Criminology - Dennis Depue

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

In our annual Halloween episode, we discuss Dennis Depue, the inspiration for the creature in Jeepers Creepers. Like Depue, there have been many real-life cold-blooded killers who have inspired horror movies. These include Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Gary Heidnik, John Wayne Gacy, and Ronald Defeo Jr., to name a few. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Dennis Depue, a man who blamed his ex-wife for all his troubles. If there was a common theme in his life, nothing was his fault. He blamed his ex-wife Marilynn for leaving him and for his children siding with their mother. It culminated in 1990 when Dennis murdered Marilynn and dumped her body off the side of the road. But, it just so happened that a couple out for a drive saw him and phoned it into police as suspicious. You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone and welcome to episode 280 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford. How you doing, man? I'm doing good.

I'm excited about this episode. It's the Halloween episode, and I'm always excited to do this. Yeah, I am too. And a longtime listeners will recognize that music, we use it. every year. And it can only mean one thing that it's time for our annual creepy Halloween episode. And we have a very disturbing case for this year's episode. Yeah, I think this is one that's known in some circles, but overall, I think it's pretty obscure compared to a lot of the other creepy cases. So this one should be a good one. Before we get into this chilling case, let's give

our Patreon shoutouts. We had Sharon below. Paul Giacomenado, Mr. and Mrs. Bradford, and Ann Shaw. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks so much to everybody that takes the time to support the show. It means a lot. And for anyone that would like to, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right.

So now that we have all that out of the way, let's dive into this case. It's a case in which the villain in this episode is so scary, not just because of what he did, but because of his looks, by most accounts, his pale emotionalist face and what some have described as lifeless eyes seemed to have hidden something sinister. In fact, this guy was so scary, he's reported to have been the inspiration for the horrible creature. In the horror movie, Jeepers Creepers, we're talking about a cold-blooded killer named Dennis DePue and witnesses to the aftermath of what he did. were undoubtedly scored for life.

The character Leatherface from the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is based on serial killer Ed Gein, also known as the Mad Butcher. Gein is also said to be the loose inspiration of Norman Bates and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The Amityville Horrors based on a house where Ronald Defeo Jr. killed his entire family. Silence of the Lambs draws inspiration from multiple real killers, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, and Gary Hydenick, who would keep abducted women captive in a pit dug into his basement floor. The Hills have eyes is based on the Scottish legend of Sawny Bean, who is head of an almost 50-member family of cannibals with over 1,000 victims over a quarter of a century. There are some

that believe Stephen King's character, Pennywise, the clown from his book, It, was inspired by John Wayne Gasey, who would dress up as a clown named Pogo or Patches. Scream's ghost face is reportedly based on serial killer Danny Rowling, who went on a four-day murder spree in Gainesville, Florida, killing five college students. So it's clear that many of the frightening villains we see in movies are inspired by real life monsters. And more if you talked about a number of scary movies. You know,

you're talking about Texas chainsaw massacre, Amniewville Horror, It, The Hills Have Eyes, Psycho, and Silence of the Lamb. So those are some scary movies. And some of those are good movies. But some of the characters in those movies are nightmare-inducing.

and to think that in large part they're based off of real-life people makes it even scary. Yeah, I think most people like myself that are big horror movie fans, we get sort of a rush out of it being scared, but knowing at the end of it, it's just a movie and we can turn it off. And for me, I don't like roller coaster, so horror movies are an outlet. We can sort of get that same thrill. and although some of these characters in these movies are scary, I think you sometimes lose sight that there were real people

that did awful things that inspired those characters in some of the cases. But doesn't that in some way make it even scarier? And I'll answer the question. To me, it does. You know, when I think about a character like Chucky, okay, Chucky is scary, scary movie, but at the end of the day, I'm not worried that a real-life Chuckie, a doll, is going to come to life and hurt me.

But we know we've covered so many of these people in episodes that there are real-life monsters. So I want listeners to imagine a scenario. You're driving down a rural road and you see a car pulled over. It gets your attention on an otherwise empty stretch of road and you notice the driver of the car. is outside the vehicle carrying something. You look closer and realize that this person is dumping evidence of a crime, either a body or a bloody sheet. As you make that realization, the driver sees you.

Immediately you know that the driver knows that you saw what they were doing. You have spotted a murderer in the aftermath of something terrible, and they have spotted you. Cell phones aren't a thing yet. and you're on a deserted stretch of road. As you drive away, you see their car in your rearview mirror. Now the killer is following you. The next few miles are probably the most terrifying minutes of your life.

But eventually, he's not behind you anymore. In the version of this story that became the 2001 movie Jeepers Creepers, the killer is actually some sort of creature with wings who resurfaces every 23 years for a 23-day-long feeding frenzy. But in real life, much of what I just described actually happened on a lonely and quiet stretch of road in Michigan in 1990. In the true story that inspired the movie, the killer wasn't a mythical creature. He was a very real human, a jilted and angry man.

On Easter Sunday, April 15, 1990, Ray and Marine Thornton's weekly drive was interrupted by something they'll never forget. The two were driving south on Snow Perry Road, about 12 miles from Coldwater, Michigan, as they did every Sunday. Out of nowhere, a van coming up quickly behind them swerved into an oncoming lane to pass them. In a reenactment of the encounter in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, Ray Thornton said, he sure is in a hurry, remarking at the van's high rate of speed. Noticing the van's license plate, starting with GZ, Marie pointed it out and made a joke saying, GZ, geez, he must be in a hurry.

This was a game they liked to play, thinking of words and phrases from different license plates they saw on the road. This one was just great timing. They laughed and continued driving. After a few miles, the Thorntons passed an old schoolhouse. They saw the same van that had overtaken them earlier,

a green 1984 Chevrolet van parked there. They saw the driver shoving a bloody sheet into a hole in the ground. Marie immediately realized what she was seeing. The man had been in a hurry to get rid of a body, and they had just caught him trying to get rid of a bloody sheet. They were horrified and drove off, hoping to spot a police car. As they drove, Marie tried to write down what she remembered of the license plate, GZ. A few minutes later, the van was suddenly behind them again.

It followed closely behind them for almost two miles. The driver followed so closely that they could see he was wearing a white skull cap. So, I mean, no doubt their hearts were racing. And you can only imagine how terrified they were. This scene is very reminiscent of one in the movie Fargo, in which an unwitting couple drive by the scene where someone had just committed a murder and then the killer chased them down and ends their lives as well. thankfully though for the Thorntons the van pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and they were able to escape however the quick thinking couple weren't satisfied with what they remembered of his license plate it wasn't enough to give to the authorities and be certain the man in the van would be found and caught

what the Thorntons did next was incredibly brave but dangers and some might say foolish they decided to turn around and go back and look for the van so they could get more information to provide to police. Now they were hunting someone they thought might be a killer. They found him in the same spot, still pulled over on the side of the road. The door to the van was wide open and the driver was hunched over behind the vehicle, attempting to switch out the license plate since he knew he had been spotted. Inside the van, Ray and Marie saw blood, a lot of it covering the passenger door. They stopped off at the schoolhouse where they had first seen the van parked

and tried to see if they could find what he had been carrying. Marie told Unolved Mysteries. We were beginning to get nervous when we got back to the schoolhouse. We were very careful about where we walked, but we tried to find what this white thing was that he had been carrying. Sticking out of a shallow animal hole, they found the bloody sheet. They raced off to the nearest phone to report what they had just encountered. It was soon after this that they saw on the news,

a story about a man who had attacked and abducted his ex-wife and fled. When they saw the wanted man's face, they recognized him as the man in the van. And more, if I want to talk a little bit about what the Thorntons did, you know, you mentioned it, right? Brave, dangerous. Some might say foolish. I just wonder how many people in this same scenario would do what they did because they saw something. They obviously thought something criminal was happening. But then that, you know, the van started following them. And at that point, your heart has to be racing because you think this person is after you. They might want to try to silence you. But then they turn around and try to find the van and the guy again. I just don't know, man. I don't know if I would do that.

Yeah, there's it takes a lot of guts to do that. But at the same time, I think it's foolish in many ways because they really thought that he had killed someone. Why wouldn't he do the same thing to them to keep them silent about what they're they had seen and being able to describe his van. And so I think they really took a big risk. But in the end, as we're going to get into, it really helped the police in their investigation. Yeah, I think that's the flip side of it.

You're taking a big chance, but you could also be doing something that in the long run turns out to be very good and could save the lives of other people, help catch a criminal. I think that's just the decision that every person or every couple would have to make for themselves. Police were searching for 46-year-old Dennis DePue, the state of Michigan property assessor. On Easter, Dennis went to the home of his ex-wife, Maryland DePue, to pick up their children. Though they were divorced, they shared custody of the three children who were all in high school at the time. Dennis had moved down to the family home, but he still maintained. in office there in the guest house for his work. So despite the separation, he was basically still

always in the home and always with his family. Maryland DePue, a counselor at Coldwater High School, was afraid of her ex-husband Dennis, which is why they were divorced in December of 1989 after 17 years of marriage. And this sounds like a very kind of messed up situation to me. You know, Maryland was afraid of Dennis. They divorced, but he's still at the house all the time because he basically has an office there in the guest house. I don't know. It doesn't sound like a great situation. Yeah, if she was truly afraid of him, you hope that she would have been able to get away from him altogether, but maybe because of financial reasons, whatever it may be, maybe that was the arrangement that they had to have for that time until he was able to get his

office set up someplace else. Marilyn had been a counselor at the school since 1972, and before that she worked there as a substitute teacher for one year and taught English at a high school in Livonia, Michigan, for seven years before that. She had gone to school at Michigan State University, but earned her degree in counseling at Wayne State University. In 1990, she was working on a doctoral degree in administration at Michigan. State University. Dennis earned his bachelor's degree in business education at Michigan State

University, and by 1990, he worked for the state of Michigan's Treasury Department, and he also taught business education at Michigan State. From the outside, the depues seemed like a normal, happy, and successful family. They attended church and lived in a nice home. From the few accounts we have from those who knew them best, including their own children, Dennis and Maryland didn't argue often or get violent with each other. But then again, we never can know what happens behind closed doors. And that right there is something that comes up in so many episodes. You know, you always hear descriptions about people.

And, you know, let's talk about couples. Neighbors say they were in love. They never fought. They never argued. But how do they really know that? All anyone can ever know is what they see. and how many couples actually fight and argue in front of other. So, you know, to your point, we don't always know what happens behind closed doors.

And I think that's very true because most people, I would say, if they are having issues, they keep those issues inside the home as much as they can. Yeah. And we have to remember, too, this is before social media because social media would add a whole new aspect to it. I think we all, or many of us anyway, have maybe a Facebook friend who blast their entire business, things that you can't imagine yourself sharing on Facebook. Some of these people are just content to lay out everything that's going on in their lives.

Well, most people don't do that. They keep problems they're having, things are going through to themselves. And it seems like whatever problems this couple is having, they wanted to keep it inside their their home. Yeah, that's something I've, I've never understood is really laying everything in your life out there on social media. I get sharing the good things, you know, the birthdays, the graduation of your kids and, and things like that. But, you know, to your point, there are people who are pretty much willing to put it all out there, bear it all. And, and that's just not something that I've ever felt comfortable with.

Toward the end of their marriage, Dennis didn't want to get divorced, and he fought the idea, but Marilyn couldn't stay with him. Their daughter, Julie, told Unsolved Mysteries, they just didn't really talk. And one of Marie's co-workers and Dunkel explained this situation as the marriage was broken up. There's no longer a marriage there. Maryland's divorce attorney Jay Richard Colbeck said, I believe that she felt at that time that Dennis was in effect trying to domineer her. That is, run her life and not allow her to make decisions she wanted to make.

It seemed clear that for whatever reason, Marilyn was afraid of Dennis. She had changed the locks to the home, they once shared, but Dennis somehow was still always able to get inside. Maryland had come home from work to find Dennis on her couch multiple times, despite not having a key. She was open about her fear telling her friends that her husband was a bully. And the children seemed to feel the same way. They wanted to spend their time with Marilyn. And I think that says a lot right there. You know, in some of these stories, he said, she said between couples is, is also, often hard to decipher. People have different points of views. They see things happening a different way.

But when you have the children seemingly feeling the same way as Maryland, I think it really sheds a lot of light on the situation. Yeah. And anytime you have a divorce and there's kids involved, that adds another layer of complexity to the whole situation because you've got custody battle sometimes. you've got kids maybe don't want to go with one of the parents and that causes a resentment with the other parent. So it can just make a bad situation even worse when that happens. When Dennis came to pick the kids up on Easter Sunday for one of his biweekly visits agreed upon on the divorce settlement, Julie, the youngest daughter, refused to get into his car. This wasn't the first time the children had given him trouble on a visit. Her sister, Jennifer, and their brother Scott, backed her up and also refused to go with Dennis.

He began to argue with the children, and Marilyn tried to step in and stop it. Dennis was furious with Marilyn and felt that it was her fault that their children were on her side and didn't want to see him. During the argument, he pushed Marilyn down the stairs. He ran down to her, not to help her, but instead to continue beating her, right in front of the children. Jennifer, the oldest, rushed out of the house and tried to get help at a neighbor's home. When she went back home, Dennis was leaving. He claimed he was taking Marilyn to the children. hospital. Julie recalled on Unsolved Mysteries that she wasn't walking completely on her own. He was

kind of holding her up and she was just like in a daze. Dennis loaded Maryland into the van and drove away and the kids never saw their mom again. In the suburbs of DC a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades the case remained unsolved. until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. The Branch County Sheriff's Department and the Michigan State Police were already searching for Dennis Depew by the time that officers responded to the Thornton's call.

They had been alerted to the crime, an assault, and then a missing person. when Jennifer called for help from the neighbor's house. There was no record of Maryland DePue being taken to any hospital in the area. Tire tracks from the area near the sheet were matched to the 1984 Chevy van, the dentist drove, and blood in the area was matched to Maryland's blood type. Police were fearing the worst, that Marilyn was dead, and now it was a challenge of finding her body and catching her killer. The next day, on Monday, April 16th, Marilyn DePue's body was found in the brush on the side of a secluded road near her church. This area was between the Depew home and the schoolhouse where Dennis was spotted by the Thorntons.

The medical examiner determined that Marilyn didn't die as the result of the beating she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband. Instead, she died from a single bullet fired into the back of her head. Marilyn's mother, Betty McClannahan, told Unsolved Mysteries. it was so brutal and premeditated. It makes you so angry. If she'd been killed in an automobile accident, you could get over that, but not this.

So there's a couple of things that kind of stand out here to me. One is obviously Betty's statement on unsolved mysteries. You know, it would be difficult in any scenario to lose a child, but to lose one in this way. You know, she said it. If Marilyn had been killed in an automobile accident, well, that's one thing. But to know that she died at the hands of her ex-husband from a single gunshot wound to the head, that would be hard to live with.

Absolutely. And the other thing was that, you know, it didn't seem as though Dennis went through a lot of effort to hide Marilyn's body. I get it. It was a secluded road, but he essentially put her in some brush on the side of the road. He didn't go to great lengths to try to hide her body, I guess, is what jumped out of me. And you have to wonder if any part of his plan was foiled by the Thorntons witnessing him at this point when they saw him had he already dumped Maryland's body or did he do that after they saw him? those are the things we really don't know and what his ultimate goal was. Yeah, he could have had more elaborate plans, possibly, of trying to hide Maryland's body, and maybe it was this siding by the Thorntons that made him do what he did.

Police put out bolos on Dennis DePue in his vehicle, and a warrant was issued for his arrest, but he was nowhere to be found. During his time in hiding, he sent 17 letters to friends. and family from different locations in Virginia, Iowa, and Oklahoma. One letter Dennis wrote to one of his coworkers, blaming Marilyn for his hopelessness instead of his own temper, read in part, Marilyn had many, many opportunities to treat me fairly during this divorce, and she chose to string it out, trick me, lie to me. And when you lose your wife, children in home, there's not much left. Dennis apparently did not want to

to be a divorced man, explaining in one letter, I was too old to start over. One of the letters sent in July 1990 was 13 pages long and full of Bible verses. So no doubt, Dennis DePue was driving all over the country. I mean, that's evidenced by, you know, the different locations from where these letters came from. The other thing is, and we hinted at it earlier, these letters really kind of paint a picture of a man who felt as though his life was essentially over after this divorce. And the animosity, the hatred that he felt towards Maryland really comes out here. So while he's writing all these letters, you mentioned he's in these different locations.

This is indicative of the year 1990. Cell phone usage wasn't common. We don't know for sure if he even had a cell phone. So the ways to track Dennis while he was on the run, there just weren't that many of them. So finding his van during a time period when there were a lot of vans like that on the road, it'd probably be like finding a needle in a haystack, assuming he was still driving the van. Efforts to find Dennis came up empty. And judging by his letters that he mailed, he could be anywhere.

So in an effort to try and find him and bring him to justice, police and Maryland's family decided to cooperate with his show Unolved Mysteries and run a segment about the case. On March 21st, 1991, almost a year after the murder, the episode aired. Host Robert Stack called the last long letter from Dennis, a chilling 5,000-word rationalization. At around 8.30 on the night the episode aired,

a woman identified only as Mary from Dallas, Texas, got back home from work, and noticed that her boyfriend, who she knew as Hank Queen, was at her house. His van was parked in her driveway, which was a surprise. because he would normally park in the garage. When she went inside, Hank told her that you needed to drive home to visit his mother who was very sick.

And he asked Mary to make him some sandwiches for the road while he packed his belongings. Mary felt something was off, telling unsolved mysteries in a later update segment. I was sure that something else was going on, but I didn't know what. Hank and Mary hugged. He took the sandwiches and drove off in his green 1984 Chevrolet van. Mary said on the show, I realized that something was troubling him and I knew I'd never see him again. Mary had been distracted, talking to Hank and making him sandwiches while unsolved mysteries played in the other room. She said on the update episode, looking back on an hour, I'm sure he was watching and I think that he was deliberately keeping my attention distracted in the kitchen so that I wouldn't see the segment and so that he could leave.

she never would see the man. She knew as Hank again, but she would very quickly realize that he had given her a fake name and hadn't gone to visit his sick mom. She had been dating Dennis DePue without knowing his identity or what he had done in his past.

And this has come up in other episodes we've done and the thought that always goes through my head is what would that feeling be of knowing that you were dating or you were married to a murderer who was wanted by police, but you had no idea. This person had snowed you. They were using a fake name. I just can't imagine what that would be like.

Yeah, I think it shows how cunning he was and how conniving he was to make this fake name up and dupe her into starting a relationship, and meanwhile, he's got this terrible secret that he was keeping from her. On the same night, the Unsolved Mysteries episode aired, one of Mary's friends who watched the segment called the hotline given in the episode, and reported everything the friend knew about Hank Queen. They were able to provide his license plate number, which was now a Texas plate,

and they provided a possible intended destination, where Dennis DePue, aka Hank Queen, may be heading to. Just four hours later, Louisiana State Troopers spotted the Chevy van just across the border from Mississippi. Police tried to pull Dennis over, but he refused to yield, instead leading the officers on a chase. After 15 miles of pursuit, and after Dennis had broken through two police barricades, Warren County Mississippi Sheriff Paul Barrett ordered his officers to shoot the tires of the van out if Dennis wouldn't stop. Officers missed the front tires, but they did manage to shoot both of the back tires.

But Dennis Depeu wasn't simply going to stop. He drove on until the tires were just rims. But even after that, he kept going. He drove one more half mile before the van wouldn't go any further. Trapped in the car with nowhere to run and no way to drive. Dennis fired off three shots at the surrounding officers, one through the open window of the van and the other two through the windshield. Then he turned the gun on himself. and ended his life. The hunt for Maryland Dupy's killer. Her former husband, Dennis, was over. Ironically, he died in the same van. He had taken his ex-wife away in. Warren County, Mississippi Sheriff Paul Barrett, said on Unsolved Mysteries,

I think he intended to die, whether he had to do it by his own hands or whether he could get us to kill him. Otherwise, he would have stopped. and we would have gotten him out of the van alive, and there wouldn't have been any shots fired. And I think Paul Barrett is absolutely right in what he said. It seems to me as though as many people do,

Dennis DePue made the decision that he wasn't going to be taken a lot. So whether he was killed in a shootout with police or as it ultimately happened, he shot himself. it just seems as though he had already, you know, made that determination. Yeah, I think it pretty clearly indicates that he chose to leave on his own terms and not own up to what he had done, not pay for what he had done. So to me, there's no remorse there. There's no regret.

He just didn't want to be in prison for the rest of his life for the terrible thing that he did. Yeah, he just wasn't going to face justice. Dennis DePue was the first fugitive featured on Unsolved Mysteries to take his own life after being IDed as a result of the show. The episode was part of the show's third season airing on NBC. It was further proof that a show like Unsolved Mysteries could help in the search for fugitives, enlisting the public to aid them. The episode is still available to watch today and remains a compelling segment.

Sheriff Barrett had watched the episode before DePue ever wound up in his jurisdiction. He said, it was a funny feeling to realize that the night before that you had been watching this man wanted for murder someplace. And then you walk up to the van and you recognize him as being the person who was on unsolved mysteries. In one of the letters, Dennis DePue sent during his time on the run, he wrote, An Eye for an Eye, a tooth for a tooth, a lie for a lie, a life for a life. During this year on the run, those who knew Maryland were afraid that Dennis would come after them. But in the end, those words ultimately proved prophetic, as Dennis himself wound up

dead in his van, the same van, in which he had taken Marilyn away in before killing her, Marilyn DePue was buried in an unmarked grave at Oakland Hills Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Novi, Michigan, where she grew up. Dennis DePue was buried at Eagle Cemetery in LaGrange County, Indiana. in the same cemetery as his mother and father who both outlived him. I don't think you can blame anyone that was afraid that Dennis would come back to hurt them because of what he did to Maryland, his own wife of 17 years, the mother of his three children. And he attacked her and threw her down the stairs and beat her right in front of his kids. So if he was willing to do that, what else might he do?

So if I were in their shoes too, I would have been frightened that during that year. year he was on the run as well. Yeah, no doubt. The kids, friends, other, you know, extended family, you know, think about the Thorntons. There's a lot of people who had to have been really fearful during that year. Fresh air, longer days, a chance to reset. This season, let therapy be part of your spring cleaning. Clearing mental clutter, shaking off stuckness and building something better. Grow therapy helps you get there. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 15th. Grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both

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Growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. You have to wonder if there would have been an unsolved mystery segment at all if the Thorntons hadn't stumbled upon Dennis in the act of getting rid of the evidence of his crime. The little word game that they like to play with license plates, helped them to not only remember the license plate and the van when they saw it a second time, but it made for an interesting segment. They even kept that part in the movie Jeepers Creepers,

with the sister character in the movie remarking, GZ, geez, he must be in a hurry. It's clear that they could have still had a segment about Dennis Depew being on the run and posting his photo, and it might have helped catch him, but some of the parts that make the Unsolved Mysteries episode so memorable wouldn't have been there. somehow Dennis DePue managed to live a life on the run for almost a year before that episode aired and exposed who he really was.

If that hadn't happened, Mary's friend may not have called in his new license plate number and the Louisiana state troopers never would have stopped him. How long would it have taken for his past to catch up with him if the case hadn't been featured on something as far reaching as unsolved mysteries? What if he had gotten comfortable in his new life and then later gotten angry with married? Would he have harmed her too? It's easy to see how Dennis DePue could have done what he did more than one time. And this is something that I think you and I have talked about more before. You know, before the age of social media, before all the video surveillance that we have now,

you had unsolved mysteries. You had America's Most Wanted. You had a couple of shows like that where you could get information about someone who was wanted out to a mass audience. And those shows were invaluable. I mean, today, you probably get that information on your feed, right, when you woke up in the morning. But that wasn't the case back then.

Yeah, I think in the pre-technology, pre-social media era, that was a really valuable tool to help cases like this, because it obviously worked. Even the sheriff that wound up being at the scene where Dennis DePue took his own life, he had watched the episode the night before. So it just shows how far reaching it actually was. I think we really need to touch on the importance of the key witnesses in this case, the Thorntons. They were nosy for lack of a better word. be observant would be better, and they were also so quick thinking in such an odd and anxiety-inducing situation. They were pretty brave, following someone that they thought could have been up to something dangerous in order to be able to report accurate information. They could have just driven off,

which would have given Dennis time to gather up the evidence and relocated or hide it. Instead, he was literally caught by the Thorntons red-handed. Knowing that Dennis had a gun, it's a miracle he didn't decide to quickly take out the two witnesses on that secluded road. It could have easily been an episode about the murders of Maryland to Pew and the Thorntons instead. We talk in so many episodes of witnesses at see or hear something and fail to take any action. Here, the Thorntons did take action and they really went above and beyond. Yeah, there's no doubt that they played a key role in this case. And, you know, listeners can decide, you know, whether that was brave, foolish, a combination of both,

whether they would have done that themselves or, you know, would have thought more about their own safety and driven off. But the one thing that you'd have to say is that it was pretty amazing what they did and what it ultimately led to. The school where the Thornton saw Dennis to Pew trying to hide the bloody sheet known as 1908 school district number three is still standing today. In 2017, it was nearly engulfed in flames after old straw on the first floor caught fire. The long abandoned building was used as a party spot. There was an old mattress on the ground next to a bunch of empty beer cans. One post on geocaching.com from 2015 indicates something was hidden there right next to the fence and stone collar. It's anyone's guess. If the

mysterious cash has been found by now. In the movie Jeepers Creepers, the killer's a fictional creature that just happened to drive an old truck and wear ragged old clothes. But the true story that inspired the movie is one we have heard over and over. There's no mythical flying creature that feeds on humans to sustain itself. Now, Dennis DePue was a man who refused to admit that his marriage was over, or that things could have possibly been his fault.

Not even the trigger he pulled was his fault. He blamed it all on Maryland. He never once showed remorse or regret. And just like the DePue's children, there are so many children out there who were left to pick up the pieces alone because they have one parent who was killed by fatal domestic violence and another parent who then either took their own life or spent the rest of it in prison for what they did.

The three Depew children are now each older than either of their parents ever lived to be. They have lived very private lives since the Unsolved Mystery episode aired. We talked about some scary movie villains in this episode, but the real-life villains are the ones we talk about on criminology. Even some of the most recent suspects we've discussed, O.J. Simpson and Timothy Bleafnick have been convicted, or in OJ's case, at least believed by many, to have killed women who rejected them. Simpson suspected by many, but acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and one of her friends, Bleafnick found guilty of killing his estranged wife.

Some of our not so recent episodes tell the story of the same kind of monster, like Brian Laundrie, who took his life before he could be held accountable for the murder of Gabby Petito. The fiancee he was supposed to have loved. There are many more stories, just like those that we haven't covered yet, like those of Jennifer Doulouse and Suzanne Morfew, just to name a couple. It seems just like with Dennis DePue, the killers are a couple. accused killers, you mentioned in some of the cases we've covered, blame their victim the way that Dennis blamed Marilyn for wanting a divorce and for turning their children against him.

It's clear that something set off an alert in Maryland. And sadly, despite trying to distance herself from Dennis, she wound up dying at his hands. And we've said it, right? But this is something that happens all too often. In this case, Dennis blamed Marilyn basically for everything. The divorce, turning their kids against him, there's no way that he could have been the catalyst, been the one who had caused her to want a divorce or could have caused the children to not want to be with him. And I guess it's something that for me is a little bit hard to understand. there are just some people who never see themselves as the reason why, you know, something is occurring or why a relationship goes bad, they have to blame it on others.

And obviously, that's what Dennis did. And I'm sure there are many men who do that, but don't take it to the level that Dennis DePue did. Unfortunately, there are many who do. More if you and I have mentioned we both love Halloween, it's gruesome and dark, frightening, and fun for some. Halloween is the chance to be afraid, but to know in the back of one's mind that it's all make believe. But we also have to remember at Halloween

and all through the month of October that October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The hotline.org has tools to help you identify abuse in a relationship as well as multiple methods of communication when you're ready to reach out by a chat, text, or call. So for anyone listening that needs help escaping from a domestic violence situation, please check out that website and the tools that are available. There would be no Jeepers Creepers movie or any of its sequels without Dennis Depew. But again, as scary as the villains are in these horror movies,

the real life people that inspire those characters are the real monsters. Maybe that's why so many of us like horror movies. When we're done watching, we can turn it off and go back to our everyday lives. Sadly, the Maryland DePue's of the world can't go on with their lives, thanks to people like Dennis DePue. So Morph, as we wrap up this episode, obviously what Dennis DePue did was horrified, to the point where he inspired a character.

in a horror movie that I think spawned a number of sequels, I just keep going back to this thought that he must have had, that he was wronged by Maryland. It was all her fault for the divorce, for turning the children against him. It just seems to me as though he saw himself as playing no role in it whatsoever. And I'm sure in a large part that fueled what he ultimately did. And we talked about how there were no reported instances of domestic violence between Dennis and

Maryland. But obviously, we know that can happen without people knowing about it. We talked earlier about how what was going on between Maryland and Dennis, they kept themselves, even their kids didn't know some of what was going on. So there may have been instances where Dennis was violent to Maryland leading her to want to leave him. We just don't know. But it's scary that the first known instance here of domestic violence is a fatal one. And I wonder how many times the first known instance, we talk about cases where there's a history of domestic violence and everybody knows it, the family knows it, the friends know it, but here, when it suddenly seems like the first known instance is the fatal one, I wonder how common that is. But although we don't know

the history or the level of domestic violence that was happening, we do know that it's a very underreported crime sometimes, and oftentimes family members, friends don't know what's really going on, and that may have been true here in this case. Yeah, and at the end of the day, No doubt. Dennis DePue was an absolute monster. But that's it for our episode on Dennis DePue. If you love the show and haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating, leave a review. Keep telling your friends, word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on the X platform with the handle at criminology pod. you can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash criminology podcast.

And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.