Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Stranger stabs professor mom to death while she bathes her children

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

When Georgia college professor Emily Mason was stabbed to death in her home while bathing her young children, investigators first suspected her husband as the killer. Nancy Grace explores the investigation, which eventually led to a stranger. Her panel includes psychologist Caryn Stark, forensics expert Karen Smith, Atlanta juvenile judge and lawyer Ashley Willcott, WTOC-TV Reporter Dal Cannady, Crime Stories reporter Robyn Walensky. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Imagine this scene. A beautiful brunette English professor at a local college found dead by who else? Her husband. He tells police he left the house for a really quick trip, just running to Walmart and back. But he says when he got home, his gorgeous wife, Emily Mason, is dead. And she didn't go easily. There was a war between the gods. She put up a fight. She was home with her two small daughters. What a coinkydink. Hubby leaves just for a short while and comes back. And all of this happens in the short moments he's gone. I'm Nancy Grace.

This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. What happened to this beautiful young professor out of Swainsboro? Joining me, an all-star panel, Karen Smith, forensics expert out of the Florida jurisdiction. Ashley Wilcott, judge, lawyer, anchor. You can find her at ashleywilcott.com. Well-known reporter, WTOC reporter, Dowell Kennedy.

Karen Stark, psychologist joining us from Manhattan. You can find her at KarenStark.com and CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, author of Beautiful Life, the CSI behind the Casey Anthony trial, Robin Walensky. Straight to Dowell Kennedy with WTOC. Dow, I want to start with the timeline and the crime scene. First of all, let's hear everything you know about the crime.

Let's hear everything you know about the crime scene. Well, you're talking about a small house in Swainsboro. The husband returns from the store, calls 911. Wait a minute. Swainsboro, let's returns from the store, calls 911. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Swainsboro, let's set the scene. Okay. I split my time, as everybody knows, between New York and Atlanta. And when I drive south from Macon, if I have to go beyond that, you go through Emanuel County.

And it is beautiful if you like wide open spaces. You're not going to find high rises or congested streets and honking horns. It is out in the country. It is beautiful. I'm not sure how many exits does Swainsboro have, Emanuel County, on the interstate? Dale, three or one? Probably three. A couple of places where you would go through an even smaller town to get to Swainsboro and then the ones that are more direct. What smaller town is there besides Swainsboro? And hey, here's where I'm coming from. I say I'm from Macon. We didn't even live in the city. We lived in rural, unincorporated Bibb County on a red dirt road with a tree in the middle of it in front of our driveway. And my grandfather dug our well,

okay, and built the house. So believe me, I'm all about small towns. But what town is smaller than Swainsboro that you have an exit? What is it? You would have Oak Park, which you pass by on the interstate. And, you know, if you blink, you've missed it. I have been to Oak Park. I have had dinner in someone's home in Oak Park. And it's lovely. And so there's the Oak Park exit. That's Emanuel County, not Swainsboro, but still in the county.

What's the other? You claim there are three exits. I'm not sure I believe you. Well, I think if you got off the Soperton exit, you could take a roundabout way to Swainsboro. Now, wait a minute. Is Soperton any manual county? No, that's Trootland County. But, you know, you'd go a roundabout way to get there.

I knew it. I knew it. I caught you in an inconsistency. And here's my point. I'm not just doing it for the fun of it, Ashley Wilcott, to torture Dow Kennedy. My point is, you've got a town, which I think I have identified as having one exit on the interstate. Okay. Who else is going to get into the area, unknown, unseen, and in that small slice of time, break in to Emily Mason's home, murder her with her children home.

And then the husband comes home miraculously from Walmart. Right, exactly. So that's the point. It's a very small community, and it's, you know, everybody knows everybody kind of community. And not only that, yeah, oh, I just ran to the store. How often have we heard that before? You know what it reminds me of, Dow Kennedy? It reminds me of my rural area, Rutland in Bibb County.

I don't know if you're familiar with that. You may be. It's off of the Hartley Bridge Road exit south of Macon. And I go to a little United Methodist Church, Liberty United Methodist Church, and I'm in Macon. And there was a guy there, a lawyer, who his family had gone to the church in the past, but he ended up dead apparently from slipping and falling everybody was like she did it long story short in this case where everybody is Ashley Wilcott just said knows each other then suddenly she ends up dead i keep asking you about the scene because

i want karen smith our forensics expert to weigh in robin tell me about the murder of emily mason what happened to her because this is significant and i'm going to have our psychologist weigh in on the significance of the mode of murder well here's deal. She was bathing her children in a bathtub and then suddenly somebody breaks into the house. And apparently, according to the medical examiner, she had knife wounds in her neck, Nancy. Somebody stabbed her with a knife three times with a steak knife. Interesting. It was a steak knife from the home. Yeah. You know, that's that's significant. Karen Stark, a psychologist. You can find her at karenstark.com, joining us today out of Manhattan.

Karen, strangulation and stabbing deaths are, I have called in the past, sweetheart murders. Not that your sweetheart did it, but the fact that you are so intimately connected with the victim. It's not like shooting them at 50 paces. You have to get up close to them. They're looking in your eyes often if you are strangling them. When you stab them, unless you do it from behind, they see you. They know you're stabbing them and you're very close

proximity to them. It's an intimate murder. So here we've got the steak knife from the home, which suggests to me, was this planned or no? Because the perp used the steak knife from the home. Karen, I mean, I've been in your apartment, your Lux pad in Manhattan with all of your many, many dogs that love to bark at the same time. People have a set of steak knives. It's very easily identifiable if it comes out of your kitchen. Not only that, Nancy, I want to go back to what you just said about a sweetheart murder, because that intimacy makes all the difference. It means that the person who's committing this crime has no problem letting that other person that they're killing know that they are doing this. So they have so much rage

and anger that they actually want the person to know. There's tremendous buildup there. And it's very, very different than walking away, not being close, letting somebody think, I don't know who it is right before they die. They're enjoying this killing this person. And the stabbing in the neck. I i mean that's clearly to kill that you know that's going to be a mortal wound i mean the phrase go for the jugular could not be any more true than it is in this case and karen smith forensics expert guys karen smith um listen to this we've done a lot of experiment recreate recreations together she's's fantastic. Karen Smith, let me talk to you about this for just one moment. It's a steak knife out of the family home. That's highly significant. You know what I

like about steak knives? They're a great way to get the perp's DNA because if they have a wooden handle, that DNA gets down in the grooves of the wood. You don't always get that with a plastic handle. You might get a good fingerprint, but you don't get that DNA down in the handle. Another thing I love about knives, Karen Smith, is that when the perp stabs, very often their hand will go down the knife, past the little hilt, and they can get sliced too. When they stab, that gives their DNA. You find it right there on the scene if you collect it properly, Karen Smith. That's absolutely right. A lot of times in sharp force injuries with knives, they will slide down the hilt.

They'll go past that and they'll cut their hand. A lot of times they'll cut their forearm if it's a frenzy type killing. And that DNA, that mixture can be found. And just looking at the bloodstains and looking at differences between the victim's blood and perhaps some passive dripping that may have been left at the scene on the way out of the crime scene, through the front door threshold, down the sidewalk, to an area where they may have had a transport, like a car, or ran away. You can follow that trail, and if it's not the victims, you can sure bet it's the perpetrator. Robin Wielicki, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, where you can find this and all other breaking crime and justice news. Robin, you said she was stabbed, I think, three times in the neck.

Was she in the tub, or were her girls in the tub, and how old were the daughters? The girls were in the tub, and I know that one of the neck was she in the tub or were her girls in the tub and how old were the daughters the girls were in the tub i know that one of the daughters was four years old was she in the tub robin she was not in the tub no she was bathing so she was bathing them you know you kind of lean over the tub and bathe your child with a washcloth or whatever so she was not in the tub but her child was in the tub oh my. Because that used to be the special time I had with the twins. I would take each one into the bathroom one at a time and let somebody else play with the other twin. And I would stay in there for like an hour with each twin before I had to go to work. We'd play in the water, we'd sing ABCs. I mean, it was a really wonderful time. And I'm thinking about her. And I mean, it was a really wonderful time. And I'm thinking about her.

And I mean, I would be completely hunched over the tub, talking to them, watching them, making sure they didn't slip underwater. Ashley, do you remember those days with your children? I can distinctly remember that. Oh, yeah, that was some of my favorite time because they loved bath and I love bath. It was the end of the exhausting day. And it was like, yeah, we get fun time in the bathtub. And then you get all the, you remember all the different like, oh, what's the foam, the pink foam called Mr. Bubbles. What is that stuff? Used to have his kids. Like we love bath time in our house when they were little.

And I would read them books in there. I immediately started teaching them their ABCs when they were just, you know, able to sit up. And I, well, for me, it wasn't the end of the day because I would bathe them. And then I'd have to climb out the back window in wet clothes from the bath. So they would know I was going to HLN to hop on the air or they'd have a big fit. But it was still one of my favorite times. And I'm trying to imagine this mom, beautiful professor, English professor, gorgeous, long brunette, shiny hair, bathing her children, her two little girls, and being stabbed literally in the jugular. A gorgeous young college professor in rural Georgia, in her home, bathing her two little girls, one of them age four,

when someone comes in, stabs her in the neck brutally. What a crime scene with the little girls watching as mommy is stabbed dead. Coincidentally, it's when daddy had left home just briefly to go to Walmart, comes home to a murder scene. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us. This is Crime Stories. I want to go to Dale Kennedy, WTOC reporter. So tell me about the husband.

What do we know about the husband? Walt Mason was also a professor at the same community college where his wife was a teacher. He taught physical education. The two of them had been on staff. They had met there and, you know, they had gotten married and had two children. And, you know, they had been there in the community for a few years when this happened. So they both taught together. You know, Karen Starr, working together is very, very difficult. Why?

Well, because it's just too much time spent together and too many differences that can come up. What if one person is doing much better than the other? There's a lot of competition. And so it's not the most ideal situation. I often work with couples that work together. I see them just to help them figure out how they can get along and make something like that turn out to be okay. It's very challenging.

To Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Robin, you know, a murder like this doesn't just happen out of the blue. What was brewing within that home before Emily was murdered right in front of her children? Well, here's the problem. When this guy comes home and he finds his wife on the floor dead with the blood and the kids, he's calling 911, Nancy, screaming and shocked that he leaves for however long he's out. And he comes home and now my wife is dead. And here's how he gets jammed up in this, is that when police ask him question number one,

were you guys separating? Were you guys getting a divorce? Are there marital problems? I mean, this is a police officer's job, police 101, I call it. And he says to the police officers who show up at the house on this 911, responding to the 911 call, oh yeah, we had marital problems. So ding, ding, ding. Now they're thinking, oh, well, she hated him. He hated her. And I believe that's how he got jammed up in this situation. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. What do you mean? I don't know what you mean by jammed up. I mean, his wife's dead on the floor while he had a convenient trip to Walmart. But what was the marital problem? I mean, they were fighting. They had arguments. As he put it, it wasn't a perfect marriage, and people argue in their relationship. To Dowell Kennedy,

WTOC reporter who has cracked a lot of stories revolving around this case, Dowell Kennedy, what was the problem? Why did he blurt out to police they had marital problems? One of the things that was brought up was that she was perhaps maybe more assertive and that he felt insecure from her success, from her academics. One person teaches an academic subject and he's teaching physical education that maybe there was some insecurity on his part, his teaching compared to hers. There were also witnesses that she was critical, openly critical of him towards other people. And, you know, he perhaps resented some of that.

Oh, my goodness ashley wilcott judge lawyer anchor you can find her ashleywilcott.com my dad was so happy my mom worked uh so proud of her achieving she went from bank teller to the cfo of a company for pete's sake i never heard him say a word and he was right there ashley um He and mother both would come to many of my trials, could not have been prouder. And so when I hear stories like this, all I can do is compare it to my dad and my husband, David. If something good happens with me, he's thrilled and likewise. And bottom line, he taught PE, she taught uh English literature the paycheck was probably the same so who cares well that's how it should be in a perfect marriage right you should have

a partner that supports you in your efforts support you in your career support you in all your successes that's how it should be but we all know that doesn't always happen egos get involved and let's be honest you Nancy, a lot of people have marital issues. So the fact he said, hey, yeah, we had marital issues. Does that mean he committed this murder? Maybe, maybe not. So Ashley Wilcott, you're the juvenile judge. The children had to see what happened. And there is a host of difficulties putting children this young on the stand. For instance, they may be nonverbal. They may be so traumatized they can't relate what they saw. They may not want to get their dad in trouble. And I remember in the Josh

Powell case, remember he killed his wife Susan Powell. Later on, years later, killed the two boys. When the two boys were asked what happened the night mommy disappeared, they drew a picture of them in the car with their dad and mommy in the car trunk. Okay, so they did not say what happened, but the picture showed it all. I worked with many, many child victims and a host of felonies. And you have to be able to spend time with them, not pressure them, get them to open up and they speak their own language. Like in every indictment, you have to give a general time period when the crime happened. I would say things like, was the Christmas tree up when this happened? Would the Easter bunny come?

Did you have, you already picked out your Halloween outfit? Things like that to get a time reference. So, Ashley, there's a host of problems with putting children on the stand. And then, of course, the defense always claims they're lying. Absolutely. So two things. Number one is when you have children make any statements, it can be used and should be used for law enforcement to thoroughly investigate and try to find other evidence that links the crime to the actual defendant who's accused of murdering this person. Number two is, yes, there are a host of issues. You know, as well as I do, though, that defendants have the right to person. Number two is, yes, there are a host of issues. You know as well

as I do, though, that defendants have the right to confront. And so theoretically, yes, the children may need to testify. What's crucial then is to do it in a child-friendly manner as much as possible to lessen the trauma to that child if they have to testify. So, Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, the girls had to see mommy get stabbed. She was bathing them. Yes, Nancy, the four-year-old definitely saw it happen. That I know for sure. I'm looking at a photo of them.

The four-year-old has the beautiful long brunette shiny hair like her mom. And the other, oh, they're so cute. Mommy's holding them, sitting on a family sofa. And the other one is really a tot. I'm not totally sure she could sit up on her own but probably so dow kennedy wtoc what can you tell me about what the girls maybe said about when mommy was stabbed in the neck during bath time she referred to it and they never really understood what she meant but she referred to the brown man or a man wearing brown being in the house

and chasing mommy, you know, from the bathroom back in, back past the bathroom, you know, in the other rooms. And they could hear, you know, they could hear commotion. Can you imagine this being the last memory of your mother, hearing her running from room to room, screaming, where the man in brown chased her? What a child will do to cover for their dad? Is that what happened? Hi, Nancy Grace here.

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Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Imagine as a child sitting in the bathtub, your mom bathing you, your little sister there, and you hear your mom running from room to room, screaming. That's your last memory of mommy. That's exactly what happened when young mom and college professor Emily Mason was murdered in her own home at her daughter's bath time. She had been bathing the two little girls, one an infant, one four years old, when she was brutally stabbed in the neck multiple times. The dad had conveniently gone to Walmart, came home to find Emily dead. For the longest time, the children couldn't speak until one child said it was the man in brown, or words to that effect.

It wasn't long after when Emily's husband was indicted, Walter C. Mason Jr. Is it true he was indicted, was booked, and two years passed to Dow Kennedy WTOC? Yes, the whole community was waiting on Walt Mason to face trial and for, you know, the evidence to come forward. So Dowell Kennedy, WTOC, he's charged with murder, a brutal murder. His children are taken away from him, of course. He's on bond. He has to wait two years. In fact, he actually had to leave Emanuel County. He was so shunned. He left the county. Of course, Ashley Wilcott, judges will order no contact with the children or only supervised contact, right?

So he had no way of knowing exactly what his children were saying. Right, Ash? Absolutely. That's typical. Why is that? Well, it's because they don't. He's accused of the crime, right? Somebody else has these children and they do not want him to be around the children unsupervised because they're fearful, probably rightfully so, if somebody's been charged, that something's going to happen to those children, that they're going to do something

to the children. You're right. They're witnesses. They're witnesses to mommy's brutal stabbing death. But then everything changed. Because not long after that, somebody robbed a coffee store employee at knife point. Somebody robbed a coffee store employee at knife point. Emphasis on knife point. And the robber was not Emily's husband, Walter C. Mason,

Jr. The robber was Philip Scott Kirby, Sr. Dale Kennedy, did the coffee shop robbery occur in Swainsboro? It did. So you've got in a very, very small town, a rural area, another knife-related incident, a violent knife-related incident. But still, it means nothing to Emily's murder. But the fact that he robbed at knife point, Karen Stark, typically in this day and age, robberies are done with a gun. The fact that he used a knife, another knife-related incident in this small town to me is a red flag. Right there, Karen Stark. Yeah, especially because it's a small town. They

don't see that many incidents of people being killed. And as we said before, this is somebody who murders and enjoys it. So wants that contact and intimacy that we talked about. And that would make them wonder. I always think about why you would want money so badly. You would hold someone at knife point or gun point to get it. It's a whole nother mentality. It's not like you're going into Macy's and shoplifting. It's not like you're picking up a $5 bill off the ground and not trying to find out who did it. You're willing to hold a knife to somebody's face to take their money. And you mean it. They're so afraid they give you what you want. It's that mentality. It's probably something most of us cannot relate to. So you've got another knife incident in a very small town. Now, let me ask you this. Dow Kennedy, WTOC, what was Philip Scott Kirby Sr. doing for a living at the time Emily was murdered at bath time? He was a repairman.

He was a repairman. What kind of repairman? What did he do? Like refrigerators, heating, what? Heating and air conditioning. So this is the guy that did water heaters, heating and air repairs in Swainsboro. Can I ask you one question, Dow Kennedy? What color was his uniform? Brown. Well, brown shirt.

Other than having a brown shirt on, what else can you tell me, Dale Kennedy? What can you tell me about a pair of sweatpants at the scene of Emily's murder in that blood-soaked scene and a wedding band? The hair was sort of a mystery that they could not match it up to anything until Philip Kirby is convicted, he is sent to prison, and his DNA is put into the state database. His DNA matches up to that hair. Wow. Now, what he can argue, of course, what Philip Kirby can argue

is that he did repairs in the home, and that was simply one of his hairs. We know Kirby had worked in Emily's home as a repairman, but what more can you tell me? Because somebody's got to explain away his wedding band, Robin Walensky. Was that his wedding band? Yeah, it was his wedding band. During the crime, he dropped his wedding band. He didn't wear the wedding band on his finger like a normal person does because he's using his hands to fix things in the house, the heat and the air conditioner, his wedding band, he was wearing it on a chain. I've seen women do this where you wear the wedding band on a chain instead of on your finger. Well, as a guy, he did the same thing because he's using his hands. And in the context of the crime,

when he's running after her with the knife, running down the hallway, stabbing her in the neck, the wedding band that's on a chain around his neck falls off. And he's claiming it's not his ring, but it is his ring. Here's the reality, though. He was just in the home the day before making a repair. That's his defense. Well, it was unusual, Nancy, for a case to progress like it did and then go in a completely different direction. Initially, the husband, Walt Mason, was the prime suspect, was arrested, was even indicted. And, you know, from what you might consider circumstantial evidence, when, you know, with a spouse or, you know, a person is found murdered, you know, most of the time the first suspect is the spouse. And his alibi was, I had gone to the store for a few minutes, you know, just across town in the small town of Swainsboro. When I came back, my wife is brutally murdered

here in the floor. The kids are in the other room. You know, investigators had a hard time believing that. A beautiful young college professor, Emily Mason, bathing her two infant girls when she's stabbed brutally in the neck. Her husband, almost immediately under suspicion, arrested and indicted. He is so shunned in the Swainsboro neighborhood. And why shouldn't he be? The girls are taken away. It was so bad he moved out of the county. And then in a fluke, two years later, another guy, Philip Kirby, robs a coffee shop at knife point. He gets arrested. He has to submit to DNA and bam, the case breaks wide open. His DNA matches hair at the scene of Emily's murder years before. And a wedding ring is found. It's his wedding ring. Then he explains, well, you know what? I work on home repairs. I wear it on a chain around my neck. It fell off. You can't frame me for murder. But what about this

Dale Kennedy, WTOC reporter? How can you explain that the night of Emily's murder, he is found covered in blood in a car near the home? His claim was that he was in a car wreck. And that that was the explanation for his wounds and for the blood. Darn. Oh, he's got an answer for everything. But wait a minute, Robin Walensky. What did he say about the wedding band? Did he say he lost the wedding band during the car wreck?

He can't explain away the wedding band. Yes, he could say anything, that he lost it in the car wreck, that he lost it here, he lost it there, it's not his ring. He's got every excuse in the book. But he stages, Nancy, this car accident. This car accident is just two miles from the house, and he drives his vehicle into a ditch. Idiot.

So he gets hurt. What an idiot. Karen Stark, why do you have to, why don't you just go home and clean up? Why stage a car crash? I don't know if he was such an idiot, Nancy, because he was worried, I'm guessing, that if he went home, maybe that his wife, the wedding band he wore around his neck, would notice that there was all this blood. There must have been that much blood that he felt he couldn't get away with going home. And so he decided to crash his car and make it look as though he had been in this terrible accident, and that was the reason for the blood.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practiced to deceive it worked ashley wilcott can you imagine him ashley in the car leaving the murder and then he touches his neck and finds out the wedding band isn't there listen the good news for us is criminals are not always what smart they're not and they panic and they make stupid decisions and do stupid things and quite frankly despite the dna evidence matching up to the hair there prosecutors felt that's just not enough he was just in the home repairing the day before even though the little girl says it was the man in brown uh there were arguments that she may have said the brown man versus the man in brown. They still didn't feel

they had a case, and then Kirby was set to be released on the coffee store robbery. Then evidence comes forward. The state digs. They dig and they dig, and they find the receipt for that wedding band. It's the same exact wedding band found in the home. Listen to this. The unsolved murder of Emily Mason has kept tongues wagging in Emanuel County for more than a decade. Today, prosecutors made their move, had arrested their suspect in this case, just as he was about to walk out of prison a free man. Philip Kirby traded one jumpsuit for another and walked into Superior Court to hear the charge of felony murder against him. Judge Kathy Palmer told him he's accused in the 2002 murder of Emily Pastana Mason, a wife and mother assaulted in her family's home.

Had just recently had decided to review older case files and based on the review of that case file, it was determined that it was time to proceed forward with it. Wow. You're hearing our friend, Dal Kennedy from WTOC, who is with us right now. You know, one thing always stuck in my mind, Dal, the entire time when the husband, Walter, was being shunned, when his children were not really allowed to see him after his wife's murder, when everyone thought he was guilty, her family stood by him. Her family, Emily Mason's family, and his family, of course, stood by him. They never believed it, Dale. Is that true? It is. They were extremely supportive. It was interesting, the time frame of that, because prosecutors announced Philip Kirby as a person of interest, as a suspect, when they dropped the

charges against Walt Mason. And Philip Kirby went to prison and served his full term. And that's why there was, you know, more than a decade between him named as a suspect before he ever went to trial. Is it true, Dow Kennedy, that this guy, Philip Scott Kirby Sr., had a prior rape charge? Yes, that is true. a witness of a co-worker that when he had come back from the Mason house, was talking about her and said that he was going to go back to see her sometime. Well, you know, I've been wondering over and over and over in my mind, Robin, what was the motive? And now we know. He was in the home the day before doing a hot water heater repair, and he sees her. And it reminds me of the recent case of Jamie Closs. The perp in that case is behind a school bus, and he sees Jamie Closs, the little girl, get off the school bus, the redheaded girl.

And he says, I'm taking her. It's just like that. Can I tell you what happened to me uh Karen Stark I was a prosecutor I was having I tried to paint the inside of my house and I was just running out of time working working working so I finally hired some guy a friend of a friend whatever recommended I was getting ready to leave one morning. He came in to finish the painting. Do you know this guy had to be 6'5", grabbed me, and kissed me right on the mouth? Right on the mouth, Karen Stark! Well, that inspired a section in my new book, Don't Be a Victim.

But when you invite, let people in your home, that's a very tricky situation, Karen. Can you imagine this perv telling people at work, I saw this beautiful mom. I want to go back and see her. And not being aware of the fact that, I mean, how ridiculous, Nancy, that he doesn't think, well, somebody might take notice of that. The fact that I'm saying I want to go back and check this woman out. And it's hard to hear that story about you. How awful. People have to be very, very careful when there's a stranger in your home. That needs to really be pushed into everybody's consciousness. I don't want to sound

like I'm blaming her because I'm not. She didn't even know he was coming in the day that he came in and murdered her. I mean, in her mind, this is just a hot water heater repair guy. You know, Nancy, I agree with you on your point about Jamie Closs and the suspect who saw her and grabbed her from the bus stop. This is the same thing. premeditated in that this repair guy saw this beautiful woman, saw the two little girls, kept thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it, and came back and committed this horrendous crime. It was 100% premeditated. It's like an animal out in the wild that sees another animal and says, I'm going to tear its throat out. And that's what happened. He sees this beautiful young mom. If you could see a picture of her right now, which you can, crime online.

This beautiful, her skin looks like porcelain. Long, beautiful, dark brown, shiny hair, chestnut colored, big, perfect smile, holding these babies. He sees that. and instead of thinking what a gorgeous mom, what a happy family, his instinct is to stab her in the throat and try to rape her. It's the difference in a regular person and a predator like you walk through the park or you go on a walk and you see a bunny rabbit cross your path. Is your instinct to chase it down and tear its throat out? Probably not.

But that's what a predator would do. And that's what this guy is. And these children grow up deep in their subconscious knowing mommy was giving them a bath when she was brutally attacked. Their last memory of Mommy is her running from room to room, screaming. And it was not Daddy. It was this guy, Philip Scott Kirby Sr. May he rot in hell. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.