Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: The Signal Mountain Murders

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

A summer joyride turns deadly when three men are viciously gunned down in the hills of southern Tennessee.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-signal-mountain-murders/ 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today takes us deep into the woods on the borders of Appalachia. An evening joy ride turns deadly when three men are gunned down on their way to a local landmark, leaving behind a haunting mystery. This is the story of the Signal Mountain Murders. On the evening of July 9, 1988, in the woods of Signal Mountain in southeastern Tennessee, a family adventure is about to get underway.

Signal Mountain is actually a town and not the official name of a specific mountain, but it's what the locals call their part of Walden's Ridge. The population growth has been slow over the past 150 years or so, but as more people have moved into the region, more public land has gone into private hands. Signal Mountain is this really gorgeous suburb of Chattanooga, covered in rolling hills and ridges, breathtaking skies and trees as far as the eye can see. Signal Mountain is situated kind of between a pair of good-sized natural markers, the Chickamauga and the Chattanooga National Military Park to the south, and the Prentice Cooper

State Forest to the east with the Signal Point Lookout, right there on Walden's Ridge, listed as a military park district. For visitors, it's an outdoorsy person's paradise and the perfect place to get back to nature without going too far off the beaten path. For local residents who spent their whole lives learning these woods, it's home. So tonight, with that in mind, a woman named Martha Mason isn't all that worried as she stands outside her house watching her husband Richard, their son-in-law Kenneth Griffith, and Kenneth's friend Earl Smock get ready to head out to a local swimming spot called

the Blue Hole. The Blue Hole is a really popular spot and something of a landmark in the region, and it also happens to be one of Kenneth's favorite places on earth. It's like three miles north of the Mason's house located just off the Tennessee River. Richard, Kenneth, and Earl are totally ready for a good time, like they've got the cooler packed and everything. Richard's also got his pistol packed in his ATV's toolbox just in case. Which I mean, to me at least, is totally in line with being in such a rural area.

Totally. Now, there aren't any roads that lead to the Blue Hole, so to get there, the three men have to off-road it, and since Richard knows the land so well and all three guys are experienced ATV writers, Martha's not worried about them at all. She and her daughter Paula stay in the yard with them for a little while, hanging out, chatting with the men while they rev their engines and get pumped up for their ride. And finally, at around 6pm, they take off for the swimming hole. So Martha and Paula wave goodbye and go back inside.

The men still aren't back yet by the time Martha goes to bed, but she's not worried. That is, not until the next morning when she wakes up and Richard, Kenneth, and Earl still haven't come home. As she told unsolved mysteries for their segment about this story, at first, Martha thinks maybe they stopped somewhere for the night and just haven't gotten back yet. It was kind of cloudy the night before, so in her mind, it's totally possible that they got lost without the moonlight. Or even maybe they ran out of gas or decided, you know, it's better safe than sorry in that

kind of terrain, a dark, you know, just, let's just camp it out, out there, or something. Yeah, exactly. But deep in her gut, there's just this little seed of doubt that something is wrong. And as the morning goes on with no sign of them, that seed starts to grow bigger and bigger until finally in the late evening, Martha calls the police to report the men missing. So while she waits for the police to arrive, the Masons get their friends together and start searching themselves immediately.

But what they don't know when they start this search is that at some point, right in this same time frame on Sunday evening, somebody else calls the police too. According to court records, a local resident calls in to tell police that he was driving along Roberts Mill Road about five miles away from the Masons house when he pulled over to check one of his tires. At first, everything out in the woods seemed normal. But then he noticed something shocking. There down at the bottom of this super steep hill, he says he found three abandoned ATVs.

So is this near the blue hole? No, that is what's so odd. So the blue hole is up a few miles north of where the Masons live. But the ATVs are found a few miles pretty much like due east from their house. So police hurry out to this spot and there's no sign of any of the riders, which is concerning enough on its own, but only gets worse when police look closer at the ATVs. And they see that two of the vehicles are covered in what looks like blood. Now interestingly, the third ATV doesn't have any blood on it, which stands out right

away to police. When they go through some of the things that get left behind to see if they can get any clues as to who was riding these ATVs or what happened to them, they find a pistol tucked safely into one of the vehicle's toolboxes. So you said this was happening about the same time that the missing person's report was filed. Do these cops out there with the ATVs already know about the missing guys? Different sources seem to say different things about the exact timeline, like unsolved mysteries hints that yes they do, but then investigation discoveries, Bloodlands episode, Signal Mountain

Murders says that they found out about the missing guys after they found the ATVs. So to be honest, I'm not 100% sure. But what I do know though is that they're connected very quickly, like the very same night and police race against time to search the woods as thoroughly as they can before dark, but eventually they have to call off their search until the next morning. The next day, which was Monday morning, about 36 hours after the three guys first went missing, a team of about 100 officers and local volunteers are right back out there in the rain, searching an area of around four square miles for any trace of the three guys.

According to court records, police set up this kind of like command post out there in the woods to really like centralize their operations. And it's out at this command post that police get a tip from another one of the Signal Mountain locals who tells police that he heard gunshots around 7 or 7.30 on Saturday night. Which kind of fits our timeline, but as someone who grew up in a super rural area as well, you kind of hear that stuff from hunters on the regular. Well yes, except July in this area is not hunting season. And this man tells police that's a big part of why these gunshots stood out to him in

the first place. And it wasn't like one blast from a rifle. He says that he heard between five and eight shots go off fast within about a second of each other and it was coming from an area he calls the gate. So armed with this new information, searchers expand their area to include a trail known locally as the Helican Road and this Helican Gate, which they don't actually show up on Google Maps. So trust me when I say that we're like still in the woods a few miles away from where the

ATVs were. The Helican Road is a path people use to get to the blue hole. So it's pretty well traveled. But when they get to this gate area, it looks a bit different than usual because it looks like someone's been back there like tidying up, which I know sounds weird for the woods, but basically like the leaves and brush on the forest floor look like they've almost been like swept and there is no sense of like that randomness that you would normally get in nature.

You know what I mean? Like the whole place just looks like. It's kind of in like brushed off the path or out of the way. I can actually picture what you're saying exactly like it's all just kind of like neat and manicured. Anyways, as the search team is walking through the forest near the Helican Gate, which actually doesn't have a gate anymore, but it used to so the locals still call it like the gate. But anyways, they're walking through this area and nature kind of gives them a nudge

in the right direction like broken twigs or something. Right broken twigs, according to unsolved mysteries, a glimpse of some shiny, iridescent green catches an officer's eye. And when he turns to look at it, he sees a green fly land on him. So so green flies are attracted to one thing. Green flies are attracted to decaying flesh. And so police can't help but think that they must be getting close to something. And sure enough, just a short distance away from where the fly landed outside of the places

in the forest around the gate that looked like they'd been cleaned up. They find two pools of blood and a cooler. Now this is the same kind of cooler that the three men left with the day that they went missing. The Daily News Journal reported that in addition to the blood, police also find hair, bone fragments and brain tissue. More than enough evidence to tell them that this is a crime scene. Now they don't find any bullets or shell casings, but in this same area, hidden in the leaf

litter, searchers find a pocket knife. So okay, I know you told me that one of the ATVs didn't have any blood on it. So once police find all this physical stuff, are they thinking that maybe one of the three guys shot the other two and then took off on foot? So according to Bloodlands, police have this theory super early on in the first day or so that since the friend Earl's ATV was the clean one, they're thinking maybe he did something to Richard and Kenneth who are related. And then like you said, took off.

But both Martha and Paula are adamant that even though they aren't related to Earl, they know him. He's like a stand-up guy who would never hurt anyone. And an article from the Kingsport Times News mentions police have other evidence to suggest that Earl might have jumped off his vehicle and ran. Okay, but what other evidence though? Because that's not enough to convince me that Earl didn't shoot Kenneth and Richard before taking off running.

I read in the Jackson Sun that bone chips are found on one of the ATVs, but neither that article nor court records clarify if it's on Earl's clean ATV or maybe one of the others. So to be honest, I'm not sure what the evidence is or why police think it rules out Earl as attacking Kenneth and Richard, but basically all the physical evidence police have gets sent back to the lab for testing while officers stay out in the woods to keep searching. Even though it feels like almost a foregone conclusion that Kenneth, Earl, and Richard have been shot, they refuse to give up hope of finding them alive.

According to that same article I just told you about, the local sheriff's department that's in charge of the investigation actually gets some help from the Tennessee state government in their search efforts. You see, the state's doing its part for the Reagan era war on drugs with their own like marijuana eradication task force. And since they're already in the area looking for pot plants, they offer to help with the search. And in fact, both the police and this task force are kind of wondering at this point

if these disappearances could be drug related. Like maybe on the way to Blue Hole, these three guys stumbled on like some kind of illegal operation or, you know, illegal crop and someone came across them who would do anything to keep them from talking about it. Okay, but have police found any crops or operations to support this theory though? No, so not at this point. It's just one of the many theories that they're looking into because again, honestly, they can't come up with any clear motive about why anyone would want to hurt any of these

guys. I mean, Kenneth and Earl are both stationed out of state in Florida and Richard doesn't have any enemies that police can find yet. So they're just not ruling out anything. But what I will say is that while Richard doesn't have any enemies, police do learn from some of the local residents that trespassing is a pretty common issue around these parts and some landowners take it more seriously than others. Now, one person in particular is known to have threatened people with a gun within the

last month to keep them away from the swimming hole on his land. Wait, is that the Blue Hole? The article just says, quote, a popular swimming hole without saying one way or the other. And another article I found mentions that there are numerous swimming holes in the area, so the TBD. And remember, even though the land around Signal Mountain is all divided up into private property, a lot of locals still treat it as pretty communal land, but not this dude. Like clearly, if he's like pointing guns at people, he's not having any of it.

As the investigation continues into Monday afternoon, police ask all the local property owners to come to the search area. One of the people that shows up is this guy named Frank Castile. Frank owns land right near the Blue Hole. And there's some conflict in my source material about whether or not he actually owns the Blue Hole itself, but at the very least, the Helican Road on the way to the Blue Hole actually passes through his property. So the blood and the brain tissue was found on this guy's land.

Now, Frank agrees to let police search his jeep, and in the process, they find this weird book. According to William Watts reporting in the Chattanooga, it's a logbook of every single person that's trespassed on Frank's land. This dude has kept detailed records of all these encounters since he and his wife bought their property just a couple of months ago. And it's not just like some guy in this kind of truck crossed my land. Frank has names, phone numbers, and license plate numbers.

Yeah, he's not messing around. And when police ask Frank if he owns a shotgun, he admits that he does. Now, right away, police's senses are tingling about this guy. So they decide to dig a little deeper and ask Frank if they can examine his shotgun. And once again, Frank says, sure, go ahead, and he passes it over for some ballistic tests. As they keep questioning him to see what he was doing during the time when the men went missing or to see if he heard the same shots that the other witness did, Frank tells him that he spent the weekend camping, actually right out near the Blue Hole with his wife,

but he didn't hear any gunshots. Now, seems sus to me, but all police can do while they're waiting for the results on Frank's gun is to keep searching, keep investigating both on the ground with their sniffer dogs and from the sky with helicopters. At some point during their searches, they come across a woman's purse, some beat up tennis shoes, a wallet, and a checkbook, none of which belong to the missing men. All these items are collected, though, and still taken back for analysis. According to the Jackson Sun by Tuesday, this is three days after they were first reported

missing, police are more sure than ever that the missing men are victims of foul play. They've put together a list of 15 separate possibilities about what could have happened to Richard, Earl, and Kenneth. Like I said, police aren't ruling anything out, no matter how strange it sounds, including the possibility of devil worship. Now, you know I love to roll my eyes at a good like satanic panic moment. And as fear spreads across Signal Mountain with few answers and few clues about exactly what happened, police have to investigate these alleged sightings of satanic activity.

But surprise, surprise, there is no evidence that devil worship has anything to do with what happened or was even happening anywhere on Signal Mountain. One time, and nothing in my research says exactly when, but right in these early days, police do get some of their test results back, and they show trace amounts of lead on the bone fragments, leading police to believe that the men were attacked with a shotgun. Then, four days after the three men vanished, directly west of Signal Mountain, over in Marion County, Tennessee, on Suck Creek Mountain, a woman named Portia goes out on a walk. She lives out near the Prentice Cooper State Forest, and just like Signal Mountain, this

is a gorgeous, woodsy area, green as far as I can see, the Tennessee River rushing peacefully through the trees, I mean, this is nature at nature's best. Except today, as Portia is walking by the local trash dump, she catches a whiff of something terrible. Whatever's in the air today goes way beyond the normal garbage smell. It is just totally disgusting, and she knows something is terribly wrong. Portia hurries home to tell her husband, Bernie, and when he goes out to have a look, he makes a shocking discovery.

There, at the bottom of the dump, are three bodies. Bernie and Portia call the police right away, and law enforcement hurries out to the dump. According to another article in the Kingsport Times News, police find three bodies stacked, one on top of another. And while they don't have any idea on them, two of the three are wearing Air Force-issued flight suits, and it seems pretty clear that they have found Richard, Kenneth, and Earl. So how far is this from Signal Mountain? So the Leaf Chronicle reported that this is about 10 miles outside of where the search

teams have been looking, and five miles from where the blood pools were found. And this was interesting. It's like in the opposite direction of the ATVs, which I know all sounds like so complicated over audio, so I actually drew a map of this, and here I can have you look at it. Okay, so I have this map, and the Mason's home is kind of right in the center of everything. And directly north of that is the murder site, and directly like southeast is where the ATVs were found, kind of like a, almost like a triangle of those three locations. Then on the furthest west point of this map is where the bodies were found, so in a completely

different area. Right, and we're gonna have this up on our blog for anyone listening who wants to kind of like orient themselves as well. But between the different locations of the blood, the bodies in the ATVs, police are now thinking that someone or multiple people made an effort to hide the bodies and the vehicles to cover up the crime, and that in order to do this, the person had to be familiar with the area and the backwood trails between Signal Mountain and Suck Creek Mountain. Otherwise, like, they'd have had to transport the bodies on a main highway, which doesn't

make sense. Police also form the conclusion that based on what they know so far, their killer is possibly a local resident, someone who might have even known the victims. As news of the bodies being found spreads through the local grapevines, police also have to contend with the fear spreading throughout the area's residents. I mean, this is generally a really safe place to live, so with not one, not two, but three victims dead in a vicious slaying, everyone is terrified that their bubble of safety and serenity out in nature has been popped forever.

And that is when it happens. When fear and panic is at an all-time high, the investigation takes an unexpected twist. Police end up linking that wallet, shoes, purse, and checkbook that they had found in the woods to a man named Mark Miley. This guy's from Crossville, Tennessee, which is about an hour and a half north of Chattanooga. And get this, Mark has been missing for over eight months. What? According to Mike Moser's reporting in the Tennessean, Mark's mom tells police that

she hasn't seen him since November when he packed his bags and said that he was leaving Crossville to start over in Chattanooga. Does Mark have any connection to the Signal Mountain area at all? Not that police can find, and here's the thing, as odd as this is, police can't find anything to link Mark's disappearance to the murders. To me, this feels like a huge coincidence, though. Was Mark actually reported missing by anyone? Did he even make it to Chattanooga at all?

Did he somehow know Earl or Kenneth or Richard? I have so many questions about this. Me too, and I wish I could tell you more about what happened to Mark, but here's what's so bizarre. There is literally crickets out there about him. No follow-up, no is he still missing, no was he reported missing. I can't tell you this is connected officially, police say no, but I can't even make a determination because I can't find anything.

All I know is from that same Tennessean article that says Mark did have a few outstanding warrants for writing bad checks back when writing bad checks was a thing, but I couldn't find anything else about what happened to him. Or get this, I couldn't even find anything to say whether or not police ever determined that he was actually 100% missing and not just running away from his legal problems or really did just decide to start a new life. I was going to say he even said supposedly that he wanted to start fresh or whatever. Which he might have done, right?

Yeah. Once police get the autopsy results back from the county medical examiner, their theories are confirmed. It is their three missing men and all three men died from gunshot wounds. Their time of death is estimated to be between 6pm and 8pm on the evening of July 9th, so not too long after they left the mason's house, and authorities believe that they never even made it to the blue hole. Court records say Kenneth died instantly from a single shot to the left side of his head,

whereas Richard died from a single shot to the chest. And based on how close the shotgun pellets in his body are, it's believed that he was shot from close range. The medical examiner's report also finds that Earl was the only one of the three guys who was shot more than once. And didn't you say earlier that the police were thinking that one of the guys got off his ATV and maybe tried to run away? Yes.

Because to me, if Earl was trying to escape, that would kind of fit with him being shot multiple times. Right, yeah. And that's definitely part of the theory that they're working with now. Unlike Richard and Kenneth, who were both hit with a buckshot, the medical examiner finds that Earl was hit first with a bird shot. So that's basically like these smaller pellets. But his second wound is a buckshot.

So it's super strange. So it almost feels like whoever is shooting them is kind of just pulling casings and shots out of like a bag. Like there's no rhyme or reason. It's not a case. There's no preparation. It's kind of like reaching in and grabbing whatever's there, loading the shotgun and shooting from there.

Or it could be two different people, but you would think you would see the bird shot more than once. I don't know. Again, I've never shot a rifle. But more consistency in that, right? I don't know if it's normal. Like I know it's normal to have different types of ammo. I guess I just don't know if it's normal to like go out with like a handful of like just

whatever you find and just like load and shoot. I have no idea. In my mind, like if you're that serious about trespassers on your land, which is kind of like the angle that I think everyone is kind of considering to a certain extent, then maybe yeah, like you just grab whatever's there. If it's targeted, it might be different. I mean, I don't understand how people can shoot other people. So there's a lot of things I don't understand.

Very accurate. Now, the report goes on to say that Earl was shot once in the right shoulder at close range like Richard and Kenneth, and then again in the side piercing his heart. And because it was that close, the round left behind two pieces of shotgun wadding. According to court records, the second wound is consistent with a shooter standing over him, possibly looking right in Earl's eyes before they pulled the trigger. So remember how I told you earlier that police collected a shotgun from one of the signal mountain locals?

Yeah, Frank with like the trespassers logbook, Frank with the logbook, right? So little by little, the pieces look like they're coming together. You see all 12 people in Frank's logbook tell police he was definitely armed when he confronted them about trespassing. And police already know that he owns a shotgun. Well, as it turns out, the shotgun police collected from the signal mountain local belonged to Frank Castile. He was the guy that they took it from.

So at some point, ballistic experts compare the wadding found in Earl's wounds to wadding from Frank's shotgun. But according to the Chattanooga, the tests are inconclusive, which I don't know a lot about shotguns, but all this comes from like what we did on counterclock. But you can't actually like prove something came from a specific shotgun, but you can prove that it's like the same type of wadding. So what I'm thinking this means is that yes, it's the same type of wadding, but that wadding could have come from any gun.

You can't say that it came from Frank's gun. And I think that's what they mean by inconclusive. Right. So with the autopsy reports in tow, along with all the other physical evidence and information law enforcement has gathered from the locals, police announced to the press that they're about ready to take their case to a prosecutor, but they don't give any insight about what's holding them up. Like they say, we've got this.

It's going to happen. It's going to happen. But by the time July turns into August, nothing has happened. There's still no arrest. In early August, about three weeks after the bodies were first discovered, the Jackson Sun reported that the Tennessee governor authorized a $5,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction in Richard Kenneth and Earl's murders. Just a few days later, Crime Stoppers adds another $1,000 and police are hopeful that

the extra money will be all the motivation someone needs to start talking. And here's the thing. It might actually work. You mean someone called in a tip? I think so. This police are keeping a lot of their information close to the chest right now. I'm not exactly sure when this tip comes in or exactly how, but according to another article in the Tennessean, two unidentified men were seen in a blue or silver pickup truck

on the night of Earl Kenneth and Richard's murder. One of the guys has a beard. Now it doesn't say if that was the driver or the passenger. And while driving the pickup truck is totally par for the course in the wilds of Tennessee, this truck looked like it just so happened to be carrying three ATVs. So police go hard looking for any piece of information that they can get their hands on about who these guys might be. Unfortunately, they come up with nothing.

And so this lead goes nowhere. Now in addition to those two guys, that same Tennessean article mentions police are looking for a woman too. She was seen out on that fateful Saturday night deliberately blocking traffic near where the bloody ATVs were found. Like she seemed super annoyed and wouldn't let anybody drive through. That seems a little bit sus. Super sus.

But just like with the two guys in the truck, police are unable to track down her name. Now the investigation continues through the rest of 1988 and into February of 89 when unsolved mysteries come to film a piece on the murders. But the months keep passing and as the one year anniversary of the murders approaches with no arrests and no closure, police remain tormented by this same feeling they've had since day one that the killer has to be familiar with this area. And kind of like a bad toothache. The feeling just keeps getting stronger as the investigation continues.

Feeling they know keeps pointing them back to the same place, back to the same person. Who? Police won't say. Like I said, law enforcement is not revealing a lot of information. It's basically like on a need to know level. So they won't name this person in the media. But what I find super interesting is that one of the lead detectives actually goes on record saying that they know who did it.

They just can't prove it until they get more evidence. And so all they can do is keep working, keep waiting, and keep hoping while the case grows colder every day. Unsolved mysteries goes to air with their signal mountain segment in January of 1990, a year and a half after the murders. The Johnson City Press reported that the segment sparks new tips from all over the country. And as I'm sure you can imagine, some of them are more legit than others. Like one woman who saw the show calls in and tells police that in order to solve the crime,

they need to have a block party, essentially. Like invite the neighbors and as many men as they possibly can who drive pickup trucks. Oh, that's a short list, I'm sure. Yeah. And then, no, it gets better. Then she basically says everyone needs to join like a group hypnosis session. Okay, one, as someone who knows a lot of guys who drive pickup trucks, I would love to see anybody try to convince them to join a group hypnosis session.

Right. But also, it reminds me of the case we covered in our live show when we talk about, you know, you can get a thousand tips and 90 or 999 would be terrible, but you have to hunt down every single one of them. Right. But, you know, this is right in line of what we're used to with cold cases. And for their part, the police seem to handle it pretty well. They're just like, thanks, but no thanks.

We're going to like not go with the hypnosis session. And they kind of just reiterate once again that they are sure they know who the killer is. We don't need the block party, but all they're missing is a critical piece of the puzzle. And it would take them six more long years to get that piece. In October of 1996, just over eight years after the murders, one of the lead detectives is at home when he gets a strange phone call. According to the Daily News Journal, a woman is on the other line.

And while she won't give out her name or any of her personal information, she tells him that if he wants to solve the signal mountain murders, he should talk to a woman named Marie Hill. Wait, who's Marie Hill? Well, this anonymous caller tells the detective she's Frank Castile's mistress. But just hearing that name makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Because for eight long years, Frank Castile has been front and center on their list of possible suspects.

Even after the tests on Frank's gun were inconclusive, that nagging gut feeling that Frank knew more than he was saying never went away. Police go to talk to Marie Hill as soon as they can. And when they do, she tells them a bizarre story. She says that back in September, about a month after she and Frank started this affair, she got a strange letter in the mail. There was no return address, no signature. And when she opened it, she found old newspaper clippings and a letter saying Frank was a

murderer. Marie was really rattled by this, but she tells police that Frank told her not to worry about it because someone had been sending these same letters to his neighbors. So it's basically just someone who's out to get him. Yeah, and Marie was able to brush it off until she got a second letter. Now, I don't have the full text, unfortunately, but I did find a snippet in the court records. And here, Brett, I want you to share it. It says, quote, we were up there camping and these men came up there on three wheelers

and he shot them because they were disturbing him. And he sent me home. End quote. Unlike the first letter, which was anonymous, Marie says that this letter was signed by someone calling themselves boozy. To make things even creepier, Marie also tells police that her neighbors have started getting letters warning them that she's putting all of their lives in danger by having a relationship with a murderer.

Marie tells law enforcement she doesn't have the letters anymore since she gave them to Frank. So police come up with another plan. They get her permission to bug her whole house. And at first, they don't catch anything interesting. But then on October 12 at about 2 30 in the morning, Frank's wife, Susie, shows up at Marie's house while Frank is there. This conversation that they catch on tape is intense.

No holds barred. Like say everything you want to say and then some for five freaking hours. And this just blows my mind. But during this conversation, Frank has the gall to accuse Susie of trying to sabotage his relationship with Marie. Oh, wait. So he is mad that his wife, who we've already established that he's cheating on, is trying to ruin his relationship with his mistress.

Yes. Yes. But I have the wall. What? Yeah. I literally read that sentence over and over again to make sure I was like not blacking out halfway through. Processing it correctly.

Yes. But that is exactly what he was doing. Police are recording every single word as Marie, Susie and Frank hash out their weird love triangle and at some point during the conversation, Susie says something that makes law enforcement sit straight up in their seats. She claims she was quote drug down to the police station and fingerprinted end quote because of what Frank had done. She also says at one point quote what I went through eight years ago doesn't prove to

you that I love you. Oh my God. Like that's that's like the smoking gun that they're looking for. Yes. But not exactly. Because technically it's all circumstantial. So in the hopes of getting something more, police ask Marie to get those letters back and sometime in the weeks after this explosive conversation, she actually manages to get

two of the letters back. Unfortunately it's two without signatures, but she passes them over to police. Since DNA testing has come leaps and bounds from 1988 when this happened to 1996, the saliva on the stamps is analyzed and it comes back with a match to Frank's wife, Susie. And not only that, but you remember that anonymous woman who told the detective to talk to Marie in the first place? Oh my God. No.

Yes. That anonymous woman was Susie Castile. So my mind is blown. All I can think of is that episode of the office where like the last clip is the three guys standing in the conference room like pretending to point finger guns at each other in like a standoff. Yes. That's this.

This is this. That's all I can think of. This is that situation. On April 15, 1997, Frank Castile is arrested in Red Bank, Tennessee and charged with the murders of Richard Mason, Kenneth Griffith, and Earl Smock. The prosecution wants life in prison instead of the death penalty for a few reasons. According to the Tennessean, they're taking into account how the victims' families feel life in prison is more fitting, how they don't have any witnesses or a murder weapon, and

also how much of the evidence is tied to advancements in DNA technology. Frank finally goes to trial in May of 1998. The prosecution argues that his bitterness and obsession with trespassers on ATVs that tore up his land where he hoped to build his dream house spilled over into violence that cost three innocent men their lives. According to Rachel Zoll's reporting in the Johnson City Press, the prosecution argues during the trial that Frank's wife Susie and his son Donnie helped him hide the ATVs after the murders.

Neither of them have ever been charged with any crimes, though. When Susie takes the stand, and she and Frank are still married, by the way, she denies any involvement but admits to sending the letters, yet she testifies that she believes Frank is innocent. In fact, she's riddled with guilt about calling the police and writing the letters and blames her behavior on hormone fluctuations from a hysterectomy. Okay, so obviously with the infidelity that we know about, Frank and Susie had marriage problems, but was he abusive?

Because to me, that would put all of her behavior in a completely different context with what we know about domestic violence. I don't actually know if he was or not. We have nothing to say that no one's ever even actually brought that up in anything that I've read. I wasn't able to find anything in court records, but I mean, considering how often domestic violence goes unreported, it doesn't mean that it wasn't. It's just something that I don't even know that we can even have a conversation around.

Frank Castile is found guilty of all three murders on May 20th, 1998 and sentenced to life in prison. His conviction is overturned on appeal in 2001 on the grounds that the taped conversation between him, Susie and Marie apparently never should have been allowed into the trial as evidence, so Frank ends up getting granted a retrial, but he's found guilty for a second time in 2003 and once again is sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. He died in prison on May 25th, 2019 at 71 years old. His son Trevor self-published a book in 2020 called Statement of Facts, laying out why

he believes to this day that his dad was wrongfully convicted and while I haven't read the book, the back blurb alleges crime scene contamination and police misconduct as part of his argument for his father's innocence. With the families left behind, Frank's death meant something like closure at the end of 30 long years of suffering. One man's decision to stop people riding on his land by any means necessary set off a ripple effect that traveled far beyond his property lines, damaging three families and costing three lives in the process.

Nothing will ever fully heal the whole their deaths left behind, but justice took its course at long last. If you have enjoyed this story of a beautiful place upended by brutal murder and you want to hear more like it, be sure to check out our other show, Park Predators, hosted by Delia D'Ambra. Season two actually premieres tomorrow on June 1st and season one is available to binge right now, wherever you listen to podcasts or on parkpredators.com. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode, but stick around for proppit of the month. Okay, so this is a submission from one of our listeners named Ashley and she did give the warning that this is more of an Ashley flower story in that it's a little sad, but it's also happy. And that's the order of things, sad than happy. So laying it out there before we do anything else. So Ashley had her prepped soulmate tank and they were incredibly close, but Ashley's family's

financial situations changed and they actually had to move from the home that they shared with tank to a rental property that didn't allow pets and Ashley made the incredibly difficult decision to re-home tank and chose kind of a retirement rescue where older dogs get to live out their lives on a farm, which sounds like a scary cliche, but it was like a real thing. Ashley even kept in contact with the owners and got to visit tank and while she was in contact with tanks new family, she had heard that there was an issue with someone locally trying to poison neighborhood dogs.

And in the summer of 2018, tank actually became this evil person's victim. And after three days in the pet hospital, he actually officially moved out. And you know, Ashley was heartbroken. Like what would have happened if they had still had their old home? Or if she had chosen someone else to re-home tank too, like all of the what ifs she was living. Wait, who is this monster and like, why is there not a whole episode about getting justice for tanks?

Oh no, I'm writing one. I'm researching right now. Oh my God. I'm out to get this person 1000%. So I mean, Ashley is living with all these what ifs and in the almost three years since, you know, her kids have been asking you about getting another dog, they've moved, they've had opportunities to have pets again. But Ashley was just never quite ready.

And girl after my own heart, she was always browsing the pet finder websites. But she wasn't quite done with tank, you know, like you're not quite ready to move on yet. Until one day she was on a local shelter site. And that's when she saw Kristoff, what a name, an Aussie shepherd mix. And she knew he was the one. She immediately screenshot a picture to her husband and said, we have to meet him. And so they lined up a time to meet Kristoff. And when they met him, one of the volunteers told them a little bit more of Kristoff's

story. He was actually a part of a litter at the shelter that were all named after characters from Frozen. And he was adopted as a puppy with his brother named Olaf. But unfortunately being adopted together wasn't working out and the family that adopted both of them decided to keep Olaf, but re-surrender Kristoff back to the shelter where he was now. And again, Ashley from a picture knew that this was the dog for their family.

And after meeting him, she knew she wasn't wrong. And they brought him home that very night. And he was just immediately great with their kids. He even slept in the kids room with them that first night. And Ashley's husband like went in to check on them later that night after everyone had gone to bed. And Kristoff did this little bark like, hey, be quiet, my people puppies are sleeping. What are you doing here?

Which I thought was the cutest thing in the world. He bonded with them immediately. And he's so gentle and kind and smart, loves racing around with the kids in the backyard and his green squeaky monkey toy. And Ashley said her once broken heart is mending all because of Kristoff. And I'm glad that this ended happy. So it starts sad. It ends really great.

Oh my goodness. I was so happy to hear this story because I was heartbroken at the beginning. I don't know. I'm still stuck in the middle of this story. Like I'm very happy for Ashley. And I'm glad she's okay. But like, who is this monster that's poisoning dogs? We know better than anyone else.

There are monsters in this world, Ashley. I know. But like also like, okay, first of all, they're like the sweetest kindest, like the most innocent things in the world. And second of all, like that's a precursor to something much bigger. Like we all have some big things to worry about if this lunatic is just running free. Right. I need a follow-up, Ashley.

We need, like there's escalation happening right now. There are, there are puppets that are dying. Oh my God. Yeah. But I am, I am so happy for Ashley that she found her new soulmate. Yes. And Ashley, of course, wanted to make sure to mention the Oklahoma Humane Society and their amazing group of volunteers, especially the one who fostered Kristoff after he got

resurrendered and took amazing care of him before he joined their family. And as always, we'll be posting pictures of Kristoff and linking to the Oklahoma Humane Society on our website.