 Every Sunday after church, they'd go to Hooters and eat. He would take him up to the shop and, you know, work on cars.

Speaker 12 The sun rose and set in that boy's rear. He loved that child's death.

Speaker 2 In 2007, Michael and Marie decided to get married. They bought a home with a freestanding garage and lived on 10 acres of property that Michael owned just outside of town.

Speaker 8 Their closest neighbor was probably about a quarter mile away. It's a very rural area.

Speaker 2 Sharing joint custody with their children from their previous marriages, Marie and Michael worked to build new memories as a blended family.

Speaker 12 We always try to get together at mom and dad's every year for every holiday.

Speaker 3 I remember we had Easter one year and we painted eggs, we colored them and I'd chase them around the house.

Speaker 2 Then in 2010, Michael embarked on a new business venture.

Speaker 12 He had met a guy that had his own buses, so Michael started working for him, driving a bus. Then he decided, okay, I'm going to go out on my own.

Speaker 5 So he bought a couple of buses.

Speaker 12 He had his own routes and

Speaker 12 had his own drivers and there was one that he did drive himself, which coincidentally was the one that Jacob wrote.

Speaker 3 It was very weird at first because you know you think my dad's driving the bus, but I enjoyed it because I got to see him every day.

Speaker 2 Things seemed to be going well for Michael and Marie

Speaker 2 until November 2011, when Marie's stepfather suddenly passed away.

Speaker 9 When her stepdad died, her and her brother, Chris, became closer.

Speaker 2 With Marie and her brother leaning on each other for support, she slowly rebounded from the loss of her stepdad.

Speaker 2 In the meantime, Michael's fleet of buses had grown.

Speaker 12 He was doing good with it. I'm wanting to say six buses.
Between running his bus right over the morning, running it over the evening, he would be in his shop working on vehicles.

Speaker 12 So he was constantly working, doing something.

Speaker 2 And with her daughter now 22, Marie took a part-time job.

Speaker 12 Marie worked part-time at the post office.

Speaker 2 After weathering a pair of divorces and the death of a loved one, it seemed that life for Marie and Michael was better than ever.

Speaker 3 They seemed happy. They seemed to get along.

Speaker 2 Then comes the afternoon of October 11th. Detectives are at the Strickland home following a panicked call from Marie.

Speaker 22 She found him lying in the driveway.

Speaker 5 His clothes were saturated in blood.

Speaker 8 I could tell just by looking at him that there were no signs of life, so I did not attempt to try to revive him in any way. All we knew was there's a male body laying in the driveway.

Speaker 22 After we had declared that he was deceased, we found a lot of blood, and in finding blood, you always want to find the source.

Speaker 2 As investigators survey the scene, they realize that Michael was not initially wounded in the driveway.

Speaker 15 We found a trail of blood from the shop to where his body was at.

Speaker 13 It was clear that the death wound took place in the garage.

Speaker 8 It appeared that he might have been working on a vehicle that was up on a high lift when the incident occurred. And the blood trail actually started just behind that vehicle on the high lift.

Speaker 15 We traveled some distance moving at some speed before he collapsed.

Speaker 8 We had several different theories. You know, he's in a garage, so he was working with compressed gas or compressed air, things of that nature.

Speaker 2 Coming up, as investigators take a closer look at the crime scene, new evidence points to something more calculated.

Speaker 15 Bullet marks were found inside the shop.

Speaker 2 And as word of Michael's death spreads around town, deeply rooted animosity is unearthed.

Speaker 26 Keith had made statements that was happy that he was dead.

Speaker 2 After weathering a pair of very public and very scandalous divorces, Marie Strickland and her second husband, Michael, were enjoying a quiet country life in Teleco Plains, Tennessee.

Speaker 2 But just after noon on October 11th, 2013, Marie called 911 to report that she discovered Michael in a pool of blood outside the door of his garage.

Speaker 6 He had got about eight feet from the garage, and that's where he collapsed and he was face down.

Speaker 2 Investigators from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, along with with responding Monroe County Sheriff's Officer Clint Brookshire, determine that Michael likely received a fatal injury in his workshop.

Speaker 2 But what had caused it?

Speaker 5 Hoses blow, things get stuck.

Speaker 8 We didn't know exactly what happened, but it appeared whatever it was come from the right side of the garage if you're facing the garage. So then we start trying to find what may have done that.

Speaker 2 As they survey one of the cars in Michael's garage, detectives make a telling discovery.

Speaker 23 There was the bullet found in the tire of the car that he was working on.

Speaker 2 Is it possible Michael Strickland had died of a gunshot wound?

Speaker 2 To one of the EMTs prepping Michael's body for transport, that theory seems plausible.

Speaker 22 Forensically, we can't say that this is 100% a gunshot wound and this is the cause of death, but from what we've seen, it appeared to be a gunshot wound.

Speaker 2 Operating from this theory, detectives are able to determine the possible location of the shooter at the time the gun was fired.

Speaker 29 The shooter had been sitting in a chair next to the car that he was working on.

Speaker 6 And we knew that because of the trajectory of the bullet, he was shot in the neck on the right side.

Speaker 26 We know that most murders within the family are committed by the family.

Speaker 24 The first suspect you're going to have in any murder case, assuming it's not drug or gang-related, the first suspect you're going to have is the spouse.

Speaker 2 That evening, investigators sit down with Marie at the Monroe County Sheriff's Office for a formal interview.

Speaker 2 They start by asking Marie to pace them through the events leading up to her discovering Michael's body in the driveway.

Speaker 31 We got up probably after seven. He went to the chiropractor in Knoxville.
Probably left around 8, somewhere in there. He came home maybe around

Speaker 31 sometime between 10 and 10.30.

Speaker 31 He ate,

Speaker 31 changed, and then he went up to the shop to work.

Speaker 31 I was up there with him until about close to 11.30.

Speaker 2 According to Marie, shortly after 11.30, she left to give her daughter a ride to work.

Speaker 31 So I left probably around 20 to 12. That's what I used to do.

Speaker 31 Took her save a lot.

Speaker 31 Went by the library. Came home.

Speaker 8 She had returned home, went back in the house. She knew that Mike was up in the garage working.

Speaker 2 Once she was back at the house, Marie started a load of laundry. Around 12.30, her cell phone rang.
It was one of Michael's friends wanting to talk to him about doing some repair work.

Speaker 31 I was on my way up there. Saying what you want.

Speaker 31 I'm on traveling.

Speaker 5 I didn't know.

Speaker 31 I ran up to you again.

Speaker 31 I saw the boy.

Speaker 31 Called mama.

Speaker 2 Marie tells them she never heard or saw anything suspicious, but she can't say for sure whether or not Michael had any visitors to his shop shop that day.

Speaker 31 So we have people that will come by and ask him to drive their car and say, tell me what you think's wrong with you.

Speaker 25 Anything

Speaker 31 different recently happened? Family life, business life,

Speaker 31 anything?

Speaker 2 Marie insists that Michael didn't have any enemies and can think of nothing out of the ordinary that's happened lately.

Speaker 31 No, he's pretty laid back about stuff like that.

Speaker 31 Is he not really a warrior?

Speaker 2 Detectives ask Marie if their marriage is a happy one. Marie's only complaint is that when it came to expressing his love for her, Michael sometimes missed the mark.

Speaker 31 I think I'm understanding what you're saying.

Speaker 31 Or someone someone else might have

Speaker 31 thought your roses were found. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But according to Marie, what Michael lacked in the way of grand romantic gestures, he more than made up for in the bedroom.

Speaker 31 How was y'all's life as far as husband and life, as far as intimacy? It was very good. Okay.
Hard question.

Speaker 31 Did you have anything to do with Michael's death?

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 31 Do you have any idea who did?

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 31 You have any idea who or want to?

Speaker 31 I don't.

Speaker 2 To detectives, Marie seems to be telling the truth.

Speaker 31 Thought of nothing else.

Speaker 31 Life insurance.

Speaker 31 No, we didn't have anything like that. No cost.

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 2 Though it appears Marie had no reason, financial or otherwise, to shoot Michael, it's clear she partly blames herself for his his death.

Speaker 31 Can I ask an odd question? Yes. Do you think if I had that CPR

Speaker 31 that I could have helped him?

Speaker 31 Honestly, I don't think it would have made any difference at all.

Speaker 31 Just to be truthful with you,

Speaker 31 it wouldn't have helped him.

Speaker 31 Not in this case.

Speaker 31 So, I mean, don't blame yourself for not doing that.

Speaker 2 Detectives release Marie and must now face the difficult task of informing the rest of his family about his death. They start with his ex-wife, Katrina.

Speaker 9 I was just like,

Speaker 5 breathe.

Speaker 9 Because I mean, how do you tell your kid that their dad's gone? I set Jacob down on the couch and I told him.

Speaker 3 Whenever mom first told me, I was in shock.

Speaker 3 I didn't really believe it at first. You don't think that this could happen to me?

Speaker 12 Jacob Blessy's heart did not take it well at all.

Speaker 12 He was obviously heartbroken. He, even to us, me, mom, and dad, he would not hardly speak.

Speaker 2 In a town the size of Teleco Plains, it doesn't take long for word of Michael's death to make the rounds.

Speaker 2 And as the small-town rumor mill cranks up, Investigators get wind that at least one person in town doesn't seem so heartbroken. His wife's ex-husband and Michael's former best friend, Ben.

Speaker 27 Ben had made statements that he was happy that he was dead.

Speaker 2 Though it's just hearsay, this rumor raises an immediate red flag with investigators.

Speaker 14 So obviously that led police to wonder whether he was involved in this.

Speaker 2 Coming up, was Marie's ex holding a grudge against his former best friend?

Speaker 17 Ben became a person of interest.

Speaker 2 And as the rumors continue to fly, a shocking revelation is made.

Speaker 9 He was caught cheating on the school bus. I could have pictured a jealous husband or something doing it.

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Speaker 2 Just hours after Marie Strickland reported the death of her husband, Michael, rumors in the small town of Teleco Plains, Tennessee are flying.

Speaker 14 Ben had made statements that he wished he could have killed Michael. So obviously that led police to wonder whether he was involved in this.

Speaker 9 The police wanted to know how well I knew Ben and if I'd been in contact with him.

Speaker 2 Before investigators are able to talk to Ben, they learn that the medical examiner has finished Michael's autopsy. As expected, the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the right side of his neck.

Speaker 17 The autopsy indicated that it was an intermediate range firing, that it pierced the right side, exited to the left, about 9.6 inches from the top of the head, that it pierced his jugular vein and his larynx, and that was the cause of death.

Speaker 2 With Michael's cause of death confirmed, detectives locate Ben at his apartment in nearby Lenore City.

Speaker 2 Standing face to face with law enforcement, Ben doesn't mince words about his feelings for Michael.

Speaker 9 Ben was not brokenhearted that Mike was gone.

Speaker 27 He was happy that he was dead.

Speaker 13 Believe it or not, somebody could say that, but he did.

Speaker 2 Through time, Ben's anger over Marie and Michael's relationship faded. However, in recent years, he'd found another reason to detest Michael.

Speaker 9 I had heard Ben say Mike was mean to Marie's daughter and would call her names.

Speaker 9 And I think Ben was upset that Mike treated their daughter like that.

Speaker 14 He said, I wanted him dead, but God got to him first.

Speaker 2 Ben insists that a few harsh words are the extent of his involvement in Michael's murder.

Speaker 10 His story made sense to law enforcement.

Speaker 28 His demeanor was a truthful demeanor, and good law enforcement officers can look at someone's demeanor, see how they answer questions, see if they're forthcoming.

Speaker 11 And he answered questions appropriately.

Speaker 23 He was forthcoming.

Speaker 19 Ben did have an alibi.

Speaker 14 He was eliminated pretty early on.

Speaker 2 With Ben no longer on the list of potential perpetrators, detectives turned to Michael's sister Amy and his ex-wife, Katrina.

Speaker 12 We were asked if we knew of anybody that would have wanted to see harm come of Michael. To our knowledge, we did not know anybody that would want him

Speaker 12 killed.

Speaker 3 At the time, I didn't think anyone would have a reason to. To me, he was a great dad.
He was kind to everybody that he met, really smooth with them, like smooth with people. He was very kind.

Speaker 2 However, Katrina says there was one person Michael hadn't been getting along with lately. Her former best friend, Michael's wife, Marie.

Speaker 9 It wasn't a happy home because they argued.

Speaker 3 They argued a lot, and I knew they argued.

Speaker 2 As for the source of the arguments, Katrina tells detectives that Michael was apparently up to his his old philandering ways.

Speaker 13 He had been cheating on her.

Speaker 12 She had followed him to Sweetwater one day and actually caught him.

Speaker 9 Marie caught Mike cheating on the school bus.

Speaker 9 In a way, I was like, well, you reap what you sow, you know, because you were aware of how he was when he was with me.

Speaker 9 So did you think he would change because he got with you?

Speaker 2 But according to Michael's family, he wasn't the only one in the marriage that was being unfaithful.

Speaker 12 Michael was not a saint. Michael did have one on the side and come to find out she did too.

Speaker 12 He wasn't faithful.

Speaker 2 Well, she wasn't either.

Speaker 12 She was dating one of the postal drivers. He run one of the tractor trailers for the post office.

Speaker 2 According to Michael's sister, the infidelity had gotten so bad that the marriage was on the brink of collapse.

Speaker 12 He had called me and told me that he wanted to get a divorce and asked if I knew a lawyer.

Speaker 12 And we didn't live in the same counties anymore, but I found one that at our time aunt had used several times and made him an appointment and me and him met at the lawyer's office.

Speaker 2 Amy says that Michael had divorce papers drawn up, but when he presented them to Marie, she refused to sign them.

Speaker 12 The day that we went to the lawyer's office and had the paperwork done, of course, we had to wait for the paperwork to get typed up in order for it to be filed.

Speaker 12 But he told me that when he did get the paperwork, he was going to take it home and basically lay it on her pillow and say, Hey, here you go. I want a divorce.

Speaker 5 I want you gone.

Speaker 12 And from what I understood, it did not go over well. She did not want to leave.

Speaker 2 Basically, she refused.

Speaker 2 Instead, Marie demanded that Michael move out. But Michael told her he wasn't going anywhere.

Speaker 5 It was his property.

Speaker 12 He had had all of that before they got married. So now he was not going to give up what was rightfully his before the marriage.
And I can't say that I blame him. I wouldn't either.

Speaker 2 As far as Amy knew, Mike and Marie were still at an impasse. That is, until Michael was murdered.

Speaker 2 For detectives, the allegations of infidelity and impending divorce open up a whole new pool of potential killers.

Speaker 9 I could have pictured a jealous husband or something doing it.

Speaker 2 Hoping to put some names to the rumors, detectives obtain warrants for both Marie and Michael's cell phones. When they take a look at Michael's phone, they find what appears to be proof of infidelity.

Speaker 4 I knew that he was cheating on Marie. I had another friend on that same website, and she was immediately like, oh my God, yes, he's hit on me.
And here's all of our conversations.

Speaker 28 So it's not like it was even hidden in the community.

Speaker 2 After reviewing the tawdry text messages, detectives begin tracking down the women Michael was communicating with. They also begin analyzing the contents of Marie's phone as well.

Speaker 18 Number one is they are looking for any person that she may have called that day.

Speaker 30 Second is they're looking, of course, for text messages.

Speaker 2 It's not what investigators find on Marie's phone that raises suspicion, it's what they don't find.

Speaker 15 Marie's cell records that we obtained through subpoena were different from the records that were still on her phone.

Speaker 15 And it was obvious to us that she had deleted those texts.

Speaker 2 Coming up, the questions around Marie's missing text messages continue to swirl.

Speaker 7 She couldn't remember what that was about or why that text would have been on her phone.

Speaker 31 Does that not sound suspicious to you? It does.

Speaker 2 And a break in the case reveals a new suspect with a spotty record.

Speaker 25 A search warrant issue for text message content brought him into our investigative picture.

Speaker 18 He was placed on probation and he's violated his probation, so no one knows where he is.

Speaker 2 Detectives in Teleco Plains, Tennessee, have just uncovered evidence that Marie Strickland deleted text messages on the day of her husband, Michael Strickland's murder.

Speaker 30 Search warrants were issued and they were able to get text messages.

Speaker 2 When searching through the deleted messages, detectives uncover a chilling back and forth between Marie and her brother.

Speaker 25 There were text messages that pertained to this investigation between Marie and Chris.

Speaker 18 In the text that she sent to Chris Smallin, she had said that the gun was cocked, the clip was in, but she wanted to know if this gun was still loaded.

Speaker 13 Chris texted her back and said that there's a button that you can push that will, I guess, eject the clip.

Speaker 14 That's how you can see if the gun is loaded.

Speaker 25 The content put Marie in possession of a firearm the day of the murder, based on the text message times.

Speaker 2 Shortly after midnight, detectives knock on Marie's front door.

Speaker 20 So law enforcement goes to her.

Speaker 26 at her house, the TBI did, and they confront her with these texts.

Speaker 15 I confronted her with that information. She told me that she couldn't remember what that was about or why that text would have been on her phone.

Speaker 31 Then he texted you back. It says,

Speaker 31 hit the button on the side of the handle and pull the clip out.

Speaker 31 You don't remember it?

Speaker 31 Hit the button on the side. of the handle

Speaker 31 and pull the clip out.

Speaker 31 That's what your brother text you back.

Speaker 31 What does that sound like?

Speaker 31 Does it not sound like a gun?

Speaker 31 It does.

Speaker 31 Why would you be having that conversation the morning prior to your husband being murdered?

Speaker 31 You see where I'm coming from? Right.

Speaker 31 Does that not sound

Speaker 31 suspicious to you? It does.

Speaker 31 Did you have a gun that day?

Speaker 31 No?

Speaker 15 I presented Marie with the text messages that were obviously indicating that she had a weapon the day her husband was murdered and repeatedly denied any knowledge of her husband's murder.

Speaker 2 Having gotten nowhere with Marie, detectives turn to her 31-year-old brother, Chris Smallin, and confront him with the texts.

Speaker 25 After I presented the content of the text messages between he and Marie, he was very truthful about the fact that he had provided a gun recently to Marie for self-defense.

Speaker 14 Chris Smallin admits that Marie had called him two weeks before the murder, had indicated that she was somewhat scared of Michael.

Speaker 17 and that she needed a gun.

Speaker 2 That's when Chris tells detectives something they don't know.

Speaker 2 According to Chris, he met up with Marie later that morning at the Teleco Plains library.

Speaker 28 She had called him and asked him to meet him at the library.

Speaker 2 Once there, she gave the gun back to Chris.

Speaker 14 She gave him the gun and said, I'm afraid something bad might happen, so take this gun.

Speaker 2 Chris tells detectives that the whole thing made him nervous and a little suspicious.

Speaker 25 He talked about the fact that he didn't want to be caught with that firearm. He didn't want anything to do with it if it had been used to shoot someone.

Speaker 16 He took the gun and tossed it in the Teleco River.

Speaker 15 Marie had denied any involvement. When I went back and met with Agent Melton, who had simultaneously interviewed her brother, Mr.
Smallin. And Mr.

Speaker 15 Smallin had provided information that he had provided her with a weapon. I took that information back to Marie.

Speaker 18 So you just get back into good old-fashioned police work.

Speaker 18 And good old-fashioned police work is going to the suspect and talk to them, get a statement from them, preferably a statement that's a confession.

Speaker 5 You have to hope for that, you pray for that.

Speaker 13 They went back to Marie and they said, listen, we've got the statement from Chris.

Speaker 10 Chris said that he gave you this gun.

Speaker 24 Chris said that you gave it back to him the day of.

Speaker 19 Tell us about it.

Speaker 31 I wanted to

Speaker 31 tell you that we went and talked to your brother Chris.

Speaker 31 And Chris told us about giving you a gun.

Speaker 2 Once again, Marie proves hard to pin down.

Speaker 31 Did you have a gun that day?

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 31 Is he lying about that? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 31 No, I'm not saying he's lying. Just...

Speaker 31 There's nothing else I can say to that.

Speaker 16 You know, when somebody gives enough details, you come to the conclusion that either they're telling the truth or they should be in the business of writing fiction.

Speaker 24 And Marie would not have been in the business of writing fiction.

Speaker 2 Coming up, investigators continue to push Marie for answers.

Speaker 31 At that point, you had a pistol that wasn't your car. Is that right? It's just such a blur.
It's like parts fast forward or something.

Speaker 2 But what she says next throws everything they know about the case into question.

Speaker 31 She's trying to get away from me.

Speaker 30 At this point, we have gaps in the story.

Speaker 2 It's 3.30 in the morning on December 10th, 2013, and detectives are interviewing 41-year-old Marie Strickland in regard to the shooting death of her husband, Michael.

Speaker 2 Marie claims she's hesitant to say more because she's trying to protect Michael's reputation, a claim that further confuses detectives.

Speaker 31 If you thought your family to be one way or your dad to be so,

Speaker 31 would it not curse you to think that you were something different? I don't know what you're talking about about.

Speaker 18 Eventually, what the agent had to do was just to begin to present facts to her and get yes-no answers from her.

Speaker 15 She said that Michael was in one of his moods that day.

Speaker 2 According to Marie, Michael asked her to come to the garage to sit with him while he worked.

Speaker 2 She did, but not before stopping at her car.

Speaker 13 She gets out the 380.

Speaker 18 She puts it into her back pocket.

Speaker 14 She doesn't really know why she decided to take the gun up there.

Speaker 11 Something just didn't feel right.

Speaker 31 At that point, you had the pistol that wasn't your car. Is that right?

Speaker 31 Shaking your head, yes. Yeah, yes, all right.

Speaker 2 Once again, her answers turn vague.

Speaker 28 So she went up to the shop.

Speaker 14 She said that there was an argument in the shop.

Speaker 26 She didn't know what the argument was about.

Speaker 19 Couldn't remember that.

Speaker 31 Come to that pool, right to that pool.

Speaker 31 You go up there, I mean, you've got the pistol.

Speaker 31 And I need to.

Speaker 2 Marie tells them that the next thing she remembers is running from Michael.

Speaker 31 Why was you running?

Speaker 31 I was just trying to get away from him.

Speaker 20 And then at this point, we have gaps. Total gaps in the story.

Speaker 23 That she couldn't remember.

Speaker 31 Was there a reason you were trying to get away from him?

Speaker 15 She tells me a lot of things were blurry about that day.

Speaker 7 She thought she recalled running away and firing back towards him.

Speaker 25 You remember running and shooting back?

Speaker 30 Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 31 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2 Marie claims she just kept running all the way to her house.

Speaker 20 She stated that when she got back to the house, she took her daughter to work, and then she went to the library and gave the gun to Christopher Small,

Speaker 29 and then she came back home.

Speaker 2 Marie says that it wasn't until Michael's customer called that she went back to the garage.

Speaker 31 I didn't know what he took her cover.

Speaker 31 You got back down.

Speaker 31 You got back to work.

Speaker 31 Back home.

Speaker 2 No matter how much they press her, Marie can't, or perhaps won't, provide a complete account of what transpired.

Speaker 31 You said how many times I went over this with my mom, and it's all,

Speaker 31 it's just such a blur.

Speaker 31 It's just

Speaker 31 like parts fast forward or something.

Speaker 2 Even so, Detectives have enough to place her under arrest for first-degree murder.

Speaker 12 Oh, Lord, we were so happy whenever she got arrested. She got arrested in December, just a week or two before Christmas.

Speaker 4 It breaks your heart a little. I would have never thought Marie could have snapped and done something like this.
I would have never, out of anybody, seen this coming.

Speaker 2 As the case makes its way through the courts, Prosecutors piece together what they think really happened the day Michael was shot.

Speaker 15 I do believe that he was inside the garage when he was first shot.

Speaker 26 She's sitting in the chair, pulls out the gun, and shoots.

Speaker 8 She apparently had tried to shoot at him once, which was the bullet lodged in the tire,

Speaker 8 missed.

Speaker 8 He then realized what was going on, attempted to run, and was shot in the neck.

Speaker 8 Which is why he fell where he had fell in the driveway.

Speaker 28 Clearly there was something amiss in the marriage.

Speaker 23 Arguably, again,

Speaker 29 it was an unhappy marriage, and she wanted for whatever reason to get out of this marriage and to escape.

Speaker 2 Despite what they believe is a clear picture of how and why the crime went down, prosecutors aren't convinced a jury will see things the same way.

Speaker 11 We all know trials are kind of like wars.

Speaker 18 They have uncertain outcomes.

Speaker 13 So based upon that, we agreed to a plea.

Speaker 2 In June of 2015, Marie Strickland pleads guilty to second-degree murder.

Speaker 2 At her sentencing hearing, she begs the judge for leniency and in the process, gives prosecutors a glimpse into the defense she would have put on had the case gone to trial.

Speaker 9 She said it was in self-defense because they were arguing and he was chasing her.

Speaker 2 Marie's attorneys claim that Marie had reason to fear Michael based on a pattern of abuse that had gone on for years.

Speaker 14 What Marie had stated to her psychologist was that, like I said, he was controlling, that if she was gone too long,

Speaker 24 that he would text her, that he would follow her on occasions, that he wouldn't let her family members come to the house.

Speaker 18 The allegation of abuse only took place

Speaker 16 after the murder.

Speaker 10 She'd never told her family members that he was abusive.

Speaker 18 She had never called the police about it.

Speaker 11 I mean, not only had he not been convicted of abusing her, he'd never been arrested for abusing her.

Speaker 18 There were no reports of abusing her.

Speaker 2 The judge agrees with prosecutors.

Speaker 17 The sentence ranged from 15 to 25 years, and the judge rendered a sentence of 21 years.

Speaker 19 And that was a good sentence.

Speaker 12 She had already spent right at two years in county jail, so that left her with 19 inches of change.

Speaker 5 I wish it was longer.

Speaker 5 Her sentence was longer. I don't want anything to do with her.

Speaker 9 I think it should have been longer. At least a little longer, because I think it was premeditated.

Speaker 2 With Marie behind bars, friends and family must deal with the carnage left in her wake.

Speaker 9 I don't know why she did it. If you're not happy and you're seeing somebody else, which she was and he was too, why did you go back?

Speaker 5 If you're that miserable,

Speaker 9 why do you go back?

Speaker 4 I've wondered a lot, you know, what would it take to make Marie do this because she was one of us. She really was.
She's one of us. And what would it take to push you to do that?

Speaker 4 And I'm drawing a blank still today.

Speaker 18 The most mysterious aspect of it is not knowing the specific motive.

Speaker 18 or even the specific reason that is troubling you.

Speaker 19 They would like to know the reason.

Speaker 18 They would like to know the specific reason for this.

Speaker 20 And they have never received an answer to it.

Speaker 30 And, you know, I don't anticipate they ever will.

Speaker 1 In June 2015, Marie's brother, Chris Smallin, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact for disposing of the murder weapon. He received a two-year suspended sentence.

Speaker 1 Marie Strickland is set to be released in 2031. She will be 59 years old.

Speaker 2 For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

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