Criminology - The Carnation Murders

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

In 2007, in Carnation, Washington, a terrible tragedy unfolded. When 61-year-old Judy Anderson didn't show up to work on December 26th, a friend and co-worker drove to her place. What she discovered was an unimaginable scene. Six members of the Anderson family, including Judy's husband Wayne, were found dead inside the home. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Carnation murders. Three generations of the Anderson family had been murdered, and the police had to figure out who would want them dead. There was one family member missing; Wayne and Judy's daughter Michele Anderson. The authorities were shocked when they finally arrived at the truth of what happened inside that home.   You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok  Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford. 

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. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

So, everyone, and welcome to episode 390 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, what's going on this week, buddy? I'm doing pretty good. I'm actually coaching my son's flag football team, which is getting ready to start. So I'm sitting here reviewing my playbook and taking off my podcasting hat for a second, putting my coaching hat on.

So this is, it's going to be a little bit of fun. Wow, they got plays and everything, right? Oh, yeah. High tech.

Okay. So is this like what I remember of flag football? There's a flag on each side of the waist and somebody's trying to pull one of them off? Yep. Six on six. Classic rules. It's NFL inspired. And there's like 400 kids come out in our community for it.

So it's a lot of teams, actually. It's very popular. Wow. That's awesome. So there's two things that I want to talk about more real quick. First of all, episode 390. We are closing in on 400.

It'll be here early next year. That'll be an amazing milestone. And then the second is, you know, the holidays are upcoming. You and I are taking next week off, but we are going to run a best of episode. So there will be something out there for people to listen to. Yeah, we've had a lot of people. tell us that they hate that week when we're off and they'd like to listen to something. So this is a good way to get something out there for them.

And if they haven't heard it before, they're hearing it for the first time. And if they like repeats, this is a good way to catch up on one that they've heard before. All right. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Coffee Cat, Carol Hand, Sky, Emilino, and Marguerite Puente McGowan. So that's a lot of great new support. support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much. And for anyone else that would like to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash criminology. All right. Let's jump right

into this case. And since this episode is coming out over the holidays, we decided to cover an infamous case that happened during the holiday season. For most people, the holidays are a really special time, a time when you get together with family, maybe have a special meal, exchange gifts, that kind of stuff, it should be a time for building memories. But for the Anderson family in Carnation, Washington, back in 2007, their holiday get-together would prove to be deadly. On December 26, 2007, 61-year-old Judy Anderson didn't show up for work. She had been a postal worker for many years, and it was extremely out of character for just

not to show up to her job. Linda Thiel, Judy's best friend, was also a woman. one of her coworkers at the Carnation Post Office, was immediately worried. She would later testify in court that by 7.30, I knew there was something wrong. There was just no doubt in my mind. Judy was never late and never missed a day without you knowing ahead of time. She called Judy's cell phone, but she didn't answer, so she called her at home and got the same thing. No answer.

Linda was so worried by her unexpected absence and lack of any contact that she drove out to the Anderson's property in Carnation, and she was so positive that something terrible had happened that she was already crying on her drive there. Just for reference, her nation is a small town of about 2,500 people, about 35 miles east of Seattle. And I know we've talked about this before Morph, but, you know, people's patterns, it's hard to overstate how big that is, not just in cases, right, but just in everyday life. when you're a person who never misses work or who always calls and then all of a sudden you don't that becomes a really big deal because it's just so out of character yeah and lindus really seems like a good friend because she's immediately concerned she takes upon herself to go drive there we talk in a lot of episodes how some people do nothing there's you know even if they're concerned

and they don't really do anything about it, but Linda's really going above and beyond here to try and figure out where her friend is at. When Linda got to the end of the Anderson's driveway, she found that the gate was locked, blocking any vehicles from entering the property. This also gave her a bad feeling. But it didn't deter her.

She got out of her car, headed up the long driveway on foot. As she walked up toward the house, she expected to see the Anderson's dog, which was usually out in the driveway, but she didn't. When she finally got up to the house, she figured that the dog would be up on the porch.

But again, she didn't see it. This was also odd, like Judy not showing up to work, and it gave her a bad feeling. She knocked on the door, but there was no answer. She decided to try the doorknob and found it was unlocked. So she opened the door and called out to Judy, but still, no response. She opened the door wider and looked into the house, which was dark. as her eyes adjusted to the room,

she was shocked to see the body of a man lying on the floor. The first thing that came to her mind was that there must be some kind of carbon monoxide leak. So she tried to make her way over to him to see if she could help. She knew it was important to act quickly and get anyone inside to fresh air. As she reached the body of who she believed was Wayne Anderson. Judy's 62-year-old husband, she realized that, Not only was this not Wayne, but she could immediately see this wasn't a case of carbon monoxide poisoning. And she'd soon find out he wasn't the only victim.

Linda knew that she had stumbled into a crime scene. Linda didn't have a cell phone with her, so she hurried through the home, winding up in a back bedroom where she found a landline-based phone and nervously called 911. By the time the 911 dispatcher answered, Linda was in shock and excitedly told the dispatcher, they were all shot in the head. They were all shot in close range. There's been a murder. She said there's a baby, a man, and a woman.

But Linda was not just in shock about stumbling into a crime scene. She was actually in fear because she was worried that the killer may be in the house someplace and might enter the room and attack her. She told the dispatcher, I'm worried about someone coming in and shooting me. Police raced to the scene, and just to be safe, Linda laid down behind a bed to try and stay out of view. She was relieved when she heard the sound of sirens

And moments later when police entered the home Only then did she feel safe And I can't speak to being in a situation like this morph But I can't imagine being in something where You're scared Obviously there would be a ton of fear People are dead You don't know if this person is still in the house

If they're coming back So this idea that she's here's the sirens and then the police come in. And only then does she feel safe? Well, the part in between would be agonizingly fearful for anyone. Yeah, we mentioned that Linda sort of was preparing herself as she went there

thinking something was already wrong. But I don't think that made it any easier for what she found when she entered that house. And I'm assuming that her thinking something was wrong didn't quite equate to the actual scene. Police got to Linda and took her out of the home. Then they made their way around trying to figure out what had happened. They would soon find out that there were more victims in the home than they expected. First, they found the body of 32-year-old Scott Anderson.

Wayne and Judy's son, his wife, 32-year-old Erica Anderson, was dead next to the couch. Their son, three-year-old Nathan Anderson, was lying on top of him. her, as if she had been trying to comfort him. In her final moments, it took a while, but officers finally noticed five-year-old Olivia Anderson, partially wedged underneath her mother's body. Outside the home, they found the body of 60-year-old Wayne Anderson, who'd been left in the entryway of a shed and covered with old rugs. And nearby inside the shed was the body of 61-year-old Judy, Anderson. There were six victims. Three generations of a family were gone just after Christmas. While finding six victims of the Anderson family was terrible, they didn't find every member of the family.

Missing were Michelle Anderson, Judy and Wayne's 29-year-old daughter, and her boyfriend, Joe McEnroe. They lived in a mobile home on the family's property, about 200 yards away from the main home. Police checked the trailer but didn't find Michelle or Joe. had said something interesting about Michelle during her 911 call. Maybe it was the time she had to think about and process what she had just seen. Maybe she just knew the family and their routines so well that she was able to make observations that were proved to be uncanny. Either way, she told the dispatcher, the gate is locked, which makes me wonder if her daughter did it, which is scary because I might be up here with a murder. Linda knew that Judy's daughter,

Michelle, was having some problems with the rest of the family. That piece of information caught the investigators' attention. After the scene was processed, the bodies of all six victims were taken from the scene for autopsy, which would reveal that the fatal shots had been fired from two different handguns, a 357 magnum, and a 9mm, two days before on Christmas Eve. Investigators had been on the property for three hours, processing it when Michelle and Joe showed up. The first thing that made investigators suspicious of Michelle and Joe is that they didn't seem

to be confused by the huge law enforcement presence in the property where they lived. They didn't ask if everything was okay. They didn't ask anyone what happened or what was going on. Once officers started asking questions, it didn't take long for either of them to break down and start confessing that it was the two of them who had murdered their family. Michelle Anderson and her boyfriend Joe McEnroe were both arrested and charged with six counts a first degree aggravated murder. News of the murders in the small community was shocking enough,

but the fact that the Anderson family was murdered by people within their inner circle was unbelievable. In this scenario morph where people don't ask questions, they don't seem to be confused by things. That happens quite a bit. You know, I watch a lot of true crime shows. and I'm always fascinated with the interviews, the real interviews when they have them of, you know, people sitting down with detectives and the questions they ask.

But more often than not, people who turn out to be guilty, they give themselves away with this type of thing. They don't ask the questions that you would expect a person to ask. You know, they don't ask what happened, what's going on. And I think to the authorities, there's only one answer for that. And it's because they already know, so there's no reason to ask the question. Yeah, I think sometimes it says little things that maybe a person that commits this kind of crime doesn't think about, you know, even if they've got some kind of story made up, you know, they're trying to have some kind of alibi. their attitudes, the way they interact with police when they encounter them.

Those things, they sometimes, they can't hide the truth. And I think in this case, it was pretty telling that they weren't asking questions because, like you said, they already knew what had happened. And the other thing that jumped out of me was that, you know, they caved very quickly. They broke down and started to confess. This wasn't at least as it's been reversed. reported a long drawn-out process. They just kind of cracked right away.

And that was probably good for the community because, you know, in a small community like that, you have a family murdered. I would imagine that everyone there is going to be frightened, worried that someone is amongst them that's a murderer. And, you know, here this is, it seemed like they had answers pretty quickly. Bail was denied for Michelle and Joe while they waited for their trial, a trial, which would be a long time in coming, because they both faced the death penalty, the case dragged on in the legal system for years. During their interviews with police, detectives skillfully

walked Michelle and Joe right into saying exactly what they needed to say in order to be charged with aggravated first-degree murder, which was at the time the only crime in the state that carried the possibility of the death penalty. Michelle admitted to detectives that she had been thinking about killing her family for at least two weeks beforehand. According to Seattle, Atdopi.com, she said, I wanted my mom, brother, and dad to die because they abused me over the years. This statement proved that these murders were premeditated. She and Joe both admitted multiple times that the children were killed, at least partially, so they wouldn't be able to ID them as the killers.

But this case had nothing to do with abuse. It was all about money. Michelle's story was really all over the place. She was adamant that a family argument that led to the murder. had been over $40,000 that her brother Scott owed her, but she hadn't given him a loan or anything like that. According to her, she had estimated that over the years, that's how much she had given to him. And now she wanted it back. When Joe was questioned, he told police that Michelle was arguing about $3,000, not $40,000. Both are substantial amounts of money, but then again, as we've talked

about, people kill for far less. Either way, Michelle felt like her parents, always took her brother, Scott's side. Up until the time of the murders, Michelle and Joe had been living there on the property, completely rent-free and had been for about a year. Michelle claimed that her parents wanted to kick her out because she wanted to collect her money from Scott, but at another point, she said that she wanted to collect that money so she could pay the rent and not just, get kicked out. So police had a lot to sort out. But one way or another, it seemed that money played some kind of role in the murders. And another thing that's fascinating for me, it always is, is to see people's initial stories or what they initially say to police change, right? Because the

authorities come back at them with information that, you know, kind of makes their initial story crumble. So they have to scramble. But this, this story, I don't want to laugh about it, but it is laughable. You know, it's not like you gave somebody $40,000 and you're asking for it back. This seems like equivalent to me saying to one of my daughters, hey, you know, over 24 years of your life, I probably spend about X amount of dollars on you. I would now like to have that money back. That doesn't seem to make any sense. And it's also interesting that Michelle was claiming that she was arguing about $40,000,

but Joe being questioned separately said that it was substantially less. So it seemed like either way, there was, it was about money. It was just a question of how much it was really about. Michelle and Joe also both acknowledged that there was an agreement that after a period of one year, they would start paying rent. Joe even admitted that they didn't need to live there rent-free. It had been Michelle who convinced her parents to give them a year under the guys that they needed the time to get back on their feet. After the year went by, they were supposed to start paying just $200 a month,

and that this amount would increase over another year until they were paying $1,000 a month. That would go towards family bills, including electric, water and groceries. To police, it seemed clear, Michelle didn't want to start paying the rent. Joe and Michelle had met online. They were both part of the same writing group. At the time they met, he was living in North Carolina. Eventually, he moved out to Washington to be with Michelle. Joe didn't have a driver's license, and as she usually did, following the murders, she drove Joe away from the property. This wasn't like she was scared and just along for the ride. She was literally in control of where they went and went.

Based on evidence founded to crime scene, police pieced together what happened on December 24th, Christmas Eve. The Anderson family got together on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. It was clear that the Anderson's had been interrupted while they were preparing to host Christmas dinner. There had been a roast cooking in the oven. Judy had been in the middle of wrapping some presents in the back room. Wayne had been attacked.

first. Michelle's first shot with the 9mm missed him. After the second shot, her gun jammed. Joe then used his 357 magnum to shoot Wayne. Judy ran toward the commotion and she was shot too. Sadly, one of the bullets paralyzed her, leaving her helpless but alive and conscious, waiting for the fatal shot, knowing she was about to die at the hands of her own daughter. The carnage didn't end when Judy and Wayne were killed. First, Judy was dragged outside and into the shed. Wayne was also dragged outside, but his body was left just outside the entryway to the shed. Old rugs that had been lying in the yard were piled on top of his body.

Wayne had been too heavy for the two of them to get all the way into the shed. Piling the rugs on top of him was the only way they could think of to make sure that Scott didn't see his father's body when he arrived and called for help right away. More rugs and multiple tails were used to sop up the blood inside the home. The scene was hastily cleaned. Then the killers waited, planning to ambush the rest of their family. One of the biggest decisions for a new parent is who you trust with your child's health care. We chose Salas Health.

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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. Sometime between one and two hours later, Scott Anderson and his wife, Erica, arrived with their two young children, Olivia and Nathan. They were there to celebrate Christmas.

Like they did every year, they had no idea what they were about to walk into. There was a third Anderson sibling, Mary Victoria, who was supposed to bring her family that day. However, that year, she wasn't feeling well. So they all decided to stay home. This decision may have saved the lives of herself and her family. Michelle knew that Christmas Eve was a very important day to her father and that he liked for the whole family to get together. Once inside the house, Scott and Erika started to settle in. Erica took off her shoes and she and Scott sat on the couch in the living room where they always sat when they came over.

Scott asked Michelle where their parents were and Michelle told him that they were both in the bathroom. According to Michelle, she immediately confronted him over money. She said Scott was baffled and he said he didn't know what she was talking about, which obviously only enraged her more. According to Michelle, Scott not only owed her money, but he also had her car, a firebird, that he wouldn't give back to her. She explained that they were supposed to have an agreement where she would provide money, and he would buy parts and fix up old cars for her, but he never held up his end of the deal. During the argument, Michelle pulled out the gun, and Scott jumped up to try and take it away from her, and a fierce struggle ensued.

Joe helped pull Scott off Michelle. Then they proceeded to kill Scott, his wife, and the children. And morphed, there's no way around it, right? This is a horrible scene all the way around. two parents in their 60s dead. But then the idea that Michelle and Joe are essentially lying in wait for Michelle's brother, his wife, and their two children to show up all the while knowing they're going to kill everyone.

I just, I can't imagine any of this. throw in the fact that it's Christmas Eve, a time for celebration and family to be together. It just makes it that more baffling. Yeah, this whole attack, we talked about how it was premeditated. She went over there with a plan. She went there with multiple guns, her and Joe. And it's not like something suddenly happened and on a whim this all unfolded. and after they initially killed her parents, they had time to sit back and maybe show remorse.

Maybe they could have called 911 and said, hey, that something happened. We committed this crime. They didn't do that. They sat around and said, okay, let's ambush the rest of the family when they get here. So, you know, not only as they premeditated, but they gave it further thought and then decided that they should kill the rest of the family. it's about as cold-blooded as you can get. And I think when you factor in that, you know, Michelle and Joe not only killed her brother, her sister-in-law, but also her niece and nephew who were young.

I mean, this is monstrous. These people are monsters. Erica's mother, Pam Mantle, had been worrying about the family since late on Christmas Eve. She expected to hear from them, but she never did. Pam would later testify that I couldn't get a hold of Erica. I'd been trying to call her for a day and a half. The last time they spoke, it had been early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and she was getting the kids ready to head it over to Wayne and Judy's house.

The plan was to spend Christmas Eve with Scott's parents and then Christmas Day with Erica's. Now, I think most listeners recognize that during the holidays, there's quite a bit of juggling. logistically, right? Having to visit different family members at different times, but it's very unusual for someone to completely drop out of sight. Usually there's a text or short phone call to finalize plans. And I know with my wife and her mother, there's a series of long phone calls, many of them every day and in the days leading up to the holidays.

days. Who's bringing the biscuits? Who's bringing this? You know, just talk about nailing down the specifics of the dinner. Yeah, and I think Pam immediately knew that something wasn't right because she hadn't heard from her over a day and they were supposed to see them. So she's probably not getting a good feeling about what's going on at that point. It turns out that Pam had been right to be worried. There had actually been a 911 call made from the Amherst. Anderson home during the attack. Erica had already been shot by the time she made an attempt to reach out for help. Seizing an opportunity when the only working gun ran out of bullets,

she crawled over to the couch in the living room and frantically grabbed the landline phone and managed to dial 911. According to Pam, in the call that she's listened to, you can hear Erica yell, not the kids, but for the call abruptly ended. The dispatcher tried to call the Anderson's number back twice, but there was no answer. So deputies were sent to check on things. Knowing that there were bodies outside that police might see, Michelle panicked. She ran down to the driveway gate and locked it.

During her interview, she revealed that she actually saw the officers approaching the property. They were nearly caught in the act. But upon finding the property locked up, the police didn't think there was an emergency. They managed to speak to a neighbor who hadn't heard anything unusual. So they left. This has caused a lot of people to have anger. with the police who responded, with many people saying,

had they walked up to the home, maybe some of the Anderson family could have been saved. By the time they arrived, though, it's believed that all the victims were already dead and couldn't be saved, but there could have been other outcomes. Maybe officers could have arrested Michelle and Joe immediately on the spot. Then again, maybe the police would have been ambushed.

And then we're talking about an even bigger, tragedy. Joe admitted that the 911 call Erica made had ended because he noticed she was making a call and he rushed over to her, grabbed the phone out of her hand, took the batteries out of it, and then smashed it on the ground. According to Joe, before she died, Erica begged for her life in the lives of her children. She said, you don't have to do this. And he said, yes, we do, before shooting her in the head. According to Mynorthwest.com, Joe claimed that Nathan looked like he understood and said, like he didn't hate us for it. Michelle said something very similar about Nathan. She said that he seemed accepting of the fact that he was about to die. And these are two young children who

likely didn't have any idea what was happening and were probably terrified about what was going on. according to Fox News, when police asked Joe why they needed to kill the children, he said, I didn't want them to turn us in. And according to a statement, Michelle made the police, the decision to kill the children was a culmination of not wanting them to live with these memories and not wanting witnesses. And this is the part where I call BS because you hear it time and time again. people trying to explain why they killed small children saying that, well, I didn't want them to have to live with the members. And I'll never understand that.

I mean, no doubt what they had already done to this point was horrific. And yes, two children having to see their parents murdered would be horrible. it would scar them, but for the perpetrator to say, well, I didn't want them to have to live with the memories. I mean, that just floors me, that someone could even think that in any realm, that's a coherent, acceptable thought or reason for, you know, murdering two small children. This is really starting to make my blood boil. Yeah, Michelle's trying to make my blood boil. Michelle's trying to make it sound like she's a caring aunt who's only looking out for the well-being of her nephew and niece, and she doesn't want them to live with these memories.

So she decides the best way to deal with is to spare them of that pain by killing them. It's mind-boggling. And I'm also blown away by the claims made by Joe and Michelle that Nathan looked like he understood, like he didn't. hate us for what we were doing and that he was accepting of the fact that he was about to die. It's just, it's like to me, they are trying to rationalize what they did when in reality, there's no possible way or nothing you can say that could rationalize the killing of these two young children. But they're trying anyway.

Despite this being a cold-blooded and premeditated murder of her entire family, Michelle and Joe hadn't fully thought through what to do in the aftermath of the murders. After fleeing the property, their first thought was to head to Canada. There were multiple ports of entry, just about two hours north of carnation. For whatever reason, they turned back and went back to their mobile home on the Anderson property, where they began to burn evidence. including bloody towels and rugs and her father's slippers in an outdoor fire pit. They also took the time to get rid of both guns used in the murders.

Under the cover of darkness, they wrapped both weapons in a t-shirt and tossed them off of a bridge into a river. They pulled over at a random spot on the highway to dump the rest of their ammunition. Eventually, Michelle and Joe were going to pretend they had been gone, away from the property during the murders and potentially portray themselves as even lucky survivors of a gruesome attack that claimed the rest of their family. They plan to call 911 and report making the shocking discovery of their family. But when they got back to the house, it was too late. Linda had already called 911 and officers had arrived.

And this, I think, goes back to Linda being such a good friend. that going over there immediately out of concern maybe changes this entire outcome because who knows what would have happened if the plan by Joe and Michelle worked and the police bought that they had simply found the rest of their family murdered. You know, this could have a entirely different outcome, but Linda spoiled that. Yeah, I think you're right. but I also believe that, you know, they were kind of careless and haphazard in the way they did things. So I think police would have figured it out eventually.

But the fact that Linda went over there and called 911 to my way of thinking sped things up probably pretty quickly. Both Joe and Michelle claimed that they had originally gone to Wayne and Judy's house that day to tell them that they were going to get married in Las Vegas. Joe was going to take Michelle's name and would come back to Washington as Joe Anderson. Police didn't buy this story, that they simply went to the home to share the happy news, because why would they bring two guns with them? On top of that, Michelle had claimed she was mad about money. Now she was saying she was happy about getting married. It just didn't add up.

Michelle had her 9mm handgun wrapped in a sweater she was carrying, and Joe had his 357 magnum in a holster on his left side. as King County Deputy Prosecutor Scott O'Toole would later point out in the courtroom, they also were armed with something else. The trust of the people inside that home and hatred for the people inside that home. And, you know, to me, that's a, that's a very fascinating statement. Because, you know, we talk about guns a lot. Obviously, gun violence is prevalent in a lot of the stories that, you know, we discuss. and it is here as well,

but I don't think you can overstate this idea that the people inside that home had a level of trust because Michelle was family. Joe had been around for, you know, whatever period of time he had been around, they were comfortable with them. I mean, this is not like a home invasion where you don't know the other people inside. So to me, it does two things. It makes it much easier for Michelle and Joe to do what they did,

but it also makes it that much more heinous, that they took advantage of the trust and love of their family. Yeah, if Wayne and Judy saw strangers approaching with guns drawn, something like that, they'd be able to lock their doors, call 911, maybe arm themselves, But they were completely surprised because they let the people that murdered them right into their house because they knew them and loved them and they were part of the family. So they had no inclinations, apparently, that this was a possible outcome. Not to mention the fact that it's Christmas Eve, right?

It's a time for family. Throughout her interview, Michelle's story evolved. First, she said Joe had absolutely nothing to do. with anything. It was all hurt. Then she said he did shoot her father, but only because she needed help after her gun jammed, and he didn't know about any of the other victims. Eventually, she admitted, perhaps it was even an accidental slip, that she was just supposed to shoot everybody. She also admitted in her statement to police that Joe was standing next to her before she shot Joe and Erica, and that she had wanted him to protect her.

Michelle tried to stick to the idea that she didn't shoot her brother until after he lunged at her. But Joe's version was different, and he said that Michelle shot Scott, and then he charged her, and he was trying to rip the gun out of her hands. This clearly was Scott trying to defend himself, his wife, and his kids,

and not a case of him attacking. his sister. The question that most people were asking was, how did things get to this point? How did Michelle come to this decision to murder her entire family? It really seems like Michelle's anger built up over years and years. As far as we can tell, there was no real trigger, no one incident that caused Michelle to snap. Unless she never thought her parents would actually make her start paying the rent, she agreed she would start paying after a year. And then she realized that she was going to have to.

At trial, Michelle told the judge that her attorneys were abusive in their meetings, so she wasn't able to talk to them and participate in her own defense. It was a small taste of what the Anderson family must have been dealing with. She claimed the entire family had been abusive to her for her entire life, even including Erica, who she felt turned her brother Scott against her. Scott and Erica were high school sweethearts. They got married in Las Vegas in 1999, four years after graduation. If Michelle had some kind of grudge against Erica, it went back a long time. Joe was under the impression that Michelle had been badly abused by her family for most of her life. When he went along with her, according to him, it was out of a sense of protecting her.

Michelle claimed that she panicked because she didn't want to end up on the street. But Joe makes it seem like they would have had no trouble paying rent. The only issue with the rent was that Michelle didn't feel like she should have to pay anything. It's unclear why Michelle chose Christmas Eve if it wasn't an attempt to eliminate the entire family, but things had been getting worse for the couple leading up to the holiday season. In November, Joe quit his job at Target at Michelle's urging. She wanted him to become an electrician. He tried, and he got his GED, took some online courses,

and tried to learn how to drive so he could get his license. Michelle had been unemployed for months, though she had a pretty large sum of money sitting in her savings account since she hadn't had to pay rent in a year. The rent-free period was ending, where it perhaps passed, and she likely knew her savings were about to evaporate. Michelle claimed that neither she nor Joe drank alcohol,

let alone did any drugs. All of these decisions were apparently made while they were both completely sober. By the summer of 2008, Michelle was claiming that she wanted the death penalty. she told the Seattle Times in a jailhouse interview, life in prison is not enough punishment for me. I want the most severe punishment,

which would be the death penalty. And I'm always a little bit dubious about, you know, these killers asking for the death penalty. They have their reasons or at least what they give to be reasons. But for me, I often think it's because they just don't want to to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Now, she's calling the death penalty the most severe punishment, but maybe to her having

to sit in that cell for the rest of her life is actually the most severe punishment. And it can be for many people. Yeah, there's real remorse where somebody truly is sorry for what they did. But I think a majority of times it's self-preservation where they just can't bear the situation. They don't want to be behind bars for the rest of their lives, and they think that the death penalty is going to end their suffering. It's not out of responsibility that they feel this way. Yeah, I truly agree. In July of 2011, a teenager found a revolver and a holster on the edge of the still-a-gwamish river. His father contacted authorities in case it was stolen property or had been

dumped as part of a crime, he turned out to be correct about that possibility. The weapon was registered to Joe McEnroe. Ballistics experts tried to test the gun, but it couldn't be fired due to water damage, but the bullets still inside the gun matched the two 357 shell casings found at the scene. This was a crucial piece of evidence that had been recovered. In January 2014, Joe McEnroe tried to enter a guilty plea to all six murders in exchange for the state dropping the option of the death penalty. But prosecutors disagreed with this decision. King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Scott O'Toole told the press following a hearing that Joseph McEnroe is not going to dictate his punishment. In 2015, after the case finally made it to trial, Joe McEnroe was found guilty of all six murders.

though he was facing the death penalty, he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility parole. The jury couldn't agree on a death sentence. After this, the prosecution dropped the option for the death penalty in Michelle's case. And more if I don't know how Joe McEnroe's case really could have gone any other way. I mean, he confessed to the murders, confessed to his role in them. it seemed like, you know, when it just all came down to it, he really just didn't want the death penalty. But my thought is he knew he was going away forever. And let's face it, he should. And this is a man who was able to kill an entire family, including young children.

This is a guy who should never see the light of day, never be free again. And I'm going to make the point I always make in so many of these episodes, how does this guy decide he's going to go along with this plan, you know, of Michelle's to murder not only our parents, but her brother, his wife, and two young children.

I mean, at any time he could have walked away and said, nope, I'm not being a part of this. You know, if there's really some kind of abuse that's happened, call the police, get them involved.

But instead, he backs, her and he says yeah it sounds like a good plan let's let's kill your entire family so you know I'm glad that he he is where he is because you know he could have walked away from this and he chose to be part of it but isn't that part of the fascination with true crime when you try to analyze these individuals and the decisions that they make for most of us there's no way for us to understand how a person can make that decision because it just absolutely makes no sense. And it goes against everything that we would do.

But like you said, for some reason, he went along with it and he seemed to be okay with it. Yeah, there are instances or cases where something happens, somebody snaps people that normally think rationally and wouldn't willingly go along with a murderer in the spur of the moment in the heat of the moment, they may be involved in a crime. But when someone has, you know, forethought and time to think about something, even if he originally agreed to it, he could have changed his mind and said, you know what, this is a bad idea and backed out of it. But it just, you know, he went all the way through with it. So he got what he deserves. No witnesses were called by the defense to testify on Michelle's behalf. Instead, her attorney's

tried to rely on a strong opening and closing statement. Michelle refused to testify in her own defense and only wanted to tell the jury that she hadn't been adequately represented, which the judge wouldn't allow. Michelle's defense attorneys actually believed that she was mentally ill. However, she did undergo a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, and she was deemed competent to stay in trial. In 2016, Michelle Anderson was also found guilty of the six murders and sentenced to serve six consecutive sentences of life in prison with no possibility of parole. Erica's mom, Pam, told the Seattle Times, I wish she had had to face the death penalty because I wanted her to feel the terror of losing her life.

Pam was happy, however, that at the very least, Michelle will never get out of. of prison. Michelle's sentencing hearing was a very interesting situation. Most of the victim impact statements were the kind of things that would bring the survivor's comfort after losing the family. Person after person stepped up to tell Michelle how beloved her parents were and how senseless the loss was. One of them even told her, I'm sorry your mom is not going to be there to mail you care

packages in jail and to visit you because I know she would have. She was that special of a person. Everyone who spoke was still kind to Michelle, though, even though she was the cause of the loss. Michelle Anderson is now 47 years old and is currently serving her sentence at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor. Joe McEnroe, who's also 47, is currently serving his sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Both have expressed a lot of what many would describe as regret, but

not exactly what you would call remorse. They probably realized that the killings didn't solve any of their problems and put them in jail for the rest of their lives. So they regret their actions, but most people believe there's no real remorse. They aren't sorry for taking the lives of their family. And this is something that, you know, I get the feeling of in many cases.

Okay, maybe the word regret really speaks more to the fact that they were caught. And there's not remorse, which you would think of as being sorry for what they actually did. And I think you have that with a lot of killers. They're not sorry about what they did. What they're sorry about is that they got caught and they have to spend the rest of their lives in prison and that they're not free to maybe either do what they want or do other horrible acts. Well, hopefully behind prison bars, you know, Michelle and Joe have time to think about what they did and maybe one day truly are sorry when she realizes that, you know, she took the family that loved her, the only family she really has and murdered them.

You know, what I did think was a very interesting part of the impact statement is someone saying that her mom, if she was alive, was a type of person that even given the horrible actions that Michelle had committed, would still visit her in jail, would send her care packages because that's just the type of person she was. I think that really tells you everything. You need to know. Pam Mantle thinks of her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, especially during the holidays. And it's important to Pam that they all be remembered. In an interview with K-I-R-O-7, Pam implored the coronation community to please don't forget them.

Hopefully a story like this one will help listeners appreciate the loving and trusting family bonds that they have during this holiday season. And maybe it's just a reminder to let the people you care about know just how much they mean to you. Yeah, obviously that's something that we should all be doing. We should do it all the time, but the holiday season kind of really does reinforce that. I think for a lot of people,

there's more get-togethers, right? During the holiday season, you get to see family more for a lot of us, but it really is a time to, you know, treasure family. And that's what most of us do. And I think as we wrap this case up, that's what makes a case like this even more unbelievable is that, you know, Michelle couldn't see her family for what they really were. I mean, think about her mom and dad.

They were letting her live there, her and Joe, rent free for a period of time. You know, she was saving up money. She was getting on her feet. that in and of itself is an amazing thing. What an opportunity. But she didn't see it that way. All she saw was that even though it was said ahead of time, it was about ready to get to the point where they were going to have to start paying rent.

She didn't want to do that. She just wanted to continue to sponge off of them. And then you have this weird dynamic with her brother Scott. all right she calculated that somehow he owed her $40,000. Not for a loan, just for things that had somehow built up over time. I didn't really get that part. I don't know. There's no way to make sense of any of it.

Yeah, this kind of crime murder of an entire family is shocking anytime it happens. But I think especially during the holiday season, in a safe place that is supposed to be a home having a Christmas dinner together for this to happen. It's just, it's especially disturbing when it happens under those circumstances. And I don't want to forget the fact that, you know, in the process of trying to wiggle her way out of this, she threw members of her family under the proverbial bus by saying she has, she had, had been abused, almost as if it's not bad enough what I did. In trying to explain what I did, I'm going to further hurt these people. Even though they're already dead, I'm going to smear their

names, their good names, by saying, they abused me. Now, it ultimately came out that that was all BS. But it's just the type of thing that, you know, you hear from killers. they have to come up with something more to explain why they did what they did when in reality sometimes there's just no explanation nothing you come up with is going to make sense for what you did but that doesn't stop them from trying that's a good thing that the police were able to arrest them right away keep them from hurting anyone else and you know maybe help this town heal from this awful tragedy, you know, faster by not having them on the loose and not having an unsolved crime on their hands.

I just keep going back to the amount of carnage that they inflicted. And I'm particularly struck by the young kids. You know, the fact that they thought they had to murder anyone is mind boggling. But the fact that you could kill too small. children who are related to you. I don't know what else screams monster more than that. I really don't. Yeah, and I think they are right where they belong for what they did.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I have no problems with a life sentence without parole. I just don't think these are people, either one of them, that should ever be back on the street. But that's it for our episode on the carnation murders. And just another reminder, Morph and I will have a week off between Christmas and New Year's Day. And like Morph said, you know,

we know there's a lot of listeners who need their criminology episode on a Saturday night. So we'll be re-releasing one of our older episodes that we think you'll really enjoy. So be on the lookout for that. Also, don't forget, If you'd love the show, go out, leave us a rating, leave a review. Keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really goes a long way.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform. Just search for a criminology podcast on your favorite. And for news and old episodes and more, head over to our website, Criminology Podcast.com. And finally, if you want to join a discussion group about the podcast and the cases we discuss, go to Facebook and search for criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology. Morph and I want to wish everybody, happy holidays,

and we'll be back with you in a couple of weeks with a brand new episode. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you in two weeks. See you in 202026. Happy holidays.