Anatomy of Murder - International Mystery (Viktor Gunnarsson, Catherine Miller)

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

A man’s body found on the snowy hills of North Carolina leads back to an overseas political assassination.For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/. Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Have you seen the movie Sleeping with the Enemy? The one with Julia Roberts and the guy is so completely... This guy and the cans in his cabinet were perfectly lined up. His shirts were all turned the same direction, equal distance apart. Six of the same pair of shoes, all of them with tassels and with rubber bands around the tassels. And shoe trees in the shoes. He was known to iron the fringe on his rugs. Very disturbing. Very disturbing.

I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. We've talked about the investigator's mindset in a homicide case. You follow wherever the evidence leads, and usually cases take a similar path. And then you catch a once-in-a-lifetime case, one that opens the door to an international conspiracy. Well, that is what we're dealing with in today's case. My name is Paula May, like the month.

And I was with the Watauga County Sheriff's Office for 20 years. And then I left there and went to the city of King to be chief of police. Today's story takes us to the rural city of Boone in Watuga County, North Carolina. And when you think about this town, it is smack in the middle of the Appalachian region of the United States. So you have everything from the beautiful scenery, the change of seasons, the skiing. But it's very rural and a lot of farming communities, tobacco and Christmas trees growing a lot in the area and a lot of good hardworking people, but also its share of criminal element as well. So we're going to move into a wintry night. It's early in the evening on Friday, January of 1994. And this

happened to be a Friday that was a very cold, snowy, wintry day. And I plan to just stay in the office and get some paperwork done and head out early as the roads were becoming slick with the winter storm. Dispatch called in and informed detectives that a survey crew found something unusual near a local parkway. A survey crew had found a pair of bare feet sticking up out of the snow. After you got off the roadway there, there was just a few feet of shoulder of the road and grass, and then you're deep into the woods where visibility is poor and the ground is not level. The victim was found at the base of a pine tree along the Blue Ridge Parkway. He was naked, his feet were sticking up from the snow, and his skin was frozen to the ground. The body was found at the base of a large fallen pine tree.

The root ball was pulled up out of the ground as if, you know, the weather or so forth had caused the tree to fall over. And the body was shoved up underneath the base of that. Appeared to be not buried, but somewhat hidden. So around this victim, who was very easily identified as male, there was no identification. There was no weapon. So, you know, short of a coyote carrying it away, we knew he had a homicide. And really what it says to me, the fact that he is naked and there's no clothing, it just screams to me like power play and humiliation, which somehow means to me, at least, that this is most likely pre-planned and something methodical in the way that the killer went about this crime.

They were able to determine that there were no drag marks. Lack of drag marks means that the victim was probably walked to this spot by the killer or killers. And I also think that the lack of clothing is interesting. True. You know, removing the clothing tells me two things. One, could this have been a form of torture? It's really freezing outside and you're removing someone's clothes, making them stand in the snow. Or could it have been a situation that the killer was concerned about the transfer of forensics to the clothing? So by removing the clothing from the victim and then removing those clothes from the crime scene, was he trying to protect the identity of who the killer was by not leaving any traces?

But let me add one other element. His feet were sticking up from the snow. What about the potential that the killer left the feet sticking up, hoping in a sense that animals attacked the body and could destroy potential evidence there. There was, and in fact, his right foot, the toes had pretty much been chewed off. Judging from the teeth marks and the claw marks, looked like some small wild animals, you know. At the time, Paula was a detective sergeant and was part of a team of four officers. I was not properly dressed because I planned to stay in the office. My feet were completely numb.

I think that's the coldest my feet have ever been. Once they began to really dig into the crime scene, a fog began to roll in. So that really made it difficult to see, and our lighting sources just did not go very far in the dense woods there. Paula and her team had a John Doe on their hands. But although he didn't have any clothes, as we've mentioned a couple times here, he was wearing a gold watch and a ring. He was wearing a signet ring with initials RMR on it.

But he also had a gold watch on it. Both the ring and the watch were very unique and easily identifiable. And when they also looked at the area surrounding the victim, the sheriff found another clue about what might have happened here. We knew that he was bound because the sheriff himself found a length of tape about 18 inches long near the feet of the victim. Now we have a binding. The victim suffered two gunshot wounds, one to the temple and one to the neck. But when they recovered the electrical tape, they found two interesting things. The first thing, clearly, that it was near his feet. So that's probably where he was bound on the body. But it also had

a bullet hole in it itself. And it also had hair and blood spatter from the victim on it. So we knew that it had been on the victim at the time that he was shot. So what does that say? And so now we're talking about even more clearly an abduction. Someone is brought there. They're bound. While they're still bound, they're shot. So forensically, they were able to determine the tape actually was over his head because they were able to match that bullet hole in the tape with a wound in his temple.

And investigators would benefit forensically from the weather being so cold and the body being frozen because it preserved so many different things. So we did have that. We're able to document bruising and that kind of thing that we would not ordinarily because of the temperatures. And rather than risk destroying any trace evidence that might be there, we just pretty much left the snow intact and lifted his body onto a body bag and sealed it with the snow still on top of him. And so the first thing that Paula wants to do, of course, is identify who her victim is. So what does she have to go on? Well, you have dental records, hopefully from teeth.

You have fingerprints, potentially. You have this tape. But the first thing Paula did was go back to the missing person reports in the area, see if anyone has reported anyone missing that fits her John Doe description. We did not have any missing persons that fits her John Doe description. We did not have any missing persons that fit that description in our county. So we sent out what we call the SR-50, which is a state radius of 50 miles, trying to find anybody that fit that description within 50 miles and then reaching out a little further, such as a statewide broadcast.

Then Paula discovered that three weeks earlier on December 15th, a man fitting the description of the victim was reported missing. His name was Victor Gunnarsson. Victor Gunnarsson had been reported missing by his apartment manager. But Victor had not grown up in the area. He was actually a Swedish national, still a citizen of that country, but had been in the U.S. for some years. He was more of a very magnetic personality. He was very good looking and he attracted women wherever he went. Like one lady he met in the video store, she was the video clerk,

and he just went home with her and lived with her like for two months. And he would move on to someone else just mooching off people and charming people wherever he went. Very young women to much older women, small women, large women. And the thing is, they all loved him. When he moved on, they didn't have a bad thing to say about him. He was not ever known to be violent that we could determine. He just was a charmer. And since Victor wasn't an American citizen, Paula would have to reach out to Interpol, which is a law enforcement organization for the international community, to try to get as much information as she possibly could about Victor.

And, you know, Interpol definitely has that international intrigue. It's the type that the word that you see in spy novels that you may have read, but it's a very real organization. You know, I've worked with them a couple of times. I didn't even know how real and how powerful they were until as a homicide prosecutor, getting to work with them in cases from other countries. They really have this network that you cannot imagine and such resources at their disposal that they're incredibly helpful when trying to navigate working with and understanding cases that impact

not only something in our own country, but somewhere else as well. To be honest with you, young and inexperienced at that time, I wasn't sure how to get a quarter to go about getting records in another country for things like dental records and fingerprints. So Interpol was very happy to assist us with that. In the meantime, Paula had an additional way to identify her victim. Victor Gunnarsson had a girlfriend. Then his girlfriend was able to identify the watch and ring positively as belonging to him. Now it became clear quite quickly that the initials on that ring didn't have anything to do with his name. Obviously that does not equal Victor Gunnarsson, but it went to a new company. So now that we know that who

Victor Gunnarsson is, it presented another unexpected problem. Victor Gunnarsson was a political figure to some degree. He himself had been suspected of a serious crime, but something you would never probably expect. Because it was widely believed that back in 1986, which was eight years before, that Gunnarsson had shot and killed the prime minister of Sweden. He had been arrested and charged with the assassination of Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, in 1986. Then all of a sudden, what seems to maybe be a routine homicide turns into a case of international, you know, fairly quickly. In and of itself, that adds so many different layers.

Like one, people believe he's the killer of a prime minister. Well, there is certainly going to be potential grudges or at least potential revenge as a motive. Could it be an international revenge kill? And going down that path, one needs to extend the search for suspects, you know, across borders. But the reason I say potentially is because investigators don't even know if it's relevant to his arrest years earlier for an assassination, a case that, by the way, never went to trial. So all options, as I see it, are on the table. Well, I knew instantly that I had to do a lot of research,

a lot of international research to even, you know, learn what was going on and what was fact and what was media hype. And to better understand the details surrounding Victor's arrest and really determine that if it could be a viable motive for a murder, Paula would reach out to members of the Swedish National Police. Everyone had a different opinion as to whether or not Gunnarsson may have, in fact, assassinated the prime minister. And so I did not know if I was dealing with a case of revenge. You know, some hitman came from Sweden and, you know, knocked this guy off. So what happened in that case? And now we're going to jump over the water over to Sweden for a moment and take a sidestep. It was 1986 and the prime minister, his name was Olaf Palm,

had gone out with his wife for a nice evening in Stockholm, Sweden. He had given his security detail the night off because he was just trying to spend that personal time with his wife. When a man approached him, they spoke for a moment. And when the prime minister and his wife thought that conversation was over and turned away, well, the man pulled out a gun and shot the prime minister twice in the back, killing him instantly. Here's something else to know. Victor was seen in a bar down the street from where the prime minister was killed. And according to a witness, he was very angry about the current administration. So could the assassin be our victim, Victor Gunnarsson? Investigators in Sweden said yes.

So now there's two mysteries for us to track. Did Victor Gunnarsson assassinate the prime minister? And who killed Victor? So in trying to learn more about Victor Gunnarsson, Paula May and other investigators went to his apartment. I thought he'd been abducted from his home because his door, the door to his apartment, had been left ajar. Nobody leaves their door open and just walks away in mid-December in a crowded apartment complex. Paula first thought it appeared that Victor had been woken up in the middle of the night. It looked as if he had gotten into bed, but the covers were not very messed up

and something had woken him and he had just gotten out of bed, pulled the covers back, maybe walked to the door. I think that very much is what happened. And considering that this may be the location of a potential abduction, investigators began to process the apartment for clues. We knew every item that was in his apartment, everything that was written, every handwritten note, you know, every notebook. We seized those. Some were in Sweden, and of course we had those translated,

and we did not find anything in his apartment that would indicate that he was in any way tied to the assassination. And now let's just think about that for a moment, because it looks to Paula like Victor had been home and he'd been woken up during the night, while the area where his body had been found was almost a two-hour drive away. That's to me that we were dealing with someone who was very cold and calculating because he had two hours after kidnapping Victor Gunnarsson to reconsider his actions. But he drove him in the freezing temperatures all the way up to the mountains and marched him into the woods and killed him there and then stripped him of his clothes and just left him. So what does that say about the killer?

Because if you assume at least that those things are true, that Victor was taken from his home and then taken on this two-hour drive, well, this was very pre-planned. And we're talking about someone with bindings. Remember, Scott talked about that black tape. So this is someone on a mission with purpose. And again, not a crime of passion because those usually occur exactly where the two parties initially meet. Investigators would begin to dig into Victor's relationships. And we did learn earlier that he had a girlfriend who did ID him for police. Her name was Kay Whedon, and now Paula would set out to learn everything she

could about her. Now, Kay was married and divorced, and her husband lived up somewhere in Virginia, but they were very settled there, and she also, of course, had a teenage son, Jason. Kay and Victor's relationship was brand new. It was only a couple of weeks when Victor suddenly stopped calling, Kay and a friend went by his house to check in on him. Did he change his mind about dating her? And, you know, he just all of a sudden was ghosting her. So she and another girlfriend was like, let's go by his house and let's see if he's there. They also saw that the door was ajar, like just maybe an inch crack or something, and it was not completely closed.

And they even went so far as to actually peek into his apartment, but they saw that he wasn't there. And they saw some of his personal things there. His bicycle was still there, like on the back porch. His car was there. His car was parked in its customary spot out in front of his apartment, but no Victor. So the first day they were like, well, maybe he stepped out. Maybe he got in the car and went somewhere with a friend. But he never came back the next day or the next day. Kay may have gone to police at that point, but something horrible happened

that took over her life. Her mother, Catherine Miller, was murdered. Okay, let's just get it out here because we know that Victor's been killed. And now we hear that Kay's mother has been murdered. You know, right away you start to wonder, like, does two plus two equal four? And that's certainly what I was thinking, Scott, at least wondering, how about you? Both murders did appear to be unrelated, or were they? It isn't just us wondering it.

Paul wondered that, too. And so while she wasn't assigned to the case that happened in a different part of the state, so it's another jurisdiction, she did know that it was something that she at least needed to check out. And when she did, here's what she learned. Well, on the night of the 8th, we knew that Catherine Miller had gotten home from work, and she'd worked for the same company for 40 years and, you know, rarely ever missed a day of work. By the next day, Kay was approached by Catherine's boss,

who informed her that her mother did not show up for work. And he's like, well, we can't get an answer at her home. Someone rode by and her car is there. Would you go with us? So, of course, she's going to go to the house and try to see what's going on with her mom. Of course, Kay was very distraught. And in that emotional state, she picked up the wrong set of keys and did not have her mother's house keys. So when they got there, they made a deputy there and the deputy forced entry into the home. And Catherine's home was located on what they consider a tree-lined street,

a nice upper-class neighborhood. When the officer went inside, he saw that she did have an alarm, but the alarm was deactivated as if it had been turned off, perhaps when somebody knocked on the door. So someone at least had turned it off. Was it Catherine or somebody else? And inside the house, you could tell that it was normally kept very neat, but it looked as if it had been staged to appear to be a break-in or struggle. Because even though nothing was taken, and there was silver, there were long guns, there were certainly valuable items there to be taken. As officers approached the kitchen, Catherine was in a seated position with her back resting on the refrigerator. It appeared that she had been standing and was walking backwards toward the refrigerator. She had two gunshot wounds to her head.

Blood spatter trailed down from the top of the door to her seated position, indicating that she was shot while she was standing up and she slid down. This is an older woman inside her home and clearly the victim of some sort of a home invasion or pre-planned attack. You know, to me, it clearly looks like we have a personal targeted attack. It appears that Catherine may have been confronted by the killer somewhere between the living room and the kitchen. She was likely walked back at gunpoint into the kitchen and shot

at point-blank range. Then next, an attempt was made to make it look like a home invasion robbery. Even though nothing was taken, like the magazines were in the floor, some of the drawers were pulled out in the middle of the floor. There was really nothing missing that you might expect if this was a robbery. There was one thing missing, and that was Catherine's wallet. But that, you know, it conveniently, almost too conveniently, showed up the next morning in what was considered a quote-unquote rough part of town. It was almost too easy as investigators began to look at the what and the way things were left. So here's a little bit more about Catherine Miller. At the time she was murdered,

she was 77 years old and was really well liked at work. Catherine was a model citizen. She was active in her church. She volunteered in the community. She had no known enemies. As far as police could see, there was no clear reason for someone to want her dead. But Kay was her only daughter. And so they were very, very close, and she was very influential in Kay's life. You know, Scott, for investigators, where do they go from here? Well, I know that I would process the heck

out of that crime scene, hoping something tangible develops from the kitchen, from anywhere in that house, actually. At the very same time, find out who was in her immediate circle. Family, friends, fellow parishioners. What intel can be derived from those interviews?

And when investigators looked at that, nothing was standing out. There didn't seem to be anyone that they could find that had this actual problem with Catherine. So again, they went to the next level and they started to look at her daughter Kay's life to see if maybe she was involved with someone that might have been, you know, a threat to Catherine. And what they learned is that Kay indeed had been having problems with an ex-boyfriend. And that ex-boyfriend was a police officer. His name was Lamont Claxton Underwood. He went by L.C. Underwood. He'd been with Salisbury Police Department about eight years at that point.

But total in North Carolina, 19 and a half years law enforcement experience. This is our first real potential break. It digs into the possible motive and also opens the door for an unusual twist. That Catherine Miller did not care for Underwood and was trying to actively discourage Kay from pursuing a relationship with him or from doing anything with him, really. And he knew that, and he was very resentful of that. Could your target not only be Kay's ex-boyfriend, but also a cop going rogue out of jealousy or even anger? The more they explored, the more they looked into it, the more Underwood kept coming up as having a problem with Catherine

and having a problem with anybody that she had a relationship with other than him. And looking now more in depth, it didn't take long for Paula to learn that not only had Kay and Underwood dated, but they were actually engaged to be married. But things became too bumpy and Kay had tried to end the relationship, but that Underwood would not give up, at least not easily. And adding to investigators' suspicions, this fact. They learned that Underwood did not have nice things to say about Kay's mother, Catherine. He said to numerous people, but especially to Kay,

you know, why does your mother hate me? And, you know, she just, she spoils you, she spoils Jason. The things he said about her were derogatory. Law enforcement knew about Kay's troubling relationship with Underwood. When Kay and Underwood would get in a fight and she would threaten to break up with him, he would call her up and say, I'm going to kill myself, you know, if you leave me. So she would call the police and say, can you come check on him? I think he's suicidal. So they were very much aware of the interactions between Kay and Jason.

But there was this other puzzling thing that was kind of looming out there that Paula learned the more that she dug into Kay, remember, who's Catherine's daughter, and was also the girlfriend now of Victor. But before anyone had been killed, Kay had been receiving threatening letters and phone calls. And when she did, the person that she looked to for support, well, that was back to Elsie Underwood. And in fact, she would turn to Elsie when something would happen and she would get afraid. And, you know, he would, of course, be there to comfort her and tell her that he's going to figure it out. Police suspected that Underwood was behind the threats,

but he managed to convince Kay to go to the police and ask them to stop the investigation. Because it was ruining his reputation and that he was going to lose his job if she didn't do that. And that's exactly what she did. And I know for me, this is the point where I'm thinking he was attempting to squash an investigation. And that's certainly a big red flag. You know, if you've done nothing wrong, let the investigation clear you. There's two sides to that, right? There is Underwood, who is apparently pressuring her, at least maybe pressuring her to stop the investigation.

But then there is also Kay. You know, you start to look at her, you know, that somehow she is being, you know, puppeted in a way by him. So they really needed to start to look at the interplay between this couple to see if it would lead to any of these crimes that police were now investigating as homicides. All those pieces of the puzzle, the relationship, the letters, and even the department's own suspicion of one of their officers being involved, that's all a part of this puzzle. The relationship, the letters, and even the department's own suspicion of one of their officers being involved. That's all a part of this puzzle, and clearly every angle has to be looked at. And one of the reasons, too, in her defense that she thought he was not responsible for those things were some of the anonymous phone calls that she received was when Elsie was in her presence.

But the threats, the phone calls, the letters, the ante was upped much more than just words because it soon became almost at least homicidal. One evening, someone fired a gunshot through Kay's 18-year-old son's bedroom window. And that young man, the 18-year-old, was sleeping inside. Jason's bedroom window was fired into with a.22 caliber Dan Wesson rifle. And had it not been for some divine intervention and the furniture being moved around that day, then he could very well have struck Jason in the head.

First of all, clearly, that is horrific. You know, a random incident not connected to the murder, does that sound likely? I don't think so. But it's far, obviously, from a direct connection. As I said, another piece of an important puzzle. The fact that she was being stalked by a Salisbury police officer, not just any police officer, but a police officer with 19 and a half years of law enforcement experience in my state of North Carolina, and it wasn't looking good. And if Underwood could kill Kay's mother, Catherine, in Paula's mind, why couldn't he kill her new boyfriend, Victor Gunnarsson? It began to look like these two cases

were really one in the same. So the obvious thing that Paula knows about Elsie Underwood is that he is a police officer and one within her own department. Paula would learn that Elsie Underwood had a very rough upbringing. He was abandoned early on by both his parents who were partiers apparently. He went to live with an abusive uncle and when he got tired of him, he dumped him and his sister off at the orphanage and they both lived there until they turned 18. So Paul's investigation was really focusing on his relationship not only with Kay but with other women. By the time I talked to the third or fourth woman, the story was all the same. He was very charming at first, quite the gentleman, but he could not keep up that facade. He became very possessive and very jealous.

And the more they wanted out, then that's when problems began. Assaults, physical assaults. He had a terrible temper, slamming his fist down on the dash of a car. And the women ultimately were afraid of him. He threatened one of his ex-girlfriends that he would shoot himself unless she stayed with him. It's a threat that he never carried out. So let's go back to the night now of Victor's murder. What was it that Paula pieced together? They had gone to dinner and they went back to her house. And then her teenage son later came in. About 11 or so, he left, kissed her goodbye in the doorway of her home and

drove back to his apartment. And this is the moment where these two cases connect for Paula. Underwood had even used his own resources at the department to call in and trace a license plate of a car. He took down the tag number of that vehicle that was at her house and called a buddy of his with the sheriff's department, had the buddy run the license plate. And it came back to Victor Gunnarsson. And so he had Victor Gunnarsson's name and address. So now this isn't just, hmm, wonder. The pieces are starting to fall into place.

And if you remember back to the crime scene of Victor's murder, the evidence collection team did recover some tape that was wrapped around his head. So could that tape potentially be connected to Underwood? Paula wanted the answer to that, and a judge agreed, signing off on a search warrant for Elsie Underwood's car. During a search warrant, we seized the trunk mats out of both of Underwood's two personal vehicles. But as the analyst was rolling up the trunk mat out of Underwood's Monte Carlo, he held it up to a light as he was rolling it up and saw a single head hair. Once he took the mat apart, he found 17 human head hairs not on top of this trunk mat but underneath and after they had gone through

his car they next got a search warrant for underwood's apartment oh my goodness have you seen the movie sleeping with the enemy the one with julia roberts and the guys so completely that's that's lc under. The cans in his cabinet were perfectly lined up. His shirts were all turned the same direction, equal distance apart, six of the same pair of shoes, all of them with tassels and with rubber bands around the tassels and shoe trees in the shoes. Everything was just super neat. Here's a man who folded his underwear, who folded his clothes in perfect order in his closet, a man who ironed the fringes of the carpeting in his home. What does it say about Underwood? If he was OCD about his underwear, he'd be OCD about not leaving evidence behind at a crime scene,

removing the victim's clothing from the crime scene, check, put the body in the snow with only his feet sticking up, hoping that it may be eaten by animals, which can potentially affect the collection of any forensic evidence. I say check again. Yes, it starts to check off those boxes, but certainly I'm no expert in various mental health disorders or even psychology, but it is the type of thing you see. Now, is it something obsessive compulsive in his psyche? Is it something that is his high functioning, but with other mental challenges going on underneath the surface? Or is this leading into showing us that he is truly a sociopath at this point at heart?

And let's go back to science, forensics. Detectives did find three other things of note. So first, it was a box for a.38 caliber weapon, but that box was empty. Which in all likelihood was the murder weapon of Catherine Miller. And second was a map leading to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which if you'll remember, is right near where Victor's body was found. And third was a piece of tape attached to the hose in his laundry room, and that tape seemed to match the tape found at the crime scene. But this next piece of evidence would reveal that Elsie Underwood didn't think of everything.

Remember those threatening typed letters that Kay was getting before the murders? Police had confiscated a typewriter ribbon from the high school where Underwood would work from time to time. But remember, Kay had asked police to stop the investigation into Underwood. Well, after the murders, that ribbon was sent to a technician. And guess what? It was a match. That is my favorite piece of evidence in the entire case. And really just because it is real life CSI. You know, as a prosecutor, you spend so much time talking to juries about there is no real life CSI in the way that you see things portrayed on the show.

There's never going to be the typewriter that the typeface is going to show you the year that something, but they actually had it here. So, you know, I just loved it as a very cool piece of showing how forensics and this type of CSI investigation is sometimes exactly that real life. You know, Anasika, I doubted that he ever believed that that would be his Achilles heel. and this type of CSI investigation is sometimes exactly that, real life. You know, Anastasia, I doubted that he ever believed that that would be his Achilles heel, but it was. But there's still more. The report soon came back from the lab that hair fibers that had been found in Underwood's trunk came back to Victor Gunnarsson.

After jumping through a bunch of hoops, we found out that it was a mitochondrial DNA match, and mitochondria comes from the maternal side of your family. And so the fact that no one other than Victor Gunnarsson and his family had ever been in the United States made it conclusive for us that that was Victor Gunnarsson's head hair. Let's talk for a moment about how full of fear Kay's life must have been. I mean, just think about this. Her mother's murdered. So she's reeling from that. Then she finds out that her new boyfriend is murdered.

It's being linked back to her ex-boyfriend, who is a police officer. Remember, it took almost two years before he was put under arrest. So all that time, he is local, he's in town. And at this point, she knows what he's capable of because he was suspected from pretty early on. They just didn't have the evidence to prove it. It is a difficult situation to understand that the person that you were with not only killed your mother, but killed the person that you had a relationship with. And because of that relationship, because of the jealousy and the rage that Elsie Underwood had. So Kay's life has been absolutely miserable. It has been one of fear and just terror because we couldn't get him in jail. And she knew that he had killed and was afraid that he was going to do something to her or to Jason with good reason. Now, Paula finally had the evidence she needed to make the arrest and working hand in hand with prosecutors to make that happen.

So we were very excited. We had worked that case for, you know, two and a half years before we had enough evidence. We had lots of circumstantial evidence, but, you know, physical evidence to satisfy the district attorney that he could successfully prosecute that case. Underwood was transported by Paula back to the sheriff's office. And to say the least, that ride was quite uncomfortable. So we met them and then transported them in our car. It was me and the sheriff and the SBI agent and Underwood. And I sat in the back seat with Underwood all the way back up to the sheriff's office. And it was really bizarre. He would not speak with the sheriff or with the SBI agent, but he would speak to them through me. For instance, he would say, would you ask him if he could turn the air up or down, you know, whatever. And he's sitting right

behind him. I just kind of grinned under my breath because he is such a manipulator. And so I knew right away that I was the youngest, I was female, whatever he wanted, he was going to try to get out of me. Underwood and his defense team would challenge the prosecution's case at every turn, which obviously is their right. But at the end of the day, the jury came back and quickly with a guilty verdict. They very quickly found him guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping. And at that point, then we had to go into a whole new sentencing hearing because once he's convicted of first- degree murder and it's a capital case, the jury has to make a recommendation to the penalty, which is either life in prison or the death penalty.

And they found 11 to 1 for the death penalty, but it had to be unanimous. And so he got life in prison for the first degree murder and 40 years to be served consecutively on the first degree kidnapping. But that's not the end of our story. Underwood began to threaten Paula from prison. He became somewhat obsessed with me. In fact, from prison, he was conspiring with other inmates who were about to get out on, you know, doing things to me and another investigator. She knew he was already a dangerous man. And we've seen in cases that, you know, people who are even incarcerated have the opportunity to reach out and harm somebody using somebody else or asking someone to hurt someone on their behalf.

But even after we got enough to arrest him and then we had the trial and he was sentenced, but even then, Kate's life was just a terror. You know, there's so much that we can talk about in this case. And, you know, certainly one of them is the fact that Underwood is not just a killer, but he was a killer who was wearing a badge. You know, he took that oath to serve and protect, and he ultimately used it as his own personal sword, you know, helping him get away with some of his crimes. And I became more and more angry and insulted that, you know, someone who shared my same profession was, you know, so devious and so

evil. I did not care for that one bit. And I took it personally. I did not care for the fact that he was in my same profession and had taken advantage of resources that we had and used our knowledge against somebody personally and had tormented and tortured Kay the way that he had done. hopefully protect themselves and not endure what she's had to face, but that she goes on with strength and purpose and the power that Elsie Underwood tried to take away. In the end, we learn that Victor Gunnarsson was not responsible for the assassination of the Swedish prime minister because somebody else had come forward and confessed. So Victor Gunnarsson was more of a lover than a killer. Tune in next week

for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frosetti Media. Ashley Flowers and Sumit David are executive

producers. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?