Let's Go To Court! - 59: The Milkshake Murder & Blood Spatter Analysis

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Robert Kissel appeared to have it all. He was a high-powered investment banker living in Hong Kong with his wife and children, making millions of dollars a year. Then, in late 2003, he did something out of character. The reliable workaholic missed an important conference call. His coworkers were immediately suspicious. What could have happened to Robert? Then, Warren Horinek was drunk. Super drunk. He and his wife Bonnie had just spent the evening drinking at TGIFriday’s. They’d hadn’t been home long when Warren called 911. Through slurs, he told the dispatcher that his wife had been shot. But had she? Police, the medical examiner and the district attorney all agreed that the scene looked like a suicide. But Bonnie’s friends and family thought differently. 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: “A bloody injustice,” by Dave Mann, Texas Observer “The defense calls Terry Laber,” Texas Center for Community Journalism “CNN explores Warren Horinek Case,” Texas Observer “The Warren Horinek Case,” waco-criminal-attorney.com In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “Born to Win” episode Behind Mansion Walls “Nancy Kissel: The Hong Kong Milkshake Murder” by Anthony Bruno, TruTV.com “Kissels Of Death” by Steve Fishman, New York Magazine “Murder of Robert Kissel” wikipedia.org  

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A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group. One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Pitts. I'm Brandi Egan. Let's go to court. On this episode, I'll talk about blood spatter. And I'll be talking

about the milkshake murder. Sounds delicious. Are you going to ruin something wonderful? No, no. It's a small part of the case, but this is how it was known. This case happens in Hong Kong. Okay. This is kind of how it was, how it was known in the case happens in hong kong okay this is kind of how it was how it was known in the press as the milkshake murder really has very little to do with a milkshake but um are you trying to get more listeners around the world is that what's happening i'm going international i'm not to be fair this does happen in in Hong Kong, but it is a case that involves Americans. Okay. And I had never heard of this case.

My Aunt Stephanie told me about it the other day. And really, she knew like four details of it. That's fine. That's all you need. But I was like, that sounds super interesting. So I looked it up. It turns out it was super interesting. So thank you, Aunt Stephanie, for this recommendation.

Well, Aunt Stephanie knows her shit, right? She does. She's been obsessed with true crime since before it was super interesting. So thank you, Aunt Stephanie, for this recommendation. Well, Aunt Stephanie knows her shit, right? She does. She's been obsessed with true crime since before it was cool. Aunt Stephanie loves true crime. Yes. Okay. It was just before midnight

on November 6, 2003. We're in the storage area of a luxury apartment building in Hong Kong. Police investigators are executing a search warrant on a storage room belonging to Robert and Nancy Kissel. They knew what they were looking for, and upon entering the storage area, they'd spotted it almost immediately.

The Hong Kong police were investigating the disappearance of Rob Kissel. Coworkers had alerted police after he missed a conference call on the night of November 2nd. Oh, you mean my birthday? This was something that Rob would never do. And they'd been unable to get in touch with him ever since. So like earlier in the day, he had spoken to coworkers to schedule that conference call and they thought he sounded weird. And then he didn't show for the conference call.

And this dude was like workaholic, worked 24-7. Right. And so it was completely unheard of that he missed this call. He sounded weird. Can you tell us it was completely unheard of that he missed this call. He sounded weird. Can you tell us weird how? Just out of it. Kind of slurring his speech a little bit. Okay.

So no one had been able to get in touch with him since then. And Nancy? Well, Nancy hadn't been real forthcoming with information. Like the fact that when police had come to talk to her about rob and look around their home she'd forgotten to mention that they had this storage area in another building on the property but when police had talked to some of the employees on the property regarding rob's disappearance they had gotten some interesting information from a couple of the maintenance men they said that nancy had called them and asked them to take a rug from the Kissel apartment to their storage area. How heavy was the rug? But

when they picked up the rug to move it, it was wrapped oddly. There was plastic in the middle of it and it was way heavier than they expected it to be. No, no. And now the hong kong police detectives were standing in that storage area looking at that rug and the maintenance guys were right it was wrapped oddly there was like bits of plastic hanging out of it and it was rolled up kind of loosely and then tied with like rope and bungee cords now krist Kristen. Yeah. I am not a professional organizer, nor am I a professional mover. But a rug is literally one of the easiest things to make compact and store. Yes. You roll it up and you're done. I'm going to disagree with you. It's easy in one sense, but what if you got a dead body?

Then it's not so easy to wrap up, right? You just wrap it up. You don't need tape. You don't need plastic. You don't need bungee cords. That is unless there's a body in the middle of it. So investigators are looking at this rug. And one steps forward. And he reached into the middle of it.

And he felt what he believed to be a... Ew, wait, wait. No, no, no. He reached into it. Ew, no. No. Reached in. Quit, quit, quit making...

You guys, she's doing creepy hand gestures like she's the world's most invasive gynecologist. He reached in. Gross. And he felt what he believed to be a head wrapped in plastic. Why would you do that? You know what's in there. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure you know what's in there.

So they're like, oh, shit. He's definitely inside there. So they unroll it. Oh, God. And sure enough, in the middle of this rug, completely sealed in plastic, then wrapped in red tape, was a body that they would later identify as Robert Kissel. And it was clear that he had been dead for a few days at this point, because when investigators unsealed that plastic, the smell of decay hit them like a freight train. Nancy Kissel was arrested and charged with murder almost immediately. Like, arrested that same night and by like 2 o'clock in the morning had charges of murder.

Well, I mean, it seems pretty open and shut to me. I seems pretty open and shut to me. Robert and Nancy Kissel were two wealthy American expats living the life of luxury in Hong Kong. And when I say wealthy, Robert's estate was valued at upwards of $18 million at the time of his death. Wealthy. They were wealthy. Holy shit. Okay. $18 million. wealthy they were wealthy holy shit okay eight eighteen million dollars so what had gone wrong hold on what kind of business were they in i'll get there

milkshake business keep your pants on i can't i can't around 18 million dollars how had robert wound up dead wrapped in a rug oh boy it's a baby let's see you guys my phone has gone off again second week in a row we're still on baby watch this baby's playing games with our hearts uh no nothing from the baby it's just Norm letting me know how his traveling is going. Oh, excellent. When does he get home? So, well, that's the thing. We're going to have to cut nachos short or whatever we end up eating. Um, he, you're, you're not supposed to take it that well.

You're supposed to be like, I'm so sad. You have to pick up Norm. You have to pick up Norm. No, so his flight gets in at 530. Oh, okay. So I have to take off norm no so his flight gets in at 5 30 so i have to take off at like five okay robert kissel was born into the life of luxury his father was wealthy and he grew up with lots of privilege for his 16th birthday he was given his own credit card with only one rule what that there were no rules he could buy anything he wanted

with it and daddy would foot the bill you're kidding me no so a lot of this information comes from this episode of behind mansion walls uh-huh that i watched yeah it sounds like a great show. And so, yeah, they said that, like, I mean, just a super privileged upbringing. Yeah. Credit card by the time he was 16 with no rules attached. He could literally buy anything he wanted. Can you imagine? No, I can't imagine. No.

Look at your face. What would we have bought i i have no idea everything at a park today i'm gonna smell like a sun-ripened raspberry or should it be cucumber melon oh cucumber melon was the shit. Oh, man, that was the jam. Yes. So he grew up super rich, very privileged. And then he met Nancy, who grew up much more modestly. She was from Michigan, not from a wealthy family. Wait, did she have to wait until she was an adult to get her first credit card? Yeah, that's right. That is right.

Oh, God. What a terrible life. She had to pay her own bill. Ew. So there was like a rule where like you can't buy anything you want. So they met in 1987 and they married in 1989. After they married, Nancy put her own career aspirations on hold and worked three jobs in Manhattan while Ron worked on his MBA at NYU. He promised her that it would be worth it in the end.

He was going to be super successful and they were going to be super rich. And he was right. After graduating from NYU in 1991, Rob got a job at a financial firm in New York. He worked there for five years before landing a position with Goldman Sachs, which eventually took the family overseas to Hong Kong. And then in 2000, he landed a job with Merrill Lynch as the managing director of global investments in Hong Kong. And that position boasted a salary of over $3 million a year. What?

Yes. What? Yes. That? Yes. That's crazy. Crazy money. Crazy money. What would you do with $3 million a year? It's laughable to me that that is a salary. And honestly, this shows a lot about my life.

We've done a few cases in the past few weeks where people have had salaries in excess of one million dollars yeah i didn't know really that people worked in a job yeah where you would get more than a million dollars a year i just thought that was like i'm living off my investments i'm'm, you know, coasting. It is unreal to me that there are people. I mean, I don't want to brag, Christine, but my first salaried position, I made $38,000 a year.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And like at the time, I went from an hourly position to a salary position and I was like holy shit may i tell you my holy shit moment okay so when i worked at the newspaper i was making thirty thousand dollars yeah which was like i know it sounds awful and it was awful but for a newspaper yeah a small newspaper i was like all right okay i'm doing fine yeah then i switched into the dark side of public relations made 41 000 a year and i was like drinks on me i oh my god and i remember the first like the first meeting i had in PR, they provided juice and snacks for us.

And I was like, whoa, you mean these are free? These are for us? Every time at the newspaper they had snacks, it was a potluck, and it sucked because we all made $30,000 a year. Anyway, I learned to stop being impressed by orange juice because it made me look really stupid. So, yeah. So this guy's making $3 million a year.

Relatable. Okay. We're with him. But that's not all. What do you mean? In addition to that salary, they got luxury living accommodations. Oh, my God. They have their living expenses taken care of?

So the Kissels, at some point along the way, Nancy had popped out like three kids, two girls and a boy, I believe. Oh, popped out. Boy. There's not a lot of details about the kids here. You hearing that, Kyla? You just pop it out. Pop it out. So the Kissels were put up at one of the nicest apartment complexes in all of Hong Kong.

It was described as more of a resort than an apartment complex. Oh, wow. The rent there was, do you care to venture a guess how much a month? $50,000 a month. $20,000 a month. $20,000 a month. Okay, it's still crazy. It's still crazy money. And it was all paid by Merrill Lynch.

Oh my gosh. It had multiple swimming pools, laundry service, housekeeping services, and lots of other American expats working in the Hong Kong finance market. So all of the housewives were friends. They all hung out. And all of the husbands worked crazy hours in this finance market. So all of the housewives were friends, they all hung out, and all the husbands worked crazy hours in this financial market. That, I don't know, that sounds weird. Yeah. Well, it sounds great. And it also sounds kind of sad, too. Yes. So these housewives of the financial types were known to the native Chinese as tai tai, which I guess literally means wife

in Cantonese, but it carried kind of a derogatory connotation. You don't say. Nancy, by all accounts, loved this luxury lifestyle. She loved to shop. She loved to swim in the complex as many pools. And she got, wait for it, Kristen, $5,000 haircut. Okay, I cut hair and I cannot imagine what a $5,000 haircut would be. I mean, what would it be? I have no idea! What do you get for $5,000? I mean... I'm only thinking of really gross stuff right now.

Gross! Well, I'm thinking, like, it'd have to include weird sex stuff, right? I mean, it can't just be a haircut. And, I mean, you'd better be walking out of there thinking, like, it'd have to include weird sex stuff, right? I mean, it can't just be a haircut. And, I mean, you'd better be walking out of there with, like, the best hair ever. It just looked all right. I mean, it was fine. Well, yeah, because at a certain point, that's just crazy.

It's hair, yes. That's just crazy money. Yeah. There can't be that big a difference between, like, a $600 haircut and a $5,000 one. I have no idea. So Nancy loved the lifestyle, but she didn't necessarily love living in Hong Kong. She missed the U.S. But in 2003, something happened in China that sent a huge percentage of the 30,000 Americans living in Hong Kong running back to the United States. Any guess what that might have been?

2003. Mm-hmm. No. The SARS epidemic. Oh. The SARS epidemic. Oh. So SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, hit China hard. Between November of 2002 and July of 2003, an outbreak of SARS in southern China caused an eventual 8,098 cases, resulting in 774 deaths in 34 countries.

But the majority of the cases were in China. It had like a 10% fatality rate. That's scary. Yeah. So this is really interesting to me. No cases of SARS have been reported worldwide since 2004. Yeah. So what happened?

I don't know. Yeah. So what, what happened? I don't know. In late 2017, Chinese scientists traced the virus through civets, which I've never heard of. It's this weird animal. It looks like a cross between a cat and an otter. Okay. It's like this, this animal that's found in China and Africa and other parts of Asia, I'm assuming okay um but they tracked the disease like to those cats and then from those i don't even really know that they're cats i don't know what they are okay some kind of animal to these bats these horseshoe bats that live in caves oh god yes this is getting scarier somehow the the sars disease originated in these bats and then these civets got it from the bats somehow and then transferred it to people somehow. So, yeah, it was a huge deal in 2003.

Initial symptoms were flu-like and included fever, muscle pain, lethargy, cough, sore throat. And really the only symptom that seemed common to all patients was the fever that was over 100 degrees. Okay, this is so scary when stuff starts out like you're run-of-the-mill cold. Yes. And then, oh no, someone fucked one of those cat things. I mean, is that how it happened? I mean, I don't know. Where they let one lick their mouth or something, right?

Let's hope it was that way. Eventually, as SARS progressed, it would lead to shortness of breath and pneumonia. And then as it got worse, it could be even viral pneumonia or bacterial pneumonia. 10% of the people that got it died. even viral pneumonia or bacterial pneumonia. I know. 10% of the people that got it died. Yeah, that's nuts. That's awful. So I don't know if you remember this.

I remember it was a huge fucking deal at the time. People were wearing those masks everywhere. You see all that footage of people in airports with those masks on. And Kanye West even rapped about it in his song, New Workout Plan. Let's hear it. Oh, girl, your silhouette makes me want to light a cigarette. My name, Kanye, from the gigaset. Twist said, get it wet.

Ooh, girl, your breath is harsh. Cover your mouth up like you got SARS. Beautifully said. Thank you. beautifully said thank you so anyway in march of 2003 2003 in march of 2003 when the epidemic was at its worst nancy and rob decided that she and the kids would go to their vacation home near stratton Mountain in Vermont, which apparently is a popular ski resort area. Okay.

Unsure of how long she and the kids would need to stay in Vermont, Nancy invested in an expensive home entertainment setup to entertain herself and the kids. The man she bought it from set her up with his brother to install the equipment. And that's when Michael Del Priore waltzed into Nancy Kistler's life. Kistler? Kissel.

Kissel's life. I like how you said it so confidently at first. Well, I was like, why is it different there? Hmm. It's Kissel. Okay. For sure. Is it?

Michael was described as ruggedly handsome, though I've not seen any pictures of him, so I cannot confirm or deny that. But the two became very close while he worked on Nancy's home. One day, he confided to her that his alcoholic father used to beat his mother. He said he revealed this to Nancy because he noticed that she often wore that same downtrodden look that his mother always had. And that was all Nancy needed to hear. She found a man that understood her nuances. all Nancy needed to hear.

She found a man that understood her nuances. He saw past that perfect, chiseled, beautiful exterior to the dissatisfied housewife inside. The two became lovers. Was she being, like, abused? I don't know. Was she, Kristen?

Oh, is this another one of these? Damn it! Okay, so they're becoming lovers, yeah yeah and best friends oh well that's great though nancy said she never considered leaving her husband for him well yeah i mean did this dude make three million a year i doubt it yes she loved michael but her home was in hong kong with her husband translation michael lived in a trailer park on the shit side of town. Rob was worth $18 million. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, God. Not even. I was thinking this Michael character was like doing all right. Not so much. Okay. Some articles described him as an electrician, which electricians make great money. And then other articles referred to him as a TV repairman.

Yeah, there's a world of difference. There's a big difference. I'm going to say if he was in the trailer park, probably a TV repairman. By the summer of 2003, the SARS epidemic was over and Nancy and the kids returned to Hong Kong. She and Michael still kept in touch and Rob grew suspicious. Sometime after Nancy and the kids returned to Hong Kong, I believe it was like August, Robert hired a private investigator to confirm his suspicions about Nancy. And by November 2nd, Robert was dead, bludgeoned to death with an eight pound statuette. Oh, yeah.

That's a wealthy way to go. It is. Nancy pled not guilty. She said it was self-defense. Oh, jeez. You're not allowed to do these anymore. I hate this stuff. Her trial began in June of 2005 at Hong Kong's High Court before Justice Michael Lunn.

It lasted 65 days. Whoa! It's a long one. Nancy pulled a full-on Jodi Arias. Or maybe Jodi Arias pulled a Nancy, because this case happened before Jodi's. Nancy ditched her blonde hair, makeup, and flashy clothing for the court instead she dyed her hair dark brown donned a pair of glasses and dressed each day in a conservative black dress it was quite the transformation she was like this beautiful blonde like always dressed very fancy. And now she is this meek little dark haired plain looking woman.

What do you think about that? Oh, I think it's a tactic. But I think it's shitty. See, I don't necessarily think it's shitty. Why? It's a lie. Okay. Let's say you really are innocent of something and you think your looks yeah might

affect how a jury's gonna see you i mean all this stuff i think it's super manipulative what if you just want a little make under i i mean i think there's no reason to do that other than to manipulate the jury well yeah it's manipulation but the whole thing's manipulation i mean it is yeah okay I mean, I think there's no reason to do that other than to manipulate the jury. Well, yeah, it's manipulation, but the whole thing's manipulation. I mean, it is. Okay, okay. Some commentators even opined that perhaps Nancy was attempting to make herself look more Asian to gain the sympathy of the jury. Well, I mean, you're not going to fool anybody. No, you're not. But okay, but to look like less of the jury. Well, I mean, you're not going to fool anybody.

No, you're not. But to look like less of an outsider, maybe? Now, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's say you're on trial for murder. Okay. You don't take the blue out of your hair? No. You don't cover your tattoos?

No. You don't take out your piercings? I mean, my defense attorney would probably make me. Now, let's say your defense attorney is like, bring me. Okay, I would not go makeup-less. Well, no. No, neither would I. 100%.

I'm too vain for that. It's like, look, we want you to look like more like just your average woman you'd see on the street. Wear whatever makeup you want. But like, let's cover the tattoos. Take out the lip piercing. Take the blue out of your hair. What do you do?

Yeah, I'd probably do it. Exactly. But it feels like a lie. It's a lie. That's not who i am wait you are your they make up part of my personality yeah listen you've had this personality a long ass time uh side note i'm getting rid of the blue you are i am i have a hair appointment on friday what are you doing mullet yeah rat tail i'm doing like a long braided rat tail cool no what are you gonna do like a balayage okay i'm very excited about this yeah is it because you're about to go on trial for something no or something? No. Okay, sorry. Continue. The prosecution painted Nancy Kissel as a duplicitous

cheating wife who meticulously planned the murder of her husband so that she could run off with her lover. Yeah. Rob had found out that she was cheating and told her that he was going to divorce her. She'd be left with nothing. Say goodbye to that luxury lifestyle you love so much, Nancy. So Nancy had come up with a plan. She would drug Rob, and then when he was passed out and defenseless, she'd murder him. Oh.

Rob had five drugs in his body at the time of his death. Whoa. Including Rohypnol, commonly known as the date rape drug. Ooh. What do you think about that, Kristen? How do you think that looks for old Nance? Yeah. Okay, I'm struggling with this one because I feel like,

what was it just last week that you did? Or was it the week before that you did another few? The week before I did another Bob and Nancy. Is it another? Oh my gosh. It's another Bob and Nancy. This is so weird. This Bob goes by Rob.

Okay, okay. I don't know. I'm feeling more like in this one, I'm not, I haven't heard enough about the alleged abuse. Whereas the other one, it seemed like there was clearly abuse going on in that house for decades. And to me, it did seem like she did snap. But this one, it seems a little more like, I don't know. Did they not have, did they have a prenup?

Is that? I do not believe so. I don't know. They didn't have a prenup? I don't know. See, that's important to me. They might have had some because he came for money and she didn't. It didn't come up in the court case, so I don't know.

But why was she working three jobs? I know. I thought that was odd, too. Because to me that sounds like if she's working three jobs and he's doing his master's, then it sounds like she's supporting them. Which in that case, if I'm doing that for you, no, I am not signing a prenup. Thank you very much. Maybe they did have a prenup. And maybe it said if she, if either of them committed adultery that they would be they get nothing

see to me the prenup makes it and i don't know it didn't come up in anything that i watched or any of the articles that i read okay okay continue so he's got five drugs in his body one of them is rehypnol, the date rape drug. The other four, Nancy had prescriptions for all four of them in her name from different doctors. Not great, right? No, not great. The prosecution alleged that on November 2nd, Kristen's birthday, Nancy had prepared a strawberry milkshake for Rob and it had been laced with the five drugs. After downing the milkshake,

which was delivered to Rob by his young daughter. I'm sorry, I thought you were going to say, which was delicious. No, what I said was that it was delivered by his young daughter. Okay, that is so fucked up. It is fucked up. It's super fucked up. So after he drank this milkshake, he went to the bedroom to lay down.

He said he wasn't feeling well. I bet. Then sometime after he'd passed out, Nancy had taken an eight pound statuette from the kitchen. Oh, God. Okay, why do you do this? What? I think it's important to know. Like, she didn't just, like, you know, hit him twice and hope he was not, like, hope he was done.

She bashed his head in. Yeah, yeah. Five times with an eight-pound statuette. Then, for the next couple of days, Nancy kept Rob's body in her bedroom.

What? She slept beside it for two or three nights. No, no, no, no, no. No, she didn't. What? She slept beside it for two or three nights. No, no, no, no, no. No, she didn't. She did before finally wrapping it in plastic,

rolling it up in the rug, and having it move to the storage unit. What? So this is the theory put forth by the prosecution. Oh my God. And

they produced a couple of witnesses who could back some of this up. The first was a neighbor of the Kissels. He had been there at the house on November 2nd. His daughter was having a play date with the Kissels' daughter, and he was sitting in the living room with Rob Kissel. When their daughters brought them strawberry milkshakes. Oh my god! Yeah, this guy drank his strawberry milkshake, which he said tasted like strawberries, bananas, and crushed cookies. And then he'd gone home because he wasn't feeling well. And then he'd fallen asleep on the couch for 18 hours.

What? When he woke up, he had completely soiled the couch. Oh, my God. Oh. Oh, no. And he had almost no memory of how he got there. Well, I bet not. Yes.

So this guy didn't have, like, a spouse or anything. He did. He had a wife who tried to wake him several times during this and he would come around a little bit and then immediately pass back out. Okay, if that were Norman, we'd be going to the hospital. I wouldn't be like, okay, go ahead and poop on the couch. She's fine. Go ahead and shit all over the couch. Was his milkshake poisoned, do you think?

Do you think it was laced with five drugs kristin i don't know i often just go on a milkshake vendor and i'm out of it for days i can't believe she drugged him too i know right well and i think the part that's really getting to me is like these little girls. Yeah. I can. Here. Here's what I can promise you. Little Kristen.

If I was asked to deliver something delicious to you're going to take a drink. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to like stick your finger in. Get a little taste. I'm like, sorry, mom. Only made you have a milkshake. And I guess I just die.

Yeah. That's just die. Yeah. That's messed up. Yeah. No, I'm fully against Nancy on this one. We haven't heard Nancy's take yet. Okay. Next, that private investigator that Rob had hired to look into Nancy, he testified. investigator that Rob had hired to look into Nancy, he testified. He said that in late August of 2003, Rob had called him and said, I think Nancy might be poisoning me.

My scotch that I drink every night tastes funny. And after I drink it, I feel kind of weird, kind of sleepy, kind of woozy. I think something's up. Wow. And so the private investigator was like, okay, let me look into this. He installed spyware on Nancy's phone and computer so he could track her internet searches. And it turns out that Nancy was doing all kinds of research about how different drugs would affect people. Yeah, yeah. Just a typical thing you do.

And so he called Rob and he's like, don't drink anything. Don't stop drinking your scotch. I think she's definitely poisoning you. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's pretty bad. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Wow. It's pretty bad. Yes. Yes. Yes. So the prosecution has said what they think happened. They brought forth a couple of witnesses who said, yeah, we're pretty sure she was poisoning him.

Yes, absolutely. But Nancy was going to take the stand in her own defense. Oh, bad move. She admitted that she killed her husband, but she maintained that it was in self-defense. Under the law in Hong Kong, Nancy Kissel could have pleaded insanity in the murder. That's kind of like that's kind of how one self-defense argument there is that you like went into a rage and you had no control over what you did but under an insanity defense she would have been guaranteed um incarceration in a psychiatric facility for some amount of time

that seems fair yeah yeah instead she and her lawyer or barrister, as they call it, they chose another route. They pled diminished responsibility. So the legal system in Hong Kong is based off of the British system. And this diminished responsibility allows defendants to plead guilty to a crime committed under extraordinary circumstances that reduce the defendant's culpability. So she's saying, yes, I did it, but this is why I did it. And under that defense, the defendant must proof from the prosecution to the defense. That's interesting. Yes.

So the defense has to be able to prove that this is what she did and why she did it. Okay. Okay, okay. I think that's pretty interesting. That fascinates me. Yeah. Yeah. So it allows the prosecution to have to do a lot less. They basically just have to be able to poke holes

in the defense's version. Okay. Rather than having to prove how and why she killed him wow all right all right on august 1st 2005 nancy kissel took the stand and she presented a very different portrait of her husband to their community in hong kong robert Kissel was a successful, respected, and admired colleague. But to his wife, he was a cocaine addict and a brutal control freak who beat her regularly and forced her to have rough anal sex every night. Oh, no. According to Nancy, her husband's use of cocaine started when he was studying for his MBA in New York.

And she was working all of those jobs to support them. They would argue about it, she said. And she said that he was wasting their hard-earned money on drugs. But he got his degree and they went on to make this money and everything was fine. But he got his degree and they went on to make this money and everything was fine. Serious trouble started, she testified, after the birth of their first child. She told the court that she gained weight and her body had changed. And Robert said he no longer found her attractive.

He hounded her to lose weight she said and according to nancy his sexual preference had turned away from traditional sex to anal sex god this story is nuts it's so crazy she said that she believed it was because he no longer wanted to see her face. Well, I don't know. God. She said every night he would assault her sexually. On one occasion, she said that he was so aggressive, she heard something pop in her torso.

Oh, no. And she went to the hospital next day and learned that he'd broken one of her ribs oh what do you think about this i hate it because it's it's the same thing i always feel which is that you know if she's the victim then yeah i feel terrible for her. And then and I think, well, she did what she had to do. The only thing that's making me think this is bullshit is that she poisoned that other guy and she put those two little girls at risk. To me, that's not someone who's acting out of self-defense or snapping. It's someone who is kind of a murderous jerk.

I think it's 100% bullshit. I think she thought of the worst things that she could say about him and stuff that would be difficult to corroborate. Nobody else would know what went on in their bedroom. Well, but that's the thing about a lot of domestic violence. Yeah, it is. You're right. You're totally right. Did they have the hospital records and everything as far as i found they weren't able to produce any witnesses who could verify her

her hospital visit or anything yeah because i looked into that because i was like okay where are the where are the medical records easy to back uh yeah okay yeah you're losing me so she went on and on she testified for 10 days about how horrible it was being married to him he worked all the time and then when he wasn't at work he was abusive and all of this stuff yeah and then she talked about how she'd had this affair and how she loved this other man. But the thought of leaving her husband never crossed her mind. Okay, well, that's just bullshit. It's dumb. It is. It's bullshit.

It's just bullshit. Yeah. So she testified to that on the one hand, her home was with rob in hong kong but then on another on the other hand later in her testimony so as i mentioned she testified over 10 days yeah she testifies that at one point she asked him for a divorce and he said oh no you don't get to ask for a divorce if we're getting a divorce i get to ask for the divorce and then flew into a fit of rage and hit her well i mean i don't know how do you know okay when he so he hired the private investigator how long did he sit on the information um so he hired the private investigator at the end of the summer of 2003 and this

event happened in november so see to me that seems believable then that he would say you don't get to ask for a divorce i get to ask for a divorce i mean if he had all the information and he was sticking around Yeah. This, this. Nancy also testified that his moods were often volatile and that the children were sometimes the brunt of it. She said that one time he was on a conference call for work and one of the kids was jumping on their bed and making all this noise. And so he stormed into her room and yanked her off the bed and broke her arm. Oh. Okay. Medical records?

I believe that there's record of her breaking the arm, but that story was never told before then. The reason, I think the story was told that she fell off the bed and broke the arm. Which is believable that you would tell that story. Yes. I mean, that's what sucks. It's totally believable. It's believable that a kid would break their arm it's also believable that in a domestic violence situation everyone would

be like oh gee yeah little suzy just fell off the bed exactly yeah it's really hard to know okay keep going keep going I'm so intrigued. So the defense also brought forth some character references or character witnesses. Thank you. Character witnesses for Nancy. And they said that she was a devoted mother who spent a lot of time volunteering at the kids' schools and that she was always present in their lives. And that's about all that those character witnesses said. I mean, nobody could vouch for her version of what her marriage was like. And I believe that that's completely possible.

It could have been that terrible and nobody could have known. I feel like that's the case in a lot of them. Absolutely. Absolutely it is. completely possible it could have been that terrible and nobody could have known i feel like that's the case in a lot absolutely absolutely it is yeah nobody's gonna be bragging about how terrible their fucking husband is right yeah so i don't know yeah so she said my husband's so bad yeah yeah oh i skipped a little part here sorry i'm gonna back up just for a second so another thing that nancy said is she she tried to offer explanations for why she had the that search history of all of those drugs and things that she had looked at and she said she was simply looking

for ways to make her own life easier she could drug herself a little bit maybe be a little bit easier to get through the abuse and get through the pain and that's why she saw those different doctors so she could get those different medications and all of that she completely denied drugging okay her husband well you just you can't deny drugging him she completely denies it she said that this happened in a completely different way than the prosecution laid forth. She said that she asked Rob for a divorce and he flew into a fit of rage. He grabbed her and he forced her into the an item to defend herself against him. And she just kind of, while he was forcing himself on her, reached back and hit him with it and realized that she had killed him. No. No.

It just doesn't match. No. And did she have, like, big defensive wounds on her? No. Okay. Yeah. Then no. No. And did she have, like, big defensive wounds on her? No. Okay. Yeah, then no. Nope. No.

Nope. Not at all. I think in a case like this, the only thing you can really say is, yeah, he was abusive and horrible, and it came to a point where I was like, it's his life or mine. And I decided to kill him. Yeah. But I mean, you're going to have to do jail time for that. So I guess that wasn't what she wanted.

No. Yeah. I just think it was totally the wrong move to deny poisoning him. Yeah, you really can't. You poisoned two guys. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can't deny that. And the physical evidence shows that he didn't fight back.

Like, so she said that she hit him the one time and he was super stunned and he was like sitting. He fell to the floor and then he crawled up and he was on the bed and he he realized he was bleeding. And so he started to try and swing at her and so she just hit him a couple more times with the statue yeah i don't think so i don't know i don't think that works i mean was he like half her size because then maybe then it works no no so the trial wrapped up in august of 2005 during his closing arguments

the prosecutor told the jury this was a cold-blooded murder instead of the life or death struggle with a madman that nancy tried to depict um chapman said that the defendant had used that figurine to inflict the injuries on Robert Kissel as he was lying down, helpless, unconscious, as a result of drinking the potent milkshake she had given him. Her motive, he contended, was to remove the obstacle in her life that Robert Kissel had become so that she could make room for her lover. Yeah. Yeah. I think that lays it out pretty good.

In the defense's closing argument, Nancy's attorney said that his client had killed her husband in self-defense during a struggle that had begun when Rob announced that he was filing for divorce and that he was going to take the kids from Nancy. Okay. That's not quite what Nancy said on the stand. Right. And I don't think it makes any sense. Yeah. At what point, how does Robert fly into a rage and Nancy has to defend herself after he says he's going to file for divorce?

Yeah, that really doesn't work. Yeah. in the apartment that would have proven that there was a struggle that took place in there because there were no they found no signs of struggle no defensive wounds nothing that showed that there had been this great fight and so he's saying no they were there they just missed him i can't really prove that to you i don't have any pictures to show you believe me they were there uh-huh the jury deliberated for eight hours what do you think they found guilty for sure they found her guilty um and she was sentenced immediately to the mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole yeah but she appealed her conviction in 2008 but her appeal was rejected yeah so she appealed her case all the way to the court of

final appeal and in january of 2010 a five judge panel looked it over and they said she deserved a new trial really yeah why i don't know damn it brandy hold on it was something about they believed that the defense had or that the prosecution had brought forth some kind of evidence that shouldn't have been admissible. Okay. But you don't know what it is. I don't know what specific evidence it was. But something they felt led to her getting a less than fair trial. Something was presented that they didn't think the judge should have let in, and it led to Nancy getting a less than fair trial.

So her conviction was overturned she was allowed to seek bail and get release until she was retried she didn't for some reason probably didn't have the money probably i'm guessing yeah but she was um tried again and reconvicted oh well so she remains in prison in Hong Kong. Wow. Yeah. That story was crazy. Crazy, right? Yes. So here is a little crazy tidbit that's not really related.

So Rob had a brother that he was super close with. His name was Andrew or Andy. I think he went by Andy. Who lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. Okay. Greenwich is how they pronounce it. was andrew or andy i think he went by andy who lived in greenwich connecticut okay um green which is how they pronounce it and he was also super wealthy uh-huh but it turned out that he was wealthy because he was doing shady business deals oh so he was a real estate investor but he

was like buying all this real estate and then forging documents to prove that he'd paid off the mortgages on them when he hadn't actually oh yeah it was all of the like crazy stuff he ends up getting indicted for it like they figure out what's going on that he's got all this fraud and larceny and all this stuff going on so he's placed on house arrest and then his wife files for divorce because all of his assets are frozen. And she's like, fuck this. I'm out of here. And so they're having to liquidate all of the assets that aren't frozen. And so he's on house arrest in this big mansion in Greenwich. And he's having to move out of it.

So these movers come on the last day that he's supposed to be out of the house. And nobody's answering the door. And so they get a hold of his ex-wife. Her name's Haley. Get a hold of her. And she gives them the code to get in. They get answering the door. And so they get a hold of his ex-wife. Her name's Haley. Get a hold of her. And she gives them the code to get in. They get in the house. They can't find Andy anywhere.

He's in the basement dead. He's been murdered. Murdered? Oh, I... He's been stabbed. And his throat has been cut. He's tied to a chair. Oh, my God.

He's been stabbed, I don't know, like 11 times in the back. And then his throat was slashed. He's bled out. Shut up. Yeah. I thought you were going to say that he'd committed suicide. Did he? Well, obviously not. Oh really? Is it so obvious? Yes!

It's so obvious. There's this big theory. So, okay. Stabbed 11 times and slit his own throat. All superficial stab wounds. Oh, my God. Okay, tell me. Damn it. So, it's not really been solved.

There is someone who has been convicted of the crime, but prosecutors and police don't believe they got the full story. So, at the end, when all of his life was falling apart, this Andy guy had like one friend left. It was his driver. His name was Carlos. Okay. The guy that pled guilty to murdering him is Carlos's cousin. And he said that Carlos paid him to kill Andy. Police and investigators believe that Andy paid them to kill him and make it look like he'd been tortured by like a mobster or something like that so that his family wouldn't know that he'd really committed suicide.

No. He was going to go to prison for a long time. There's a lot of people that believe that version. They tried to try Carlos and he was acquitted but is suicide really that much more shameful than going to prison for the rest of your life like oh my family can't know this part i don't know it's much better if they think I was murdered and tortured. By the mob! That's silly! It's less cowardly. It would be seen as less cowardly.

I'm not saying it's less cowardly. I'm saying it would be... Yeah. Yeah, maybe less sad. Yeah. In that sense. Like, it... Hmm. yeah maybe less sad yeah in that sense like it hmm but there's a mother out there who thinks both of her children were who believes that both of her children were murdered well yeah yeah i mean one was 100 for sure murdered yeah Yeah. The other one, question mark.

Nobody really knows. It's crazy. It's a crazy story. His whole life story is so crazy. There's a bunch of articles about him. His name's Andrew Kissel. Do some reading on him because it's nuts. Like he was super into Coke and hookers and doing bad things. Wow.

That was, that was so good. Yeah. Thanks. And Stephanie. Oh, that was crazy. All right.

You ready for some blood? I am. You know, I love blood. I know you do. Oh God. Okay. So starting off with a big thank you to Camille.

Camille emailed in with this case suggestion. And I've got to say, like all of this comes from a fantastic article in the Texas Observer by Dave Mann. And it's one of those things where if I tell you the headline, it's going to give it away. So I'm going to save that for later. But just know that like all of this comes from Dave Mann. Thanks, Dave. Thanks. You're the man.

You know what's funny? I started that off as like a dad joke but then i really genuinely laughed at it okay bonnie and warren hornack had a shitty relationship oh the best kind they'd been married for three years and and Bonnie's friends were worried about her. They said Warren abused her, and that Warren was a drunk. And there was really no denying that last part. Warren had been a Fort Worth police officer for a long time, but he lost the job because of his drinking.

Everyone thought these two were headed for a divorce. But on Tuesday, March 14th, 1995, Bonnie and Warren appeared to be having a pretty good time. They were at their local TGI Fridays, living it up. Bottomless apps. Apps, zerts and drinks no so so bonnie had this like really nice job as an attorney in downtown fort worth and warren i'm not quite sure what he was doing i mean he'd been fired from the police force i think he had his own gig but anyway they're getting drunk at tgi fridays like you do yeah so they arrived at about

7 15 and a little after 11 p.m they left warren had like 11 cores lights and bonnie had a bunch of chardonnay by the way 11 seems like too much to you? What? Yeah, that's a shit ton. Yeah, that's a lot of Coors Light. My gosh. By the way, who gets drunk at a TGI Friday? Right? I mean, I worked at TGI Fridays and I never saw anyone get drunk there. By the time they left, they were obviously both drunk.

So naturally, they drove home. Great. You know, you get an Uber when you've had 12 Coors Lights. Uber didn't exist in 1995. You know what I mean. Roughly half an hour later, Warren called 911. He was in an extreme panic. He tried talking to the dispatcher, but he was so sloshed that, like, his words ran together.

He couldn't understand this guy at all. Oh, my gosh. Finally, he pulled himself together and said, my wife just shot herself. Police arrived on the scene and found Bonnie lying in bed. She'd been shot in the chest. And Warren was there trying to perform CPR. So when he made that call, you could hear her breathing. And so he was trying to administer CPR,

but the paramedics get there and they're like, buddy, you have to stop. She's gone. And eventually they just had to pull him out of the room. Immediately, police start looking around. They see a shotgun at the edge of the bed. And a revolver right next to Bonnie. Odd.

Yeah. Otherwise, the house looked fine. No signs of a break-in. The only other person in the house at the time Bonnie was shot was Warren. Then there was other weird stuff. Bonnie had a pillowcase

wrapped around her neck. And Warren had blood splattered all over his shirt. There was no bullet. Police are like, okay, what? Did Bonnie really shoot herself? Because it doesn't look like it. J.D. Roberts was one of the first officers who arrived that day. And he was like, I think I know what's going on here. Warren shot Bonnie with a shotgun.

And then he strangled her with a pillowcase. What? What? That doesn't make any sense. What do you think's going on? I don't know what's going on yet. I don't have enough information. Keep going. Later, the medical examiner did the autopsy and was like, no, she wasn't strangled.

But I was. Strangled by phlegm. Gross. This is why we have a podcast. because I've got such a beautiful voice. So the medical examiner's like, no, she wasn't strangled. And that missing bullet, well, yeah, we can't find it. But we can see that it went through the mattress and the carpet and eventually went into the foundation of the house. So it's not like it's, like, missing.

Right. It's just. We can't recover it. Right. Got it. Okay. All right. The medical examiner listed the manner of death as undetermined.

But they were pretty sure it was a suicide. Bonnie's body showed no signs of struggle, and the gun had been placed right against her skin when it was fired. So that looked like a self-inflicted wound what what no what no what bullshit okay she she held a shotgun to her own chest and killed herself hold on there was a shotgun in the room and there was a revolver in the room i don't believe that a revolver bullet is going through and through her body through the mattress through the floor and into the foundation so it can't be recovered wow this is bullshit if i've ever heard it okay okay

pretty soon the case went to assistant assistant district attorney mike parish i'd like to point out that i know nothing about guns i was gonna say you know more than i do you seem to know a lot about what's gonna happen to a revolver bullet he spoke to very confident about something i know nothing about. That describes us completely. Assistant District Attorney Mike Parrish spoke to some of the police officers. He read the medical examiner's report. Who shoots themselves in the chest to commit suicide? I don't know.

You think it always happens in the head? Yeah. You're not going to die immediately in the chest. Who's going to choose to suffer like that? I'm not buying it. Continue. What if you're, like, really drunk, though? I mean, your judgment would be off, I'm guessing.

Yeah. I still am not buying it. Okay. Okay. That's my official opinion so far. All right. I reserve the right to change it at any time. So, you know, he spoke to the police officers who were there on the scene.

He read the medical examiner's report and he decided, yeah, sounds like a suicide. Mm-hmm. But Bonnie's parents were like, no way. Bonnie was a successful attorney. She earned six figures in 1995. She just got a new job at a cool downtown law firm. And yeah, she did suffer from depression. But she was overall really happy.

The only thing shitty about her life was Warren. Her friends agreed. She told them that Warren could be violent and that when he drank, she was afraid of him. Bonnie's parents knew that Warren had killed their daughter. And when the DA declined to prosecute, they were like, no, we're not done here. We are taking this into our own hands. They hired their own attorney and a private investigator, and they discovered some really troubling stuff. They learned that once, in 1992, police were called to the home where warren and bonnie lived to live

together warren was drunk and firing his gun into their pool what you know how you do no yeah yeah come on come on do you ever get drunk and bored and just want to fire your gun into a pool no okay well i'm hoping i mean the risks for leaks would be high i feel like i read somewhere that it was like uh the pool was empty i don't know if that makes a difference for you either way weird way to spend your night yeah then in 1993 warren shot a gun over bonnie's head while she was lying in bed now don't worry are we still thinking this was only a suicide well yeah okay because here's here's the thing don't worry don't worry i know that sounds bad in In fact, to the attorney, it sounded like a pattern of abuse. Yeah, in fact. But in reality, it's totally chill.

Okay, it's totally fine. See, Warren just did that. He just shot the gun above her head to get her attention. Yeah, that's normal behavior. Hold on, yeah. Well, it was like a fun little joke. No! Yes, yes.

Okay, I'll say, not his best material. No! Yes, yes. Okay, okay. I'll say, not his best material, but he was just trying to get her attention. So he held the gun up against the wall and fired. So obviously he wasn't intending to hurt her. It was just a hilarious thing he did to get her attention. No. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm totally with you. That is 100% abusive behavior. Absolutely terrifying, crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I am totally with you. That is 100% abusive behavior. Absolutely terrifying, crazy. Yes. Awful. Yeah. 1993 was also the year that Warren was fired from the police force. The day he was let go, he went home, locked himself in a room, and told Bonnie that he was going to kill himself.

Bonnie called the police. They arrived at the home, took him away. And as they were walking him away, he yelled at Bonnie. He said he'd make her pay for doing this to him. So Bonnie's parents' attorney, Mike Ware, had all this evidence showing that Bonnie and Warren had an abusive relationship and that Warren was a pretty scary dude. Mike was certain that Warren killed Bonnie. But Mike Ware was not a district attorney. So what the hell could he do with this information?

Turns out, there's this weird law on the books in texas that no one ever uses and according to this law anyone can bring evidence before a grand jury what yeah okay this is the craziest thing so the way the article was worded it almost seemed like any like concerned citizen could just bring it. Surely you have to at least be an attorney. But, I mean, bottom line is, it's this weird law. And, yeah, in Texas, if you feel like something bad happened, you can, I guess, jump through a few hoops, present it to a grand jury. Huh.

So, Mike Ware did exactly that. It was a totally circumstantial case, but it was pretty compelling, and in 1996, Warren was indicted for murder. So they've got this

indictment, but the DA was like, sorry, don't care. What? I don't think he did it oh my gosh and therefore it would be unethical for me to prosecute him a grand jury thinks that he did it so or that there's reason to believe he committed a crime yeah so the da's office recused itself from the case. Who takes it then? So a judge assigned

two private attorneys to act as special prosecutors. This is nuts. This is crazy. So... The DA can just be like, nah, thanks? Apparently.

What? Because here's the thing. The DA, like everyone on the prosecution side thought it was a suicide. So this judge is like, OK, we're going to get these private attorneys to act as these special prosecutors. So this led to a weird, weird trial. The prosecution was made up entirely of lawyers who were in private practice. And, of course, they used their own private psychologists and private investigators. You know, they used who they were used to working with.

Meanwhile, the defense was made up of people who normally serve on the state side so the crime scene investigator the homicide sergeant and the da all testified for the defense it was like bizarro upside down world yes this is the craziest thing it's nuts thank you camille yeah so here's the thing war It's nuts. Thank you, Camille. Yeah. So here's the thing. Warren's attorney was not worried. He was like, look, you may have been abusive. You may have been a drunken asshole.

But there's no evidence that you murdered your wife. And you can't be convicted of murder with no evidence. At trial, the jury heard all of the drunken incidents that we just went over. They heard from Bonnie's friends and family. They also heard from defense witnesses who said that Bonnie's death looked like a suicide. They heard Warren's side of the story. According to Warren, on the night Bonnie died, he and Bonnie got home from TGI Fridays. He went into their home office to check his messages.

And that's when he heard the gunshot. No. I don't believe it. No? You know, he hears the gunshot. He thought someone had broken into the house. So he grabbed his shotgun, ran into the bedroom, and found Bonnie shot. So that's why there's two guns in that bedroom.

I just remembered your intro to this case. Yeah. I'm getting excited. Okay, continue. It looked to him in that moment like she was bleeding from the neck. So he grabbed a pillowcase and wound it around the wound to help stop the bleeding. Then he called 911. Warren said it was a suicide. He hadn't been there when the gun was fired.

And obviously everyone who responded to the scene that night agreed. The trial was coming to a close. And the prosecution called the final witness, a rebuttal witness. And the prosecution called the final witness a rebuttal witness. His name was Tom Bevel, and he was an expert on bloodstain patterns. We've talked about blood spatter analysis on this podcast before. It's widely been discredited. Yeah, people seem to think it's kind of bullshit now but this was like 1996 and they were still you know all in on blood spatter got it um so blood

spatter analysis has been around for a very long time i want to say this article said like since the 1890s but in the past few decades experts have really started to question it they say it's kind of subjective not super scientific all the time and there have been a lot of cases where people were wrongfully convicted over flawed blood spatter analysis that's not to say it's completely useless yeah but basically you really have to know what you're talking about. And the other thing I'd say, just from reading some of this stuff, is, like, you can't put too much emphasis on it. Like, I don't think your entire trial should hinge upon blood spatter analysis because it's not DNA, you know? It has to be a component. Yeah, absolutely.

It has to be a component. Yeah, absolutely. Well, because a large part of it is interpretation. Yeah. Yeah. So one blood spatter expert's opinion of the scene could vary from another's. You can't base your entire case on something that could vary that differently. Yeah. The National Academy of Sciences has studied blood spatter analysis and the role it plays in American courtrooms. And they say that anyone who's

going to serve as this kind of expert should have a very strong grasp, if not advanced degrees in math, physics and the pathology of wounds. Wow. Which. Yeah. I mean, if your testimony could possibly put someone away for life or let someone go free. Yeah. You better be a fucking real expert absolutely tom bevel didn't have any of that stuff though great where'd tom bevel get his certification

so here's a mail order thing so he had taken some professional training on those topics. Who could some? Great. But his background wasn't super science-y. Mm-hmm. Here's the deal. He had worked for the Oklahoma City Police Department for a very long time, and he had an interest in this stuff. Mm-hmm. So he began offering his services as an expert witness. And he made a name for himself. He taught classes on this stuff.

And he even wrote three editions of the textbook Bloodstained Pattern Analysis with an Introduction to Crime Scene Reconstruction. So Tom takes a stand at Warren's trial. And they brought out the Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt that Warren had been wearing on the night of Bonnie's murder? Suicide? Question mark? There was blood on it, obviously. But Tom zeroed in on the tiny specks of blood on the left shoulder of the shirt. Did those specks hit his shirt when Warren was performing CPR?

Or when a gun was fired? Tom had the answer. It was when a gun was fired. Yeah. I mean, I've got this long thing. I don't think I'm going to read it because it's kind of boring. But basically he said bloodstains that are less than one millimeter in diameter, so super tiny, can only occur because of a high velocity occurrence. And it has to be, in this case, the gunshot.

What if he's doing CPR like super fast and hard? That's a very good question. Because you do it super hard and fast. Right. Huh. Okay. Tom says it's the gunshot with that they found warren guilty what do you think well that it's gonna get overturned and he's gonna get a new trial because Tom Bevel's an idiot. He's going to be widely discredited.

How many textbooks have you written, Missy? Zero. So Warren was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Later, the jury foreman said that until Tom Bevel testified, they were all prepared to go for an acquittal. Great. And Tom Bevel's testimony is full bullshit, right? That's what we're going to find out. So years passed. You know who also worked for the Oklahoma City Police Department?

Who? Joyce Gilchrist. The woman who made the... Yes! Who did the fraudulent blood work in the Beatrice Six case. What the hell is going on in Oklahoma City? Yeah.

What? Yeah, that's... Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. There was one person who just couldn't let this case go. It was a man named Jim Varnon.

Jim was a crime scene investigator for the Fort Worth Police Department. He was one of the first people who arrived on the scene when Bonnie died. And he was haunted by this case. It just didn't make any sense to him. If Warren

really murdered Bonnie, then why tie the pillowcase around her neck? Wouldn't that just make him look more guilty? Yeah. So to him, it made sense that, like, if you think it's a neck wound, yeah, you go in. But, I mean, if you've just shot someone in the chest,

why would you wrap a pillowcase around their neck? That's true. And why bring in the shotgun? Wouldn't that make you look guilty too? Like if you've just shot someone with a revolver, do you go and grab a shotgun? Another gun? And if he did shoot her,

he would have had to have done it with the gun pressed against her skin. That's common in suicides but pretty rare in murders so here's what it said basically in a murder there's almost always a struggle and the victim has some sort of defensive wounds and the gun is rarely pressed right up against their skin because like if you've got a gun we're're going to be... Yeah. And you could definitely shoot me and kill me, but it'd be pretty hard for you to get right up against me and do it. That's part of the point of a gun as a murder weapon, is it doesn't have to be as intimate.

You don't have to be as close. Yeah. If you're looking for a hands-on murder, you're going to stab someone. Brandy's murder recommendations. If you really want to get your hands in there. Now what I recommend is a figurine. Plus, the timing didn't really work. If Warren truly staged this crime scene,

then he did an amazing job. And he did it in an incredibly tight time frame. Well, fall down drunk. And he got Bonnie to die at the exact right moment. Because you could hear that she was alive on the 911 call but then dead by the time police got there yeah that's right yeah right yeah that all is interesting when you add it all up like that okay i'm so glad you had the reaction that you did because i feel like i would be the exact same way yeah like it just he seems good for this.

But yeah, I mean, you add all that up and it doesn't make sense. The pillowcase thing gets to me. Why would you do that? But none of that had really mattered to the jury because they'd heard all of that and yet they still found Warren guilty. So Jim went after the one thing he felt put Warren away. Bevel. The blood spatter. Do you think it's blood spatter or blood splatter?

Spatter. Spatter. So Tom traveled to New York. Tom traveled to New York. Tom traveled to New York to talk to Herb McDonald, who is like the guy when it comes to blood patterns. Awkward side note, Tom studied under this dude, I guess. So, I mean, his training couldn't have been too bad, right,

if he's studying under the guy. Yeah. But I don't know if that was like an afternoon class one time or a webinar or what. Well, probably not a webinar in the 90s. Yeah. So Herb reviewed what Tom had concluded at trial. And he was like, hmm. No.

I don't know. A lot of things can cause tiny blood specks. An analyst named Anita Zanin weighed in, too, and she said, yeah, Tom's testimony was wrong. Really small blood specks like the ones Tom described don't exclusively come from gunshots or, you know, high velocity, whatever. They can come from CPR. I believe I said that. Our expert, Brandy. This could go either way.

Yeah, it could be from a gunshot, but it could be exactly what Warren described. There's no way to know, and therefore Tom shouldn't have testified with such certainty that this one thing happened. Anita Zanin worked on this case for three years. The longer she worked, the more certain she became that there had been a miscarriage of justice. Overall, she decided that the evidence showed that the blood spatter more likely came from CPR than a gunshot. So she decided something had to be done. She reached out to an attorney named Walter Reeves. Walter works on innocence cases. He looked it over and he very quickly concluded that Warren Hornick had been wrongfully convicted. He took the case pro bono.

Meanwhile, Tom Bevel softened his stance on what happened to Bonnie. But he was still like, oh, Warren for sure murdered her. But, you know, the thing I said about it being for sure a gunshot. He just kind of backed it up. In the years since Warren's conviction, Tom has been linked to several wrongful convictions. There's not a ton of info about this case online. So I wasn't able to find everything. But I just found an article that said he's been linked to several wrongful convictions and also a bunch of convictions where there's like a big question mark about what happened. So Warren's new lawyer, Walter Reeves, moves forward and he basically had two goals.

Either one, vacate Warren's conviction, or if we can't do that, just get a new trial. conviction, or if we can't do that, just get a new trial. There were two hearings where a judge heard testimony from three forensic experts. All of them testified that, based on the evidence, Bonnie's death was a suicide. People all over the place were fired up about this case. Anderson Cooper did a show about it. Time Magazine did a little something about it. Newsweek did a little blurb. What year are we at now? I want to say 2011-ish. He's been in there a hot minute. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, by the time this hearing came out, yeah, I mean, it's hard to say. But it all came down to one judge.

Would that judge recommend that the case go to the Court of Appeals? Or would the judge say, you've established that this man is innocent? What do you think the judge said? Court of Appeals. The judge said, neither. What? Okay, you said there were two choices. Ha, ha, ha.

The judge said they hadn't established Warren's innocence, and they also hadn't established that Tom Bevel's blood spatter testimony was false. What? He wasn't convinced at all? They hadn't established that it was false. As of 2017, Warren Hornick remains in prison. What? Yeah. That's the end?

That's the end. That's the end. Can you believe that? No! So here's the thing. So Camille sent this in, and I was like, I read through that first article. OK, so the first article is called A Bloody Injustice. And it's from a long time ago.

And it ends with kind of this question mark of like, what will happen? And I was like, oh, this is going to be so good. So I like typey, typey, type, you know, reading this fascinating article over again. I was like, OK, I wonder what happened. Fucking nothing. There's like nothing there it was really hard to find like good reliable info on this but yeah uh that's that's it holy shit yeah what do you think you think he's innocent and he's in prison? I feel like an asshole on this one.

You don't think he's innocent? No, I do think he's innocent. But you think he was abusive, so it doesn't matter? Not that it doesn't matter. Hang on. This is why I feel like an asshole. Because, like, yeah, I think Bonnie probably committed suicide. Yeah, I think Bonnie probably committed suicide.

But at the same time, a guy who shoots a gun above somebody's head, a guy with that kind of track record, I don't know. I'm not upset that he's been locked away. But that's a terrible thing to say because that's a terrible society to live in where we just lock people up forever for something they didn't do. Oh my gosh. I don't know if he didn't do it. To me, the fact that the jury, according to the jury foreman,

was headed toward acquittal. And then Beville gets up there and they love everything he has to say. And then it turns out he's a total dipshit. Yeah. That is deeply unsettling. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you, Camille. Really appreciate it. Camille's like, well, I'm done with them. I'm turning this fucking podcast off. I just think it's so fascinating. That is nuts. Yeah. What do you think?

I don't know what I think. Sorry. I think people don't kill themselves by shooting themselves in the chest. Why do you think that? Based on what? I don't know. Well, exactly. Based on 27 episodes

of crime documentaries. Episodes of crime documentaries? That's right. I've seen countless episodes. 27 of them involve suicides and not a single one did they shoot themselves in the chest.

It was frustrating on this shit. Okay, what do you got? I don't know. Let's see. It says no one does it. Case closed. The judge must have googled that exact same thing.

Case closed. The judge must have Googled that exact same thing. I don't know. Huh. This study presents a case series of suicides carried out by self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the chest. A relatively uncommon means of suicide. Uncommon. I mean, maybe he did it and you know maybe the reason that the police and everybody was on his side was because he'd been their colleague for forever

you know i mean that's another that's another side of it yeah yeah oh gosh. There's so many questions. I don't like this. I know. I kind of wish. Okay, so I saw an article. It was in some law magazine that was clearly more on the side of Warren's a murderer and, you know, the attorneys for what? Well, I found a stupid, like, you know, one of those websites where people can ask questions and then just random idiots give their answers. Yes. So the question is, how often do people shoot themselves in the chest from suicide?

Okay. That's not a great way to phrase that question. No. The best answer says that I've heard that when a man uses a gun to shoot himself, he will normally put it in his mouth. When women use a gun to kill themselves, they often shoot themselves in the heart. I don't know how true this is or if it's folk legend or not. I can't think of any examples. Okay. Interesting.

That is interesting. He does cite Bud Dwyer in his answer here but dwyer he was the treasurer who shot himself on tv oh yeah oh but like i was saying there i didn't find a satisfying amount of articles on this i i put it into newspapers.com there were three articles that popped up. So I was super pissed. But part of me feels like, is there stuff that we're missing with this

that would make it feel like this wasn't such a miscarriage of justice? This person says, suicide by a shot to the chest is a stupid way to go. Thank you. Did you just write that? There are too many ways to screw it up and not die. Well, that's not stupid in my opinion.

We should probably, since we're talking about this so much, we should probably give the suicide hotline number. Let's do it. Suicide is never the answer the national suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 thank you i was starting to feel weird yeah i know i agree okay i agree so yeah that's i don't like that case at all thank you i don't care for it one bit sorry i don't either because i got to the end of it and I was like, well, damn. There's no resolution. I don't know how I feel.

Am I okay that he's in prison because I think he did it? I don't know. Do I think there was a grave miscarriage of justice? I don't know. My favorite part was like that you were like sitting back in your chair totally ready for and we go to appeal and blah blah blah and then it was just like and done i just knew how jarring that was for me when i was writing this and i yeah yeah not not great? I don't like it.

Should we talk about something else? Yes, please. I have no show notes today. I have no show notes either. So, you been watching any good shows lately? What about a show I recommended to you last week? Okay. Okay, so last week you said that there is a new show on Hulu

that is basically our lives, and it's called Pin 15. Mm-hmm. I started watching. Okay, here's my problem. It's so much like us. I know. That I couldn't just breeze through them because it was too cringy. Yes.

Because one of those girls is super tall. Yes. Like taller than everyone else in the show. Yeah. The part that got me right off the bat, there are things that you do or say at that age. Yeah. By the time you're an adult, you totally forget about that.

Right. But then you hear it and you go, oh, my God. OK, so there's this scene where they're having a slumber party. Do you remember? They're having a slumber party. And one of the girls says to the other, oh, my God. slumber party and one of the girls says to the other oh my god you know what if like i heard i heard that so and so fell asleep one night and then she woke up the next morning and she had huge boobs what if when we wake up we have huge boobs okay i had totally forgotten it but do you remember yeah like every slumber party yeah

all of us what girls talk about at sleepover yeah like oh my god you guys what if when we wake up i have like double d boobs i read in 17 magazine that it could totally happen overnight uh so yeah there were there were lots of moments like that oh man yeah it's so much so much of what our life was like did you have a moment like that um yeah i mean several moments like that yes yeah um there's one point when they're doing a project for school and they have to um film themselves and they decide that they're going to be the spice girls and they're arguing over who gets to be which we had so many arguments oh man man we loved the spice girls yes yeah you know there are sad moments in that show too oh yeah like some really sad moments like

you see the moment where like they just they clearly love playing with these little dolls yeah but then you know they hit middle school and like people start making fun of them it's not cool and so then they stop doing the thing they enjoy because they feel like they have to be cool oh yeah it's sad. We never stopped playing with dolls. We still play with dolls every week after the podcast. What if we did? That'd be really sad. We never played with dolls, though, really.

No, but I mean, like, dressing up as the Spice Girls? I mean, that hit a hard stop. It did, yeah. It was just like, that's done. Yeah. It's not cool anymore. Now that we're in middle school. Yeah.

And we're so adult. Yes. We need to focus on whether we'll's done. Yeah. It's not cool anymore. Now that we're in middle school. Yeah. And we're so adult. Yes. We need to focus on whether we'll wake up with boobs. I can't sing those songs that were secretly about having sex. We had no idea. Yesterday was a heartbreaking day for me, Kristen. my Jayhawks lost last night which means that they will not win the um do you know what they will not win the big 12 conference uh-huh they've won 14 years in a row they will not win this year it's gonna be number 15 so sorry I had no chance of winning. It was pretty sad.

Yeah. It's pretty sad for me. And they looked terrible. They played so horribly last night. Ouch. Way to rub it in. It was bad. What if they're all listening?

I'm sure that they are all listening. What was so bad? Oh, they look terrible. They couldn't, they couldn't put any points on the board it was horrible yeah yeah they were down by like 13 within the first five minutes or something it was crazy are you a yeller at the tv oh yeah just do oh okay no i yell at it okay yeah or i make like really like snide comments like oh yeah that's great just pass it to the other team excellent that's exactly what you're supposed to do wonderful oh oh another turnover

excellent you realize right that you are your dad you just morphed into this. Because your dad's the same way, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes. Do you two get together to watch these things? Oh, yeah. Okay, well, then it's, yeah, we need to. Yeah.

There are so many aspects of your life I want to videotape. I would like to videotape that because I think people would find it really entertaining. Yeah. I also, and I know you think this is something you'd never do but i think this is like the next money-making scheme yeah i'm not doing set up hey i haven't even said i know what it is you guys what if we set up a video camera in brandy's salon and you could just watch brandy don't don't shake your head watch Watch Brandy give haircuts. I think it would be like ASMR level relaxing.

Now, we'd have to like cut out the sound because you laugh too loud. Oh, yeah. That's not going to be relaxing for anyone. But I mean, just watching a haircut, it's so relaxing. I know. That's why I do it. I love watching haircuts. Just like this transformation as you go is amazing especially men's haircuts okay so what i hear is a yes what i'm hearing is come on by it's a hard pass but thank you well

they say i'm a dreamer i guess i'll stick that wonderful idea back into my back pocket. I got some more bad news for you. What? What do you mean more bad news? I don't care that the Jayhawks lost. How dare you not care? I mean, I just don't care about sports.

That's something that I take very seriously. Well. What about Salve? Have you heard about Salve? What happened to Salve? He's out for the year. He has Tommy John surgery next week. Oh, I do like Salvi.

Yes. Salvador Perez, everyone. Salvador Perez, catcher for the Kansas City Royals, out for the season. Yeah, it's really upsetting. That wasn't my more bad news. I was going to give you. Well, what's the bad news? We're not at 1,000 ratings and reviews yet.

What? Can you believe it? Damn it. Guys, we really are going to need you to come through on this. I'm really going through a rough time right now with this injury to Salvador Perez, my Jayhawks losing. Really, I've got nothing to look forward to until March Madness starts. So if you guys could head on over there to iTunes, leave us a rating, leave us a review. That'll really lift my spirits.

And I am upset because Brandi just shot down my great business venture. So do it for both of us. Absolutely. And while you're at it, find us on social media. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. We're on Instagram. We're on Reddit.

We're on YouTube. Find us all those places. Have fun with us. And then, you know, 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 vocabulary.

And I copy and paste from the best sources on the web and sometimes Wikipedia. So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts. For this episode, I got my info from the article A Bloody Injustice by Dave Mann for the Texas Observer, as well as other articles by Dave Mann for the Texas Observer, the Hood County News, and Walter Reeves' website. And I got my info from an episode of Behind Mansion Walls, truetv.com, New York Magazine, and Wikipedia. For a full list of our sources,

visit lgtcpodcast.com. Any errors are of course ours, but please don't take our word for it. Go read their stuff.