Criminology - Michele Neurauter

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

In 2017, Michele Neurauter was living in Corning, NY, with her 14-year-old daughter. She was going through a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband Lloyd Neurauter. When Michele was found dead, some in law enforcement thought it was a suicide. But that outlook quickly changed. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murder of Michele Neurauter. Free of her abusive husband, Michele was finally beginning to live her life on her terms. Her death came as a shock to friends and family. Naturally, the ex-husband would be looked at first. But what came out about who all was involved in Michele's murder would shock everyone. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital production

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 324 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing better than I was last time. Still, you know, still making progress, but not quite very yet, but hopefully sounding better. Yeah, you do sound better. I can still hear it a little bit in your voice.

I mean, I think it just goes to show you how rough and how long it can take to, uh, to get out from under that. Yeah, it's, you know, I, maybe I didn't take it as serious as I should have. Well, you wouldn't be the first person to do that. I think until you've had it and everybody experiences it differently. For some, it hits harder than it does for others. But I think until you've had it and until you've had a bad case of it, you don't realize how bad it can really be.

Yeah, got to take it seriously. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Xenia, Viola Marie, and Sky Sealand. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time to support the show. It means a lot to us. And for anyone that would like to,

they can head over to patreon.com slash criminology to get started. All right. We're diving right into this week's case. And we're talking about a difficult one that involves domestic violence. Now, we've covered plenty of cases on this show that deal with elements of domestic violence. It's safe to say that in most of those cases, it's a man committing domestic violence against their girlfriend or wife or an ex-partner. But one thing we don't often see is when those men involve or enlist their children. to help in or help carry out the violence.

Well, that's the scenario we're dealing with in this episode. We're talking about the August 2017 death of Michelle New Ryder in upstate New York. The truth about what happened to Michelle and just who was responsible was shocking. Michelle Jeanette Landy was born on February 2nd, 1971 in Van Nuys, California. We don't know a lot about her younger years, but she attended, Quartz Hill High School in Quartz Hill, California. That's where Michelle met her future husband, Lloyd Newriter. Lloyd was two years younger than Michelle, so since she was a senior and he was a sophomore,

they weren't in many classes together. Michelle and Lloyd were married as soon as he graduated on December 7, 1991, on Edwards Air Force Base in California. After college, they moved to Corning, New York, although some reports mentioned spending time in Idaho before ending up in New York. Corning seemed like a great place to raise a family. Corning, New York is in upstate New York in the northwest, just above the Pennsylvania border. It has a population of just over 11,000 people.

Steuben County District Attorney Brooks Baker told CBS News, it's the kind of place where a lot of folks still don't lock their doors. And more of how many times have we heard this break? smaller town, it's the kind of place some people don't lock their door. Now, many times, it seems as though, you know, some type of tragedy, some type of violent event comes along that changes all that for a town or community. I guess for my way of thinking, you feel safe until something happens to make you not feel safe. Yeah, I think a lot of people are cut off guard when something happens. They have the attitude of that can't happen here.

And then something does. And like we always hear about, you know, that's when people start locking their doors. They go out maybe and buy a firearm or, you know, make other changes in their life. Lloyd found a job in Corning. As an engineer for the Corning Glass Company, they make Corningware, Pyrax, and Correll cookware. And I would be shocked. If anyone listening right now does not have at least one piece of that in their kitchen. My wife swears by Pyrex.

We have a ton of Pyrex. She loves that stuff. While Lloyd worked at the Corning Glass Company, Michelle homeschooled their three daughters until the girls got older. Then she started working at a local college as an English professor. their oldest daughter has kept her name out of the media. So we had a really tough time getting that information. But they did also have a middle daughter named Carrie and their youngest was Charlotte. Cynthia Raj, Michelle's best friend, actually met Lloyd before meeting Michelle,

because he was the one taking the girls to their dance classes at the time and could sometimes be seen fixing their hair. Cynthia told CBS News. The mothers were rather smitten with him. So were the other children. Cynthia's daughter, Mina, told CBS, I thought he was a really amazing person. He's very charismatic, shows a lot of care. And I think I've talked about it before Morp, but both of my daughters took dance and by and large, most of the time my wife took them. But there were times where I, I, I, I had to take them. And, you know, those were always tough because, you know, the doing of the hair, you know, some of that stuff was a little bit above my skill level.

I got to be honest with you. Yeah, I think for some of those fathers fixing up their, their daughter's hair and styling it up nice is probably not high on our skills list. No, and especially with dance because a lot of times the hair had to be. done in a very specific way. And it just wasn't something that I was good at. But I want to talk about, you know, these people coming out and speaking of Lloyd in kind of these glowing terms, right?

He's, he's there for his daughters. He's taking them to dance. The word smitten was used. Okay. He's charismatic. People are drawn to him. Despite the outward appearance, that life was fine in the new writer family home.

There were signs that not everything was perfect. Mina told CBS, there were times when I'd call my mom and tell her that I was worried about how strict of a disciplinarian Lloyd was for really, really small things. Mina explained, adding, it was sort of like you never knew when he would snap. Mina also recalled times Lloyd would slap his children

or make them cower on their knees in front of him when he was angry. Michelle's family knew that despite Trump, trying her hardest. She was never quite enough for Lloyd. Michelle's mother, Gene, told CBS, he would put her down with a smile on his face. Things went on this way for years. There had been multiple calls to the police for domestic violence at the new writer home in the past, but never any charges or arrest made. And this is something that you see in a lot of cases, right? Some people have an image of a person. It's what they see. They're not in the whole. home, but it's what they see, you know, when they encounter this person. And I think that's what

was going on here with Lloyd. People were encountering him at places like dance. And he seemed like the All-American dad. He's taking care of the girls. He's charismatic. He's funny. But people don't always know what's going on inside the home. Now, some of these same people later did see it. He was very strict. He was hitting his children. And then you have this putting down of Michelle. And I thought, you know, what her mother said when she added that he did it with a smile on his face, that really gave me a kind of a sadistic type of feeling about Lloyd Newwright. You know, not only am I going to be mean and nasty to you, I'm going to take pleasure. It seems so common that when cases like this happen, the people that come out of the woodwork,

they all are surprised most of the time. You know, I never expected this or he was very charming. And then after something happens, people are sort of shocked. And I completely understand that because, again, for me, it goes back to most people showing you what they want you to see. They don't want to show you the monster. They want to show you the good guy, the helpful neighbor, the good dad. And, you know, most neighbors, even a lot of friends, don't get to see what really goes on inside a home. Out of the blue, Michelle stopped talking to her parents.

After Thanksgiving in 2007, they were blindsided. There was zero warning. She was going to end their relationship and no reason they could think of other than Lloyd perhaps telling her to stop communicating. Jean felt that he must have threatened to harm her or one of the children if she didn't comply with whatever demands or conditions he had because it seemed so sudden. Thankfully, this period of silence was relatively short sometime in 2008 after Lloyd took a job in New Jersey and, and moved away from the family, things started getting back to normal. Cynthia told CBS News, Michelle seemed much more relaxed, even though Lloyd filed for divorce. And it was a pretty nasty divorce, legally speaking.

According to Michelle's lawyer, Susan Betts Jidimir, in a CBS interview, Lloyd was relentless in using the legal system to harass Michelle. She explained that there were 26 separate sets of filings post-teachial. divorce, which is something she called astounding and also super unusual. Stuban County District Attorney Brooks Baker agreed, recalling that this was one of those cases that everybody sort of heard about, talked about over the water cooler or at a bar, and the name came up because this husband and wife were going at it nonstop. And this is sort of reminiscent of the murder of Jennifer Dullos, who's a strange husband killed her after a long, contentious, and expensive divorce in custody battle.

It's clear that by this point, things were getting bad between Michelle and Lloyd. The new writer's divorce was finalized in August 2012. After this, Michelle was finally free of Lloyd, but her relationship with her daughters, particularly Carrie, had been deteriorating since their split. Carrie and her older sister lived with Lloyd most of the time, while her younger sister lived with Michelle, after their parents separated, investigators and those who knew the family

believed that Lloyd used his time with Carrie and the other children to basically brainwash them into thinking that Michelle was a bad person, something called parental alienation. According to Oxygen.com, in multiple filings during the divorce, Michelle wrote about how Lloyd was turning Carrie against her. He started to poison them

against her, according to attorney Bansjidimir, adding that eventually Carrie especially hated her mother. We all know there can be periods of rebellion or resistance from a child where the relationship with a parent can be strained. But this was something different. In 2015, Carrie and Michelle got into a fight when Michelle was leaving home and Carrie stood behind the car to block her path. Later, according to those who knew the family, Lloyd told Carrie that Michelle had been trying to run her over. Things got to the point where Carrie called the police and filed a report about the incident. Police came out, but Michelle was never charged with any crime. Despite incidents like this, things seemed to improve, though, as Michelle and her daughters, including Carrie, who was home for the Thanksgiving break,

volunteered together at Christ Episcopal Church in 2016, cooking free Thanksgiving meals for the community. There was no sign to other volunteers of any tension between the family members. And more, if you and I have talked about divorce a lot, it comes up in a lot of the cases that we do, it's never easy. But I think, you know, when you have a situation like this, where one parent is constantly bad mouthing the other to the kids, really trying to turn them against their, ex-partner. That's a really rough situation. You know, number one, it's really bad for the parent who's being bad mouth all the time. You know, the kids are going to have a bad opinion of them. But also, it's very terrible for the children. You know, you're hearing it all the time. How can it not

seep in? You know, it's like, to me, it seems like Lloyd was using the kids as pawns. in some type of game that he was playing against Michelle. Yeah, and marriages sometimes don't last, but it's a shame when the kids of those relationships sort of get sucked into being on one side or being used by one of the parents to attack the other one or stress them out in some way. And that's what it looked like was going on here.

In the suburbs of D.C., 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. By 2017, 46-year-old Michelle was still living in Corning, New York, with 14-year-old Charlotte and 45-year-old Lloyd was living in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

They were still fighting in court over custody matters, and from looking at past filings, they would have likely spent the next four years that Charlotte was a minor, wrapped up in different court battles. But then something strange happened. toward the end of August 2017. After all this time, in fighting so bitterly, Lloyd was a no-show in court on an important date. According to CBS News, Michelle sent a text to her lawyer,

explaining the situation, it read, I'm in shop. Lloyd didn't show up for the appearance for his petition. For sole custody, he didn't withdraw. He didn't ask for an adjournment. he didn't answer the court's phone calls, emails, nothing. Of course, Michelle was ecstatic after Lloyd skipped court. She had been fighting him in court for so long.

And now it appeared he had just completely given up. She and the girls took part in some summer fun that weekend. They took large blocks of ice up a hill and used them to slide down the grass. Michelle was looking to the next chapter in her life. one in which she would share fun times with her girls. Sadly, her joy lasted only a few days. One of Michelle's family friends called 911 on August 28, 2017. He was at Michelle's to pick up Charlotte and take her a swim practice,

but could immediately tell that something was wrong. According to CBS News, he told them over the phone, got something strange happening at her friend's house. I thought I saw the mother standing in the stairway, but she's motionless. Sergeant John McDivitt was one of the responding officers. According to CBS News, he could see Michelle laying at the bottom of the stairs

when he looked through the multiple large glass panes in the front door. As he entered the house, Michelle's dog ran to greet him, but there was no movement or sound for Michelle. As he looked closer, there was a rope around her neck, and it was clear that she had been dead for some time. Her feet were touching the ground, but she was suspended by the rope, which was tied to a rallying upstairs.

There was no sign of forced entry in the home. Retired New York State Police Detective Mark Procopio described it to Oxygen.com as a gruesome scene. Sergeant McDivitt told CBS News, at first glance, it appears to be a suicide by hanging. However, there was an odd U-shaped mark, a rounder chin, that some investigators believed didn't line up with the scenario where she took her own life. With the rope that was still around her neck, Chief Jeff Spalding focused on this mark, saying it appeared as though somebody had gone behind

and thrown a rope over the neck and pulled back and down and caused that. This isn't the only thing that could have caused this mark, though. Retired New York State Police Detective Allison Regan told oxygen, and perhaps it was a last-minute panic where she didn't want to kill herself. But if Chief Spalding was right,

this would mean that they were not dealing with a suicide. Michelle had been murdered. Puzzling officers, Charlotte, the new writer's 14-year-old daughter, who was being picked up for swim practice, wasn't in the home. Obviously, imaginations could run wild here. District Attorney Brooks Baker told CBS News, the number of possible outcomes there that are bad is tremendous.

They searched all the nooks and crannies of the house, searched the property and the neighborhood. But Charlotte just wasn't there. Lieutenant Jeff Heverley received the call from the new writer's middle daughter, Carrie. 19-year-old Kerry at this point was living off-campus in Syracuse, New York, while attending Rochester Institute of Technology. She was just one year away from completing her computer engineering technology studies here. Carrie told Lieutenant Heverley that one of her friends had just informed her about what happened to her mother. He learned from Carrie that her younger sister, Charlotte, the missing 14-year-old, was with her at her apartment in Syracuse.

This explained where she was, but not how she got there, almost 100 miles away. according to Carrie, she wanted to spend the night at her mother's house in Corning that night so that she could sleep in her room one last time before fully moving into her new apartment. But it wasn't a very warm welcome from her mom. Carrie said that Michelle was upset when she arrived because she didn't believe that Carrie was just there for some nostalgic reason. Carrie explained that this was basically typical of Michelle's behavior, especially lately. Carrie told CBS News, when I got there, my mom started freaking out, going on to add that she would freak out a lot. Carrie said Michelle was angry, apparently feeling betrayed by her daughter. She accused Carrie of taking her father's side in the divorce proceedings.

She was so upset that she started freaking out and screaming. This woke up Carrie's little sister Charlotte, who had been asleep in the home when Michelle began to yell. The chaos and confusion began to scare Charlotte. Carrie felt the best thing to do would be to leave and take her sister with her due to just how emotional their mother was being. She put Charlotte in the car and drove back to Syracuse, leaving Michelle alone and worked up. Because of that U-shaped mark on Michelle's chin, detectives continued to look at the case as if it were a home. homicide, if only to rule out the possibility. Authorities were initially suspicious of Lloyd for obvious reasons. The ex-husband who would get his way in his contentious court battle

wouldn't have to pay child support or deal with custody battles anymore. It's pretty much always a prime suspect when a woman dies under mysterious circumstances or has clearly been murdered. Some of Michelle's family, including her sister, were immediately suspicious of him too. They knew of his controlling ways and bad temper. And they couldn't help but think that he had taken out his anger on Michelle one final time. And that seems, you know, to me, more to be pretty much in line with what you would think that Michelle's family would be pondering, right? They know about all of the contentious things going on between Lloyd and Michelle.

Michelle ends up dead. how could her family not think that, well, possibly Lloyd had something to do with it? Who would want Michelle dead more than Lloyd New Ryder? And sometimes surprisingly, someone who's died in her mysterious circumstances, their family will actually support their spouse and say, oh, there's no way that he would do this. He loved her and they'll stick up for him. but not in this case. It doesn't seem like they were behind Lloyd at all.

Yeah. In that situation you're talking about, you know, kind of Scott Peterson comes to mind. Lacey's family, they were fully behind him in the beginning. It wasn't until, you know, really all of the stuff about Amber Frye came out that they started to turn on him. And some of the other evidence and stuff like that. But in the very beginning, I remember. It was like everyone in her family was like, no way. No way would Scott ever do this. He loved her. But then that changed over time. When police questioned Lloyd, he claimed to have been traveling to California for a job interview during the window of time that Michelle could have died. He was actually still in California, more than 2,000 miles away from Corny when investigators called to notify him about the death of his ex-wife. But his behavior didn't help investigators stop focusing on him. One of the first things he did when he flew back home was to go to the Stubin County Family Court

and make sure his alimony and child support payments were paused since Michelle had passed away. He also tried to collect on Michelle's $260,000 life insurance policy, of which 14-year-old Charlotte was the beneficiary. And I could see, you know, how these actions taken by Lloyd are not going to help the police think better of him. I mean, here you have your ex-wife has died. And what is your first thought upon arriving home? Man, I've got to make sure that these alimony and child support payments are pawned. And I've got to quickly try to collect on.

on her life insurance policy. And my thought is more of that, I get it, people fall out of love. They go through contentious divorces, but deep down. At one point, you loved this person. They are the mother of your children. No matter how contentious the divorce is, if they were to die, there has to be emotion there, right? at some level.

You would think that he cares about her still, even though their marriage didn't work out, that he'd be upset what happened or that he'd be upset for his kids and want to race home for them to support them. Instead, he's trying to pause payments and cash and insurance policies, and that probably looked suspicious to a lot of people. Yeah, and that's a great point. I mean, even if there was no feeling, no, no. nothing left. You're still talking about the mother of your children. So if you have love for them,

then there's got to be something there. But for him, it was all about money. And that never makes a person look good. Putting the pieces together and ended up being clear to investigators that Carrie was lying. Her story made no sense. Michelle has been thrilled about the recent court proceedings since Lloyd didn't show up, and Carrie couldn't point to anything that happened between that day and when she showed up that would have set her mom off. Carrie admitted to the detectives that her father had stopped a visitor on his way to California. His timeline hadn't been entirely truthful. Carrie was moving into a new place that day, and Lloyd had helped her.

This placed him about 100 miles away from Michelle's, only about a two-hour drive, not thousands of miles away as he had claimed. The cause of Michelle's death was still undetermined after her autopsy, but investigators were sure now. This was a homicide. Lloyd's DNA was found on the pajamas. Michelle was wearing when she died looking closely at the scene. Investigators noticed that Michelle's bed wasn't exactly in its usual spot and there was a

streak of something on the bedroom wall. It was hard to see, but DNA confirmed that it was Michelle's. blood. After a second opinion, Michelle's death was ruled a homicide. The prime suspects were Michelle's ex-husband Lloyd and her daughter, Carrie. Both Carrie and Lloyd's phones were tapped by authorities in the fall of 2017. Neither one of them said anything that helped the investigation. In November, Chief Jeff Spalding said they decided to, as they described to CBS, tickle. Tickle, the wire. They called Carrie and asked her to come into the station. They didn't reveal any information hoping she would call Lloyd and they would begin to panic. It worked. As soon as she was off the phone

with investigators, Carrie called Lloyd and asked him what to do. He questioned her, wanting to know how much she had told them before deciding it was probably nothing, because they would just get a warrant if they had any proof. According to CBS News, he told Carrie to tell them, she had a therapy appointment in New Jersey and couldn't get to the station, adding, I don't think I want you talking to them. He also told her to remind them how hard the whole situation had been for her. The most damning part of the call, according to CBS News, is when Lloyd asked Carrie, if she could cry when she calls them back.

They laughed and she says she might. So I think, you know, if investigators had any doubt, which I'm sure they had some, these phone calls probably ended any of that. And I think some of these phone calls are so telling. You know, what people say when they think they are completely alone with another person. Well, they're free, at least in their mind, to say whatever they want. And I think, you know, this call in particular pretty much spells it out. Lloyd is coaching Carrie on what to do, but it's really this part about, you know, where they

laugh together, about whether or not Carrie could cry when she calls them back. Yeah, these investigators are listening to this call are probably used to things like that, but I imagine they'd still be sort of shocked about how nonchalant the conversation was. but and just the callousness of it all. Even if you didn't have anything to do with the murder of your mom, would you be laughing about, you know, such a serious subject and most people would not be? Detectives moved in on both Kerry and Lloyd at the same time on January 24, 2018. Profilers from the Behavioral Analysis Unit.

of the FBI, helped advise detectives on how to talk to Carrie and Lloyd and get the information they needed. To play to Lloyd's intelligence, he was questioned by agents from the FBI. Well, Carrie was interviewed by two detectives who were both very kind to her. Carrie was at her college internship in Syracuse when they asked her to talk. Lloyd was at work in New Jersey. They informed Lloyd that Michelle's death had been ruled a homicide and asked him to take a polygraph test so that they could rule him out. He agreed and was given the address of a police station where a polygraph examiner was on site. During questioning, Lloyd admitted to being in New York a little longer than he originally said he was, helping Kerry move into her apartment before

checking into a hotel. But he now claimed he had never left the hotel that night. Security footage from the hotel shows that he did go to a hotel in Rochester, but it doesn't quite back up his whole story. It shows Kerry coming for a visit after he checked in, and it also shows him both heading to the parking lot that night. Lloyd claimed he just walked her to her car and said goodbye, but footage from the next morning shows him arriving from the parking lot in the clothes he had been wearing the night before.

His cell phone data showed that he was in the hotel all night, but the surveillance footage suggests he didn't go back inside after walking to Kerry's car. The next morning, he's visible on surveillance footage from the parking lot at 6.30 a.m. Half an hour before Carrie and Charlotte arrive to go to breakfast with him. Looking at Lloyd's cell phone data again, there was no activity on the phone overnight. Though the phone was in Rochester the whole time, it didn't actually prove that Lloyd himself was in Rochester. Sure. And cell phone data comes up in many, many cases. Oftentimes, it's great. But it really only gives you the information you need. If the person you're looking at takes the phone with them

wherever they go. If they leave it inside a hotel room, what does that data actually show? And I would say not much at all. I think it might be. be a good way to attempt to give yourself an alibi. But again, as we mentioned, that phone being there in the hotel at Rochester doesn't mean that Lloyd couldn't have gone out without it, did what he did, and then come back and tried to make himself have an alibi. Well, I think it would have worked a lot better had there not been surveillance video, which kind of contradicted the phone data. Mother's Day has a way of sneaking up on you,

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That's 1,800flowers.com slash. podcast. It's interesting that Carrie's first words to investigators were actually an attempt to control the narrative. According to NBC.com, she said she had been informed of the death, but said, my mom hung herself, not my mom is dead or something similar to that. According to Oxygen.com, both Carrie and Lloyd tried to portray Michelle as someone who had frequent tantrums. And often, and had escalating outbursts. But it didn't work. It didn't make sense.

Investigators saw right through it. Carrie explained to investigators that her father had presented her with a terrible ultimatum, which led her to cooperating with his plan to kill Michelle. According to CBS news, Carrie laid out how Lloyd said he was going to kill himself. Or there was this way to. so he wouldn't kill himself, which was killing my mom. Lloyd told Kerry he saw no way out because he couldn't afford to pay for the alimony and child support. He was giving Michelle.

At the time, he was giving Michelle about $6,000 each month. Investigators found that along with the large monthly payments to Michelle, Lloyd was $100,000 in debt. Carrie told Oxygen.com, I had to choose. Carrie told detectives what happened that night. She came clean. She was the one who drove him from Rochester to Corning that night. Carrie also admitted that she helped Lloyd sneak in undetected

by unplugging or disconnecting electronics in the home. Reports don't really expand on this, but she may be referring to door sensors, motion sensors, or security cameras that Michelle had set up at the home and were disabled. Charlotte was asleep in the living room and didn't even know that Lloyd was there. He went upstairs, and when Michelle saw him, she began to yell at him, asking him why he was there and how he got inside. When Carrie had described Michelle freaking out in her initial statements, she wasn't lying about everything. Michelle was yelling, and she was emotional.

But it was because her ex-husband was suddenly in her bedroom, and she was afraid. Carrie said she decided to take Charlotte out of the home due to Michelle's yelling, but not because she was scared by the chaos. she was making sure that she didn't know why Michelle was screaming or what was going on upstairs. She didn't want her sister to be a witness. When she woke up due to the noise, Carrie took Charlotte to her car, which was parked outside. She left the back hatch open and Lloyd used the back door to leave the house so that he could sneak out without 14-year-old Charlotte seeing him. He climbed into the cargo area. Carrie shut it and she drove back to Rochester.

So Carrie comes clean. She tells the investigators everything. And I think it's easy to see how devious this plan was. It was thought out. They knew Michelle was going to be there. They knew Charlotte was going to be there. So there was a component to the plan of, you know, how do we get Charlotte out of the home so that she doesn't know Lloyd is there?

She doesn't know what actually happened to her mom. And then you have Lloyd kind of sneaking into the back hatch to be driven away. And Charlotte still doesn't know. It seemed like a pretty devious plan. And the fact that Lloyd was able to get Kerry to go along with it to help him with it, is one of the most shocking parts of this whole story. Yeah, it really is. You know, I go back to him saying that he was paying $6,000 a month in alimony, child

support. That's a lot of money. But I can't envision a scenario where a dad is talking to his daughter. He's kind of laying all this out. And he's telling her, I don't see any way out. other than to kill your mom and the daughter goes along with it. I'm really struggling with that. I get it.

He threatened to, you know, end his life. Was that a part of it? I'm sure it was. And go back to Kerry telling oxygen. I had to choose. Well, if you think about pretty much every case, at some point, people have to make a choice. And I'm just shocked by the choice she made.

She could have also made the choice to tell her dad that she wasn't going to cooperate and go to the police or warn her mom. And maybe the outcome would have been different. And I don't want to minimize the position that she was in. You're turning on a parent. But to turn on your mom knowing that the outcome is going to be her death, that's a tough one. Instead of turning himself into police once Carrie had told the truth, Lloyd fled. In January 2018, authorities finally tracked him down. They followed him to the top of a five-story parking garage in Princeton, New Jersey.

He held them off, threatening to jump if they came any closer. After two hours, an officer tackled him, taking his chance when Lloyd turned away for a moment. He was finally in custody. Carrie was taken into custody without incident at her apartment. Lloyd New Rider waved his extradition hearing and was taken to New York to stand trial. He was charged with first degree murder, second degree attempted murder, first degree burglary, first degree custodial interference, tampering with physical evidence, second degree conspiracy, and second degree criminal solicitation.

So seven charges in total. Now later on, Lloyd would end up taking a plea deal. And as part of that plea deal, he was supposed to take accountability. But instead, he claimed that he thought Michelle would hurt their daughters. So he felt he had to kill her to prevent that. According to Gene Lundy, blaming Michelle or anyone else is typical of him. Michelle's daughter, Carrie New Ryder, was charged with four felonies, second-degree murder, first-degree custodial interference, tampering with evidence in second-degree

conspiracy. According to CBS News, Gene Lundy, who had initially been shocked that there would be any way Carrie would be involved, wrote to Stuban County Judge Peter Bradstreet, saying, I do not believe my daughter, Michelle, would want a long prison sentence for her daughter. District Attorney Baker agreed with the later sentence for Carrie, but also felt that she needed to face some consequences for her choices. He explained his decision to CBS News, saying, I think for her own sanity,

she needs to serve some penance. District Attorney Baker allowed carry to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter instead of second-degree murder, which carried a possible life sentence and a minimum of 25 years in prison. By pleading guilty, she only faced 15 years to life. As part of this deal, she was required to testify against Lloyd at his,

trial and also had to tell authorities everything that happened the night. This time, Carrie admitted actually helping Lloyd staged the crime scene. According to CBS news, after Lloyd strangled Michelle in her own bedroom, Carrie and her father dragged her body towards the stairs and he tied the knots before throwing her over the side of the banister. She broke down sobbing. Carrie said to CBS, I saw my mom. I saw her. I just left her there. Unlike her father, Carrie did take a polygraph examination and passed.

Investigators saw no reason to doubt her final story. Stuban County District Attorney Brooks Baker told the Democrat and Chronicle, I really think she was brainwashed. Carrie New Ryder was sentenced to between one and three years in prison. She was taken to Benford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in her. in Westchester County before being transferred to Albion Correctional Facility. So you read this statement from the DA saying he thought that Kerry was brainwashed. I'm sure there is an element to that. But I want to go back to the sentence. You know, at first, she's charged with second degree murder and a host of other things,

which could have landed her 25 years to life. But she ends up pleading. guilty to second degree manslaughter. But even with that, it said she was facing 15 to life. And then we find out that she was sentenced to between one and three years. So, I mean, it's a huge difference. Now, some of that, I'm sure, comes from the fact that, you know, she finally was truthful with her story. Also a big part is testifying against her father. But you think about a young person facing many, many years in prison versus one to three. Now, nobody wants to do any time in prison, but those are really big differences.

Yeah, and you have to wonder what was going on and Carrie's mind because here she had bonded with her father so much that they put this plan in a place to kill Michelle. And now she has to break this bond with him to tell the truth so she can get herself. self a lighter sentence, so probably was a lot weighing on her. But at a certain point, as we see in many of these cases, it comes down to self-preservation. On October 12, 2018, with his trial just two weeks away, Lloyd Newrider, decided to take his chances of getting the lower end of 25 years to life, with or without parole, and changed his plea to guilty of multiple charges, admitting to first degree murder, first degree

custodial interference and second-degree conspiracy. Lloyd's sister, Wendy Benia, was also swept up in this whole ordeal. She was arrested at her home in Bakersfield, California, on April 10, 2018, on charges of trying to bribe a witness. Wendy entered a not-guilty plea on April 30, 2018. She and Lloyd were both charged with attempted bribery of a witness, a Class E felony, and fifth-degree conspiracy after they planned to try to convince Carrie to change her testimony by offering to pay for an attorney for her. District Attorney Baker told Spectrum News. The bribery was giving her access to a very expensive lawyer,

trying to get her to change her testimony and her plea in the murder case to benefit Lloyd. Carrie refused to cooperate with her plan. Lloyd also pleaded not guilty to these charges. Charges against Wendy may have been dropped because there seems to be no mention of any sentencing for her or any updates on our legal problems. District Attorney Baker, who believes that pleading guilty was Lloyd's final way of maintaining control of his image, said, I wanted everybody to see who Lloyd was. And for Michelle's sake, to see what he had done to her.

He was almost disappointed that he didn't get to take this case to trial. This guilty plea robbed Michelle of having the truth known. since Lloyd continued to blame her so much, even in his own admissions. Michelle's divorce attorney told the Democrat and Chronicle of Lloyd's actions, some people could see right through him, but some were captured by his charm. District Attorney Baker wanted the world to see through him and know that he was the kind of person who cared about nothing but himself. According to CBS News, Gene Langell.

And he again wrote to Judge Broadstreet, asking that Lloyd be given a life sentence because he should never be given the opportunity to harm anyone again. Not only had he been abusive to Michelle during their 25 years together, but he had manipulated Carrie into helping kill her own mom. She had faced life in prison due to her apparent belief in her father. Their other two daughters had also lost both parents. Lloyd harmed many people when he decided to end Michelle's life. At a sentencing hearing, Lloyd claimed to have found God. He admitted that he tried to bribe his daughter and also admitted that his sister Wendy

was involved with that attempt. Lloyd Newriter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on December 4th, 2018. Looking at photos from the day that Michelle was murdered. The day she and the kids went icing down the hill. District Attorney Baker said to CBS News, it reminds us why we're doing it. Because this lady's not here to have another day like this.

Michelle's daughter, Carrie Newriter, was released from Albion Correctional Facility on Parole on January 16th, 2020. Now, many people believe that Carrie got off way too easily because she wasn't totally helpless in this. She says she had to choose, but like you said, Morph, she could have also made the choice to call the police or even warn her mother. All we can do is hope that she has support and will get the emotional and mental help needed to be able to prevent such an influence on her in the future. When it came to her children, according to Gene in a CBS News interview, Michelle wanted them to be happy, even though they believed Lloyd's version of reality. And she hoped that someday they would realize what it was done and come back to her and say,

see how hard she fought for them to have a good life. A lighter sentence would allow the possibility of one day having a good life. Lloyd Newriter is currently serving his life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York. He's been housed in at least two other facilities, including the Omair Correctional Facility and the Clinton Correctional Facility in Danamore, New York. Michelle's obitcher and find a grave reads, Domestic Violence Victim, He ended her life for leaving him. And so, you know, as we wrap this case up more, there's a lot that stands out to me. Obviously, Lloyd Newrider was a guy who, as I think some people have said, cared very little about anything other than himself. And unfortunately, that's something that we see with a lot of

killers, right? This choice, this decision that they make. to end someone's life. Comes down to what? You know, custody, not wanting to pay alimony or child support, you know, money. I mean, you can just look at all of it and say, Lloyd was doing what was best for him.

What was going to make his life easier, his life better. And, you know, his choice was to do that, I have to end the life. of this person who at one time I love, who was the mother of my children, we spent so many years together. I think what is so different with this case compared to many that we do is this unbelievable aspect of him pulling his daughter Carrie into his plan and her ultimately going along with it. And I completely understand why some people believe that she got off

too light, you know, one to three years. She was paroled pretty early. I have no problem with people's opinion on that. I can see it myself. Now, I do think, you know, she was brainwashed in a way by Boyd, but at the same time, you could say she was old enough to make the right decision. She just didn't do it. Yeah, she was an adult, a college student who was on the verge of, you know, graduating college. So she clearly knew right from wrong. So, you know, despite her dad influencing her brainwasher or whatever, that defense can

only go so far at the end of the day, she was responsible for her own actions. and I also understand why people think she got off with the very late sentence. But at the same time, you had her grandmother, you know, writing to the judge, asking for leniency for her, basically saying that Michelle wouldn't have wanted her to spend, you know, the rest of her life in jail. But at the end of the day, you know, this case comes down to some of the same things that so many do, a very selfish person, not wanting to give up their money, not wanting to maybe be apart from their kids, and making that choice, that rather than go through all that, it would be easier to just kill someone. And that would make all of my problems go away. I just don't know how

someone gets to that point where they can justify it in their mind that it's worth taking another person's life to them. And it's a very tragic and sad case because you've got one parent who's dead, one parent who's in prison, middle sister is in jail. And, you know, for what was the end result here to save some money? but just a terrible outcome here. Yeah, all the way around, right? And you look at the number of people affected by Lloyd's actions,

and you'd have to say Cary's as well, Michelle's family. There are two other daughters, the oldest and the youngest, friends. I mean, just there's so many people affected that we don't even know about, that kind of adds to the tragedy of some of these cases. But that's it for our episode on Michelle Newrider. If you love the show, I haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a rating. You can leave a review as well, but also 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, Ron X with the handle at Criminology Pod, you can also find us on Facebook at 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.