Episode 331

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

He's laying here and I can't even see his head and there's blood all over the place. There's blood everywhere? Yes.

This isn't for the faint-hearted, those who easily faint.

This is episode 331 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters

are real.

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Kenneth Reese was drained. Another long shift at the Chrysler plant in Detroit.
Another bitter February night in 2020.

The last few years had taken everything from him. First, he lost his wife to cancer.
Now, at 60-something, he wore the title he never expected to have.

Widower.

Weren't women supposed to outlive their husbands? That's not the way it worked out for Kenneth. At 3 a.m., he pulled into the driveway of his farmhouse in Temperance, Michigan.

The car ticked as it cooled after an hour-long trip home. He couldn't wait to lie down and just go to sleep.
Kenneth climbed the porch steps, heavy with exhaustion, and opened the front door.

The moment he stepped inside, he froze.

Heart pounding, he yelled for his son upstairs. Then grabbed his phone and called 911.
Hello, 911.

Okay, watch the address.

Kenneth stared at the mess in his living room. His son, Kenny McBride, had come downstairs from his bedroom.
He'd only been staying with his father for a few weeks.

44-year-old Kenny was shirtless with plaid pajama pants and bare feet. But he provided no comfort.
Kenny wasn't the son Kenneth wanted beside him in a moment of crisis.

And is it someone that you know? No, I don't know. This is one of my son's buddies.
I can't.

Can you tell if he's breathing?

No, I can't. He's laying there.
He looks dead. Okay.

How old is he? Approximately? I don't know. I can't tell.
I've got the lights off in here in the kitchen.

Okay. Are you able to lay him on his back?

No,

it looks good. I mean, it's bad.
Okay.

I just got here. I just walked in the door.
Okay, why does he look like he's dead? He's laying here, and I can't even see his head, and there's blood all over the place. There's blood everywhere?

Yes, I just, I seen it trekking through my house.

We need to get police here or something.

I don't know what to do. Do you think he's beyond help?

Yes.

That yes is chilling, isn't it? The two officers from the Monroe County Sheriff's Department were dispatched and headed over to Kenneth's house. Temperance was a small, unincorporated town.

The kind of place that had a few gas stations, some groceries, mom-and-pop shops, a doctor's office,

everything you would need, and not much more else. Are there any weapons? I can't really tell if it's a guy, if it's a girl, if it's.

I don't know where my mother-in-law is.

She's usually laying here asleep on the couch, so if there's blood all over her. Are you able to tell what part of the body the blood came from?

It looks like around the head. Where's your son?

My son's standing right here. I just woke him up when I came in.
He was upstairs. Does he know who the person is? No.

The body was unrecognizable. Kenneth didn't know who it was or why this bloody person was lying in the middle of his living room.

And Kenny, his son, stood there quietly, acting as dumbfounded as his father.

Soon, the police arrived. The officers on the scene were new recruits, young guys with not much under their belts in this sleepy town.
They'd never encountered anything as gruesome as this before.

So they were kind of in shock when they got on scene there.

They encountered Kenneth, who was obviously the 911 caller, and they also encountered Kenny. They took a look into the living room.

They saw a headless body, at which point they detained both Kenneth and Kenny.

This is Detective Sergeant Jeff Hooper from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. He took the lead on the investigation.

The officers who first arrived were not only shocked to find a headless body, but also the state of Kenneth's living room.

Total disarray and blood, probably

everywhere in that room, on the couch, saturated into the floor, on the ceiling,

on the railing going upstairs. And

there's broken glass by the body. cut-up pictures.

In the middle of the carpet lay a headless body.

Next to the corpse was a broken piggy bank, some shattered glass, and a metal baby gate that had been disassembled and thrown around the room in pieces.

With both Kenny and Kenneth detained, the officers called in for help and took action.

When they were securing the scene to make sure that there weren't any perpetrators or other victims, They were outside clearing a garage, and he happened upon the head in the driveway.

It was dark and cold outside, but when that officer looked down and saw the victim's head, there was no mistaking exactly what he'd found. Yeah, you could tell it was a head.

I mean, basically, because the hair, the hair was super saturated with blood, and it was actually leaning up against a truck tire.

When it was found, it also had, you know, one of the key things that we saw was that it had frost on it. It was a particularly cold night.
There was a hard frost, and there was frost on the head.

It was clear that the victim had been murdered inside the home earlier that evening, and that the head had not been carefully placed under that truck fire, but thrown with force.

So when the head was thrown out the back door, it was thrown 20 yards and came to rest up against the truck tire.

And one thing that I can't ever forget is

the head was probably thrown in the air about 15 yards, and that super saturated hair had hit the concrete and left wavy blood impressions in the concrete as it bounced to where it finally came to rest.

The face was just a mess of blood, swelling, and shattered bone.

But as Detective Hooper looked closer, the truth became clear. The victim was a female.
Her face had been used like a punching bag, and the beating hadn't been enough.

Whoever did this kept going, right up until her decapitation.

Around the body were a smashed piggy bank, broken pieces of a metal baby gate,

and cut-up family photographs that were soaking in the victim's blood. So at that point, having, you know, quote unquote,

who done it or, you know, possible home invasion or, you know, we have to look at every scenario.

So we reached out to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab and had them come down to process the scene, which we typically do for larger crime scenes. That lets us, the detectives, focus in more on the

interviews and a little bit of a smaller bit of evidence and not so much that forensic evidence.

We as detectives started looking at Kenneth and Kenny, you know, wanting to talk to them, wanting to go through their digital evidence, their phones and whatnot. And that's where we started.

3 a.m. turned to early morning.
The birds were chirping. The sun was stretching through the clouds.
And prosecutor Leah Hubbard was on her way to the office.

I had actually dropped my son off at daycare that morning, which was located just a couple buildings down from where this house was located on the opposite side of the road.

I saw the crime scene unit from Michigan State Police there, so I knew right away we have very few homicides in Monroe County. Not even one a year do we average.

But when I saw the Michigan State Police crime scene ban there and multiple deputies as I'm driving to work, I know something horrific happened.

Leah knew that something earth-shattering would be coming across her desk any minute. Back at the crime scene, Detective Hooper and his team started their investigation.

Though Kenneth was cooperative, his son,

not so much. So Kenny was very quiet, just sitting on the ground,

you know, by the side door when deputies came in as they were detaining. You know, there was a basic question of what's going on here.

And Kenny said, I don't believe I should talk. So right off the get,

he wasn't going to make a statement with the police.

Kenneth, on the other hand, was full of worry and words. Mostly he was concerned about his mother-in-law, Cecilia Gibson, who also lived in the house with him and Kenny.

My mother-in-law is supposed to be here. I don't know where she is.
I just come in the door. I just

pulled in from work. Okay.

Cecilia Gibson, who everyone called Nikki, was 79 years old. She was Kenneth's mother-in-law, and she'd been staying with him to help him and his wife, her daughter, fight her battle with cancer.

The arrangement had stuck past her daughter's death. When police first arrived, Kenneth assumed the body in his living room belonged to one of his son's friends.

But now, under the cold light of morning, with reality pressing in, he saw the truth, and so did Detective Hooper.

So basically, in looking at pictures in the home, we were able to determine that that was Nikki.

The headless victim on the floor was 79-year-old Nikki Gibson.

Kenneth was destroyed. A group of officers took Kenneth and Kenny down to the station to talk further.
while the house was being processed.

Kenneth was helpful and cooperative while his son's silence started to take a new shape.

Kenny shifted from silence to irritation quickly. Every word the officer said only fueled his anger.
As the minutes ticked by, his curt replies twisted into something darker and much more concerning.

But he starts chanting and

singing and jumping around and dancing all while handcuffed in the interview room.

It sounded pretty demonic with the noises he was making.

Kenny refused to talk sensibly. Instead, he acted out like someone who was in the middle of a bad acid trip.
And according to prosecutor Leah Hubbard, he kept repeating the same eerie phrase.

He repeatedly screamed, it's motherfucking payday.

Aside from his erratic outbursts, the marks on Kenny's body started pointing towards his guilt in Nikki's murder. He had an abrasion that looked like a scratch mark behind one of his ears.

Most significantly on one of his hands, there were multiple fresh cuts on the exterior of his hand, so the top part of his hand. And then when he turned his hand over, there were

different sorts of marks and red abrasions they almost look like blisters what we compared it to the most was if you're doing yard work with a wooden rake

and you're using a repeated motion over and over

a repeated motion like having to cut off a person's head right on the palm of his hand there were multiple abrasions that looked like you know excessive rubbing or some sort of blisters forming he also had an abrasion a fresh fresh abrasion that looked like a scratch or a fingernail mark on the top of his head, and then a large bruise on his forearm.

As Kenny McBride spun in his jail cell, hurling profanities and shouting, it's motherfucking payday,

Detective Hooper and Prosecutor Hubbard were left to nothing but questions.

They had a crime scene soaked in rage. a headless grandmother, and a suspect grinning through the madness.

They knew how it all ended, but the question that gripped Temperance that morning, the one no one could let go of, was why?

And that answer would be the hardest to find.

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65-year-old widower Kenneth Reese had come home from his late-night shift to find his elderly mother-in-law decapitated in the middle of his living room.

79-year-old Nikki Gibson had been savagely murdered. Her face was battered beyond recognition.

Around her broken body lay the shattered remains of a ceramic piggy bank and a metal babygate covered in blood. Her head was sawed off and thrown 20 yards down the back driveway.

Kenneth's son, Kenny McBride, was their number one suspect. He had been home with Nikki all night.
Why Kenny would turn on the feeble 79-year-old woman with such fury, it made no sense.

So, if he did murder and decapitate her, that made it all the more terrifying.

When police interviewed Kenneth, the father, he explained what happened after he found Nikki's decapitated corpse in his living room. He called out for his son Kenny.

Moments later, Kenny came downstairs. He was acting strange, just completely off.

Kenneth had never seen him like this, but he knew his son had a history of meth abuse. Immediately, he suspected that he'd relapsed.
He kept pressing him, what happened?

But Kenny stayed blank, emotionless. He claimed he had no idea, said he'd been upstairs for hours.
As they waited for police, a patrol car sped past the house, missing the address.

Kenny turned to his father, his voice low and eerie. and he said,

they'll be back.

By the time Kenny hit the jail cell, he was gone. Mental detachment had turned into full-blown madness.
Officers tried to talk to him, but he didn't listen or couldn't listen.

He just stared, wide-eyed and twitchy. Then he erupted into streams of gibberish and nonsense.

We thought that he was under the influence of some mind-altering drug, whether that be bath salts, you know, because as investigators, we have seen the basic heroin or meth or, you know, this, that this had risen to the level that something we hadn't seen.

So that's why we took that extra step sending the blood out for the exotic things like bath salts or K2 or any of those other designer drugs.

As Detective Hooper waited for the toxicology reports to come back, they got to work figuring out what had happened that day. Kenneth had, I believe, a little bit of running to do before work.

You know, the run to the gas station just down the road. It's probably only

half a mile, quarter, or three-quarters of a mile down the road. Right across the streets of Dollar General,

and then the post office right there. So they're all right there down the road.
I know

Kenneth dropped off Kenny at the dollar store,

Dollar General, where he ended up getting a $100 green dot card.

A green dot card is a prepaid debit card. Kenny purchased one, and for what? Detective Hooper doesn't know.
You know, he's there for a few minutes.

Kenneth does his running, picks him back up, and takes him back home. And shortly thereafter, Kenneth ends up leaving for work.

Kenneth told the police that when he and Kenny return home, Nikki wasn't there. She had left with her son to run an errand.
You know, in investigating a case like this, a timeline is crucial.

And so in talking with the family members, we had learned that she was with her son Billy, you know, dropping off a mattress at a storage place.

So we go to the storage place, we get the video footage, confirm all of that.

Nikki's son then drove the two of them back to Kenneth's house, where Kenny was the only one there. Nikki's son walked her inside because she'd been having trouble with the stairs lately.

Kenny was in the kitchen. When they arrived inside, Nikki noticed that a case of water she'd purchased that morning was missing.
So she asked Kenny if he knew where it was.

That's when Nikki's son said that Kenny's whole demeanor changed. He became defensive and irritated.

It got to the point where Nikki's son suggested that Nikki stay the evening at his house, but she refused.

I know that when

investigators talked with Billy, the son, he was truly broken up because he wanted her to come

with them, you know, not stay there. And so he was really, really upset about that.

So Nikki's son left around 2.30 p.m. that afternoon with a bad feeling in his stomach.
But what was he going to do? His mother was an adult.

She could make her own decisions and she wanted to stay there. What happened in those next 12 hours was a mystery.

And as much as Kenny had tried to cover his tracks, he also had left physical clues that solidified his guilt. In investigating the bathroom, they found a bloody, I believe it was palm print

that matched Kenny's and it was in Nikki's blood. In the bathroom where that bloody palm print was located was a pair of jeans.
They were in a crumpled pile.

Kenneth Rees advised that they were not his genes and that he believed they were Kenny McBride's genes. Those genes had blood kind of smeared on the front.

If you could imagine your hands are covered in blood and you kind of wipe them on your thighs on the front of your genes to kind of get rid of the blood.

We found some blood present on the front of the genes. There was also some blood spatter located on the back side of the genes.

DNA analysis was done on those genes and it was determined that the blood located on the genes belonged to Cecilia Gibson.

Then they tested the waistband of those genes for traces of DNA. The inside of the waistband did determine that there was a mixture of DNA that included Kenny McBride's DNA.

Kenny's DNA was also found on a bloody sweater as well as that metal baby gate that was found broken next to Nikki's body.

Remember, Kenny used various objects to kill Nikki, namely a piggy bank and a metal baby gate. The baby gate had been affixed to that wall for years.

The baby gate was a very strong, sturdy metal object.

It was so carefully placed on the wall that actually left a mark on the wall when it was pulled off the wall by Kenny McBride.

So that would have taken some force and some time to remove that baby gate.

Whatever happened between Nikki and Kenny that evening had escalated to the point where Kenny was so out of his mind that he ripped a metal baby gate off the wall that had been screwed on there for years.

That takes a lot of force to do that. The drywall screws were pretty substantial.
It's not only a test of how physically strong Kenny was, but the amount of psychotic adrenaline rushing through him.

The medical examiner testified that there were at least 19 separate blows with multiple objects. The medical examiner testified that the two black eyes that she sustained were likely due to fists.

Obviously,

the baby gate was used. You also had the piggy bank being used.

He stormed through the house, zeroing in on a specific piggy bank, one that had belonged to Nikki's late daughter, Kenneth's beloved wife. And he smashed it over Nikki's head.

So that had significant value to both Kenneth Reese and Cecilia or Nikki Gibson. So we believe that was an item potentially selected on purpose because of the significant value it had to the family.

According to the medical examiner, this was no fight. It was a slaughter.
Nikki barely defended herself. The few defensive wounds she had made that heartbreakingly clear.

But how could she defend herself? Kenny stood 5'10, nearly 200 pounds, hardened by years of prison workouts. Nikki was 79, frail, and defenseless.
The moment he attacked, the outcome was inevitable.

Just imagine her terror, knowing there was no escape, no hope. Like a fragile bird caught in the jaws of a bobcat.

She never stood a chance. This wasn't just premeditated.
It was deeply personal. And in the end, the beheading said it all.

It was Kenny's loudest, cruelest message. We also proved that he went to the kitchen and grabbed three knives that were inside drawers to complete some of the acts of assault.

Kenny grabbed three knives from the kitchen, including an Appalachian bread saw.

Any sourdough ladies out there?

Yeah, you know what this knife is. But for the rest of you, it's a serrated knife with a wooden, bowed handle that makes it easy to cut slices of freshly baked bread.

It would have taken a significant amount of force and time. I mean, to the point where he actually broke a knife, broke one of the knives trying to decapitate the victim.
He had calluses on his hand,

which presumably are from the repeated saw marks.

Kenny sat there sawing at Nikki's neck until the bread knife broke. Then he moved on to the other weapons.

It took hours to get through her thick flesh, the muscle, the tendons, and the bone.

This would have taken a lot of work to accomplish the complete beheading, and then to kind of toss it out the door to the point where it bounced on concrete and just laid there.

It's unfathomable. I think it's very difficult for most of us to wrap our head around why someone do this to another person, a vulnerable elderly woman.
The answer had to be drugs.

Detective Hooper just needed to know exactly what.

Then the toxicology report came back. We did draw his blood, send it off to the crime lab, and we sent it off to a secondary lab.
for those exotic drugs that the main lab doesn't test.

And we came back with negative results.

No drugs. No alcohol.

Not an iota of any substance in his system.

Getting those test results and seeing that he was perfectly sober,

you know,

it kind of blows your mind. And so that only left us to believe that it was strictly rage.

Rage.

But for what?

What could this sweet, loving grandmother have possibly done to Kenny? Surely it wasn't over over the water bottles. Nikki was adored by her family, her community, and everyone who knew her.

She had 15 grandchildren and over 20 great-grandchildren. They all loved her.
She spent her days knitting, beading, cross-stitching, and even building furniture.

Her work was a hit at local craft shows.

Even in her later years, she stayed busy, helping out at a senior center, running errands, and pitching in wherever she could. Everyone described her as extremely loving.

She was very close with her grandchildren. It sounded like she showered them with gifts.
Very, very close with her family.

Nobody said a bad word about her throughout the whole case.

People spoke of Nikki with warmth, always with love. Never an ounce of malice.
So what the hell happened?

I only can go off of the theory that we always had that he just snapped and beat her to death for some small,

small reason that he believed that she

did him wrong. She wronged him in some way that he snapped.

There were only two people in the house that night. One was dead and the other was in jail, having a mental breakdown.

The police had to use witnesses from the family and the mess of clues at the scene.

The puzzle was incomplete, but Detective Hooper and Prosecutor Hubbard knew that the truth was hidden somewhere in that house. The answer didn't jump out at first, but when it did, it was obvious.

Beneath Nikki's lifeless body, buried in blood, lay one last clue.

Six photographs. Innocent faces of children.
All but one ripped to shreds.

And these weren't just any children, they were Nikki's grandkids, and they were also connected to Kenny. To understand why, you have to know the tangled story behind this family.

You see, Nikki's daughter, Deborah Reese, had been Kenneth's second wife, which meant that Nikki

wasn't Kenny McBride's blood relative.

But she had been on the periphery of his life for a long time.

Though they were not close, she was technically his step-grandmother. Kenny McBride was a product of Kenneth Reese and another woman.
They had separated.

Kenny McBride, primarily, as best we can tell, lived with his mother. didn't have a super close relationship with his father, Kenneth Reese.

Kenneth married his second wife, Deborah, in 1985, when Kenny was about 10 years old. Kenny was left alone to be raised by his single mother while his father started a new family.

Kenneth and Deborah had three children together and remained deeply in love until the day Deborah died of cancer in 2019.

Kenny had never been a true part of their family. He was the outcast.
The black sheep. The stained reminder of Kenneth's first failed marriage.

By the time he became an adult, he was getting in trouble a lot.

From 1992 on, we started seeing a history of criminality on the part of Kenny McBride, assault of history, history of felonious assault, which in Michigan means assault with a dangerous weapon.

So he was in and out of trouble. You know, I remember him.
I worked in the jail for approximately six years.

him coming in and out for various domestic issues, drug charges, this, that, and the other, and him going to prison.

And so, I think that drug use and, you know, going to prison probably put that strain on that relationship to where it was separated. Kenny had always been on the outside.

A lifetime of bad choices and burned bridges had pushed him far from his father. Kenneth was estranged from Kenny for about 15 years.

And then, all of a sudden, like six or seven months prior, Kenny and Kenneth start to try to get that father-son relationship going.

So Kenneth allows Kenny to move in with him

and his mother-in-law, Nikki Gibson.

So at age 44, Kenny found himself under his father's roof.

Not as a son coming home, but as a burden, like some wayward child forced to tuck himself into a life that had gone on perfectly well without him.

After Deborah's death, Kenny McBride is released from incarceration. He's coming around more frequently.
This all occurred during the COVID pandemic.

And at some point in time, Kenny McBride found himself homeless and had convinced Kenneth Reese to allow him to temporarily reside in the home. Kenny and Nikki shared a deep bond forged in grief.

He had lost lost his wife, she had lost her daughter. They leaned on one another, close through sorrow.
Kenny didn't fit into that. He never had.

Moving in didn't change anything. It only magnified how far removed he really was.

How pathetic he must have felt watching from the outside living in a house where he was little more than a tolerated shadow.

Because he had been in and out of prison most of his life, that didn't just affect his relationship with his own father, but also his relationship as a father.

Kenny had two children with the same woman. She was a lovely lady.
The kids were fantastic. They were both in their early 20s, very successful in college.
They both testified during the trial.

He had a very strained relationship with both of those children. Those two children had a half-sibling,

which was their biological mothers, along with her current husband. He was a little bit younger.

Kenny was your quintessential deadbeat father, in and out of jail, on and off drugs, and living a generally selfish lifestyle that put his own needs above the needs of his innocent children.

Yet miraculously, his children had grown into accomplished young adults. No thanks to him.

Kudos to their mother, by the way. Kenny McBride had virtually no relationship with his biological children.
He would randomly Facebook message both of his children.

His son indicated that he never would respond or even read those messages. His daughter did indicate that she would

periodically respond. I believe it was in 2019 that

Kenneth Rees'

wife, Debbie, had passed away. I believe both the children testified that Kenny McBride came to the funeral.

His son refused to see him and indicated he actually left the wake and sat in his car because he didn't want to have any contact with Kenny McBride.

Kenny's son made it clear with his actions that he wanted nothing to do with his father. But his daughter was slightly more receptive to giving him a chance.

Kenny McBride's daughter agreed to a meeting, a reunification.

Shortly before Debbie's death, she agreed to meet with Kenny McBride at the hospital back in 2019, and she had contact with him again at the wake, and they had been communicating periodically via Facebook.

So Kenny McBride had a, had developed, started developing a relationship with his daughter, whereas his son refused to any communication with him.

All of this messy, awkward reunification was unfolding while Deborah was dying. A long, brutal battle with cancer was coming to its heartbreaking end.

For Kenneth and Nikki, the focus was where it should have been, on Deborah in her final days and saying goodbye.

But not for Kenny.

At the worst possible moment, he came waltzing back in, asking for a a place to stay, stirring up old drama, picking fights about his kids, turning Deborah's funeral into another chapter of his chaos.

It was all just selfish. And for Kenneth and Nikki,

it was a cruel distraction from the deepest grief of their lives.

But maybe he did this with malice. Because Kenny's kids had always maintained a good relationship with Kenneth and Nikki.

If Kenny's children were there,

she would treat them just like her own grandchildren. She loved all of her grandchildren.

There were multiple photographs under Nikki's body. Two of them were of Kenny's son, the one who refused to have any contact with him.

Those pictures had been torn to shreds, as if whoever did this was trying to erase that person. from existence.

The other photograph, which was still intact, was of Kenny's daughter, his favorite, the one who actually responded to his Facebook messages.

Because of the fact that they're located partially under the body, near the body, they're covered in blood.

The photograph of Kenny McBride's daughter that was spared was sitting on a chair, and there were droplets of blood on the photograph itself.

So we know they played a key role in whatever happened that day.

His kids, Kenny's sore spot. A wound that would never heal.

These torn photographs weren't random violence. They were deliberate.
Kenny wasn't just killing Nikki. He was trying to wipe out everything she represented.
Love.

Family. Connection.

Things he never truly had. Things he never truly understood.
Nikki was defenseless, barely able to walk without help.

One punch would have ended it. But Kenny didn't stop at that.
He made her a target for all of her failures.

He used sentimental objects to try and hurt her, as if tearing apart what she loved made the attack worse.

He punched her eyes until they bled. He kicked her again and again.

He unleashed years of bitterness and self-loathing onto her tiny, helpless frame.

And when that wasn't enough,

he cut off her head. The decapitation was an afterthought.

And so I don't know if the decapitation was

a statement of power over the body

or if it was something to make himself look crazier.

My running theory is that, you know, he I think he stepped back and he thought for a second, oh no, I just beat this old woman to death.

How can I get out from underneath this?

Because afterwards, he had enough thought to take a shower, clean all the blood off of himself, make sure he didn't have bloody clothing on, and even make himself a sandwich.

Yeah, there was a half-eaten sandwich in the kitchen that he had made.

But no one really knew what fueled the horror that night. Cold, calculated evil, or the moment a broken man finally comes undone.

Kenny wasn't giving answers, and he only unraveled more with every passing day behind bars. But soon, he'd have to face it all, on the stand and under the cold scrutiny of psychological experts.

The real story was going to come out.

What they would uncover wouldn't just explain what happened.

it would change

everything.

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44-year-old Kenny McBride murdered his step-grandmother, Nikki Gibson, after an alleged fight over his estranged children. Beneath Nikki's bludgeoned body, detectives found torn family photos.

The only clue as to what drove Kenny to rage, murder, and decapitation.

In jail, Kenny came undone. Was this a desperate performance? A last-itch attempt to fake insanity and dodge accountability?

Or was it real? Had Kenny truly snapped? Was his mind really fractured, beyond repair?

Prosecutor Leah Hubbard knew that she was staring down the barrel of a devastating and very public trial.

Nothing like she'd ever experienced before in this small county that averaged one homicide a year.

The news would be all over this. Nikki's family wanted justice.
She had to get Kenny the maximum. We wanted to prove that this was a premeditated first-degree murder.

That charge carries life without the possibility of parole in the state of Michigan. In the state of Michigan, there has to be an opportunity for a second look.

Just long enough to consider and contemplate your action.

They went for the big guns and soon decided to up the charge and go after Kenny McBride for open murder. In the state of Michigan, we are permitted to charge someone with open murder.

Open murder includes first-degree premeditated murder. It includes first-degree felony murder, meaning a murder that happened during the commission of a specific felony.

And it also includes second-degree murder. So your typical rageful murder without evidence of premeditation.
It is then up to the jury to decide where they want to end up.

This charge was brilliant. It was kind of like throwing all the murder charges at the wall and seeing what stuck for the jury.
Kenny wouldn't stand a chance.

It's really nice because it gives the jury some options. Now, we don't always charge murders that way, but this is the perfect example of a murder that would fit the open murder category quite well.

The jury could determine based on our theory that there was sufficient premeditation.

If the jury didn't find premeditation, they still could have convicted him of second-degree murder based on this rageful, you know, heat of the moment crime of passion killing.

Prosecutors were also able to tack on one more charge of habitual offender. to really nail Kenny's coffin.
So the habitual offender notice is essentially a three strikes year-out rule.

For every felony that you commit, if they're charged as a habitual offender, it can increase both their minimum sentence and their maximum sentence.

Kenny had calmed down in jail, and now with a public defender by his side, he was starting to talk like a human being.

He soon revealed his side of what happened that night. Kenny's defense was simple.
He didn't do it.

Basically saying that, no, somebody can't come over to the house and

I don't know what happened.

That was his defense. Someone else came to the home, someone who he owed money to, and killed Nikki.
But Kenny was lucky.

He got a solid public defender, and he made sure to put Kenny's competency and mental state to the test before the trial started.

After all, if he was deemed insane by the legal system, then this whole trial could go completely sideways.

The defense attorney requested two types of evaluations. The first being a competency evaluation.
A competency evaluation determines whether or not you are competent at the time you stand trial.

So are you able to appropriately participate and actively participate in your defense? Are you able to make decisions, mindful decisions about your case with the assistance of legal counsel?

The second evaluation requested by Mr. McDride's attorney was an evaluation as to criminal responsibility.

In Michigan, criminal responsibility is an evaluation to determine: did you understand the consequences of your actions at the time that you committed the crime?

Did you know the difference between right and wrong? So, when you talk about not guilty by legal insanity, you're talking about a criminal responsibility issue.

Kenny was put through the psychological ringer, if you will.

Endless evaluations to test his sanity, his competence, and whether he even grasped what he'd done.

Early on, Detective Hooper believed drugs fueled this murder, but the toxicology report shattered that theory.

So if it wasn't drugs, was it madness?

Both the criminal responsibility and the competency evaluations came back within normal ranges. It was determined that he was competent to stand trial and that he,

if he committed the crimes, that he was criminally responsible.

Kenny wasn't insane. He knew right from wrong.
He was competent.

All that made it worse.

He wasn't crazy. He was just evil.

He was a man with something so wrong inside of him that it would take much more than a competency evaluation to figure him out.

Not only was Kenny deemed competent to stand trial, but he also decided that he would talk.

He was going to testify in his own defense.

Him taking the stand, you know, I don't know if he's got this elevated

sense of self or whatnot, but

it definitely didn't do him any favors.

In the spring of 2021, About a year after this brutal murder, Kenny McBride walked into the Monroe County courtroom ready to face a jury of his peers.

His gray hair was thinning, cropped short to match his patchy beard.

Only the prison tattoos snaking up his neck set him apart from every other forgettable, middle-aged white felon we've covered on this show.

Although the prosecutors were confident that they had enough physical evidence to win, they struggled with that one missing piece. We were worried about a couple things.
One being the motive.

We still to this day can't articulate exactly what caused Kenny McBride to act so ragefully against an innocent, vulnerable adult.

So, you know, we had the family strife, but, you know, the jury wants to hear that. They want to understand the whole story.
And we weren't able to

explain in detail exactly what happened.

They might not have known every word exchanged between Nikki and Kenny that night, but they knew enough. Prosecutor Hubbard's mission was clear.

On cross-examination, she planned to tear through the cracks in Kenny's story. So Kenny got up on the stand and calmly gave his side of the story.

Kenny McBride had indicated that he was home that evening, that he was upstairs in his bedroom, and that he had the sleep amp on, that he was quote-unquote sleeping, and that he didn't really hear anything.

However, he had also speculated that there were certain people that were out to get him. He didn't really articulate who or why.

In fact, I believe, if I recall correctly, I asked him who and he refused to answer the question. So he had articulated that these people were out to get him

and

that he, that

they must have hurt Nikki Gibson to get back at him, or maybe even they thought that Nikki Gibson was him.

But the story made no sense and Prosecutor Hubbard and Detective Hooper were able to prove it. First off, the sleep app.

He said he didn't hear a violent break-in, beating, and decapitation due to his Zen sleep app. So this was wood floors throughout the home.
We actually went out to the crime scene,

the co-prosecutor who handled the case and I, so we had a good idea of the layout of the home. And the living room was located really directly underneath where his bedroom would have been.

So, with the wood floors and the echoing in the home, there's just absolutely no way that someone could have been such a close proximity away from this brutal, horrific murder involving a smashed piggy bank, a metal baby gate, you know, 19 separate blows, and not hear anything.

Then, there was also the fact that Kenny's bedroom door was unable to close.

We also noted in some of the photographs that his bedroom door had multiple shoelaces and other ties around it, so it was unable to even close.

So the idea that he's upstairs with a door that's not able to even close all the way and that he completely doesn't hear this brutal murder just a couple feet away was ridiculous.

Kenny claimed that he was using a sleep app to rest during the entire time the murder happened, but his phone said otherwise.

In fact, there was no sleep app, in case you didn't figure that part out, in case you're maybe a little slow or something.

But he was active on Facebook Messenger all night, talking intensely with a particular woman, except for a short window of time where his messages went unread.

There was 27 unread. And so, I mean, it was our theory that around that time, between those unread messages, there was no active interaction with his phone.

So either A, he was, you know, committing homicide, B, cleaning up the scene, cleaning himself up.

After that window of unread messages, he resumed his activity and started messaging another old friend.

He sent her a weird one later in the evening, I think around midnight, like, are you alive?

And she responds, yeah, are you?

And he typed something. Unfortunately, he deleted it.
We don't know what it was. She didn't know what it was.

Detective Hooper discovered something else that pointed to Kenny as well, and not some random person that broke into the house and did this while Kenny was sleeping.

Nikki always wore a life alert pendant around her neck. One of those simple devices seniors use so that if you fall, the authorities are alerted.
When her body was found, it was gone.

Two weeks after the homicide, all of a sudden that alerted.

The alert pendant was soon found at a plant nursery down the road.

What had happened was a tree trimming crew had brought fresh trimmings in for the nursery and dumped it on top of what we believe was the pendant, which caused it to activate.

It had a very weak GPS signal that gave like a 63 meter hit which wasn't really good. And so the pendant however when it has a weak GPS signal would touch Wi-Fi's in the area and would

you know it to try to boost the signal and so we went in the area of the nursery and went to people's houses and this, that, and the other.

And so the pendant had MAC addresses that it connected to and we went and found the houses where it was connecting to the wi-fi the pendant made a clear path from kenneth's house to the nursery bouncing off wi-fi signals along the way a random stranger wouldn't have known to take that off of nikki but kenny knew she wore it and getting rid of it bought him some time

if he had left it on her the police would have arrived the minute she fell from his first blow.

Detective Hooper thinks that Kenny killed her, then turned it off and ditched it at the nursery. He never expected it to activate again.

So, Leah brought this all up when Kenny was on the stand. She looked him dead in the eye and poked holes in his story like a sadist stuffing salt in an open wound.

Then, when that wasn't enough, she hit him where she knew it would really sting.

His

inadequacy as a father. I asked a lot of questions about his children, and he did acknowledge that he had a better relationship with one, with the female child, over the male child.

And he got a little frustrated at that point.

Yet to everyone's surprise, he kept his cool. No screaming, no cursing, no wincing.
He remained calm. Prosecutor Hubbard wanted Kenny to get angry.
She wanted rage.

She wanted that, you can't handle the truth moment. You know what I mean?

She tried her best to poke the bear so that Kenny would slip up for the jury.

But he was as steady as a rock, apparently having rehearsed for this moment. You see, crazy people can still be manipulative.

In fact,

They usually go hand in hand.

Anytime Kenny got frustrated, he reeled it back quickly. Like someone or something

had tied an invisible string to the normal side of his brain and tugged on it. Maybe that thing was the realization that if he didn't act right now, he'd go to prison forever.

That's enough to scare you out of your alleged mental illness, isn't it? And one of my goals was to get him frustrated or flustered so we could see the real Kenny McBride.

And I have to give him credit, he did a great job keeping it under control for the most part.

Even during closing arguments and deliberation, Kenny remained steady. In fact, he barely flinched when they read the verdict.

Guilty.

The prison life he thought he had escaped was calling him back for good.

Kenny had tried to hold it together. At trial, he kept his temper in check, playing the part of the calm, rational man.

But it was obviously just an act.

Beneath the surface, rage boiled.

For that month before sentencing, he stewed behind bars, resentment building like pressure in a sealed valve.

Then, when it came time to face the judge and hear his fate, Kenny just couldn't hold it anymore.

What entered the courtroom that day wasn't a misunderstood man. It was exactly who he had always been.

Violent, bitter, and consumed by hate.

I believe we saw the real Kenny McBride at sentencing when he came in screaming, cursing,

you know, expressing just rage. I think that was the first time we really saw Kenny McBride.

The real Kenny came out when when he knew he had nothing more to lose. He sauntered into the courtroom in his shackles, barking at the judge like they were about to start a bar fight.

I believe at one point in time he referred to the judge as Captain Kangaroo. I know the jail staff had some difficulty getting him to sit down and appear for sentencing.

He needed to be present so the court could sentence him.

So it was definitely challenging. It was somewhat shocking after seeing him so composed during the trial.

That's the most terrifying thing about someone like Kenny. He can fake normal.
He can sit still, speak calmly, and try to convince you he's just another lost soul.

But beneath that thin layer of control was something much more violent, waiting for the moment it could break free.

Kenny was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Today, Kenny McBride sits in the Lakewood Correctional Facility.

He will be there until the day he dies, thank God.

He showed no real remorse, took no responsibility, and wasted no time flooding the courts with his laughable appeals. He cited multiple errors,

namely that the jury made a decision that was against the weight of the evidence, that the court should have granted his motion to change venue,

and the court of appeals determined that there was no merit to any of his arguments. His case has been,

conviction has been upheld, and at this point in time he's exhausted most of his appellate rights.

Justice may have been served, but it offered little comfort. Kenny's life sentence couldn't erase what he took.

Nikki Gibson was ripped from this world in a brutal and disgusting act that still defies understanding.

For those who knew her and worked on this case, the lack of answers cuts almost as deep as the loss itself.

Elderly and children, crimes against them are horrific.

But to be a totally innocent victim that was sticking up for his children, probably most likely,

and to, you know,

again,

The one thing that I'll never get out of my head, and like I told you earlier, is that 15 yards from the back door, that hair landing on that concrete with that hair impression in blood.

You know, that's something that I'd never forget.

The way Nikki's head was discarded haunts both Detective Hooper and Prosecutor Hubbard to this day. It was the eeriest part of the case.
Throwing that head out the door like that,

it's just

the one part of the case that's really stuck with all of us

why and how. And where he threw it was right where Kenneth Reese would have drove his car home.
In fact, it's surprising that Kenneth Reese missed it on his way in, but it was dark out.

So it just

will never be able to understand or wrap our head around why he did what he did.

I don't think he's crazy. I think he tried to manipulate

the system afterwards to try to believe that he was crazy.

You know, i think it's human nature to try to try to want to explain why something happened and to distinguish ourselves from this person right they were on drugs their mind was altered they're they're they're they're different than us they we you know

you want to understand why this happened and and be able to wrap your head around why someone would act this way and it's so easy to just try to blame it on a substance because we can't understand why someone would do something like this to another person.

If you look at everything, it is pretty clear that he intended this rageful murder.

The amount of different weapons that were used, the amount of blows that she sustained, he could have only had one purpose.

She had significant bruising on her arms. You could see these deep purple fingerprint marks on one of her arms.
I mean, her face was covered in bruises.

The laceration to her, one of the lacerations to her lip area almost completely severed her lip from her face.

This was very intentional and extremely brutal, and very hard to understand someone having this amount of rage.

Kenny McBride was a lifelong criminal. In 1991, under five different aliases, he'd racked up over 30 charges in the Monroe County court system, not including Nikki Gibson's murder.

This was not the only place he lived. Who knows how many other arrests he had under his belt in other counties?

Kenny McBride was just a stain on society. He didn't fall through the cracks.
He lived in them. And that was his own choice.

In his final, fuck you, to the family he felt had cast him aside, he did the unthinkable to a defenseless 79-year-old woman. But this wasn't really about Nikki.

Her murder was personal, but not in the way it seemed. It was calculated, a cruel, symbolic act meant to strike at those in his family who had pushed Kenny aside.
At least, in his own mind.

For Kenny, life had always been about resentment. He walked through it convinced he was owed love, loyalty, and respect, yet he gave nothing in return.

He couldn't hold a job, he couldn't stay sober, he couldn't show up for his own children. And as the world moved on, leaving him in the dust, that bitterness hardened into something else.

He didn't seek redemption, even during moments of sobriety when the path to change stood open.

he veered away, clinging to his grudges.

Kenny wasn't looking for healing. He was looking for someone else to blame.

And when Nikki Gibson stepped up where he never did,

she became that target.

He didn't hesitate when he attacked Nikki.

He destroyed a beautiful, loving grandmother simply because she said something that made him see what a loser he truly was.

Sometimes we search for brokenness behind brutality. We want to believe that evil wears a human face, that monsters are made, not born.

It makes things a lot easier that way.

But with Kenny, there is no such comfort. His final act was not the cry of a lost man.

It was the declaration of one who chose darkness, who chose bitterness, who chose

revenge,

and he wanted the world

and his own family to choke on it.

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Thanks.

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