Every Town - The Disturbing Calls of the 'Weepy Voiced Killer" Paul Stephani

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

“Killing was, seemed to me, the thing you were supposed to do that was part of life. Driving a car was part of life. Eating food was part of life. To me, it seemed like killing was part of life, until I did it.” This was a quote from serial killer Paul Michael Stephani who murdered three women between 1980 &1982 in Minnesota and Wisconsin. 💥 Watch On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries🎧 Our Other Podcast: https://scarymysteries.buzzsprout.com💥 Exclusive Podcasts: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579/subscribe 💀 Follow Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 💀 Follow Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg👁 Follow Our TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald💥 Follow Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial🗣 Business Inquiries: [e-mail] Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between. With over 20 million downloads, Morning Cup of Murder has something for every true crime lover. One listener describes the show as a small package with a powerful punch of crime.

Another writes that the show is an absolute delight in the morning. Support yourself a piping hot cup of murder every single morning with Morning Cup of Murder. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every town has a dark side. killing was, seemed to me, the thing that you were supposed to do that was part of life. Driving a car was part of life, eating food was part of life. To me, it seemed like killing was part of life until I did it. This was the quote from serial killer Paul Michael Stefani,

who murdered three women between 1980 and 1982 in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Now killers don't you use. usually call 911 on themselves, nor do they beg to be caught. However, Paul did just that each and every time, except for one. What set him apart from other equally notorious killers was that Paul would make these anonymous calls to police to remorsefully report his crimes in a high-pitched voice. Thus, the police ended up giving him the moniker, the weepy voice killer. Hey, guys, I'm Andrew. Welcome to this week's episode of EveryTee, What a creepy thought. A man commits a heinous crime only to cry into the phone to police as if he couldn't help himself, and we're actually sorry.

So let's get into it and head to the Midwestern states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, where we learn about this lesser-known killer, the details of his crimes, and why exactly he did them. Paul Stefani was born on September 8, 1944, and raised in Austin, Minnesota. the youngest of ten children in a devout Catholic family. His mother went on to remarry when he was very young. Unfortunately, the stepdad was a cruel, cruel man, the type of guy who was known from time to time to throw his stepchildren down the stairs if they misbehaved or beat them. Being the youngest, he was around the house the longest to endure this abuse

and likely had a profound impact on him. He wanted to get out of that house as soon as he was. could, so after graduating from high school, he moved to St. Paul where he got by working odd jobs trying to find his place in the world. He held down several positions, but he was even fired from a janitor position at Malberg Manufacturing Company in 1977, which is worth noting because his first victim's body would be found here three years later. He met a girl named Beverly Lider, who he was able to have a steady relationship with. They got married, He even had a daughter, but Paul's twisted mind eventually caused real problems for them.

He was once convicted of aggravated assault and had a history of mental illness, and so, shortly after his girl was born, Beverly and him divorced, and he abandoned both of them completely. Now free, and on his own at the age of 35, his killings would begin on New Year's Eve of 1980. At that time, 20-year-old University of Stevens Point student, Karen Potock, had just arrived in St. Paul. call to hang out with friends and celebrate. They ended up at a nightclub which closed at 1 a.m. And when her friends went to find Karen, she was nowhere to be found. They figured since she had been drinking, perhaps she had had enough and decided to head back to her friend's place. Or perhaps she was just having fun and wanted to wander the city. Either way, it was a bad idea

because at approximately 3 a.m., the police received their first phone call. A man on the line wanted a squad car to be sent to Pierce, Butler, road and syndicate avenue by the Malberg Manufacturing Company machine shop, because there was, as he said, a girl hurt there. At the location, officers found Pottock's naked body in a snowbank near the railroad tracks. She'd been beaten with a tire iron to the point where her skull had cracked open. Miraculously, despite her severe injuries, she survived the incident, but had a long road in front of her to recover from the brain trauma. She had no memory whatsoever of the events,

and so she couldn't help with identifying her attacker. There were no witnesses on that cold winter evening, and so it looked like nothing would come to the investigation. But then, once later, police once again received a call from the same man, only this time he was claiming to have stabbed somebody with an ice pick. June 3rd, 1981, 18-year-old Kimberly Compton from Pepin, Wisconsin,

was freshly graduated from high school and making her way to the big city of St. Paul to see what it had to offer. She packed up her stuff, took a bus, and after the long ride, Kimberly was looking for a bite to eat. Just outside the bus depot, she spotted it, Mickey's Diner. She sat down, and it was there that Paul saw her sitting alone,

and so he approached her, realizing she didn't know the city he offered to show her around. and Kimberly, thinking she was all grown up, and so stranger danger didn't apply to her, agreed to go. Her body was then found in a neighboring area of Minneapolis near an unfinished freeway, when three boys stumbled upon it that very same day, and she had been stabbed 61 times with an ice pick, as the caller had said. Shortly after that is when that call came in, with Paul pleading, his voice chilling with seemingly real remorse,

laying under a sense of terror. And it was this event that resulted in police dubbing the caller, the weepy voice killer. After a couple of days, Paul called the police to say he was sorry for Compton's killing. He said, I'll try not to kill anyone else. I couldn't help it. I don't know why I stabbed her. I'm so upset about it. He then claimed he would turn himself in, but he did not.

On June 6th, he called to say newspaper account. as some of the info with the murder and attempted murder were inaccurate. His next call was on June 11th, where, in a whimpering, barely coherent voice, he cried again, I'm sorry for what I did to Compton. The serial contact of police so often that the investigators felt like there was a pretty good chance someone in law enforcement would recognize the voice,

but the recordings were so short and distorted with emotion that they failed to nail down the identity of the killer. And several times his phone calls were traced by emergency operators, once to a bar near a bus station depot, and once to a downtown phone booth. By the time the police arrived, he was always gone. During the calls, Paul would frantically claim he wasn't in control of himself, begging for the authorities to find him, while being too scared to turn himself in because he didn't think he could survive jail. I can't believe that I'd kill myself. I'd rather kill myself to get locked up.

I'll try not to kill anybody else. His next victim was Kathleen Greening, who was found dead at her home just outside St. Paul. Paul later confessed to drowning her in her bathtub at her Roseville residence, and this was the only time he didn't report the killing to the police or media, making it an outlier. His fourth and last murder victim was Barbara Simmons, a 40-year-old nurse who was out on the town at the hexacom bar.

And Paul had asked her for a cigarette and they got to talking. At one point when Simmons went to the bar for a drink, she told the waitress that she hoped the man she had met was a good guy, because he was going to give her a ride home. Police found the body of Simmons on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. She had been stabbed to death more than a hundred times. Two days later, the killer called fire emergency to say that he was sorry. for stabbing Miss Simmons and claimed to have been responsible for Ms. Compton's murder as well. Police retraced Simmons's night. That waitress from the hexicon bar then identified Paul

Stefani as the last person who had been seen with Simmons before her death. Authorities soon discovered that Paul had been fired from his job as a janitor at the Malberg Manufacturing Plant in March of 1977, three years before Karen Pontic was found close to death at the same location. But before, police could surveil him, Paul went into the city's Red Light District, where he solicited a prostitute named Denise Williams before bringing her back to his apartment. Once they were done with the deed, Paul offered to drive her back to the district, and she accepted. However, instead of driving back to her corner, Tiffany took Denise to a dark and secluded road saying that it was a shortcut. Suspicious, Denise saw a glass bottle in the car and planned

on using it against Paul if he tried to harm her. At the end of the road, Paul stabbed Denise in the stomach with a screwdriver 15 times, but he was hit with that bottle, which caused severe wounds to his head. And she managed to open the door, but was stabbed several more times. Her screams awaken a man nearby who then confronted Paul, causing him to flee. Later, Paul called 911 to help stop his bleeding, and his voice was recognized by the department who quickly connected his injuries with Denise's attack. Paul was then quickly arrested and convicted of the attempted murder of Denise, as well as charged with the murder of Barbara Simmons.

During the trial, police could not link Paul to the murders committed by the weepy voice killer, despite his own sister confirming it was indeed his voice when listening to the tapes. Nevertheless, he was put behind bars, and in 1997 when Paul was diagnosed with skin cancer and given less than a year to live, he decided to confess to the murders of Kim Compton, Barbara Simmons, and Kathleen Greening. He had not even been a suspect in the Greening death, as he had not made a phone call to police as he had done in the other cases, but in all, he confessed to a beating attack in 1980, the stabbing death of Compton in 81, the drowning of Greening in 82, stabbing Barbara Simmons to death in 82, and the stabbing of Williams in 82.

Investigators soon found Greening's address book, which included the name Paul S, and a telephone number belonging to Paul. During Mr. Stefani's trial in Barbara Simmons' murder case, Stefani's ex-wife, sister, and a woman who live with him testify that they believe the hysterical caller revealing the attacks was Paul. Those observations alone were not enough to identify him, though, as the weepy voice killer, since the hysterical crying distorted the voice. No one knows why he contacted the police after committing his heinous crimes. While it is rare for a killer to call the police after committing a crime, it's not unheard of. When they do contact authorities, however, most killers do it for an ego boost.

If you ever confess, especially in a remorseful tone, behind bars, Paul Stefani died of cancer on June 12, 1998 at the age of 53. As psychiatrist, Park Dietz theorizes, it's an unusual thing for serial violent offenders to communicate with law enforcement during their offenses. Some of them are doing it to taunt police. Some of them do it so they can get more credit. But I don't take it to mean ever as a desire to be caught. I don't think people capable of serial homicides feel enough guilt.

And so, does this mean, Paul Stefani's weepy voice calls, we're all just for show. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. If you want more content from us, please consider checking out our exclusive bonus episodes over on our other podcast called Scary Mysteries. There we have one bonus episode per week for you. Link is in the description, and you can cancel any time.

Thanks for tuning in today. Remember to come back next week for another episode filled with scary strange and mysterious stories because you never know. Maybe your towel will be next.