Let's Go To Court! - 249: Faylene Grant & Peanuts!

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Faylene Grant’s death could have been many things. It could have been an accident. It could have been a suicide. It could have been cold-blooded murder. It could have been the result of emotional manipulation at the hands of her husband, Doug Grant. It was difficult to say for certain what led to the drowning death of 35-year-old Faylene Grant. But when her husband remarried just three weeks after Faylene died, it raised some eyebrows. Then Kristin tells us a truly vomitrocious story. At its peak, the Peanut Corporation of America produced peanuts, peanut butter and peanut powder for major food conglomerates like Sara Lee, Kelloggs and General Mills. They supplied peanut butter to hospitals, nursing homes and schools. Over the years, their profits soared. But their factories were unsanitary. Their workers were badly paid. Worst of all, the people in charge didn’t care about whether the food that they sent all over the country was safe to consume. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: The episode of American Greed, “From Peanuts to Sick Millions” “The rise and fall of a peanut empire,” by Lyndsey Layton and Nick Miroff for NBC News “PCA prison terms put industry on notice about accountability,” by Kathy Holliman for foodqualityandsafety.com “Praise for an unlikely whistleblower,” by Darin Detwiler for Food Safety News “Michael Parnell’s attorney paints him as the ‘little guy’ in the PCA case,” by Dan Flynn for Food Safety News “Unprecedented verdict: Peanut executive guilty in deadly salmonella outbreak,” by Moni Basu for CNN “Former peanut executive sentenced to 28 years in prison,” by Brady Dennis for the Washington Post In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “A Divine Death” episode A Wedding and a Murder “Fatal Visions” episode Dateline “Mormon Widower Doug Grant Wasn’t Counting on a Murder Rap When He Followed His Late Wife’s Instruction to Marry His Ex-Lover” by Paul Rubin, Phoenix New Times “Doug Grant Gets Five Years After Slain Wife’s Sister Pressed for His Conviction Based on a Dream” by Paul Rubin, Phoenix New Times “Grant v. Grant” casetext.com “Woman sues over mom's 2001 drowning” by Gary Grado, East Valley Tribune YOU’RE STILL READING? My, my, my, you skeezy scunch! You must be hungry for more! We’d offer you some sausage brunch, but that gets messy. So how about you head over to our Patreon instead? (patreon.com/lgtcpodcast). At the $5 level, you’ll get 45+ full length bonus episodes, plus access to our 90’s style chat room!  

One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Caruso. I'm Brandi Pond. Let's go to court. On this episode, I'll be talking about the Peanut Corporation of America. And I'll be talking about another mysterious bathtub death.

Will you? I will. Will you? Yeah. Hey. Yes? Doodaloo! No. Will you? Yeah. Hey. Yes? Doodaloo! No.

The people have spoken. They want it back. I don't know if they just felt sorry for me because they could tell how badly I was going to miss my doodaloo, ad, intro, outro noises. add intro outro noises you know we we have asked patty to find a little a little ditty to put in when there's gonna be an ad and yeah you know i'm gonna play um will it just be her going it'll just be the sound of patty sucking on chili dogs outside the tasty freeze it doesn't be a terrible ad sound. It doesn't have to be outside the Tasty Freeze. Just because, like, we won't know.

We won't know, yeah. She'll be sucking on a mini-holware. There will be a vibe. That's right. That's for sure. That's for sure. Anyway, welcome to the show, everyone. That's right.

Hi, how you doing? Hello. We've got energy today. We've broken into song a couple times. Yeah, many times. And, oh, what's this? You want more of us? Calm down.

My God. My God. There's more of me to go around, okay? Just hop on Patreon. Patreon.com backslash lgtc podcast once you get there you can load up on 45 bonus episodes so much too many some people have complained about the number of bonus oh my gosh can you delete some of these there's so many um and you also like the one thing no one's complained about.

There is also a monthly Zoom call. You get to hang out with us. What more could a person ask for? You can get inducted on this very podcast into the Supreme Court. How dare you do that to me when I'm literally about to drink iced coffee.

Oh shit, she's taking a drink. I'm parched because I had to's taking a drink. She's not going to join. I'm parched because I had to not take a sip. Hang on. All better. Was that so difficult for you, ma'am? You can get ad-free episodes and you can get them a day early. That's right.

Wait, was that like a Hank Hill? We're not sure who it was. Anyway, you can get all of that and more on Patreon. Should we make an announcement? Oh, maybe we should. Maybe we should. Brandi, where are we going to be in October? We're going to be at Obsessed Fest!

Yes! Year two in Dallas, Texas. For tickets and information and all of that and more, visit ObsessedFest.com. We had so much fun last year. So excited to go again. Yes. So, so excited. Boom.

Cannot wait. And people have been un-askin'. Askin'. They've been askin' if we're going to be there. And the answer is caramel sauce. That's Brandi's code for yes. I've tried to tell her she could make things a lot less complicated. But, you know, anyway, here we go.

Here we go. We've got to, like, be on top of it today because we have a Zoom call after this. And I've got a little bit of a stalling meeting i'm not i'm going i'm moving right along okay shout out to fierce mama llama for recommending this case i am speaking to her again i wasn't for a while because she recommended the maddie clifton case and i was pretty upset about that oh what she mentioned the other day in the Discord how you weren't speaking to her. Yeah.

And I thought, that seems really weird. I forgot that you'd made a joke about that. Okay, all right, anyway. So she recommended this case saying it seemed like a very brandy case, and she's absolutely correct. Also, shout outs to A Wedding and a Murder, which is an Oxygen program. Of course it is. And an episode of Dateline presented by who? Josh Mankiewicz.

Oh. Yeah. You ready? I'm ready. Failene Eves was a deeply religious woman. Her Mormon faith was the cornerstone of her life. woman. Her Mormon faith was the cornerstone of her life. In 1993, she was a divorced single mother of two when she met Doug Grant at a gym in Phoenix. Okay, she actually had kind of known Doug when they were younger because he also had grown up in the church, but they didn't know each other as

adults. And they kind of made a connection at the gym that day. And at the time, Doug was at a similar place in his life. He was a divorced single father. And his Mormon faith was also very important to him. Doug was a vitamin supplement entrepreneur. He had started a wellness company. I put wellness in quotes in my notes here. Because just anyone can start that shit, right? Yeah. He started a wellness company called Optimal Health Systems. Also was at this

time the nutritionist for the Phoenix Suns, which is a basketball team. Oh, so he was an actual nutritionist. Nutritionist, yes. Okay. Well, that's refreshing. It is. I would love it if the FDA actually oversaw any of that. All right, well, that's another thing. Failene and Doug hit it off, and very quickly they were married, and eventually they were sealed in the LDS temple to ensure that they would spend all of eternity together. What was that? That was my impression of a seal. Oh, I thought you were making a joke about, like, all dogs going to heaven or something. And I was like, how did we get there?

No, it's just a classic joke. Okay. About a seal. Yeah, let's not move on. That's fine. That's fine. They also had two sons together, which brought the Grant family a whopping total of five children. So Failene had two prior, Doug had one,

and then together they had two for a total of four boys and one girl. Things were good for the Grant family for several years. They traveled, they enjoyed lots of family time, and Doug's business continued to thrive. He was even able to offer jobs to Failene's family members. Several of them had high-paying, senior-level positions within Doug's company. But Doug had to travel a lot for work, and that began to put a strain on Doug and Failene's marriage. Failene prayed for guidance from Heavenly Father about what to do about her strained marriage. This was super big in her life. She spoke to Heavenly Father a lot and believed that he spoke back to her and sent her messages.

By the spring of 2000, Failene was struggling so much that she decided to go to the temple and pray at the temple. The temple was her favorite place, a place of clarity for her. And so she went to the temple to pray on her marriage. And it was there that Failene said she received a message from Heavenly Father. Failene said that she received a very strong witness. That's how she referred to it. I don't know exactly what that means, but that Doug had been unfaithful to her and that she should divorce him. So this is actually, okay, getting these messages from Heavenly Father or from Jesus or

from the Holy Spirit, this is something that's really big in the Mormon faith. They believe that you're supposed to spend a lot of time listening, praying and listening, and that messages will be sent to you. And so she believed that this was God speaking directly to her, saying, your husband's been unfaithful. You need to divorce him. How common is divorce in the Mormon church? So it's not common. I was going to say, I was kind of surprised that she— That they were both already divorced once.

Yeah, she already felt like that was kind of like a mark against her by having been divorced once already. But then she believed that this message was coming straight from God. So she was like, this is what I do. I get divorced. So she believed that this message was coming directly from God. And it turned out to be right. She confronted Doug and Doug admitted that he had been unfaithful. He'd engaged in affairs with six other women over the course of their marriage.

Yeah. Wait, how long had they been married? Seven years. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So Failene filed for divorce in June of 2000. And the two moved on.

Those close to Failene said that she seemed happier than ever. Her family believed that Doug had been controlling. And so, they were happy that she had moved on from him. And Doug was happy, too. After the divorce, he began dating the 19-year-old receptionist at his office, Hillary DeWitt. What? You don't like that? No, I don't.

What if he's also 19? He's not. He's not. He's 35. Yeah. Disgusting. Great. Yeah, so Doug and Hillary started dating, like, as soon as Doug's divorce went through and it got serious very quickly.

Hillary was in love with Doug and she loved his two sons and she wanted to marry him. And according to those close to Doug, he wanted to marry Hillary. They dated for about a year. And during that time, so it's kind of interesting because Failene actually knew Hillary through church. She was from church as well. I'm sure she knew her as a child. And Failene was instrumental in getting her the job at Doug's company.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you help a child out. This girl's fresh out of high school. Let's give her a job. Yeah. So they date for about my husband's all over this being in the 19 year old receptionist. before like a Mormon court, which I didn't even know was a thing, and like basically tell them what he had admitted to his wife. And at that time, he was excommunicated from the church, and he was told he had to atone for his sins. And only after he atoned would he be allowed back in. How do you atone?

I don't really know the answer to that. Here's what you do. Go join the Mormon church tomorrow and find out. I'm not going to do that, but thank you. Fine. All right. He also admitted that he was having premarital sex with Hillary during that Mormon court hearing thing. And so that was also one of the things that he had to atone for. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, so he and Hillary are dating for about a year. And then all of a sudden, Doug got a call from Failene. And she said that she thought that they should get back together. So this happened. It seemed this all kind of came out of nowhere. Doug got this call from Failene in July of 2001. OK. So the way this kind of happened, they were plaintiffs in a case together related to Doug's business. And they had to go together to, I believe, Dallas for this mediation is what it was. And at that time they went to this mediation that it was decided in their favor.

They got like a $350,000 settlement for whatever this lawsuit was. And they talked during this time. And that was like really the first time that they talked about anything other than the kids or whatever. And Failene really liked how it made her feel. And so she thought that maybe she was having feelings for Doug, but she knew that she had received a message from God telling her you're not supposed to be married to him. And so she was really confused about these feelings that she was having. And so they go to this conference. She goes back home to Arizona.

At the time, the temple in Arizona was closed for renovation. And so she drove to San Diego to go pray on these feelings that she was having. So she goes to San Diego. She goes to the temple. She prays. She's like, you know, God, give me the answer. And she says that while she was praying there, that she got a message from God that she needed to get her family back together, that she was to remarry Doug and put their family back together and that they would welcome another child. And so she calls Doug from San Diego and tells him this.

And he just like gets on a plane and flies out there and they get married. They actually drive to Las Vegas and get married. He breaks up with Hillary. I hate everything about this. Yeah. So they just like get back together. Friends and family said that after remarrying that Doug and Failene seemed happier than ever. They seemed to really belong together.

Kristen, why is your face? You just raised like one eyebrow. I'm just listening to this story. So Failene was a big journaler. This is something that's encouraged in the Mormon church. It's how you get your devotions out. I don't know the specifics of it. Tell us more. That's all I know. So she was big into journaling and she wrote in her journal on September 5th of 2001, I finally have a husband who treats me with love and respect and is even beyond what I could dream. You know, she'd done what God had told her and she was happy to have her family back together. So two months after they remarried, Doug and Faelene decided to take a second honeymoon. So they went to, I believe it's pronounced Nauvoo, Illinois.

It's like a, it's a Mormon heritage site. There's lots of historic places that are sacred to the LDS faith there. And so they decided to go there. But they were only in Illinois for like a day or two. And then Faye Lane said that she thought that they should go to utah she had this calling she felt to go to utah i'm exhausted by both of these i know you know what god god was the reason i ate eight oreos yesterday i didn't even want the eight Oreos. I'm sorry. I'm being an asshole.

So, so Faelene really believed that she was getting these messages from Heavenly Father. And one of the messages that she had received to this point was that she would be called to serve a mission somewhere other than Earth. It was time for her to join the celestial kingdom and she would be dying soon oh this is a message that she believed that the heavenly father gave to her okay and so along with that message came this belief that she was also supposed to die in utah and so what yeah so she tells doug these things that like i've received these messages from the lord he tells me that my time here on earth is almost at an end that i've been called to you know

live in the celestial kingdom and then i'm to die in utah and so she tells doug like let's go to utah and so they do and they go to this national park 30 miles south of Salt Lake City called Timpanogos Cave. That's for sure not how it's pronounced. Anyway, they go there and Doug and Failene are sightseeing. And then Failene is like kind of out on like a little bit of a cliff stage. But there's like a little wall behind her posing for a picture. And then Failene told Doug that she saw something in the sky. Oh, my God.

She said she saw the face of Jesus in the sky. And so she climbed over this little barrier wall out onto a cliff, and she was looking up into the sky at what she believed was the face of Jesus. And then Failene fell. Her knees buckled, and she fell off the cliff. No. She fell 60 cliff. No. She fell 60 feet. No. Doug was standing about 15 feet away from her at this time, trying to take these pictures of her.

And when he saw her fall, he went running down the trail that led down to, like, where this drop-off was, screaming Failene's name. like where this drop-off was, screaming Failene's name. He was sure that he'd get to the bottom of this area where she'd fallen the 60 feet and find her dead on the ground. But when he got to the bottom of this drop-off where Failene had landed, she was just standing there, almost completely unharmed. almost completely unharmed. She had fallen 60 feet, but as she fell,

she fell into a tree and she like hit each branch on her way down until she landed on the ground. She had scrapes and bruises and she was very sore, but she was essentially uninjured from a 60-foot fall. Kristen, you can't just raise your eyebrow.

People can't hear that. They know. They know I'm not liking this one bit. Why? For a lot of reasons one of them being you know how like a lot of times in church people will tell their stories and it's just like it i find it frustrating sometimes because it can be to actually have like a spiritual life and like actually believe in something and it makes

more grounded regular people be like well gosh I don't want that that's ridiculous here Brandy I've got a hot load of bullshit for you prepare to be inspired so do you think failing didn't actually fall 60 feet and survive the fall no i don't okay it's interesting that you say that because doug took failing to a hospital against her wishes she was like no no no i'm fine he took her to the hospital and they checked her out and the doctor said there that he didn't think she'd fall in 60 feet either he said said tree or no tree, like there's no way she would have survived that. No. Things that didn't happen.

But it's the story that both Doug and Failene tell about this trip to Utah. Let me tell you something, Brandi. Mr. I'm fucking the 19-year- old and Mrs. I'm divorced. No, I'm with you. Yeah. They can say whatever the fuck they want. I don't buy it. Okay.

Excellent. So it's interesting because there were some people who didn't think that it had happened. Oh, really? There were also people who thought that this was a miracle. Of course. That she had fallen and survived this. Yes. And there were other people who believed that maybe this was not an accident at all, but that Failene had attempted to take her own life and had been unsuccessful.

Apparently, Failene had a history of depression. This is well documented in her journals, her feelings of feeling inadequate, of feeling deep sadness, of, you know, different things, anger even. Even anger. Yeah. But, yeah, so Doug's family was kind of the ones who were like, was this a suicide attempt? And Failene's family were kind of the ones that were like, no, this is a great miracle that she survived this, you know, whatever. So Failene's family did not believe at all that she was ever suicidal, despite the fact that there are mentions of that in her journals. And she was telling people she was having these visions that her life was

going to come to an end soon. The Lord had called her for a different mission. So following this fall, Doug and Failene stay in Utah for a couple of days as Failene's trying to recover from the soreness of this. Like I said, she didn't have any serious injuries, but she was extremely sore. And so they saw the doctor a couple times. She got some pain meds. And then after a couple of days, they headed back to Phoenix. They arrived there on September 26th, 2001. Once they got, they actually lived in Gilbert, which is nearby Phoenix, but they flew into Phoenix, drove to Gilbert, whatever. It doesn't fucking matter. Anyway. I think it does. How far is Gilbert? I I don't have a fucking clue. Do they have a Panera?

I didn't look it up. Does Gilbert have a Panera? Yeah. Why would I know that? That's a question I expect you to know. Sounds like you didn't really do your research. My goodness. Anyway, so they get home to Gilbert.

And that day, Doug called a friend of his who was a physician's assistant. He asked him. His name was Chad White. He asked him if he could come over and just check Failene out, make sure she was okay. And so he did. He made a house call. They said, you know, that she'd had this terrible fall and that she was having trouble sleeping because of this fall. Every night when she'd go to bed, like if Doug, like the second Doug got in bed with her, it would make her shift and her whole body would be in pain. And so he gave her a shot for the pain. And then he wrote her a prescription for a muscle relaxant and a prescription for five tablets of Ambien just to get her over the hump of this initial soreness and help her sleep for a few nights while her body was healing.

Chad White did ask Doug, though, to let him know before he filled the Ambien prescription. I'm not really sure why. It's just something that's mentioned in every article that he writes these prescriptions to Doug. And he's like, hey, just give me a heads up before you fill the Ambien. That's really weird. I think it's such a weird fact, but every article mentions it. But Doug went ahead and filled the prescriptions without letting Chad White know that he was going to fill the Ambien. He went and filled both of them while his parents came over and stayed with the kids and Failene. Doug's mom talked to Failene a lot at this time when he went to go fill the prescriptions. So it's just kind of Failene and Doug's mom talking for a little bit. She recalls her name's Ione Grant. Ione? I don't know. Is it I-O-N-E? I think so. Anyway, okay. Sounds like Ira to me, you know. Her name is Ione Grant,

and she said that she sat there with Failene and Failene told her, mom, I was supposed to die up there. The Lord told me. At that point, Ione volunteered to like spend the night there, like, you know, help with the kids, whatever they might need so that Failene could heal. But Failene was like, I'm totally fine. You know, I've got the muscle relaxant. I'm going to take the, I got the shot for the pain. You know, I'm going to be good. And Failene was like, I'm totally fine. You know, I've got the muscle relaxed and I'm going to take that. I got the shot for the pain. You know, I'm going to be good. And Failene went to bed about eight o'clock that night when she was waiting for her daughter, her 11-year-old daughter, to come home from a friend's house. Her daughter gets home. Failene goes to bed.

Did the physician's assistant want the heads up about the Ambien so that he would then warn them, hey, don't do the Ambien, the muscle relaxer and the shot all at the same time? Perhaps. Yeah. I think that's very possible. I mean, I feel like that's something you should just say right up front. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Yeah. My guess is that the physician's assistant was like, okay, I'm going to give you this shot. I'm going to give you this muscle relaxant. But if those things don't work, then I'm also going to give you this Ambien prescription. But like that's a last resort. Right, right, right.

Is what I'm guessing. OK. So Failene goes to bed about 8 o'clock that night and Doug came to bed later. He didn't remember exactly what time it was, but it was later. And he said that after he'd gotten to bed, Failene woke up in pain. But there was like a conversation about whether she'd already taken an Ambien pill or if she needed to take an Ambien pill. But they both kind of dozed off for a while. And then at one point, Doug woke up and Failene had wet the bed. This was not something that

Failene regularly did. It was just because of the injuries and the medication, most likely. And so she got up and said that she wanted to take a bath. And so Doug sat up and he, you know, offered to run the bath for her. And, you know, he couldn't remember exactly the conversation that had happened because he was half asleep and he dozed back off after he says he heard Phelene start the bathwater. Fast forward to the following morning. At 7.46 a.m. the following morning, a 911 operator in Mesa, Arizona, received a phone call from physician's assistant Chad White. He said, I just got a distress call from a friend of mine who just called me. I don't know if he called you already. He said his wife is unconscious

and that she took all of the medicine he had. Chad White said that he was in the car on his way to the Grant's house. He said he was about 10 minutes out. He told the 911 operator, his wife, I think she overdosed. I couldn't understand him. He was frantic. He told me to get over here because I'm a PA. And I told him to call 911. And he said, I'm afraid to. I'm afraid to. I don't know why he said that. So this is on the 911 call this is a recorded call yeah i listened to this call and so that morning chad white had gotten a call from doug and he's like failing's unconscious i think she took all the ambien and chad was like you need to call 911 and according to chad doug had said i'm afraid to which seemed like a really weird response. Are you going to repeat that whole thing again? No, no, no.

So rude. So Chad is on his way to the Grant's house, and the 911 operator dispatched paramedics to their home as well. Chad White got there first. He beat the paramedics by just a few minutes. When he got into the Grant's home, he found Failene Grant laying naked on her back on the king-size bed in their bedroom, and she was not breathing.

There was water around her. He felt for a pulse and did not find one. And so he immediately started CPR. So Doug told Chad White that he had woken up and he had found Failene under the water of the bathtub. He'd pulled her out. He'd laid her on the bed. He'd attempted CPR, but he didn't think he'd been successful because he hadn't been Failene in the bed wet and he started performing CPR. And he did start getting vomit and water out with each chest compression. He went to work on her for a while until the paramedics came. When the paramedics came, they took over. And at some point, it seems that they got some vital signs from failing. They got more water out of her. They turned her on her side. They got some amount of pulse and they rushed her to the hospital

where she was put on life support. I'm shocked they were able to do that. Yeah, so am I. She was on life support for several hours. All of her family came to the hospital. Life support for several hours. All of her family came to the hospital. But at 4.37 p.m., they removed Failene from life support for another day to see what the doctors could – so the doctors could analyze her activity and see if there was any hope for recovery. But Doug had been adamant that Failene wouldn't want that and he had asked for them to end life support. And she had died as soon as they removed her from life support. Right.

As soon as they removed her from life support. Right. So. Why are you making that face? I just. So obviously a death investigation is started, but all of the police reports that were filed the day that Failene Grant died all say basically the same thing. Failene's death at this time appears to be accidental. One police officer wrote in his report, I did not detect the elements of a crime at this time.

But Failene's family did not agree. They said that they felt suspicious almost immediately. They thought the timing of this was really odd. Failene had fallen off a cliff just days earlier. Yeah. When she was only with her husband. Yeah. And now she drowns in the bathtub in her. When she's only with her husband. Mm-hmm. And they said that Doug couldn't give them like a consistent story about what had happened that morning. He said that he woke up and she was going to get in the tub and he asked her if she needed help and she said no. And then he fell back asleep. That's one story that he told. But he told another person that he helped her into the tub and then

went and laid back down and accidentally fell back asleep. And that is in the police reports that he told different versions to different police officers. In one version, Doug said he remembered seeing Failene walk into the bathroom. He remembers her turning on the bathtub and then he fell asleep. But he told another officer that he had run the bath for Failene and then he'd helped her into the bath and then he'd fallen asleep. That's a pretty big difference. That's a pretty big difference. It is a pretty big difference. I agree. Yeah.

I think it's a really odd difference. Did you run the bath or did you not? Right. That's too big of a discrepancy. All right. So Failene's family was suspicious. They thought Doug had done something to Failing, had murdered Failing. And those suspicions were only increased when three weeks after Failing's death.

Do you want to guess what Doug did? You have just a wild guess. What's the wildest thing Doug could do three weeks after his wife dies? Well, immediately get the life insurance. Is that what he's going to do? Or is he going to go back to the 19 year old? He's going to marry the 19 year old. Yeah. He married Hillary DeWitt three weeks after Failene died. Yeah. So he got back with Failene so that he could marry her and no longer pay her child support. And then he kills her. So

bing bang boom, that's taken care of. And now he's back with Hillary. I mean, possibly. I'm afraid so. That is one possibility, yes. Am I about to feel terrible?

No, I don't. We'll get to how I feel about this case. Okay. So, yeah. So that was that. Your version is basically what Failene's family thought. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug's family felt a little different. They did think it was wildly inappropriate that Doug remarried three weeks after his wife died and married his ex-girlfriend, his 19-year-old ex-girlfriend. I was going to say, she's a teenager. Leave her alone. Yeah. But the biggest thing that kind of pointed suspicion at Doug when they looked into this case was that Doug never called 911 that morning when he found Failene. He called his physician's assistant friend, Chad White. That seemed like a really odd move.

And then there was the thing that Chad White had said on the 911 call where he had said that Doug had told him he hadn't called 911. He said, I'm afraid to. So like six months went by before this was before like an actual investigation kind of started in this case. Really? Yeah. Yeah. The responding officers hadn't really thought it looked that out of like nothing had been that odd that day. And so their reports had said this just seems like a weird accidental drowning type thing. And the medical examiner had said like this doesn't really look like anything. It looks like an accidental drowning. This doesn't look like, you know, there's nothing suspicious here. And so, yeah, it wasn't like for another six months kind of at the insistence of Failene's family that like a formal investigation into this case started. And that's when Detective Cy Ray took over the case.

And at the time, he said he wasn't really sure if this was an accident or a homicide. He said, we didn't have hardly any evidence. So the responding detective to this case, like he was a brand new detective. He took five pictures of the bedroom that day and that's like all the evidence that was captured from the scene that day what's a normal amount well i don't know he didn't so so what's mentioned on both this dateline program and this a wedding and a murder is that like this detective didn't lock the crime scene down at all. He didn't take anything more than these five photos. He didn't collect anything as evidence. He basically treated it like it was a natural death, didn't

treat it as if it could possibly be a homicide. Right. This was a hurdle for this detective, Cy Ray, who comes in and he said, you know, we didn't have any evidence from the scene. We did have that 911 call. They thought it was that was really weird. Also, he thought it was interesting that Chad White on the 911 call mentioned specifically something about an overdose, didn't mention anything about a drowning. And the toxicology report did show that Failene had taken all five Ambien pills. It's not enough to be fatal, but it would be enough to render her unconscious. Right. Detective Cy Ray is looking into this case, and he said, you know, that Doug and Failene were not the only people in the house that morning.

Like, several of their kids were there, including Failene's daughter, Jenna, who was 11 years old at the time. He believed that her version of like that morning's events didn't match up with what Doug had told officers. She said that she had seen Doug in the kitchen making like a bowl of cereal for one of her brothers at 7.15. By that timeline, he's been up. He comes out to the kitchen at 7.15. By that timeline, he's been up. He comes out to the kitchen at 7.15. But he told officers that he had woken up at like 7.42 when he called Chad to find Failene floating in the bathtub. So already that timeline doesn't match.

Right. And so then Cy starts looking into potential motives in this case. And he comes upon some life insurance. So when he was originally questioned this, Doug said that Failene had about $30,000 in life insurance, just enough to cover the cost of her funeral. Right. But that wasn't true. But that wasn't true. So, Failene actually had $300,000 in life insurance coverage. Plus, just like a month earlier, Failene and Doug had filed for additional life insurance on Failene, bringing it to $860,000.

Okay. Case closed. What's interesting, though, is that they never finished the paperwork on that. And so the amount never increased. It was just the $300,000. Huh. Yeah. That's interesting. Mm-hmm.

Did he say why they hadn't finished? There was like a medical test that Failene had to go have done and she just hadn't done it. Mm hmm. OK. It hadn't she hadn't had time. I don't know the specifics. Sure. Like there was one final thing she had to go get some kind of testing done and then they would finalize the the additional life insurance policy. Did he say why they needed extra insurance on her and not him? I honestly think he was OK. I don't know that he gave this reason, but I've seen him talk about it other places. I don't know that he told the police this, but I've heard I've read some interviews of

him since. And like it was all part of Failene's plan because she knew she was leaving the earth. She wanted her family to be set up. OK. She believed she was dying. The Lord had told her she was dying. She was entering the celestial kingdom. Might as well set up the family before you go.

You don't like it? I mean, so many things. And part of me is kind of like, I don't know, different faith, maybe different ideas. But like, if Norman came to me and he was like, hey, I've got this feeling that I'm dying. I'm not afraid. It's all good. But let's make some plans. No.

What would you do? I would get him mental help. Absolutely. Yeah. I would think clearly he was depressed and suicidal. He was misinterpreting things and he needed help very badly. Okay. So this is kind of where my controversial opinions on this case come in.

I actually think that's very much what was going on here. I think Failene was suffering from mental illness. She was having possibly suicidal thoughts or at the very least intrusive thoughts. Yeah. And she was interpreting that as messages from Heavenly Father. Sure. So a couple of different things here. I did some reading into kind of the LDS Church's position on mental illness. And like pre-2018, from what I can find, it was like the Lord will heal you.

Oh, shit. Okay. Post-2018, they've come out and said that like, yeah, having a mental illness has nothing to do with your worthiness. Like, yeah, you should seek help from a doctor. Yeah. But it seems to me from what I could find that like pre-2018, there was like basically if you're right with the Lord, the Lord will fix you. Good grief. Okay.

Also, okay, so you've got that going on. Then I don't – have you read I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy? Yes. So good. Right. Right. I think that there's just – because in the Mormon faith, in the LDS church, you're told to listen to messages from God that things that aren't necessarily messages from God could be interpreted that way. I also wonder if I'm not ready to let go of this guy. Yes. OK. I'm wondering if you are around someone who you what are you smiling? You're going to say that

she was manipulated by Doug, right? Yes. Yes. He preyed upon her because she was in a vulnerable state. Yes. Yeah. That's exactly what this detective believes. I mean, yeah. He called it specifically murder by manipulation. Sure. Yeah.

That's 100% what this detective thinks was going on here. That, yes, Failene was in a very vulnerable state. She was dealing with what she believed were messages from the Lord, but very possibly could have been some kind of mental illness or depression or suicidal thoughts. No, God was not telling her he wanted her to die. Yeah, no. So, no, it was not God. Yes. Correct.

Telling you right now. Correct. Not God. Yeah. No, she needed help. Yes. Correct. I'm telling you right now. Correct. Not God. Yeah. No, she needed help. And that Doug. Someone who loves you when they hear you talking like that should drop everything to try to get you help. Yep.

So, yeah, that's exactly what this detective thinks happened. having these issues and that Doug then just piled on top of them until the point that either he manipulated her into killing herself or he finished the job for her. But where is the evidence of it? Fair question. it fair question yeah so they would find some evidence that uh phelene had big plans big plans to no longer be on the earth she wrote letters to all of her loved ones saying she was dying and she wrote a letter to Hillary saying that she wanted her to be the mother of her children. Oh, my God. And that she wanted her to marry Doug immediately.

Her biggest hope in life would be that they were married by her funeral. That they would come to her funeral as husband and wife. This is so sad. Yeah, I think it's really sad. Sorry, I've completely lost my place in my case here. Let me. That'll happen. You don't think

that he was manipulating her? Oh, I think it's very possible he was manipulating her. I do. I don't know that he's guilty of murdering her. Yeah, possibly not. Yeah.

I also think it's possible he murdered her. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Here's the deal. I'm not convinced that a murder happened here and we'll get into the trial here in a little bit. Like that's where I'm kind of hung up.

Like. Sure. Did she take the pills? Did he give her the pills? Did he. Did she knowingly take the pills? Did he sneak her the pills? Did he push her off the pills? Did he sneak her the pills? Did he push her off the cliff?

Did he? Okay. Even Failene's family does not believe that he pushed her off the cliff. Failene's family believes that Doug murdered Failene. But they do not believe Doug pushed her off the cliff. They believe that was an accident or a potential suicide attempt. But they believe she had a change of heart after that when she survived that fall that she then believed no longer that she was no longer going to die. You seem like you have a lot of thoughts, Kristen.

You seem like you have a lot of thoughts, Kristen. I mean, I what's what I'm struggling with is exactly what you're saying of like there's. There's no smoking gun here. And so, yeah, it's shitty to be like, well, he did this and that and the other thing. Well, I don't know. Yeah. But. Just talking out my ass here maybe he didn't push her but i think that when someone is in a really vulnerable state you can talk them off a cliff absolutely literally yeah and if you are spiritually abusing them, I think there's, you know, it doesn't always have to be do this, do that.

No. It can be more manipulative than that. And you can convince. Yeah. So lots of people who knew Doug refer to him as a master manipulator. He was a salesman. Like that was his job. He was selling supplements

on a very large stage at a very large level but like that ultimately what what it boils down to is that was his job to be a salesman and he would give these great talks and he'd be very emotional and he'd you know sell the shit out of it he'd be in tears and then people who knew him would he'd come off stage and just immediately shut it all down yeah although i get emotional talking about fiber supplements things happen brandy that you can't explain okay so miracle what happened to my pants the other day what happened to your pants take this fiber supplement and find out won't you is that like what happened in london's pants the other night that she told me about oh my gosh you have to tell that real quick oh my gosh the other night london farted and then she came up to me and

she said i burped in my pants it's the best thing ever I laughed for like 10 minutes it's genius it is it is okay so they're investigating is your child a genius she is a genius she legitimately she's so fucking smart

see now that's word art I could get behind I burped in my pants I burped in my pants okay so they're investigating this case That's word art I could get behind. I burped in my pants. I burped in my pants. Okay. So they're investigating this case. They find out that Failene has sent – well, okay, she wrote all of these letters and gave them to Doug with instructions to hand them out to everyone. And they are – I mean they are very much goodbye letters. Here's like a couple of snippets from a different one of them.

I've had the knowledge given to me that my time on Earth is very short. To another person, she wrote, well, girl, this is it. My last letter since I don't think they have mail delivery from where I'm going. Another one said, I do know we'll still be together in spirit and that comforts me. I know the time will pass quickly and then we'll all be together again. So what did he make of all this? So he his wife gives him these letters to her loved ones. Yeah.

What's she believed that this was just like I'm saying goodbye to everybody because I know the Lord is calling me home soon. Right. Not that she was going to take her own life that she would die naturally somehow as I believe. But she's like 35. She's 35 years old. Yes. So what's he what's his reaction? Yeah, it must be happening that she's the Lord has told her.

OK. Also, she told him. Burp it out your pants. Also, she said she was having these visions at one point that she was going to have another child and that that child was waiting for her in pre-existence, which is a Mormon belief. It would be a little girl and they would name her Nicole. Now, towards the end of her life, Failene said that she had that vision had changed for her, that she would die, that she would go to the celestial kingdom and she would meet this child in pre-existence. But that then that baby would be sent to Hillary.

And Hillary would become the mother of that baby. Like, they would share that baby. This guy's a sick fuck. This guy's a sick fuck. This is Failene's vision. No, it's not. No, it's not. Yeah. So then she writes in her journals.

No, no, no. I am making up the song. So Failene writes in her journals that after she has told Doug about this vision, that he then begins having these visions as well. I bet he did. He has them every night. How amazing that he also had those visions. Oh, my gosh. I have a dream that I will go fuck a 19-year-old again.

And I won't have to pay you alimony. And I'll get your life insurance. Yeah, fuck this dude. Failing, like I said, wrote a letter to Hillary where she said that she wanted her to become the mother of her children. She said, I have had extremely deep feelings that Heavenly Father has and is continuing to prepare for you a major calling in this earth life. I want you to be the mother of my children. I want you to remind them that they are not only precious to Heavenly Father, but to their mother who has been physically called to serve her mission elsewhere.

So, yeah, I mean, it looked, I don't know, different ways to different people. Failene had been called home to heaven. Failene had died by suicide. Failene had been murdered by Doug. So, like, two years go by and this case goes nowhere because there's not really any evidence here. There's just fucking weird shit yeah and a dude who looks super suspicious yes um but two years pass this just kind of flounders and then they got a break a kickstart if you will a man named jim something or other came forward okay his last name he wasn't given a last he was given a last name i don't have a fucking clue how to pronounce it and i even heard it pronounced multiple times and i was like oh i'll for sure

remember that but as soon as i look at it I cannot remember it because it is spelled so weird. Okay. It's a, it's a, it's a Mick last name. Okay. M-C-E-L-Y-E-A. Say that again. M-C-E-L-Y-E-A. Yeah, I don't know.

I know. I think it's like Mickley. Mickley. I can't remember. I know. I think it's like Mickley. I can't remember. I'm so sorry. Anyway, this guy Jim comes forward and he says that he was a friend of Doug's. He specifically comes forward to Faelene's family, though, and says, I have important information about Faelene's death and I will give it to you for the low, low price of $10,000. Shut up.

No, I will give it to you for the low, low price of $10,000. Shut up. No. I will not. And so they actually go to the police and they're like, what do we do? And the police are like, say yes. And they set like, they like, you know, rig up a car with recording information. And they agree to meet this guy in a Walmart parking lot and he comes not knowing he's being recorded. They pay him $10,000. And Jim tells them that he had a conversation with Doug at the Grant house the day after Failene died.

And this is what he says. He said that Doug told him that Failene wanted to go to heaven and he just did what she wanted. And Jim said, what do you mean? And Doug said, well, I just I helped her get to sleep and then I just kind of um so i gave her extra acute which is one of his supplements so jim said that doug told him he took this acute capsule like opened it up put the ambien inside of it closed it back up oh and gave it to failing uh-huh so that she would then so she'd be tricked into taking way more Ambien than she realized. And he waited for her to become unconscious. And then he placed her in the tub. So they have Jim saying this on tape that this is what Doug told him and so then the police like fucking show up and they're like we're gonna arrest you for extortion right now unless you want to unless you want to cooperate with us and they get jim to agree

to wear a wire and co-try to talk to doug and get this recording of doug admitting to this surely doug's not that stupid doug is not that stupid doug denies any of this and he even like goes on this like holier- holier than thou speech about if you really think that I had something to do with my wife's death then you don't know me. Well and that guy could be totally full of shit. Well so it's

I believe that's actually the case because he completely recants this afterwards as he made the whole thing up. It never happened. Here's how well okay. I want to know. you're in that position uh-huh family member has died you think murdered but you know okay someone who claims to be a friend says you know 10 grand I'll tell you what I know what What do you do? You do anything to get that information. Oh, shit. I think losing – I think a parent – I think that's part of it.

It was – they came to Failene's mother and sister. I think a parent would do anything to get that information to try and understand how their child died. You think – well, I mean they did call the police I guess but they ultimately – I assume they got the $10,000 back but I don't really know that. They definitely did. It was Monopoly money. That's what I assumed as well. It was a sheet cake that had been done by the cake boss so it was very convincing that it was money. You've been watching a lot of Cake Boss? No.

But it has a really dated reference. Well, you mentioned fondant at lunch and it got me thinking about decorative cakes and it got me thinking about cake boss. Anyway, I'm just trying to not say the thing, you know. Okay. But I would. So I would. Go ahead. You would.

What would you do? What? What would you do? So sex scenario. Someone has died. You think they're murdered. A friend comes forward and says, I'll tell you all the information for $10,000. Okay. First, some caveats. I would not actually do says, I'll tell you all the information for $10,000. Okay.

First, some caveats. I would not actually do this. I don't own a gun. I don't know how to use it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I would never be more tempted to shoot somebody on sight. Yeah. Honestly.

Yeah. You're going to the most vulnerable people you can find with maybe a made-up story. We don't know. You're going to try to get money out of me? Mm-hmm. Okay. Cash me outside. This is how I know I'm a nut.

So, yeah. So they get this guy on tape, you know, saying that Doug has confessed this to them. They try and get Doug on tape and Doug's like, absolutely not. Like, no, that didn't happen. Whatever. But I told I already spoiled it and told you that he recants this. But before he does, they use this information to secure an indictment against Doug Grant. OK. And then Jim recants all of it yeah i mean and it's at that point this is why you just shoot the guy sorry not really so so they get the indictment right they arrest doug and they think they've got this great thing like

they've got this star witness but then he never thought everything they did they've got this great thing, like they've got this star witness, but then he recants everything. They really thought that this guy was going to be the star witness. I believe they said that on Dateline. I don't believe that any prosecutor is like, oh, great. Our only evidence in this case is coming from someone who extorted a victim's family for 10 grand. What if I told you the prosecutor in this case is Juan Martinez? The victim's family for 10 grand? What if I told you the prosecutor in this case is Juan Martinez?

Who has since been disbarred. Just keeps getting better. Jeez. Okay. For those who don't recall, Juan Martinez was also the prosecutor in the Jodi Arias case. But also, no. No. Juan did not believe that this was going to be great. No prosecutor believes that this is great. I agree with you.

I think this is not a great. Of course you agree with me because I am right. You're absolutely right. Now let's go kill all the extortionists. All right. Great. What weapons do you have? Okay, great. What weapons do you have? I've got some eyeliners I could poke people with. So just as they secure this indictment, their whole case falls apart. This guy recants all the information. They find out this big motive was this $800,000 life insurance policy.

And then they find out at this point that they had actually never completed the steps to secure that $800,000 and that she really only had $300,000. How did it take them that long to figure that out? I don't know the answer to that. But according to Dateline, that's when they figured it out. But they decide to move forward with the trial anyway. No, you can't. Exactly. No, I'm sorry.

You cannot move forward. They do. All right. sorry you cannot move forward they do all right in november of 2008 seven years after failing died doug grant went on trial for the first degree murder of his wife they have to acquit him there's there's not enough here let's see all right the trial lasted four months. It would have to because like. Yeah. In his opening statement, Prosecutor Juan Martinez portrayed Doug Grant as a lying adulterer. He said, a married man, an older man pursuing a younger woman. That's not his.

Ew. Mm hmm. a younger woman that's not his. Ew. Mm-hmm. He talked about Failene's writings and her premonitions of her death. Juan Martinez argued that they really showed not that Failene wanted to die, but that Doug wanted her dead. Murder by manipulation.

I am so excited that Juan and I are on the same page here. Not at all deeply troubled. Juan Martinez said that specifically Failene had written in her journals, I must have faith in Doug's vision. Oh, well, yeah. And he said that Doug's plans all came to fruition when he told the hospital personnel to take Failene off of life support. This is what Juan Martinez said in court. When he sees that these efforts are underway to save his wife's life, he says, let her die. Just let her die.

Later that evening, the same night Failene died, he met with Hillary. Ugh. Yeah, they met up that night. Doug says it's because he had to give the letter to Hillary that Failene had written. If only there was some kind of organization that delivered letters to other people for you. No, Doug has to do it all. Yeah, gosh, that's a great idea, isn't it? Someone should do that.

But the defense's argument in this case, I think, is very good. Yeah, that they have nothing. No crime of murder was ever committed. Well, we don't know that for sure, but I mean, yeah. There's no evidence of a murder. I know, but I... I agree that we don't know, but I think it's a great defense.

There's no evidence that a murder has occurred here. Well, yeah, I mean, it's easy to have a great defense when you have a terrible prosecution. They did not have enough to go to trial. Although maybe they did. Let's find out. So the defense during their opening statements painted Failene's writings in a different light. These weren't Doug's visions. These were her visions.

And in her writings, she was urging Doug and Hillary to get married. These were her wants, her wishes, her visions. No, that's cocoa bananas. And I feel like common sense tells you that. Yeah, I agree. The defense said at the end of this case, you will find overwhelming evidence that this is not a murder case. The first prosecution witness was. Wouldn't it have been fun if the defense had gotten up there and been like look i know this is not gonna look good

you're gonna get the heebie-jeebies from this guy left right and center but i'll tell you what yeah this is about convicting someone beyond our shadow of a doubt you can't do it jury and then boom sits down yeah all cocky maybe he spreads out over two chairs. We're not sure. Oh, sure. Absolutely. Like a little lean situation. Yeah, I don't know because. And like a spreading.

Yeah, like a man spread. Yeah. But then I was in courtrooms. You think of them with the arm. Yeah, you do. He's not going to take that up the ass and look casual. Maybe he just kind of lays over the table a little bit. Hmm.

Okay. Maybe. All right. Hmm. You think? Okay. Maybe. All right. And you know what? As a juror, I'd be like, this seems like a straight shooter here. Yeah, it's a cool guy. Okay, so the prosecution's first witness is Failene's daughter from her first marriage, Jenna. She was just 11 years old when her mom died.

At this point, she's like in college. And she was completely convinced that her stepfather had killed her mother. Yeah. She testified about what she remembered from that morning. She testified that she had tried to go into her mom's room around the time that her mom would have died, but that she found the door locked. She jiggled the handle, but she didn't knock or anything. She just walked away when she found it locked. And then she said that that was about 7.40 a.m., which is about what they had pinpointed for Failene's time of death.

Time of drowning, not death. She didn't die until the hospital. God. Yep. She then talked about what she remembered at the house that hospital. But yeah, she then talked about how she what she remembered at the house that day. She said they tried to rush me out of the room, just kept looking back while they were performing CPR and my mom trying to get her heartbeat. Yeah, she said it was devastating. I can't imagine being 11 years old and dealing with that. And then she remembered at the hospital later that day when she was when Doug made the decision to remove her mom from life support and that she saw like the monitor going. And then as soon as they turned off all the life support machines, she watched her mom's heartbeat grow fainter and fainter.

And she walked out of the room as she died. You know, Juan Martinez likes very dramatic. Don't we all? Stuff in court. And so at the end of Jenna's testimony, he said, how old are you? And Jenna said, I'm going to be 19 in a few days. Oh, is he going to make this gross and weird? And Juan said, um when doug started

dating hillary how old was she and she said 19 and then she like left the stand that seems unnecessary i think it seems completely unnecessary yeah yeah she didn't need to get she knows she knows how gross it is. Yeah, absolutely. And you can tell the jury how old Hillary. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely unnecessary.

Yes. That's Juan Martinez theatrics. Play a clip from this podcast of me talking about age gaps. Absolutely. That's all you need. Absolutely. Chad White was the next to testify. That's the physician's essentialist. Sorry. Chad White was the next to testify. That's the physician's – sorry.

Essentialist. Physician's assistant who had – Been made of essential oils. That's correct. He was actually just a Young Living representative. Yeah. So he talked about how he had prescribed some muscle relaxants and Ambien to Phelene, but that Doug had filled those prescriptions technically against his orders.

And so they talk about this. And Chad said that he had told them specifically that the patient is to inform me of filling the prescription. And so Juan Martinez said, did you ever get a call that day? And Chad White said, no, sir. That Doug had filled it without letting him know. And then Chad White testified about having to call 911 because Doug hadn't done it. They talk about, you know, they played the clip of the 911 call where Chad White says, I told them to call 911.

He said, I'm afraid to. I'm afraid to. And Juan Martinez asked asked what was he afraid of and Chad White said I've thought of that I've thought of that often I don't know for the record Doug says he did not say I'm afraid to he said that Chad misheard him that he just said I'm afraid I'm afraid okay that he just said, I'm afraid. I'm afraid. Okay.

Yeah. Anyway, he also testified about how he arrived at the home. He started CPR measures on Failene and that water came out at that time. And how, so the prosecution wanted to make a big point about this. It's like saying that Doug was trained in CPR. He's – you know, he works in the medical field. Oh, well, then, yeah, he should have been able to get some water out himself. Yeah, and said that, you know, with Chad being able to get a large amount of water out, that meant that Doug had never attempted CPR on her, though he said he had.

I think it's a fair point. Yeah. Yeah. A toxicologist testified about the amount of Ambien that was found in Failene's body. Juan Martinez asked, can a 123-pound woman given 50 milligrams of Ambien draw her own bath? And the toxicologist said, absolutely not. Oh, she would be totally unconscious, completely unconscious. So they are saying the version that Doug says where she gets up and draws her own bath could not have happened. Here's my commitment to you, and I expect the same in return.

Never have my weight said specifically. The prosecutor says, could a, and then I want you to just go, eh! Under no circumstances is my actual weight ever to be entered into the court record. Could a 75 pound woman so a 911 operator testified that they had checked the call logs because doug also said that he called 911 that day there's no record and that is suspicious as hell there's no record of a call paramedics who had arrived at the scene. At the scene. Scene. They're going to split it.

I was going to go back and fix it, but I couldn't. Anyway, said that Doug had seemed unusually calm at the scene that day. Paramedic testified, I mean, there was a dead lady on the bed for all intents and purposes, and nobody seemed to be excited about it. OK, well, that's a weird way of putting weird way to put it. But I get the point. Yeah, OK. I didn't mention anything about this just because, like, I don't know how I would react in a situation like this.

But I was bothered by the fact that she was just naked i mean this is a mormon woman exactly yeah okay you had that same exactly yes to me that's i mean not a huge red flag but it's it's something that like he didn't call 9-1-1 and like and he didn't cover her up he didn't yeah i mean just put a towel on her yeah yeah modesty is a huge part of the mormon faith i mean like i'm not particularly modest but like throw a towel over me yeah unless i look hot that day you know yeah i mean that's a terrible thing to say i'm sorry the modesty thing got me to at least read the pamphlets. You're like, so these people are covered at all times?

Tell me more. And people can't make fun of you for it because it's a religious thing? All right. Sign me up. Okay. So the paramedic also testified that they didn't remember Failene being wet, which I don't know that that's particularly important to this because. OK, but in a lot of your bathtub stories, there's tons of talk about.

Absolutely. I think we don't know how fast people dry once they are out of the water. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. An emergency room doctor testified, the emergency room doctor who had examined Failene after the 60-foot fall and said that they didn't believe that the injuries were consistent with that fall. I don't really know what that means, but didn't seem to match the story they were being told. Yeah, and see, that just muddies the waters because it's like, what the hell was that then?

Yeah. Yep. The hell was that then? Yeah. Yep. The prosecution called Hillary Grant, Doug Grant's new wife, to testify. She was tearful on the stand and Juan Martinez pounced on that, of course. He said, it's clear that this is something that's very emotional to you, right?

And Hillary said, yes. And Juan Martinez says, and it's because you care right and Hillary Grant said yes and Juan Martinez said you would have done anything for Douglas Grant wouldn't you have and Hillary goes no yeah and, what is the point that you're getting here at here? Juan Martinez, you think Hillary murdered Failene? Yeah, that's. OK, see, to me, this just shows how weak of a case the prosecution has because they're just throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Is he just trying to get the jury to not like her? I assume so.

Yeah. Part of the idea here is that Juan Martinez wanted to get the jury to understand that Hillary and Failing sent a bunch of letters back and forth to each other. That's how that's Failing told her, you know, I believe I've been called to another life. I think you're supposed to be my children's mother, you know, all of this stuff. And they believe that this that they wanted to present to the jury that Hillary did this under Doug's wishes as another way to manipulate failing. Oh, so Hillary responded. She did write some letters back and forth to each other. yes, while Failene was still alive. Hmm.

What did Hillary say? Did Hillary go along with it and say, yes, I'll be the mother of your children? Essentially, yes. Well, OK. Now I'm understanding where the prosecution's going with that. Yeah. Juan Martinez asked some questions about these letters. He said, you never did tell her that you were talking to her husband behind her back in those letters, did you?

So at this time, so when Doug and Failene remarried, Doug broke up with Hillary, but he was still calling her almost daily. They were still communicating regularly. And so this is like this is Juan's point here. So you're talking you're still having some kind of communication with Doug, even though he's remarried Failene. And Failene is now thinking she's been called to die and that you are the chosen mother of her children. Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. And Hillary admitted that she had never told Failene

that she was still speaking to Doug. And on the stand, Hillary admitted that she and Doug had met the very night that Failene had passed away. They met at a park, and a friend had said that Hillary told them when they met that night that Doug had grabbed her by the hips and said, mm, I miss these.

Ew. So Juan Martinez, of course, asked Hillary about this on the stand, and she said that never happened. That they did meet that night, that he did give her a letter from Failene. But he did not miss her hips. He didn't. Well, he might have missed them, but he didn't.

He did not say that specifically. She didn't speak to his wants and specifically, but he never said it aloud is what she said so prosecution's case that's i mean you know take from it what you will now it's the defense's turn we know that juan martinez loves to object so he objections all over this case mel mcdonald was doug's defense attorney and he told the jury, if Doug had pushed Failene off the cliff on the 24th, that's a strong indication

that he would have done something to her on the 27th. So he's like, you know, if you want to believe this, then you got to believe that, basically. But nobody's believing that Doug pushed Failene off the cliff that day is essentially the point the defense is making. So why did he kill her on the 27th?

I don't know that it's a super strong point. No, I don't think it is because, I mean, if you're thinking she was manipulated into going off the cliff herself. All right. Anyway. So the defense really focused on breaking down. Did you hit that whole microphone? I did. I did. Breaking down each individual prosecution witness. So they on cross-examination, they talked to Jenna about her version that she had tried to go open the door at 740 and it had been locked.

On cross-examination, Mel McDonald, the defense attorney, said, you never told the police about that version of events. Isn't that correct? And Jenna attorney, said, you never told the police about that version of events. Isn't that correct? And Jenna said, yes, sir. Jenna had never mentioned that version until her testimony. Wow. I mean, that is. It's something. Yeah.

Yeah. She had like never mentioned the door being locked. Nothing up until that time. She said she gave a reason for that on the stand. She said, I didn't want to tell anybody because I felt like I somehow contributed to my mother's death because I didn't knock on the door. I felt guilty. That's really sad. That's horrible. Yep. The defense next went to work on poking holes in that 911 discrepancy. Doug said he called 911.

The 911 call center said they never received a call from him. They put the chief technology officer for like the city on the stand and said that the 911 recording system was down this particular day. So it's possible. You're kidding me. It's possible. You're kidding me. It's possible. Oh, shit. That Doug did call 911 and it just wasn't recorded. Hmm.

There was an AT&T wireless call, which is who Doug's cell phone provider was, placed from a home in Gilbert to the Gilbert Police Department at 7.49 a.m. How big is Gilbert? I have no idea. See, I wish we knew if they had a Panera. You're right.

I should have looked more into Gilbert. If they had a Panera, then Gilbert's a pretty big place. All right. And this chief technology officer admitted they could not ID the caller. They know this call took place. They knew it was an AT&T phone, but because the recording system were down, they don't know who it was.

Could have been Doug. Wow. Mm-hmm. I think it's a pretty big win for the defense. That's huge. Yep. Yep. Then they put the medical examiner on the stand, the medical examiner who did Failene's autopsy.

Well, I would hope so. Well, OK, I think it's interesting that the defense put the medical examiner on the stand and not the prosecution. Oh, OK. Sorry. You know what? That was rude of me. I take it back. Mel McDonald asked, isn't it true that the least likely of all the scenarios here is homicide? And the medical examiner said, I have no evidence to support this being a homicide. Yeah. There's no evidence. Yeah.

Yeah. There's no evidence. Yeah. Yeah. The defense tried to break down what the expert had said about the Ambien, too, or what whoever had talked about the amount of Ambien. I think it was a toxicologist said that there's all kinds of weird side effects people have when they take Ambien. People sleepwalk. People sleep drive. People sleep eat. Maybe people sleep draw a bath. Well, and yeah, they tweet racist shit. Everyone knows that that's a side effect of Ambien. Absolutely. Absolutely. The defense had Doug's family testify about their concerns about Failene's mental health.

I'm glad someone was concerned. They believed that she was suicidal to the point that it seemed like she was preparing for her death. She wrote these letters. Yeah. She also set out a bunch of her belongings with notes on them who they were to go to she had baggies of jewelry with like a little note on it saying give this to this same multiples of those she had her wedding dress out with a note on it give it to blah blah blah like yeah she had assigned things to specific people. It was clear she was making arrangements to no longer be alive.

Yes. Was she manipulated into doing that then? That's definitely the question here. Doug's sister talked about how the prosecution said that, you know, these were Doug's visions, not Failene's. But Tammy Fuentes, who is Doug's sister, said these weren't Doug's visions. These were Failene's visions. Mel McDonald said, were you aware that anybody connected with Failene was pushing this revelation on her? And she said no. Hillary testified to the same thing. That she didn't believe that that that Failene had been very open with her about these visions that she was having and that she didn't claim they were Doug's visions.

She claimed they were hers, that they were messages from the Lord and that she believed them to be premonitions and that she was being called to another life. The testimony lasted like four months in this case, and then it was time for closing arguments. Juan Martinez in his closing arguments called Doug a false prophet. He said, this false prophet, the defendant, Douglas Grant, invoked the will of God to sacrifice his wife, Failene, on a lover's cross for him and his paramour, Hillary. OK, calm down. And at this time, this is kind of the first time that the prosecution put out their entire theory for the jury. They cited that paramedic who said that they didn't believe that Failene's body had been wet when they were there that day. And that paramedic had also noted an abrasion, a straight

line abrasion on Failene's body that was fresher than the marks from her fall. Juan Martinez said, her body's not wet and she's got this linear abrasion. And the tub is the only thing in the house that's been shown that could have caused that. He said Doug placed her over the edge of the full tub, pushed her head under the water until she drowned. That's what caused the linear marking on her chest and that's why her body wasn't wet. Juan Martinez finished by saying, you can be assured that the defendant is guilty of first degree murder. Mel McDonald in his closing statement said, you can't take a person and label him as a killer and not have evidence that is going to hold up and be firm. You can't do it. I agree.

Yeah. He went on to say that there was no way to prove homicide and he urged the jury to consider Failene's own writings in which she was planning and anticipating her own death. Mel McDonald said, this is a unique chance to let Failene speak to you about what happened. And he ended with an impassioned plea that Juan Martinez did not like. He said, what you decide will live beyond this courtroom. Thank you so much for your commitment and your time. And may God bless you. It's been a privilege. And Juan Martinez said, we're going to object.

It's pandering to say God bless you. And Mel McDonald said, it is not pand pandering and the judge overruled it. And so the jury got the case. Doug did not testify in his own defense. Yeah. The jury deliberated for 12 days. Mm hmm. And then finally on March 24th 2009 seven, seven and a half years after Failene's death, they returned a verdict.

They found Doug guilty of manslaughter. Wow. They said they believed. So the reason they deliberated for so long is there were two holdouts for first degree murder. So the reason they deliberated for so long is there were two holdouts for first degree murder. But once they went through and they dissected all of Failene's writings, they decided that Doug could have acted to prevent Failene's death and did not. OK. So that's the manslaughter. That's the manslaughter.

Yes. All right. Yeah. It's probably the right. No. Yeah. I think I'm OK with that. Yeah. It's probably the right. No, I, yeah, I think I'm okay with that. Yeah. I might have acquitted, but.

I probably would have acquitted, I think. Yeah. I can understand the thinking around manslaughter, though. He could have intervened. He could have got her mental help. He could have. Yeah, but does the law require that we do that, though, is the question. No, I don't think so.

I think it only requires that in the moment, if you can, like he should have. Called 911. Called 911. Maybe he did. Maybe he did. The prosecution at his sentencing asked for a super aggravated sentence of 12 and a half years. They said that it met the requirements. What are we, Power Rangers? A bunch of aggravating circumstances, apparently.

But Doug's family asked for probation, which was possible under the state law if there are enough mitigating circumstances. Mel McDonald pled to the judge for a lenient sentence. He said, Judge, he's a good and decent man. Please give him a light at the end of his tunnel. Doug had a bunch of people make statements in his favor at this sentencing. His children all said, you know, that their life has been impacted by this. sentencing. His children all said, you know, that their life has been impacted by this. He had a son who was like about to go off to college. And he said the idea of making those decisions without his dad around is devastating to him. His two sons with Failene both testified and said that

they don't believe that their father murdered their mother. After they testified, Juan Martinez accused Doug Grant of basically like showboating and trying to show that he's like this great father by making his kids testify for him. Well, no, that's what kids do usually. Yeah, that's what happens. And so this pissed Doug off. So Doug then speaks in his own defense and is like, you don't know the first thing about being a father. You don't have children, which juan martinez does not and he's like how fucking dare you accuse me of being a bad father like you don't have fucking kids okay well it's not exactly what he said but that's the gist of it i just think that it comes to this part of, well, it's not a trial, but, you know, when it comes to this part, this is what happens.

Family testifies. Absolutely. Yeah. Doug went on to say that he had a lot of regrets about that morning. He said the biggest one was not immediately calling 911. He said, that will haunt me the rest of my life. He said he again did claim that he had called 911. But you know whatever. He said I've never had any malicious intent toward my wife Failene at any time. Just mistakes. I'm truly sorry for the things I did and didn't do that morning. I loved her so

deeply. He did at that time also read a letter in court and he told the judge that he believed this explained how they all got there that day. Had this letter never been sent, he didn't think that an investigation, a murder investigation ever would have taken place. So in that letter, one of Failene's sisters had said that they had a dream after praying at the temple for some sign that Failene was OK. She had a dream that Failene came to her and Failene in that dream told her that Doug had murdered her. And it was at that time that they went to the police and said, we want you to investigate this. We think Failene was murdered. So he said, had that vision never happened, had that letter never been sent, had, you know, whatever, that none of them would be there that day.

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know either. The judge gave a couple of short remarks before pronouncing her sentence. She said that she disagreed with the, quote, pro-Grant speakers. So the people who spoke in favor of Doug and insisted. I'm sorry. I'm going to hit it all again. I'm so sorry. Go back to when she pronounced her verdict.

Stop it! The judge in the case before handing down her sentence did make a few short remarks. She said that she disagreed with the people who spoke in Doug's favor, who insisted that the greatest lingering tragedy in this case was what would happen to Doug's children if he insisted that the greatest lingering tragedy in this case was what would happen to Doug's children if he had to go to prison. She said the greatest tragedy is what happened to Failene. Yeah. She said that she did appreciate the clearly very sincere sharing of personal details in the letters that she had received from Grant's family and friends and community acquaintances. And then she sentenced Doug Grant to five years in prison.

He has since served his time and been released. He served, I think, a little less than four years. And then he went home to be with his wife, Hillary, and his children. And as Fainlein had predicted, Hillary and Doug had a daughter together. Of course they did. They named her Nevaeh, which is heaven backwards. And that is the story of another mysterious bathtub death. Boy, I hate that. I know. I would not, I can't get to murder on this.

But I do think there's definite manipulation here. I don't know if Failene knowingly took her life or if he slipped her pills that day. I don't know. I don't think there's enough evidence to be able to determine that. No, that's what's so frustrating. Yeah. There's not enough evidence here at all.

Yeah. It's just a bunch of very sketchy stuff all put together. Yeah. Which is why it should have been investigated from the start. Yes. Yeah. Ugh. Yeah. Which is why it should have been investigated from the start. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. death and they did a settlement. She sued in also in her brother's honor as well. So she's got one biological brother and then her two half brothers.

So all four of them formed a suit together and it settled for like two million dollars. So basically they have to get paid that before he can make any money off of the story. Yeah. Wow. Yes. Wow is right. that was quite the tale it was quite the tale this was a meaty boy it was so much meatier than i thought it was gonna be when i first started it it was very interesting were you like fuck yes i was like just kept going and was like, oh my God, this case is so big. Well, I'm glad you told it.

Thank you. And I'm also glad to do an ad. Oh! All right. You excited for this? Peanut Corporation of America? I know. I was going to try and make a nuts joke, but I couldn't.

Don't worry. I got you covered. Okay, I figured. First off, thank you to Chareree Ray for suggesting this case twice. Oh, twice? You know, every now and then she's like, I have mentioned this to you before. Okay. So big thank yous to an episode of American Greed, the title of which, From Peanuts to Sick Millions.

Oh, like sick millions. Or like people actually sick. Yeah. Oh, okay. We're not talking about like a cool way to save a bunch of money. Anyway, also. That's my bad. Thank you to my new favorite website of course i am referring to

food quality and safety.com uh-huh yeah i had to register yeah i saw i saw an email come across on that you were like this that's kristin just looking shit up all right right. Okay, Brandi, are you ready for a sweet story about a small business just doing its best? I don't think that's what this is. You said it was the Peanut Corporation of America. Yeah. That sounds big. It is big. Okay.

Hugh Parnell was what we like to refer to on this podcast as a business cat. In the 70s, he created a company called Parnell's Peanuts. Oh, sure. What do you mean? Oh, sure. You've not heard of this. Yeah. Okay. I wish you could see this logo they used. I think they should have been sued. Why? Okay. It looks like country bumpkin Mr. Peanut. Oh. So no cane, no monocle, not a top hat in sight, just a peanut body with a smug little smile, stick limbs, and a cowboy hat. Oh, okay. Yeah. It looks like a Wild West peanut.

In 1977, Hugh renamed the company to the Peanut Corporation of America. Sure. And with a name like that, they couldn't help but grow. And grow they did. But, you know, things weren't perfect. For example, in 1990, federal regulators found high amounts of toxic mold in the Peanut Corporation of America's peanut stuff. Yeah, that sounds bad. Peanut stuff? Well, because, you know, they did peanuts. They did peanut dust, peanut powder, peanut bases.

Okay. You know, because, like, it goes into other foods. Yeah, I got it. If you've ever had a nutty buddy, you've had some PCA up in you. I've had a nutty buddy a time or two in my life. So, you know, as a result, the PCA had to do a recall and one of their customers, the American Candy Company, sued them. You know, it was a big thing. And then the next year, oopsies, another candy company sued them for the exact same problem.

I mean, people have such a thing about toxic mold. Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Brandi, the important thing, okay, because you seem hung up on the toxic mold. The important thing is that by 1994, the company was making more than $20 million in revenue. Sure. Great. Sounds wonderful. Well, it was, but couldn't they make even more?

Oh, that wasn't enough? In a way, isn't $20 million just peanuts? So in the year 2000, when Hugh's son Stuart Parnell took over the company, he had big ambitions. He immediately expanded the company. You know, it was all about money, money, money. And damn. Money, money, money, money. Oh, my God.

Money. Yeah, you had to do it. I had no choice. Stewie sure knew how to make money. Over a three-year period, he tripled the Peanut Corporation of America's revenue. To $60 million? Well, I don't know. This is, so 1994, they had the 20.

Oh, okay. Who knows? Okay, calm down. Can't you just be impressed? They're doing good things. I'm very impressed. Well, no one said they're doing good things. I know.

We said they're making a lot of money. By cutting corners, I'm guessing, and people are going to get real sick. Hmm. Stuart didn't do this alone, okay? He did have help. As a matter of fact,

his brother, Michael Parnell, became the number, became the peanut corporation of America's number one peanut broker. Oh.

Who's the number two peanut broker some sad sad little man okay i saw this somewhere else and i just can't believe this is true but i can't not say it all right apparently he had a he had a peanut brokerage business, and the name of that business was PP Sales. Can you believe that? Nobody told us? How is that possible? PP Sales. PP Sales.

Hey, it's Michael calling from pee pee sales Why does everyone always hang up on me Soon the peanut corporation of America's nuts were everywhere Sometimes people got the whole nut Sometimes it was just nut dust And that nut dust could be found in just about everything Ice cream, dog food, energy bars, Brandy's vagina. Okay.

They had contracts with Kellogg's, Sarah Lee, General Mills, even Little Debbie. Oh, shit. They supplied peanut butter, nuts, and dusts to schools, nursing homes, hospitals, and the troops. They nutted all over the troops. Brandy, I don't mean to impress you, but the Peanut Corporation of America processed approximately 2% of America's peanuts. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, sorry.

Douche. Like a low percentage. 2%. I mean, overall, right? I mean, that's not bad. Anyway. These are a whole 98%. They have nothing to do with it.

Wow. You are just whole 98 percent that have nothing to do with it. Wow. You are just all about domination, Arch. Even though he only owned like a measly 2 percent of America's peanut marketplace, Stuart Parnell became very, very rich. Stuart Parnell became very very rich he owned this kick ass five acre estate in Lynchburg Virginia which is a terrifying name for a town and at the front of his house

he had a banner what did it say? first I have to tell you that there was a little squirrel on it and next to the squirrel it said welcome to the nut house that that's cute it was pretty cute you got to admit it's good okay he was like a cartoon squirrel well what do you mean it wasn't like a picture of an actual no it was a real dead squirrel that had been stapled to a banner

and you know i think it distracted well actually. If you saw something that said, welcome to the nut house, and there was a dead squirrel staple to it. You'd be like, my God, I think these people are serious. Got to stay away from this five acre estate. Stuart owned his own airplane. He had a bunch of horses and he had the company headquarters conveniently located in his garage. But it was a very nice garage. So just relax. He spent a ton of time at the local country club.

And he was so important that he sat on the government's peanut standard board. Peanut standard? Peanut standard board. That's right. Okay. And I'll thank you not to laugh at the Peanut Standard Board, which is a very real thing. All right. But here's the thing.

I don't think he cared about peanut standards at all. I think he only cared about the money. He didn't care about the people who worked for him and he sure as hell didn't care about the quality of his product. He was more of a dairy guy. What?

And he cared about the cheddar. That was so stupid. That was so stupid. You know what's ridiculous so i'm about to tell you some really gross stuff about these factories and like all yeah my favorite thing though is that in a lot of these articles and like you know the write-ups it's like they go into the disgusting stuff, but they're also like, they used low-quality peanuts. It's like, that is the fucking last of my concerns.

Yes. You're telling me there's rodent feces everywhere. Oh, gosh. And the peanuts weren't very good quality either. Okay, so here we go. Buckle up. In many cases, it's been a long time.

Oh my. In many cases, the peanut powder would sit out in the open, uncovered. Yeah, so, gee, I wonder what's going to happen. Of course, it attracted a ton of bugs and rodents. And these factories that supplied so much food to so many places that went all over the place were just crawling with rats and mice and roaches.

The equipment was old. The factories were old. There were holes in the wall where the rats could crawl through. Oh, my gosh there were holes in the ceiling that let in rainwater and occasionally you know birds would come in shit everywhere it's disgusting but also low-grade peanuts yeah that's the real problem It was absolutely nasty. Yeah. To be fair, you know, they had been running disgusting plants for a very long time.

This guy who was a buyer for a snack company. See, I'm only mentioning this because the American Greed episode, they said that basically, you know, Stuart took over the company and, you know, things got way worse. And they definitely did. But this other article pointed out that there was this guy who was a buyer for a snack company and he inspected the PCA plants three times in the mid 80s just to see if they wanted to buy PCA products. And every time he was like, ew, absolutely not. He said, quote, it was just filthy. Dust was all over the beams, the braces of the building, the roofs leaked, the windows would be open and birds would fly through the building. It was just a time bomb waiting to go off. And everybody in the peanut industry in Georgia, Virginia, and Texas, they all knew.

Wow. So the plants were unsanitary, and unsurprisingly, the working conditions were awful. Yeah, if I'm working in a building with rats and mice and bugs and birds flying in, absolutely not. You wouldn't work extra hard and be the best Brandy you could be? Of course I fucking would. Yeah, you'd become really loyal. You'd be like, you know what? I like my peanuts with rat

shit on it. That's how I prefer it. I'm gonna dip it in a little extra rat shit. Gross. Look, we're creating food here, so obviously there's going to be bugs around. All right. All right.

So one of the people who was interviewed for the episode of American Greed said that the factories were run like plantations. Wow. He said the factory in Georgia was run by a bunch of white guys and all the workers were badly paid black guys. Yeah. A factory in Texas was managed by a bunch of white guys and all the workers were very badly paid Hispanic guys. So you get the idea. The Peanut Corporation of America was a terrible place to work. And I mean, unless you were at the absolute top because then you

were just like living in the nut house flying your plane all around yeah living the life i guess with your dead squirrel stapled to your sign it wasn't really a dead squirrel folks it was a live squirrel and it was trying like hell to get off that sign. That's terrible. But, you know, American food manufacturers aren't supposed to get away with this. Factories have to be inspected, monitored. You know, food has to be tested. The federal government mandates it. Yeah, it's in the FDA stuff. Very well said.

I think you should be a talking head for these TV shows. It's in the FDA stuff. You're just like a balloon, losing air and confidence swirling around the screen. Pretty sure the FDA is going to get involved. So there are rules in place. But these private companies are oftentimes the ones policing their own operations. Cool. What could go wrong?

Okay. Do you ever watch American Greed? Yeah. You know the guy who narrates it? Yeah. Oh, my God. So, first of all, they give him the most dramatic copy that's ever been written. And I'm here for it.

Absolutely. And he has this incredible voice that just really grabs you by the balls. So, here's what he said. Okay. The fox is guarding the hen house, and the hen house is a filthy mess. So one small good thing here is that a lot of the major food conglomerates that bought products from the Peanut Corporation of America required independent testing to make sure that the peanuts or peanut dust or whatever was safe. The thing that everyone's generally concerned about is salmonella or whatever the hell's

happening with your mouth right now. Sorry. Were you holding back a burp in the yard? I'm not really sure what it was. Something was trying to escape and I was fighting like hell to keep it in. Wow. Real American hero. Was it a nutty buddy?

No, I wish it was a nutty buddy. So the testing process for salmonella has to be very thorough and I know all about it. So let me tell you about it right now. Okay, great. Picture big vat of nuts or nut dust, whatever you've got. Salmonella can exist in little pockets. And that's why you have to run tests on all these different areas of the vat. Yeah, it's more complicated than you think, right?

It's way more complicated than I would think. And these are not quick tests. They can take anywhere from 28 hours to five days to get test results. That's a very wide range. Yeah, sure is. So you're probably thinking just skip it right no it's too wide a range it's too much time time is money right so they're just not testing no they're testing sometimes okay calm down how often do you really need to test i ask you all the time well every Every batch or whatever. Well, see, Brandy, these tests are pretty darn important because a salmonella infection can be really bad. By the way, are we saying salmonella poisoning or salmonella infection?

I've always heard it poisoning. I don't know. All right. Well, here we go. I've got salmonella poisoning. I've got a salmonella infection. I don't know. Well, either way, we don't want it.

I think people just say salmonella. I know. I've got salmonella. Mm-hmm. They don't add any other words. No, I think so. Okay, so salmonella can give someone diarrhea, a fever, really bad cramps. And the infection can last anywhere from four to seven days.

Did you know that? Sounds fucking awful. Yeah. And I mean, OK, I have in my notes here that's a relatively good case. Obviously, that's not a good case. I mean, I'm sure there are people who don't have a strong reaction to it. But in some cases, salmonella can be deadly. People who are immunocompromised, infants, elderly people, pregnant people, or pleople, whatever you got.

People can literally die from this. Yeah. But. We got to make money, so we got to rush those tests. Exactly. Thank you. Yes. Yeah.

And here's the thing. If your peanuts test positive for salmonella, boy, oh boy, people just freak the fuck out. They expect you to throw out the whole batch. Yes. They say wild things to you like, oh, now the equipment that touched those nuts is contaminated. Everything needs to be sanitized. Oh, you can't send those out to the hospital. Stuart had no time for that attitude.

He's still fighting with that squirrel. You'd think a grown man could fight a squirrel pretty well, especially when the squirrel is already stapled onto a banner. So, yeah, they test their nuts most of the time. Okay. How often are they testing the nuts? A lot. Too much, if you ask me. Also, well, hang on.

Sometimes, you know, because it did take a while to get those test results back, sometimes they just ship the nuts out before the results came in. You know, just risk it. Yeah. Yeah, you got to risk it for the biscuit. in. You know, just risk it. Yeah. Yeah, you got to risk it for the biscuit. Exactly. You know, that's on his other banner. He started up a biscuit corporation as well. And yeah, sometimes they got a positive result.

But they just crushed their fingers and nobody got sick. Yeah, but here's the thing. Oh, gosh, those positive test results. What a pain in the ass. The fine folks at the Peanut Corporation of America decided that they needed to come up with some kind of scheme to help them through this. Scheme? Yeah. What kind of scheme are we talking?

Okay, so they started taking, like, way more samples than was necessary. And then they'd only file the results from the non-positive testing nuts. You know what? I think you are a peanut corporation of American material, Brandy. We'd like to bring you on a board. Yeah, so they would send those samples to a bunch of different labs. And, you know, some of the results would be negative. Let's keep those on file.

Some would be positive. Oh, don't know what happened to that one. Quite a scheme. Worked great. That is, in fact, a scheme. Profits soared. Yeah. But some nerds were a little concerned.

Some nerds were? Yeah, some nerds. Probably people concerned. Some nerds were? Yeah, some nerds. Probably people who don't have their own planes, I'm guessing. For example, this guy, Charles Diebel, who is the president of Diebel Labs, was one of the labs that... I said that like he was, in fact, a lab. In fact, he is a human man. Yeah, no, we got it. I'm just saying grammatically I was messing up

and I'm correcting myself for the record. I didn't think he was like a dog in a lab coat. I didn't say he was a dog. A lab. Oh, I see what you mean. He'd be so adorable. He has to call them up every week. He's like, I accidentally ate all the peanut butter.

I know I'm supposed to test it. And I know this doesn't make me look very professional. But I just can't help it. Bad news, guys. I'm really sick this week. I think that was a positive. I think it's a bad batch. Anyway, Charles, who was a human man and not a Labrador, saw these test results and was alarmed at how frequently their stuff was coming back positive.

He's like, what the hell is happening here? So he actually called up the quality manager at PCA and he was like, hey, I'm getting a little worried about the number of positive test results I'm seeing. You know, if you need my help, let me know. And they're like, you're just a dog. What do you think you're going to do about it? You're just a dog. Yeah, you're only a dog.

And you're sitting there on top of a log. A log? I don't know. Rhyme the dog. And apparently the quality manager was like, actually, I really like getting the positive test results because maybe we can use them to force the owner to take some action. Oh, shit. Okay. That's grim.

Yeah. There were other people who were concerned about the ethics and sanitation at the Peanut Corporation of America. For example, this guy named Kenneth Kendrick was hired in July of 2006 to become the assistant plant manager at the PCA's Plainview, Texas location. So Kenneth seemed like a good fit for the job. He had a background in lab testing for the meat industry. So he was in a position to potentially improve things. Yeah. But when he got there on like the first day of his job, he was like, oh my God. He said he felt like he'd gone back in time by 50 years. All the equipment was super old.

It was always being welded back together or patched back together. And the plant itself was appalling. It was full of mice. And Kenneth was shocked to learn that the safety of the food was really not a concern at all. He said that the only quality control they did was making sure that the peanuts were the right color. Oh, great. But Kenneth wanted to do the right thing.

He wanted to fix this place, and he felt like he could. So he talked to Stuart Parnell, and he was like, hey, I used to work in a lab. I can fix this situation. And he says that Stuart told him, I have Hartford insurance. Don't worry about it. Okay. Yeah. Kenneth was disgusted. After four months on the job, he quit. He had a feeling that something bad was going to happen and he wanted no part of it. Absolutely. Because the same type of person who runs a

business like this is also the type of person who looks for a scapegoat when shit goes bad. Yeah. Yeah. Afterward, Kenneth reached out anonymously to the Texas Department of Health and other food companies, warning them about the practices at Peanut Corporation of America, and no one seemed to care. It probably didn't help that the location that Kenneth said he worked at didn't exist in any official capacity. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

I mean, it was obviously real. It was a real building, and they were handling real nuts and real nut powders. But it wasn't like an officially registered place so that no inspections or anything like that could be happening there. Right. You'd hate for there to be any kind of regulation going on. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, so that was the brilliant workaround. How can you monitor something or regulate it if you don't know that it exists? Yeah. By the way. What mascara do you have on today know that it exists? Yeah. By the way.

What mascara do you have on today? Are you serious? Yes. It looks amazing. Oh, my gosh. Shut up. Quit being turned on by me. Okay.

Well, first let me tell you. I'm wearing two kinds of mascara right now because I'm a bit of a diva. All right. So on my bottom lashes, I've got a little bit of the Lash Discovery. That's like a tiny little brush. And then I'm doing the Thrive Cosmetics mascara. thrive cosmetics yeah it looks amazing this is not an ad this is just an ad for how hot i am do you have any other compliments for me right now that's all i've got at this particular moment rude absolutely complimented your shirt earlier and your hair earlier what more do you want what

about my general essence yeah Your essence is killing it. It's really bringing the thunder today. Thank you. You know, when I woke up today, I thought, how will I bring the thunder? And the thunder! Lightning and the thunder!

Okay, that's your fault. That's on you. I have something hilarious to tell you. This plant that did not exist, that was invisible. Yeah. It was located in Plainview, Texas. It's just right there in Plainview. One of the guys pointed it out on American Greed.

And I was like, God damn it. I wanted to be the one to point it out. Instead, all I can do is give him credit for a solid observation. So yeah, you know, Peanut Corporation of America, keep on trucking. But it was pricey to do all these extra tests. That was kind of the one flaw in their scheme of cherry picking all this data. So Stuart Parnell, brilliant businessman that he was, came up with a new idea. And I'm going to pause because, like I said, I think you're peanut material here.

What's the cheapest way to do this, Brandy? Oh, shit. I don't know. Do the testing in-house? Cheaper. We're thinking cheaper. Come on. OK.

Not do the testing at all. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. cheaper we're thinking cheaper come on okay not to the testing at all how about you um just forge all the lab results sure people are so confused at that company meeting yep um like we're doing what now maybe that was the problem with the whistleblower. He was saying, they first and then we're first. And they're like, we just don't understand you. It's not that we're in on this in any way.

It's not a conspiracy. So yeah, positive result. No problem. Just cover it up with whiteout. Oh, okay. In fact, over email, Stewart bragged that they had a lady in Texas who was, quote, real good with the whiteout. Great. When employees asked him to get them some, you know, basic testing equipment, he replied via email that he'd only get them that

equipment, quote, if we will not get screwed. What does that mean? What I think that means is, is your lab equipment going to prove that we got salmonella? Because I don't fucking care. You want it then. Yeah. That's my interpretation. You're absolutely right. When he was told that they didn't have the test results back on one of their batches,

he said via email, no test results? Shit. Just ship it. Okay. Right. It doesn't matter. Right. What's the worst that could happen, right?

Yeah. Hmm. This was common practice. The Peanut Corporation of America sent out contaminated products multiple times. They got away with this for a long time. The emails that Stewart sent to his employees were so brazen, but he knew just what to say to people outside the company. What'd he say? Okay, check this out. At one point, this company called Bloomfield Bakers ran their own tests and they discovered, oh my gosh,

the PCA peanuts or, you know, dust or whatever that we're using is tainted with salmonella. So they reached out to PCA and Stuart responded to them on October 5th, 2006 via email. You ready? Yeah. First, I want to apologize for what is going on with these peanuts. I am dumbfounded by what you have found. In over 26 years of business, I've not found any instances of any even traces of a salmonella problem. Oh, so he is just horrified. He's on our side here. Oh, yeah. Meanwhile, his factories are covered in shit. Yeah.

Rat, mouse, and bird. Hey, why not take a dump in there yourself? I mean, what the fuck difference is it going to make? Yeah, no shit. This was just the way of doing business. But in late 2008, it finally caught up with them. By November,

people all over the country began exhibiting signs of salmonella infection. They were vomiting, feverish, bur burping how dare you we could have cut that burp okay we still can we can cut this conversation we cut this whole episode let's let's cut you out of this whole thing let's just have me reacting to your story out of context the complicated thing was that most people didn't know what was actually wrong with them.

Because, yeah, why would you? Yeah, why wouldn't you? That was definitely the case for 72-year-old Shirley Allmer. Shirley, oh my gosh, she'd been through a fucking hell of an ordeal. In the previous two years, she'd beaten lung cancer and brain cancer. Oh my gosh. But by December of 2008, you know, she was doing pretty well, all things considered. But she got a UTI, and so she was pretty weak and dehydrated.

So she was in a rehab facility to try to get her strength back. And her doctors were super optimistic. They told Shirley and her family that she'd be home by Christmas. And that definitely seemed reasonable because she was getting stronger. Her appetite was improving. She was able to eat a fair amount of chicken and she ate peanut butter toast. And all of a sudden, on December 21st, her health completely changed. The medical staff called Shirley's family and they were like, hey, you need to get over here. It looks like she might die today.

Oh, my gosh. And she did. Yeah. Holy shit. Can you imagine how shocking that would be? No. So she died that day and the doctors initially thought that she died of pneumonia. The medical examiner later ruled that she died from sepsis, which seemed a little odd. That's likella poisoning.

And Jeff was like, wait a second. Is it possible that that article is about my mom? Right. So he called the Minnesota Health Department and they were basically like, we are so sorry you found out this way, but yeah, we're talking about your mom. Holy shit. He was dumbfounded. He later said cancer couldn't claim her, but peanut butter did. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. So these reports of a salmonella outbreak were beginning to pop up. Oh, my gosh. There's this other story. I didn't write any of this part down. But like his son said that his last days were miserable. Yeah.

Because you're talking about someone who's already elderly, maybe doesn't get around great. And they are having diarrhea. They're vomiting. They're just it's just a miserable way to go. Yeah. And totally preventable. Absolutely. I hope you feel bad for only caring about the profits and the cheddar, Brandy.

That wasn't me. You only cared. That was Stuart. I saw you in the passenger seat of his plane. I was never there. A lot of people who got sick assumed they had the flu. Yeah, absolutely.

Makes perfect sense. I mean, I literally just like watched this girl on TikTok who thought she was like she's having all these stomach problems. She couldn't figure out like what was going on. She finally went to urgent care

and she was like her video was like her telling all of her stuff and she's like, I'm finally going to urgent care. And then she did a follow-up video i'm salmonella isn't that wild yeah well it's funny because i thought you were going to bring up what you talked about at lunch today about graves disease how like oh no yeah that would have been a good thing to talk about what about something from your own life instead of just some random shit you saw on tiktok

no no no when i was being diagnosed with crises i had to go through all this different testing i had testing for ulcers i had testing for i'm all kinds of i had to drink this disgusting barium drink and have this contrast ct scan of my innards it was. That was just a capri sun. It was not. I wish it was a capri sun. But yeah, so you were saying like, it can be hard to get a diagnosis because... The symptoms present differently in every patient. And in this, like the symptoms don't necessarily present differently, but they could also be indicative of other things. Exactly. Yeah. And it'd be kind of a leap to go straight to this is probably salmonella. Absolutely.

Anyway, so people are assuming this is the flu. And that's what three-year-old Jacob Hurley's parents assumed, too. So January 3rd, 2009, little Jacob was just miserable. He had blood in his stool. He was vomiting. So his parents took him to the doctor. I know you look horrified. Yeah, I would freak the fuck out.

I mean, it's horrible. They took him to the doctor. Doctor ran some tests. In the meantime, they told the parents, if there's anything that Jacob likes to eat and he can keep it down, just go ahead and give it to him. Which makes sense. But for Jacob, the thing he loved to eat was peanut butter crackers. Mm-hmm. And, of course, Jacob's parents had no idea that it was the peanut butter crackers that were making him sick.

So that's what they gave him, and they kept feeding it to him. And even later, when the doctor called and said that Jacob had tested positive for salmonella poisoning, they still didn't know that it was the peanut butter crackers. No! I wouldn't have any idea there was a risk of salmonella from peanut butter crackers. No, I'd be like, shit, did we have some bad chicken? Yes. Did something get cross-contaminated?

Did we put his cup on the counter next to the raw chicken? Like, yeah. Jacob did eventually recover, but obviously other people weren't so lucky. Thank goodness. I was going to be so mad at you. I know. I could tell by the look on your face. Uh-huh.

No, he's just fine. Okay. I'm glad to hear that. So by this point, the CDC and, you know, local health authorities kind of all over the country had caught wind that something was going on. And so. Were they like, something's happening here? What it is. Ain't exactly clear.

I said, stop now. What's that sound? Everybody look. You're ridiculous. You're ridiculous. You went along with it. So you're just as ridiculous. Only because that's an awesome song.

You couldn't even stop yourself. You didn't even want to do it. You were so reluctant. This is the second song this episode that I've been like, I can't fucking believe she's doing this. And then, like, you get a couple lines in and I'm like, well, I better join. I'd hate to not finish this song. All right. All right. To quote the episode of American Greed, the CDC, quote, use DNA testing to ID the culprit, which makes me realize I don't really know much about how that works because Mr. Peanut's DNA. you get the bloody poop and then you what now the important thing to know is that they determined conclusively that the salmonella outbreak came from the peanut corporation of america pca's peanuts yeah yeah and dna was

involved okay great peanut dna dino d. This was huge news. And, I mean, very dangerous because this shit was still on store shelves, still in people's kitchens. And it was in a lot of stuff that you wouldn't necessarily think it would be in. Exactly. This is huge. Retailers pulled products off the shelves. This became the largest food recall in U.S. history. Oh, my gosh.

At first, the Peanut Corporation of America put out statements that were like, oh, we are fully cooperating with the investigation. My goodness. Oh, I'm shocked. Oh, my. We had no idea. What? Should we have known that allowing animal feces into the food products would be a bad thing?

Right. If we'd had any idea, we would not have done that. Yeah, so meanwhile, that plant in Plainview, Texas kept on trucking. I realize I've said kept on trucking multiple times in this script. You have? I have. I didn't even catch it. It stood out to me because it's kind of a weird thing to say.

It's not a phrase I use a lot, but it feels right. Can I tell you what I discovered this week? I don't know. Can you? I was – so we were announced as guests at Obsessed Fest. That's true. We're hugely famous. Yeah, I was looking at the Obsessed Fest Instagram and they had a little clippy of us from our show that we did at the last Obsessed Fest. That's true. We're hugely famous. Yeah, I was looking at the Obsessed Fest Instagram and they had a little clippy of us from our

show that we did at the last Obsessed Fest. And so I was just like, oh, that's cute. What's that? And so I watched it and it was a little clip from our show talking about where I asked people if they wanted to join our religion because we went a little, you know, astray for a moment. And then I said,

wait until you hear about my timeshare I've got to offer you. I made a timeshare joke at the two live shows we have done. We've done two live shows. I've made two timeshare jokes. Yeah, and it's because you're a hack. Let me decode that for you. That's what it is.

See, you're not the one who's going to come up with like ghost plant in Plainview, Texas. You know, that's truly brilliant. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with it either. You know, which is why we've got to somehow lure that man from American Greed onto the show. Absolutely. Chain him to the floor. Make him podcast for us. There's a radiator in here. That's where they absolutely chain him to the floor make him podcast for us there's a radiator in here that's where they always chain people too so yeah i like how at first you were horrified by

the idea and then you were like well if we're gonna do this let's uh let's do this the right way you got a radiator right there be stupid to do it any other way. I've seen movies. So by this point, Kenneth Kendrick was watching this news in horror. This was exactly what he'd feared would happen. So once again, he began reaching out to people trying to get somebody to look into the PCA plant in Plainview, Texas. This is infuriating. plant in Plainview, Texas. This is infuriating. I don't know why people didn't take him seriously. He reached out to tons of people. The only response he received was from the Chicago Office of STOP Foodborne Illnesses. STOP is an acronym. It's all caps. And you know, they don't have my hand out as a logo, but I offer it up to them. Okay, great.

They actually listened to him and they convinced an official from the FDA to meet with Kenneth in January of 2009. By that point, the plant had been running unlicensed and uninspected for four years. Wow. Meanwhile, officials were looking into the PCA's plant in Georgia, and of course they found all kinds of nasty shit. I've got it named here. We know it all. We got it. I am getting the heebie-jeebies so bad. Yeah, we don't need to hear it again. We get it. All right. People all over the country were sick. Nine people died as a result of this, all because the higher-ups at the Peanut Corporation of America cared more about money than people.

On Monday, February 9th, 2009, the FBI raided PCA's headquarters in Lynchburg, Virginia, which was just Stu's garage. I really I hope they kick the shit out of something. I don't know. And I hope they saved that squirrel. Oh, that squirrel was done. He'd been up there for too long. I'm sorry. Is that too dark?

No. They went there, and it was just a squirrel hand. Oh, he chewed his arm off. Yeah. And they were like, is this a twig? And they were like, yeah, it's probably a twig. No, it's a tiny squirrel hand. They didn't realize it was a tiny squirrel hand that had been stapled to a banner that said, welcome to the nut house.

In their defense, they weren't really there to inspect the banner. It was more about, you know, getting access to Stuart's emails and files. Right, and they didn't have any specific squirrel expertise. No, no, of course not. So stupid. They also raided the plant in Blakely, Georgia. Oh, my gosh. I have to tell you something.

What? Sorry. This is so stupid. Okay. I didn't even really something. What? Sorry. This is so stupid. Okay. I didn't even really understand it. Didn't put it in the script, but I feel like you have to know. Okay. Okay.

So, obviously, I don't have to say again. These factories were disgusting. Yeah. Okay. The plant in Texas, it contained a jacuzzi for students. What? What? I – that was just a line in the American Greed episode. Jacuzzi for Stuart. What? I.

That was just a line in the American Greed episode. I have so many questions. So many questions. So did he have like an office in there? For sure. With a jacuzzi in it? Yes. It's not just like in the corner of the plant.

Well, but. So it's in the corner of your office? Yeah. I assume he has a lock on the door in case he wants to, you know, get his jacuzzi on. Why can't you do that at home? Yes. Listen, the dude loves a jacuzzi. Here's the thing. I don't think I'm uptight. All right. But I don't think you should jacuzzi at the office.

I'm telling you. You'd see a picture of the outside of this place. The last thing you would predict. Expect inside is a jacuzzi? Yes. I believe they said it was a custom jacuzzi tub. But aren't they all kind of. It was a peanut shaped. Oh, okay.

He had a peanut shaped jacuzzi. I would enjoy it yeah no they would have mentioned that he had a peanut shaped jacuzzi for sure custom jacuzzi i mean i just thought extra jets to wash away the stresses of a long day of not caring about peanut quality. Yeah. All right. Anyway. Can you fucking believe that? No, I can't believe that. Anyhow, so, you know, things are getting bad. And that was really hard for Stuart Parnell's sister, Beth Falwell, who coincidentally married Jerry Falwell's cousin, Jimmy.

And she is as hilariously awful as you might imagine. OK. Once news of the Salmonella outbreak hit the media, Beth did an interview with the local Virginia TV station and she said nearly in tears. OK. This is a wealthy woman. Oh, my God. Here we go. They're throwing slanders at him.

They're saying he's done these things. If people would stop and think, why would we have some filthy building doing work for Kellogg's? People that have never been in business don't know. They know nothing about what it takes to run a business. Okay. Mm-hmm. But... All right, Beth.

Yeah. This is just how business is done. No, it's not! Hugh Parnell Jr., another one of the Parnell siblings, was also very defensive. He said, it'd be like General Motors selling a car with no brakes. How are you going to benefit from that? You just hurt your company.

Okay, well, that's a great point. Yeah, it is. Why the fuck are you doing it? Yeah. Agreed. It's stupid. It's evil. It is bad for business in the long run.

Yes. But if all you care about is sitting in your jacuzzi and making a lot of money in the moment, then I guess you're cutting corners. What? Do you think he filled the jacuzzi full of peanuts? No. Just like Scrooge McDucked it? No, I do not. Okay.

That'd fill up all the jets. What are you, crazy? Maybe they were still on their shells, so they can't go in the jets. Those jets can be pretty big and peanuts can be pretty small, especially these low-grade nuts that they had lying around. It's a disaster. That's your worst idea yet. All right.

That's how they made peanut dust. You don't know. I'll tell you how they made peanut dust. They're like... They swept it off the conveyor belt. Yeah, yeah. I know how they made peanut dust. And off the floor.

Yeah, absolutely. And then they put it in your... Same way they make hot dogs. Oh, no. Stop then they put it in your... Same way they make hot dogs. Oh, no. Stop it. A few days later, little Stewie Parnell had the uncomfortable honor of sitting before a congressional hearing about the Salmonella outbreak. He looked very uncomfortable. during the hearing, Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon, who had clearly seen the classic film Erin Brockovich, busted out a clear Tupperware canister filled with packaged treats. And each

of, yes, you know what's happening here, don't you? Oh yeah, he's going to offer him a snack. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. So it's filled with these items that had been made with PCA's tainted nuts. I didn't say tainted nuts. They were tainted nuts. And Congressman Gregg had done this really cute thing where he'd gotten some caution tape and he'd wrapped it around the Tupperware vertically and horizontally. And it looked like the world's naughtiest snack box. snack box. Absolutely. And of course, in a very dramatic moment, he asked Stuart Parnell if he'd like to open the canister and sample some of the products that he'd sent out for all the rest of us to eat. Stuart wasn't hungry. Rumor had it he'd eaten three meatballs about an hour earlier, and so he didn't eat anything.

Okay, great. I just always feel like any time you come over, yeah, you've just eaten the weirdest shit. It's always three meatballs. Over the course of this hearing, Stewart pled the fifth five times, which I think we can all agree is the cutest number of times that you can plead the Fifth. Congresspeople did really uncomfortable things like read parts of his emails back to him. Some of the victims came forward. Peter Hurley, whose three-year-old son Jacob survived, so calm down, told them all about what they'd gone through. And the whole time

jacob was sitting there next to his dad being the absolute cutest he was doing what i call being a mr wiggle bottoms and that it's when a little kid is dressed in a suit and he moves around in his seat and he moves his head all around and he had the cutest little red cheeks you've ever seen that's a a Mr. Wiggle Bottoms. Absolutely. We all know it. We all know it. Anyway, in April of 2009, please quit asking me about Mr. Wiggle Bottoms.

In April of 2009, the outbreak was over. The CDC's official toll listed 714 people sickened in 46 states. But that's the official number. And they think the real number could be as high as 20,000 people. Absolutely, because most people don't go get tested when they have tummy troubles. Yeah. They just sit in misery on their porcelain throne. By that point, the Peanut Corporation of America had filed for bankruptcy. Did Stewart have to

sell his plane? God, I hope not. I hope he did. Well, of course you did. And his fucking peanut-shaped jacuzzi. With the peanuts inside of it. Yes! Never gonna get those out of the jets anyway. It's a really stupid idea.

A lot of the victims and victims' families sued Stewart in civil court. But what people really wanted was to see him face criminal charges. Yeah. Okay. I'm getting a little nervous about time here because you just went on and on and on. I know. My case was really long. And there's no time to sing. My case was really long.

And there's no time to sing. That's right. Okay. So I'll go quickly because we've already covered some court stuff. So everybody calm down. Okay. They wanted to see him face criminal charges. He'd known what he was doing.

He knew he was playing with fire. And as a result, a ton of people had gotten sick and nine people had died. There was some precedent for punishment here, but, you know, it's usually like monetary punishment, which I'm sorry, that doesn't fit what happened here. Absolutely not. Jeff Allmer, whose mom surely had died from salmonella poisoning, was told in 2009 that there would be a criminal investigation. But that's all anybody knew for years. It wasn't clear if anyone would truly be held accountable. And so one Mother's Day, Jeff went out, got a Mother's Day card, and he decided to send it to Stuart Parnell.

In the card, he wrote, I didn't know where to send it this year sincenell. In the card, he wrote, I didn't know where to send it this year since my mother is no longer alive, so I'm sending it to you, the person responsible for where she is today. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Apparently, Jeff's attorney was like, maybe you shouldn't do it, but hey, you know, if you want to, go ahead. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, this outbreak did lead to some positive changes. In January of 2011, President Barack Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act. Is it underfunded and therefore not very effective? That's an upsetting question. Let's not think about that. A few years later, in February of 2013, a federal grand jury issued a 76 count indictment against Stuart Parnell, Michael Parnell and quality assurance manager Mary Wilkerson, plus plant managers Daniel Kilgore and Samuel Leitze.

Prosecutor Michael Moore, not that Michael Moore, different Michael Moore, made the case all about wire fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy. Yeah. He didn't pursue manslaughter charges. He said his reasoning was that he didn't want to put the victim's families through that. I also think that's probably a lot harder to prove. I would think it'd be way harder to prove. Yeah. So things were moving forward. And this guy, Darren Detweiler, who's a professor and a longtime food safety advocate, had written quite a few academic articles about this outbreak. And he reached out to Stuart Parnell for an interview. And Stuart agreed. And I'm a little unsure of the exact timing on this, but it seems to have occurred in that weird kind of holding period where everyone was waiting to see what kind of consequences Stewart might receive. And at the end of the

interview, Stewart said, you know, we should go grab a beer and a burger sometime after this all blows over. So obviously, Stewart's not worried about the outcome here. not worried about the outcome here. And I'm guessing, or maybe I'm hoping, that when Stuart said that he was not aware of Darren's reason for being passionate about food safety. Why was he passionate about food safety? Okay. Have you ever heard about the Jack in the Box, the Koli outbreak? Yes. Four children died as a result of that outbreak. And one of them was Darren's infant son. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And my memory of that case is that executives did not face any kind of serious...

And so then this douchebag says to him let's go get a burger after all this blows over burger and a beer after this all blows over this man whose son died and no one really faced serious consequences for that oh my gosh holy shit Mm hmm. Holy shit. In the summer of 2014, this case kicked off in federal court. Stewart, his brother Michael and the quality assurance manager, Mary Wilkerson, were all going on trial. Plant managers Daniel Kilgore and Samuel Leitze took plea deals in exchange for their testimony. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Mary, get with it. You should have, too. Absolutely. Anyway, the trial lasted seven weeks.

And in his opening statement, the prosecutor let Stewart's emails speak for themselves. I mean, come on. Yeah. Just ship it? All right, buddy. The prosecution presented more than 1,000 documents to the jury. They called 45 witnesses to the stand. The defense's case, on the other hand, was 104 minutes long. and 1,000 documents to the jury. They called 45 witnesses to the stand.

The defense's case, on the other hand, was 104 minutes long. Wow. A little short. Okay, this is the best. The defense that Stewart's attorneys crafted for him was basically, you know, he had no idea what his employees were doing, which is fucking ridiculous. They've got the emails right there. And also now I didn't see any of this in like articles from the trial, but this was like in some of the stuff leading up to trial. Their strategy was going to be that Stewart has displayed features consistent with ADHD and that causes him to make terrible decisions.

Great. How do you feel about that, Kristen? I love that he's not even diagnosed with it. He just has features consistent with ADHD and therefore he makes terrible decisions. They couldn't just like get him diagnosed real quick before they went to trial? features consistent with ADHD and therefore he makes terrible decisions and you know they couldn't just like get him diagnosed real quick before they went to trial give me a fucking break I've got ADHD

so oopsies I killed nine people no I'm just saying if that's the fucking ridiculous way you're going don't you go the extra step and just make sure he's also diagnosed what if you feel like he won't get diagnosed right exactly that's what that says to me um the main point wow Like he won't get diagnosed. Right. Exactly. That's what that says to me.

The main point. Wow. I wrote here the main point argument. Oh. What I had here was a situation where I'm trying to decide between words and I left them both in. And now I feel like a fool. Like a fool. My ADHD causes me to make terrible decisions. Like leaving in extra words in a fool. You know, my ADHD causes me to make terrible decisions, like leaving in extra words in a script.

No, so their main argument appeared to be, you know, this is just a small business doing small business stuff. What happened here is really the government's fault. But the Peanut Corporation of America is being used as a scapegoat. Rather than going after some of the big dogs like Kellogg's. They're going after the little guy. Okay, no. You were... Also... Skirting regulations. You were...

You had a ghost plant. In plain view, Texas. You know what I think? I think this is all an excuse for the government to get more funding for the FDA. That's stupid. I mean, if this is what it takes, sure. Sure, great. It sounds like it does need more funding.

Shockingly, this defense did not work. Yeah, I believe it. On September 19th, 2014, all three of these fuckers were found guilty. I don't remember being quite so harsh. About a year later, it was time for sentencing. I love that you surprised yourself. That's how I keep it spicy. This time, several of the victims and victims' families were there to give victim impact statements.

And holy shit, my new favorite person on this earth, Beth Farwell Parnell, was sitting there in court. And if you're wondering if she had changed her tune about her brothers being the victims in all this, you're wrong. Oh, shit. wondering if she had changed her tune about her brothers being the victims in all this you're wrong oh shit okay according to darren after the victims delivered their impact statements obviously they had to walk past some people yeah and one of those people that they had to walk past was beth falwell parnell you know what she did what she flipped them off as they walked by. What? Yes. Can you? That's so bizarre. Derek said that a federal marshal pulled her out of her seat and hauled her out toward the back of the courtroom.

Yeah. Is that not shocking? Yes, it's shocking. Oh, hey, your mom died here. Here, let me flip you off. Flip you off? What the fuck? Stuart Parnell chose to speak at his sentencing. Uh-huh.

What did he have to say? I'm glad you asked. He apologized to customers, saying that he was, quote, personally embarrassed, humiliated, and morally disgraced by what happened. Dude, you did it. Yeah, happened. Dude, you did it. Yeah, exactly. You knowingly did it. You intentionally did it. Right.

This was a totally reasonable and expected outcome. Yeah. When you're supplying this much food all over the place. Yeah. You knew this was a possibility and you just didn't care. Yeah. He told the victim's families, I think about you guys every day and I'm truly sorry for what happened. Cool.

Again, not, I'm sorry for what I did. Yeah. Then came time for sentencing. The moment we've all been waiting for. Yeah, what'd they get? What'd they get? Okay. Quality Assurance Manager Mary Wilkerson got five years.

Plant Manager Samuel Leitze got three years. Plant Manager Daniel Kilgore got six years. Sam and Daniel weren't sentenced at the same time as everybody else, but time is a construct. And I have ADHD. Michael Parnell was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Wow. I believe he got such a harsh sentence for naming his business Pee Pee Sales. That's Soupy Sales, brother.

What? Is this going to be another Dixon Cider? No, Soupy Sales was like an old-timey comedian. This is why I ignore you half the time. And Stuart Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison. Wow. So that was nowhere near the maximum he could have gotten. But still, for a case like this, this is a very unusual kind of landmark case.

And it was more than a lot of people thought he would get. Yeah, it was more than I thought he would get. Yeah, there was an audible gasp in court. These were the harshest sentences that had ever been handed out to executives in a foodborne illness case. Yeah. Yeah. U.S. District Court Judge W. Louis Sands said, Ooh!

Boom! Ooh! Both of the brothers are appealing their sentences because, of course, they are. Of course, they are. You know, because it's about what happened. Yeah. Sorry for what happened to you. Yes.

Even though I was directly involved. Involved. Because of me. The whole thing. Their attorneys are arguing, among other things, that their trial attorneys should have requested a change of venue. So, you know. Okay. Go somewhere where people don't care that you killed people. Exactly.

Sorry, that's a little harsh. Anyway, that is the story of the Peanut Corporation of America. That was nuts. Freaks you out, doesn't it? Yes, it does. Because there's so much stuff that went into. So you have people consuming things that they don't have any idea.

Dog food. Yes. All kinds of stuff. Yes. Okay, we have no time. There's never any time. No time. We can do a couple of quick questions from Discord.

But first, time for an ad. You can't even help yourself. I can't. And now we're back from the ad. Oh, my gosh. This is really sweet. This isn't even a question. But my uncle was skin.

First of all, shared a picture of herself with the DP. The very real DP. And said, pretty sure I'm too late and this isn't even a question. But I sat right next to your herself with the DP. The very real DP. And said, pretty sure I'm too late, and this isn't even a question, but I sat right next to your families at the show, and I just wanted you to know how proud of you they are. They were beaming, and it was one of my favorite parts of the show. That's so sweet. Next time, look directly at us the whole time.

Thank you for sharing that with us. That's really sweet. That's awesome. Ooh, Two Raccoons in a Trench Coat wants to know, what do the insides of your purses look like? A Mary Poppins situation with a lot of random objects or clean and organized? What's the strangest thing in your purse right now? So I did used to carry a very Mary Poppins style, like all kinds of shit in there.

But I've moved to a smaller bag these days. I got a little crossbody situation. So there's like no extras in it. Is it a fucking mess in there? No. It's like I've got my keys and my. Rodent poop. No.

I've got my keys and my AirPods on one side and my wallet on the other. And then like in the middle pocket i've got like a nail file and some ibuprofen oh all right that's that's all i got no my my stuff's really boring too and i do keep it clean because i'm a lady switch you switch between purses quite a bit too don't you and not really but well for a fancy occasion sure sure. Sure. You know what? I do. I do. Thank you for asking. But I always keep my hand sandy.

My lip products. That was an obnoxious noise to make, and I apologize to all the listeners. Oh. PoeBuddiesNerfic wants to know, long-running marital argument here. Would you consider a futon the mattress and the frame, or is the futon just the mattress itself? What? That's the craziest. It's obviously the whole thing. It's the whole thing. Okay, there's more. My husband insists the Japanese created the futon as just the mattress.

No, it's the whole thing, isn't it? I don't know about the origin created the futon as just the mattress. No, it's the whole thing, isn't it? I don't know about the origin of the futon. No, we can't tell you about the origin, but we can tell you your husband is wrong. I mean, if you just saw the mattress laying on the floor, you wouldn't be like, that's a futon. That's a futon, no. If I said, hey, I'm giving you a free futon. And it's just the mattress, I'd be like, where the fuck's the rest of it? Yes.

Yes, no, it's the whole thing. And I'd say there's no such thing as a free lunch and then it would turn into a whole thing oh insert funny name here wants to know I know you both love Costco what are you feeling on Sam's Club I also have a Sam's Club membership I got one also because I was jealous that you had a membership to both places do you go to to both places? Yes, I do. Yeah, so do we. Here's my thing that I love about Sam's that Costco does not do. You can place an online order and pick it up.

It's true. It's wonderful. Except for if you want to buy 20 bags of rubber mulch. Oh, right. Then they say, bitch, get in here and pick that up yourself. Get in here and pick up your own fucking mulch. Okay, you know the other thing I like about Sam's Club. Yeah.

They have bags of chips that are like a reasonable size. Yes, they do. That don't make me feel like, well, this is a fucking terrible decision. You know, like. The Costco bags are way too big. Yeah, I do like that. I mean, I say they're too big, but we go through them and that's the problem.

Yeah, all right. Ooh, Rafiki737 wants to know, are you guys watching Yellow Jackets? Yes! I fucking love it. I'm so excited it's back. Kristen, you've not been on the Yellow Jackets train yet, have you?

No, here's a sad true story. Because you don't want to get Showtime. No, no, here's a sad true story, ma'am. Okay. Okay, the first couple episodes were free, so we watched them. I became obsessed with the show. You loved it, right? But I'm also very cheap.

Well, then Norm drops a bombshell on me the other day. Apparently he got Showtime. You've had it this whole time? What the hell? And I was like, I could have been watching Yellow Day this whole time. Anyhow, so, you know, now I'm just waiting for the right moment for me to get back into the show. Yes. Because I kind of feel like I have to start all over again.

Well, yeah, obviously. And, you know, we don't, you know, I'm very busy. So busy. I'm looking up Peanut Corporation of America stuff, making we don't you know, I'm very busy. I'm so busy. Looking up Peanut Corporation of America stuff, making nut jokes. You know, there's no time. There's never any time. Speaking of no time, we've got to move on to Supreme Court inductions because we

have a Zoom call to get to. And if you want to be participating in that, too bad. It's too late. It's too late. By the time you hear this, it already happened. But join the Patreon and you'll be in next time. And we are continuing to read for the Supreme Court inductions your names and your first celebrity crush. All right.

Mary Hammer Hor- Oh. Jesus. Sorry. Hot. Okay. Makes no heart. Okay.

Sorry. Mary Hammer Hodge. Jonathan. Okay, makes no heart. Okay, sorry. Mary Hammer Hodge. Jonathan Knight from New Kids on the Block. Jesse Thibodeau. Jared Leno. Are you okay? I'm sorry. Everyone, just so you know.

I did accidentally just call one of our listeners a whore. We are going to have to cut a lot from Brady's pronunciations. Janelle Williams. Natasha Leone. But I'm a cheerleader was an awakening, LOL. Katie Mathis. Christian Slater. Jennifer L. Eminem. Bailey M. Lance Bass and Xena Warrior Princess. First sign of bisexuality, I guess. Carl. 1984, Dune version. You skipped the person's name. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. What?

Oh, oh. I was like, that doesn't make sense. I said Carl, too, and her name's definitely Carrie. Or Carrie. Carrie, probably. Okay, sorry, let me hit that whole fucking thing again. Carrie. Kyle McClacklin.

McClacklin. Kyle McClacklin. He played the captain on How I Met Your Mother, if you've ever seen that. I've never seen that program. I'm pretty sure that's who that is anyway. Bonnie Python. Benny from The Sandlot. Yeah.

Amy M. Andrew Keegan. Isabel Hess. Terrence Hill. Lauren Knighton. Sean Astin. Brooke. Harrison Ford. Kathy. Terrence Hill Lauren Knighton Sean Astin Brooke Harrison Ford

Kathy Fozzie the Bear To this day I will always think the funny guy is hot. Absolutely. Nora B Brandon Boyd Kaylee Ballwinkle Zac Efron

Angel Bittner Ryder Strong Erica B Nick Carter Breanne Bright He is having the year of his life. Don't mispronounce his name. I think, okay, fair enough, yes. Apologies, Brandon. I'm sure he's listening right now. Definitely. Andrea Lewis.

Billy Loomis from Scream. Stacey Louise Howarth. Will Smith. April Mullinex. Ryder Strong. Again, my goodness. Tina A. David Duchovny.

Lydia Deathrage. The emo who from the 2009 animated feature film Horton Hears a Who. That's amazing. She said, in my defense, he was voiced by Jesse McCartney. Nathan Winters. Amy Lee from Evanescence. Paige B. Wynonna Ryder.

Morgan Dowler. Brendan Urie. Lead singer of Panic at the Disco. Excuse me. I knew. Of course you did. Candy M. Elijah Wood. Becky Kenya. Ricky Martin. Welcome to the Supreme

Court! Woo woo woo woo woo! Thank you everyone for all of your Martin. Welcome to the Supreme Court. Thank you, everyone, for all of your support. We appreciate it so much. If you're looking for other ways to support us, please find us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Patreon. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen and then head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Then be sure to join us next week. When we'll be experts on two whole new topics.

Podcast adjourned. And now for a note about our process. I read a bunch of stuff, then regurgitate it all back up in my very limited. Oh, no, I messed it up. Limited vocabulary. And I copy and paste from the best sources on the web and sometimes Wikipedia. You're just showing off. So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts.

I got my info from an episode of American Greed titled From Peanuts to Sick Millions as well as reporting from CNN, The Washington Post, and foodquality and safety.com. I got my info from an episode of A Wedding and a Murder, an episode of Dateline, reporting for the Phoenix New Times by Paul Rubin,

the East Valley Tribune, and the Court Record. For a full list of our sources visit lgtcpodcast.com. Any errors are, of course, ours. Please don't take our word for it. Go read their stuff. Kristen's shaking her titties at me. What?