Murder With My Husband - 172. Hruby Family - The Trust Fund Murderer

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

On this episode of MWMH, Payton comes at you alone in a “Binged” like episode discussing the murders of the Hruby Family. https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case Sources: duncanbanner.com/news/hrubys-housekeeper-describes-discovering-family-after-shooting/article_80c20d0a-1450-11e5-abc7-cf781fb5735b.html duncanbanner.com/news/article_ce10a100-5355-11e4-923b-dbcdb2643689.html tulsaworld.com/son-broke-down-over-deaths-chief-says/article_0ea1fc7c-0795-5633-a242-67efb7a33098.html dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3127017/Self-professed-shopaholic-murdered-parents-17-year-old-sister-inheritance-weeps-court-housekeeper-describes-finding-three-bodies.html dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2820869/Facebook-turns-evidence-police-shopaholic-teenager-s-page-including-disliked-family-shot-dead-parents-sister-inheritence.html news9.com/story/5e34cb64e0c96e774b34f04e/son-charged-with-3-counts-of-murder-in-duncan-triple-homicide newson6.com/story/5e35a33e83eff40362be45c5/duncan-murder-victims-best-friend-speaks-out guardianlv.com/2014/10/he-wanted-the-best-life-has-to-offer-and-killed-his-family-to-get-it/ oklahoman.com/story/news/columns/2016/03/10/triple-murder-defendant-pleads-guilty-gets-life-in-prison/60687297007/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160303094748/https://people.com/article/chilling-details-oklahoma-triple-murder thewickedtruthblog.com/from-serial-shopper-to-serial-killer-the-execution-of-the-hruby-family-c6ed0a903068 jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-alan-hruby-murder-case-in-cold.html findagrave.com/memorial/156145489/alexander-joseph-hruby findagrave.com/memorial/167892312/joy-hruby twitter.com/alanjhruby youtube.com/watch?v=E9khYlt6VQg&t=430s Newspapers.com sources: newspapers.com/image/910737941 newspapers.com/image/452101772 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody welcome back to our podcast. This is murder with my husband. I'm Peyton, Moreland and Garrett is not Here with me if you're watching on YouTube you probably recognize the studio. I'm recording from It's rising crime studio one of our other shows and actually it's in my mom's basement So here I am. We are recording on the road and because of that there is only one mic So Garrett kind of got the boot the boot this episode. I'm really sorry.

I know you guys all love him. I love him too. And I think the podcast is not the same without him. But here we are. So we are going to be recording today. I don't know. Should I do a 10 seconds? Like this is weird.

I guess my 10 seconds is that Daisy is here recording with me for this episode. And also this is very similar to Binched. This is exactly kind of the type of content I do over on Binched. So if you haven't listened, I would go check it out. Okay, let's get into the episode. So our case sources are duncanbanner.com. Hey everybody, just button in here real quick.

Sorry, I know everyone's gonna miss me. I try to squeeze next to Peyton, but I don't think we'll fit. I was gonna actually take it over and just do an episode myself, but I just had it to be nice and just let Peyton do it. Oh, he's such a liar.

So this is the 10 seconds. I heard Peyton doing a 10 seconds remotes at the door and I had to get in here and be like, no way. My 10 seconds are better. Hey, everyone. We love you all. And I will be here next week. TulsaWorld.com dailymail.co.uk news 9.com news and 6.com guardian LV.com Oklahoma.com the wicked truth blog Jim Fisher true crime findagrave, Twitter, YouTube, and newspapers.com. Alright, so people commit murder for a variety of reasons. Out of anger, out of jealousy, for deviant gratification,

oftentimes murder is committed as a solution to a problem, like husbands who'd rather kill their wives than divorce them, or family members who killed to collect on life insurance policies. Most family annihilators fall into this category. The killer sees it as a solution to a problem, as if murdering your entire family doesn't create a much bigger problem if we're looking at this purely through a logical lens. But today's case is one such story. The Ruby family of Duncan Oklahoma had been in the newspaper business for half a century.

Ever since the family patriarch had married into it. When he was a young man, Al Ruby worked as a geologist for Chevron, scouting the Oklahoma landscape for places to dig for oil. And then in 1965, his career path took a left turn when he left his job with the oil company and went to work for his father-in-law's newspaper, The Duncan Banner. Al quickly rose through the ranks from circulation

to advertising to being named associate publisher, all in his first five years at the paper. And when his father-in-law died in 1978, I'll took over as editor and publisher. I'll ran the paper for the next 19 years until his family sold the Duncan banner and I'll retired. But by this time, his son John had already followed in his father's footsteps into the newspaper business. After the sale of the Duncan Banner, son John Ruby continued working there for about a year

until taking a hiatus from the publishing industry. Then in 2007 he purchased another newspaper, the Marlow Review, which he took over as publisher and editor. And you know, it's interesting. Although the Marlow Review was founded in 1892, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. Probably because Marlow, Oklahoma is such a small city with a population of less than 5,000 people. Duncan, where the Ruby family lived, is a little bit bigger, with a population of about 23,000, which is still kind of small, the nearest big city, the city of Norman, is over an hour away. Duncan is pretty much out in the sticks in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farmland, cattle fields, and oil

rigs, but people who are born and raised in Duncan's statistically speaking stick around until they die. And for John Ruby, the son, it wasn't an easy feat to live in one town while running the next town's newspaper. But John managed this well, and in 2013 he added another paper to his growing portfolio, the Comanche County Chronicle. So the Ruby family was doing well financially. They drove nice cars and lived in a spacious, two-story brick house with 3,600 square feet

and five bedrooms. John had been married since 1989 to his wife Joy, though everybody called her Tinker. And the couple had two children, a daughter, Catherine, and a son, Alan, named after his grandfather. The rubies were so successful that they'd established a family trust for their children, which was worth $1 million.

Though neither would be able to touch that trust until they were 21 years old. In 2014, which is when our story really begins, 19-year-old Alan was a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, majoring in political science while Catherine, who was 17, was a junior in high school and still lived at home. So we are basically discussing three generations here. Alan Sr., his son John, who took over the newspaper business, and then John enjoys two children, Catherine and Alan Jr. Now Alan Jr. lived in a dorm on campus 75 miles away in Norman. That was the bigger city. Tinker had been an elementary school teacher until she left her position to work with her husband

at the Marlow Review, writing crime stories, ironically. And she also ran a real estate investment firm, and in her spare time, she was a licensed private investigator. So I already like this joy-tinker lady. And she was a Girl Scout leader. And husband John was a Boy Scout leader. And an Eagle Scout. And both of them were involved with a variety of civic and community organizations. They were deeply involved in the community and in the work that they did, and they were one of the area's most prominent and beloved families. And then tragedy struck.

On the morning of October 10, 2014, John and Tinker Ruby failed to show up for work at the Marlow Reviews offices, which caused some concern among their employees. That same morning, Catherine, their 17-year-old daughter, was absent at school without any word from her two parents. That night, Catherine was expected at her friend McKinsey's house. They had planned the day before for Catherine to spend the night, but Catherine didn't show and didn't respond to Mackenzie's calls and texts, nor did her mother tinker. Mackenzie lay awake that night with worry for her friend, and the next evening, she drove by the Ruby family's house, but she suddenly got a bad feeling and went back home without even knocking on their door. That same night, Duncan High School was playing its weekly football game, and John Ruby was

the team's photographer, and he'd always covered their games in his paper. But on this night, he never showed. And again, come Monday morning, John and Tinker were no shows at work, and Catherine she didn't come to class. Around the same time, Rosemary Chavez, the Ruby's housekeeper, who worked for the family for 20 years, showed up at their house on Ben Tree Street to begin her work. She wasn't even sure if she was working that day because usually Tinker would touch base with her to confirm whether she was working, but she hadn't heard from any of the Ruby's since the previous week.

So, playing it safe, she just assumed she was working and entered the house. It was around 8.30 that morning, and when she entered the house, it was completely quiet. It seemed like no one was home. A sort of rank smell hung in the air, so it seemed like something needed her housekeeperly attention.

Rosemary got to work right away. She went to the laundry room to get cleaning supplies, and she noticed that all the cabinets were open, and that food and water bowls for the family's two dogs were practically overflowing. So things were filling a little bit off inside the house, but Rosemary carried on with her work anyway for the next half an hour.

And then she finally entered the kitchen, where a pair of feet caught her eye from the floor. She looked down and that's where she found Tinker Ruby lying on the floor, motionless. Rosemary knelt down to touch her and the woman was stiff and cold as ice, and just a few feet away, lying face down between the kitchen and the woman was stiff and cold as ice. And just a few feet away, lying face down between the kitchen and the dining room, was John Ruby. There was blood all over the floor near where the bodies lay. And then she looked over and saw 17-year-old Catherine in the same state. All three rubies were a lying motionless and ice cold to the touch. Rosemary then heard a scream, and she was in such a state of shock in that moment

that it didn't immediately register that the scream was coming from her own mouth. She stumbled to the phone and dialed 911, and she was so panicked stricken that the operator had to ask her to repeat her statements multiple times. Ten minutes later, the police arrived at the scene, a 10-minute wait that felt like an eternity for Rosemary, as she waited alone in house with three murdered bodies, three people she'd known for 20 years. One of the first officers at the scene was Detective John Byers with the Duncan Police Department. When he got there, he noticed a surveillance camera on the corner of the house, which registered in his mind as potentially useful.

As he approached the back door, he was knocked backward by the draft that was escaping the house, not by the force of the draft, but by the smell, which he instantly recognized as the smell of death. And indeed, once inside, he saw he had a homicide case on his hands. Three dead bodies. Three. But as Detective Buyer's knew, the Rui family was a family of four. A family he knew

fairly well because again, Duncan was a small town and he'd seen them around, even had coffee with them on occasion. And he wondered where their older son, Alan, was. Rosemary phoned her daughter and her daughter, phoned Alan, who picked up his phone. So Alan, Jr. was still alive. Rosemary's daughter told him there was an emergency and he needed to come home right away. Meanwhile, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation

special agent Jeremy Engle arrived at the house and began searching it, room by room, for potential evidence. A former state bureau of investigation special agent Jeremy Ingle arrived at the house and began searching it, room by room, for potential evidence. On the floor, he found multiple 9mm shell casings and a deadbolt lock that had been removed and appeared to have a piece of paper towel in it. Fingerprints were discovered on the family's gun safe and those fingerprints were lifted. And upon checking the residence to determine if anything was missing, if this were a potential robbery, the only thing that appeared to be missing from the house was the surveillance

video from the home's security system. Video that quite likely would have shown the killer or killers arriving at the house. There was also no apparent sign of forced entry to the home. About three hours after the police got to the scene, Alan Rui finally made it to the house. And straight away, police found his demeanor, odd. He seemed flat and unemotional. Like there was no alarm or urgency at all. He didn't ask any questions, didn't ask where his parents or sister were, or if they were even okay.

Didn't make any effort to cross the yellow crime scene tape. In fact, he seemed preoccupied by something. Also, it was quickly realized that on Wednesday, October 8th, just a day before the family was last heard from, John Ruby had contacted police to report that a 9mm handgun had been stolen from the glove department of his pickup truck. An officer had arrived the next morning, the morning of October 9th, the day the murders

likely took place, and took the report from John, who told the officer that he wasn't sure if the gun had been stolen while his truck was parked at home or it is workplace up in Marlow. But he hinted that maybe his son, Alan, had something to do with it. So straight away, Alan was looking suspicious to police. Suspect number one, if you will. When the police asked him where he'd been that weekend, he told them he'd just returned from Dallas across the state line in Texas, which was reason

enough for police to detain him because Alan was on probation for credit card fraud, more on this later. But this was a violation of his probation because he wasn't allowed to leave the state without permission. So police placed Alan under arrest and took him down to the station for further questioning. Now keep in mind, no one has told him yet that his parents and sister were dead, right? Like he showed up at the house and didn't even ask about them. Investigators withheld this until they had Alan at the station, and when they did finally

tell him, he suddenly began whaling and hyperventilating, nearly collapsing onto the floor. He was so seemingly distraught that he wasn't even coherent for a while, quite the contrast from his behavior back at the house. To these trained investigators, something about his reaction, it just felt like a performance. Actually, I've heard some of the audio, and it doesn't take a trained investigator to pick up on how phony he sounded. So detectives asked him to go over his movements during the weekend.

He told them that he was at his dorm on the night of October 9th and showed them a Facebook post to prove it. He had posted on Facebook from the window of his dorm. On Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, on every social media platform pretty much. Writing that he was home and, quote, you could say we have a good view from the dorm window. And this just seemed too convenient. Like maybe he took this picture for the purpose of later establishing an alibi. He said he then drove to Dallas to spend the weekend with friends. The detectives began noticing inconsistencies between what Alan was telling them and what

they already knew. They asked him, point blank, if he had murdered his parents, his sister, and he denied that he did. He explained that he loved his family, and they'd done so much for him to help him that he couldn't possibly have done it. But investigators were far from convinced. And what local authorities knew about Allen certainly didn't make him any less of a suspect. Because Allen Ruby had an insatiable appetite for money. Specifically, spending it.

He liked to project wealth. He drove to school in a fancy car. He wore flashy clothes. wealth. He drove to school in a fancy car, he wore flashy clothes. Allen was a young dude with 25 pairs of designer shoes. He had a taste for Louis Vuitton, Versace coach. His Facebook page gave an even clearer window into Allen's character, his values, and his relationship with his family. He had set up a public figure, Facebook page, which a lot of people who aren't public figures seem to actually do as though declaring yourself a public figure automatically makes you on. My question is does it? Are you technically a public figure just because you have a social media presence and you identify yourself as a public figure? If there's anything the wacky wild 21st century has shown us, it's that you don't have to do anything notable to be famous.

But Alan wasn't even famous for being famous. He wasn't an influencer or a celeb utaunt. He was a wannabe VIP allegend in his own mind. Maybe Anadelvi. On his Facebook, he described himself as an up-and-comer who was striving for the best life has to offer. He claimed he was, quote, represented by a public relations company and a modeling agency. Up-and-comer. This is another vague term that doesn't give any indication of any real identity. But if there's a specific word that Alan Ruby used to describe himself again and again, it was shopaholic. That was his niche. That's what he was

good at, swiping credit cards. On his blog, Alan wrote, there is no bigger rush than getting to the register at a store and swiping your credit card. And in that moment that you are waiting for the screen to say approved, you start to get heart palpitations and you get a rush of adrenaline. By the time the clerk And in that moment that you are waiting for the screen to say approved, you start to get heart palpitations and you get a rush of adrenaline. By the time the clerk is handing your stuff to you, you are so high on adrenaline, the $15,000 total does not even phase you until you've gotten home and you've seen your receipts. And on his Instagram and Facebook photo galleries, Alan liked to post images of himself taking overseas trips, drinking expensive liquor, and images of expensive jewelry, and other luxury items,

like a pick of him wearing a $3,000 watch posing with the Eiffel Tower in the background. He was a materialist and a flauntor, and he also loved to gamble. Yet, he didn't have a job, and he'd never had a job, and he couldn't touch that trust fund until he was 21. So how was Alan funding his lifestyle? For a long time, it had been his parents. Until his spending started to get out of control, a fluent as they were, the Ruby family didn't have a bottomless bank account.

And especially in the 2010s, as printed journalism became more and more endangered, the family had to start cutting back. And in the family's effort to kind of combat their son's spending, tensions in the Ruby household started to amount. This was reflected in Alan's social media activity, like on November 28, 2012, he tweeted, All I Want for Christmas is a less psychotic family, hashtag Getting Ridiculous. And then four days before Christmas, after his mother confronted him again about his spending, Alan put his hands around his mother's throat and began choking her. The cops were called to the house,

and Alan was arrested for domestic battery. This actually wasn't the first time either that Alan had been arrested. When he was just 14 years old, he was arrested for stealing his grandmother's car. But as in that situation, the rubies didn't want Alan in the juvenile system. Tinker went down to the state attorney's office and told them she didn't want anything done to him legally, that they would deal with the issue themselves. So they kept this, all these family issues, to themselves. And Alan, with his family having cut him off from their money, needed to find another way to finance his lifestyle.

So he turned to his elderly grandmother, a woman who suffered from dementia, an easy mark, if you will. He would hit her up for money constantly, and she would give it to him. Her memory and mind not being sharp enough to keep track of it all, or to even know what she was doing

when Alan would drive her down to the bank, or to an ATM to withdraw the money. He was milking this old lady out of tens of thousands of dollars, using her credit cards to buy designer clothes, designer sunglasses, designer watches, and designer wallets, and his parents caught on soon enough. They thought, once again, that they could just handle this issue themselves. They didn't want to get the lawn vault because they didn't want to ruin his future. Their son's future, you know?

So what they decided to do was to try to scare him straight, bringing him down to the county courthouse for a meeting with the district attorney, who warned Alan that if he continued down this road, he'd end up with a criminal record and he'd end up doing time in the Pokey. But Allen continued on, undaunted. If you look at his Twitter and you can, it's still up. His handle is Alan J. Ruby, A-L-A-N-J-H-R-U-B-Y. There are tons of tweets about spending and shopping.

Like you can literally go check it out, it's pretty eerie. Shopping isn't an addiction, he tweeted in 2013. It is a pleasure. In summer 2014, he tweeted, the stuff I buy at 3am, like what? Hashtag sleep deprivation, hashtag shopping. The previous summer, his parents decided to gift him with airline miles because he wanted to go backpacking through Europe. He indeed go to Europe in the summer of 2014, spending time in London, Rome and Paris, and he spent $5,000 on this trip. But it ended up not being his parents' money, nor his own, obviously because he didn't

have any money of his own. Before the trip, he opened a new AMEX credit card. In his elderly C. Nile grandmother's name, forging her signature. When he got back home, his parents discovered what he'd done. They also learned that he'd been stealing checks from a friend of his grandmother. He'd cashed up to $15,000 in illegal checks. This was the final straw in the Ruby family. They contacted the police and reported him for what he'd done. And Alan Ruby was arrested for felony credit card fraud. So now Alan wasn't deep do-do.

Except this was the Ruby family, known all over town. And the district attorney was willing to cut a plea deal, offering to let Alan off with probation if he pleaded guilty. Alan obviously took the deal. And among the terms of his probation were, he wasn't allowed to drink, which since he was only 19, he couldn't legally do anyway. And he had to attend drug and alcohol counseling. Unfortunately, they overlooked counseling for his shopaholism. And so, this disease continued. So what was Alan to do with no access to credit cards or his grandmother's money now?

no access to credit cards or his grandmother's money now. How was he going to continue buying stuff? Desperate times call for desperate measures. Allen borrowed money from a loan shark up in Norman where he lived in attended college. But then he spent it of course, and he couldn't pay it back. So now he was in debt. He was growing increasingly desperate.

He could no longer buy the things he wanted to buy and do the things that he wanted to do Like he wanted to drive to Dallas the weekend of October 10th to watch the University of Oklahoma play the University of Texas But his parents were like don't know how you're gonna get there. We're not giving you any more money Alan was enraged by this one day He came home and told his sister that his parents had cut him off completely and he was going to kill them all. This upset her enough, as it should have, that she told her friend McKinsey and then she went to Rosemary the housekeeper in tears.

But Rosemary didn't take it too seriously. He's just blowing off steam, she told the teenager. But with his entire family now annihilated, it looked like maybe this threat hadn't just been steam. Maybe Alan had meant it. And the Duncan police detectives were convinced he was responsible. While they tried to break him down in the interrogation room,

they obtained search warrants for his dorm and his Jeep. They were hoping to find the missing surveillance tape and his father's stolen 9-millimeter gun, which they believed was the murder weapon. They didn't find either, but they found some other incriminating items in his dorm room. They found a stolen Ritz Carlton bathrobe, a $6,000 watch, and multiple blank checks

with his grandmother's name on them. At the station, police asked him where the gun was. I don't do guns, he said. Are you a cold-blooded killer, they asked him? He denied this, too. After hours of getting nowhere, Alan was detained overnight for violating his probation, for leaving the state for underage drinking and for check fraud.

The next day, a somber quiet took over the halls of Duncan High School where Catherine seats in all of her classes remained empty. And would remain empty for the remainder of the school year. Whisper's swelled around Allen. What's his role in this? People were curious. Back at police headquarters, detectives told Allen they wanted to give him a polygraph test. Allen said he'd take one.

The only way to pass this test, the detective told him, is to be 100% honest with me. Now we know that's not true. We've talked about this many a times, but polygraphs or lie detector tests, as they're known, are fallible. You can lie and pass a polygraph, and you can be entirely truthful and fell one. That's why they're not admissible in court. They measure your stress response, and if you're a pathological liar, and can lie without remorse, then lying may not affect your stress response. Or if you're like me and get stressed in high-pressure situations,

well, then you might fail it even if you're telling the truth. But either way, they gave Alan the polygraph test, and afterward he was told that he failed. Like I said, the detective told him, the only way to pass this test is to be 100% honest, and obviously you were lying. And Alan, he's only 19, and clearly not nearly as smart or as clever as he thinks he is. So if a cop tells him, the only way to pass a polygraph is to be completely honest. He's going to believe it. And so he's sitting there realizing they got me. They know I'm lying.

So there's the value of a polygraph test. It can make the liar believe he's been irrefutably caught in a lie. And in this case, that's what happened. It worked. Allen began to change his story. Now he was claiming that those lone sharks he owed money to, they were after him and his family, and they were most certainly the ones who had done this. Detectives immediately laughed this off as totally nonsensical. There's no way they told him, a lone shark is going to wipe out his entire family without taking any money. Try again, pal. They told him the evidence against him was overwhelming and the fingerprints they lifted from the gunsafe,

they were allons. So allons saw at this point he had no way out. He admitted it. Fine. I did it. Tell me about it. Tell me how it went down. He claimed that because he was on the hook for three grand to that loan shark, he was out to exact revenge for his non-payment. It was either him or his family, and he killed his family to save himself, including his sister, so he'd be sole heir to their estate, which included the house, vehicles, money, the trust fund, and life insurance.

He admitted that on October 8th, he drove from Norman to his family's house in Duncan to steal his father's gun and his mother's credit card, leaving his cell phone at his dorm so that he couldn't be tracked, which he also did the following evening after posting that pic from his dorm window to create an alibi, before again driving the 70 minute drive to his parents house, sneaking in through the back door and ambushing his mother, shooting her once in the neck. She fell to the ground, injured but not dead, so he shot her again in the head. At this time his sister Catherine was outside washing her car. Alan Hayden waited for her to enter the house, and when she did, he shot her in the neck

and killed her as well. An hour later, his father returned home from work. Alan popped up as John entered the kitchen and shot him. John yelled out and fell to the floor where Alan shot him one more time in the head. After shooting his family members to death, he admitted to staging the scene to look like a robbery gone bad. He took the surveillance video from the home security system, and along with the 9mm handgun he used,

he threw both of them into the lake. Or so he claimed. This turned out to be a lie when investigation found both the video and the handgun in a storage unit rented by his grandmother. After the murders, he drove to Dallas like he'd planned and checked himself into the Ritz Carlton. Aswan does after wiping out their entire family. And he paid for the room with his dead mother's credit card.

His friend Andrew met up with him not long after he arrived and they hung out at his hotel room. They didn't end up going to watch the game after all. But the whole time he was there, Andrew observed not the slightest indication from Alan that anything was out of the ordinary in his life at this point. He was laughing, he was joking all weekend, as if nothing was wrong. So naturally, Andrew was shocked when he later learned that Alan had just committed a triple homicide before hanging out with him.

After he admitted all of this, Alan Ruby was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The judge revoked his probation and he was sentenced to three years in prison for the credit card fraud while he awaited trial for murder. Meanwhile, as the district attorney developed their case, Facebook, under subpoena, gave them access to Alan's Facebook profiles, including the public figure one, where he posted such inspirational posts like, quote, if you are tired of your dreams, you simply are not dreaming big enough. I roll anyone or this, this banger. Life is all about taking chances.

Live a life full of positive chances. Don't be the person to look back ten years later regretting a decision. These words of course take on darkly ironic dimensions in hindsight. But I think what these posts tell you about the poster is they're a bland empty person, trying to project an image of success and power and wealth. And I wonder what kind of person is behind them. From the perspective of investigators, Alan didn't seem the slightest bit remorseful.

Regretful, sure, he was regretful that he got caught. Regretful because he knew his life was over. But he didn't seem to miss his family. Or have any remorse that he'd ended their lives, that he cut short the life of his sister, a happy, friendly soul with a contagious smile who just wanted to make people feel good. A person that everybody loved. And someone who truly loved her brother, who would often speak of him, with affection.

He didn't seem the slightest bit sorry for anyone but himself. On October 19th, a memorial service was held for John, Tinker, and Catherine Ruby. Over a thousand people were in attendance. The eulogy was delivered by Catherine's volleyball coach Sandy Mitchell, who remembered with fondness her volleyball star. A volleyball signed by her friends was left at their memorial surrounded by flowers. A reporter named Nolan Clay, who was covering the case for the Oklahoma, decided to reach out to Alan for a statement.

He sent him a letter and he was surprised when he got a handwritten response. It said, in part, I 100% welcome the death penalty. What occurred is so horrible it is deserved. It is so unspeakable. This has been by far the hardest thing I have ever done. The tears have all been real. I lost my entire family at once. How could they not be real? He's referring to allegations that his tears were crocodile tears. He wrote, It's hard to hear that somehow I am faking all of this.

This doesn't happen because of shopping. My shopping wasn't something I nor my parents could not pay. They just thought my spending was out of control and it was. Then he explained, I didn't feel like myself that day. This was not something that seemed like a conceivable option. Why? I'm still trying to figure that out.

Trying to figure all of this out. By far the hardest thing he'd ever done. Lost his family, all at once. It's like he's a victim too, from the way he writes it. Like this is something that happened to him rather than something that he caused or that he did. And the rationale that he just didn't feel like himself that day, come on. But the district attorney agreed with him on one thing.

He deserved the death penalty. And they intended to seek it. However, the surviving members of the Ruby family, including Tinkers family, they didn't want it. They didn't want a trial. Alan's attorney was seeking a plea deal and the surviving family wanted the prosecutor to accept it because they couldn't stand to be retraumatized by a lengthy trial and a decade longer of appeals.

So they accepted the plea deal. Alan would agree to plead guilty, waive his right to appeal, and provide a detailed account of the murders, as well as committing to never contacting his relatives and to not profit off his crimes in any way or communicate with the media. During the sentencing hearing, Alan was shackled the entire time and broke down and sobbed as the sentence was handed down. A sentence of three consecutive life terms. At the sentencing hearing, prosecutors read a statement from John Ruby's sister, Allison Whitaker, who did not attend that day. The statement read, quote, Allison Whitaker, who did not attend that day. The statement read, quote, I have known the killer since he was born. We spent many holidays and vacation time as

a family over the years. The killer was part of our family, but no more. He has destroyed that family by his evil and insidious acts. If there were ever a definition of evil, it would be the killer who took our family. I want him never to hurt another soul or to ever see him again. As he was leaving the courtroom after sentencing, Tinker's father said to Alan, may God have mercy on your soul. And that is the story of John, Tinker, and Catherine Ruby. Now, before I leave, I just want to remind everyone that if you subscribe to our Patreon or our Apple podcasts, not only do you get early release and add free, but you get it for all three

shows at the same price. So if you like Bingeed or you like Ryzen Crime, check those out. And again, this is very similar to my Binge story. So if you even somewhat enjoyed this, I'm telling you you will love Bingeed. So also go check that out and we will see you next time with another murder. I love it and Garrett still hates it. Goodbye.