My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 139 - A Hundred Feelings

Episode Date: September 20, 2018

Karen and Georgia cover the Kunz Family Murders and the murder of Joan Dawley. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. See, it's truly criminal. Hi. Hi.

Welcome to the Choose Your Own Adventure podcast, my favorite murder. This is a true crime comedy podcast that you tune into week after week to find a good time, good feelings, fun, friendship. That's what we're here for. Yes. Yeah. That's what's happening. That's what's happening.

What's going on with you? Well, I guess I should start off with a humongous corrections corner. I haven't had one in a while. This corrections corner is so big that I actually had to start it during the mini-sode that has already come out. It's that important. It's that big. It's going to change a lot of the policies around here.

I made a terrible mistake during Georgia's murder the last time we recorded in-house, not the live show from Vegas last week, but the week before. Georgia was talking about British pedophiles. I'm not sure what was happening, but she was trying to think of the name of someone. I jumped in knowing full well what the name was, and I said that the name of a British pedophile, a famous British pedophile, was Jimmy Somerville. That is not correct. Yeah.

You got the name I was looking for, and I said, okay, and we moved on. The only wrong part was that there was about five letters too many in the middle of that name. So close. The devil is the terrible BBC presenter, maybe not even BBC, presenter who was also a horrifying pedophile. Jimmy Somerville, on the other hand, was the lead singer in the Bronzeki beat, in the Communards, in Bronzeki beat.

There's no the in front of Bronzeki beat. He is an incredibly talented musician, and by all accounts, a wonderful human being. By all hundreds and hundreds of accounts that people tweeted at us. Tweeted accounts, tweeted accounts of the British, they caught caught wind very quickly of a correction corner that had to happen. So my apologies to the Somerville family and estate, to both Bronzeki beat and the Communards, I apologize. It was a terrible mistake.

And in the future, Steven, if we're having a conversation about, now, I don't want to blame Steven, but I'm going to. If we're having a conversation about pedophiles, will you please double check any name, I say. I guess when we guess a name of someone who is a terrible human being, and it's not like written down on a piece of paper. Just go ahead and throw it in a Google. I've got the red pen. Thank you.

Underline the name. And then throw it at us. Throw the red pen at us. And say, stop improvising crime facts. It's important. I was positive when I said Jimmy Somerville that I was right. I was positive by the way you said Jimmy Somerville that you were right. You know why?

Because I had a B side of a Communards single in college where Jimmy Somerville sings, Zing went the strings of my heart so beautifully. I used to play it over and over in my dorm room, my short lived dorm room. And I just felt such a connection that I wanted to call him a pedophile. You've been waiting to yell out his name with joy for so long and finally had an opportunity. It was just my chance. It was just your chance. You took it.

It just happened to not be the right moment to yell at it. It happened to be the worst chance that I could take. It happened to just ruin everybody yelling his name out again in your life. Or any name really. Here's a fun thing to talk about. We still have lots of subgroups that are unsung and unheralded. So in case you have interests that are aside from just this true crime podcast, there are other subgroups that you could join.

We'll just name a couple for you right now. You're an occult, call your corgi is one. Parsley Sage, Rosemary and Crime. I don't know if that's, I'm hoping that's like a food cooking one. Is that what it is Stephen? I love it. That's amazing. Um, there's Dragorinos, which is MFM meets RuPaul's Drag Race.

That's pretty awesome. That's good. There's Queer Eye for the Meridorino. And I have, of course, an obsessed with Jonathan Van Ness from Queer Eye. So I love that. That's a good crossover. Um, of course there's the, but what if something bad happens, anxiety support group, who doesn't need that?

Not me. I'm good. I'm fine. I'm fine. Um, my favorite cucumber, what on earth could that be? Is that like vegans? Oh. It's just cucumbers.

Stephen, are you joining these? No, I didn't join that one. It was just in the description. I just said cucumbers and that's it. You just love cucumbers of any sort. We were actually watching videos the other day at work of, um, remember they got popular for a little while, the videos where you put a cucumber behind a cat and then when it turns around and sees it, it just jumps straight the fuck up in the air.

Yeah. Well, it turns out I'm the only one at work that thinks that's funny and everybody else was bummed out that there were, it was me and two cats. Oh, please. I was like, but it's, it's their instincts. They can't control it. They think it's a snake and that makes their feet shoot them directly into the air. I think it's a snake.

I think they think it's a snake. They do have bananas too. Oh really? Elvis can't, Elvis is scared of bananas. He's terrified of bananas when, like when you're at Christmas, when we have a Christmas tree, we, um, we surround it with bananas because otherwise he'll eat the Christmas tree. Wow. And he'll just stay away.

So like bananas are our new Christmas decoration. I wonder if he thinks that's like a really poisonous snake from the inner jungle. I think the smell of it is like really, really repulsive to him somehow. Like maybe it smells poisonous. I don't know. It's just personal preference. He's a cat. There's not a lot of explaining to do when it comes to cats.

Or ways to figure it out. Well, here comes, but here comes a tweet about cat bananas, get ready to have it explained to you. You want that explained to me. I know. And then of course there's murdery no beauty basket lotions, which is, it's just like, it's like, what's a fun way we could say something? Let's make that into a group.

I like it. I mean, because that could be, it could be about beauty and keeping moisturized and loving silence of the lamp. Exactly. It's, there's so many, look, we all are so complex. We can contain multitudes. Maybe like two things, not just one thing. I have listened, this is kind of a little bit off topic, but I listened to a podcast

this week that upset me so much. Have you listened to Dr. Death? Oh no, everyone loves it. Okay. Tell me everything. This isn't even a recommendation because it's huge. It's like every time I open my podcast app, it's the thing that's on there. Yeah.

It's like, if it were like, you guys should try the podcast cereal. Yes, exactly. Everyone fucking knows it. But it's so good. It's from Wondery. It's really well made. It's very journalistic. But it is about, I never knew that I had any kind of a fear or phobia about botched surgery.

And it's about a spinal surgeon who botches surgery after surgery. And it is about these two other, they're neurosurgeons because when you work on the spine, who go after him because they keep getting called in to fix his shit. Holy shit. Because I listened to, I was like, Georgia, I binged like three episodes and then realized I was literally holding on to the kitchen table because you're just standing there listening to a podcast. And sweating and like freaking out the thing of how does this keep like that?

When we get murder stories like that, I just can't handle it. It's like, why doesn't someone stop this person from doing all these things? Well, and the scary thing. So I would say this too, if you're going to listen to Dr. Death, make sure you don't have claustrophobia issues, like fear of surgery. Do not listen to this podcast. Make sure you're about to get surgery. Yeah.

If you're getting spinal surgery the next day, don't try to go to sleep by listening to this podcast. Don't fall asleep to this podcast. Like truly it's a warning, but if you, if all that is clear for you, it is the best. I mean, I can't believe this story and these doctors that are in it. It's the most compelling. What time period is it from? It's like old enough.

It just fucking happened in the 2000s. I want it to be like the 80s taking me like, yeah, they fucked up shit like that all the time. Exactly what we recorded with Chris Faribanks yesterday for Do You Need a Ride? And that's exactly what Chris said. He said, when did it happen? I said the 2000s and he goes, I needed it to be the 80s. Yeah.

I needed it to be like, well, they fucked everything up in the 80s. Look at us. But here's the thing. And this is kind of what's compelling about it. It's about how when the healthcare system is all for profit and everybody's worried about making money and getting sued and that's all anyone cares about, how much it fucks the patient. And it's like the red tape that's there so that you can't just, you know, call out some

other doctor and be like, he fucks everything up, but it's there for the good. But then when it's, it can't be used to get someone who should not be fucking doing these things out of town. That's exactly right. That's what they talk about is no hospital would quote unquote fire this doctor because then he could turn around and sue them for wrongful termination. And for ruining their career. So he just keeps getting let go and given like, we think you're great letters.

And he gets keeps getting sent to worse and worse neighborhoods where people can't fight where there's no money to fight doctors like that. And it is like, it is as scary as any serial killer story we've ever told. It's fucking so intense. I was sweating like through my shirt where it's like, I'm so unhappy and uncomfortable. And I'm like, Oh yeah, this podcast is freaking the shit out of me. I don't know if I can listen to it right now. I don't know if I'm gonna, I want to.

I don't know if I can. Do you need a more up an uplifting? Yeah. Is there a good uplifting one? Do you have one? Well, Jonathan Vaness is getting curious is, he's just such a lovely man. He's amazing. God, I love that person.

And such a good host. Yeah. And like truly curious. I mean, it's called getting curious, right? Truly he just sounds like he has this curiosity and it's, Oh, how about the podcast? Everything is alive where this person interviews people, interviews objects as if they're people. There's like a bar of soap when I listened to you recently that I was like, I'll put this on as I'm like laying in bed and I just was laughing so hard.

I couldn't fall asleep. So I had to turn it off. That's it. What else do you have? Oh, I listened to Dave Chang's podcast. He is the amazing chef from who also is the host of ugly delicious and a bunch of stuff. He has a podcast now and he interviews his friends because he wants to talk about or

from what I can gather. I've listened to two, but he likes talking about people who are successful kind of in the face of adversity or like that no one believes in. It's kind of like an underdog. How did you get? How did you get to where you got type of podcast? And he's such a good interview. He's such a like passionate person.

I just really like that guy. He's taken his career so far. He is. It's crazy. He's so admirable. Admirable? Admirable. Admirable.

Not admirable. He also is admirable. Oh, wait. There's one more, but it's not light. Good. I don't like love light. Okay. It is the comprehensive story.

It's CBC's uncover escaping nexium. Do you love it? Here's the thing. The host guy runs into a girl he went to high school with in a park and he goes, what have you been up to? I just escaped a cult. So he then, the whole thing is he already had this relationship with her. He's known her since she was a teenager and she tells them the story of how she got involved

in nexium, which is that cult that that actress from smallville just got arrested and is being like there's charges against her for like sex trafficking and all this crazy shit like branded themselves and shit too. They were branded and she has a brand on her. This girl. Someone was explaining to me that had listened to the podcast, how they got branded and how they did it with like a laser pointer, not like something normal, like a fucking safety pin.

Yeah. Well, not all at once like a brand where it hurts once and then you're done. It took half an hour. And you could smell the flesh burning. Yes. And it's huge. And it's really ugly. You have to listen to it because it's one thing for people to tell you about that cult,

but this is a person from the inside being like, and then this and then that and the whole thing is based on like pyramid schemes on the on the salesmanship thing. So it starts out as like, don't you want to improve your life and your career, which of course everyone does and that's normal. And then they basically blend you into suddenly you're you're a slave and the person your mentor is your master people to come to come to the cult and join it and like if you get five pyramids, you win the pyramid prize, the pyramid game. Yes.

Exactly. It's so intense. It's really another one. That's really well done. Okay. I'll listen to that. That one I can deal with. Yeah.

That one is and she's she got out and her husband got out. Okay. Great. The family was in. It was crazy. So that's bananas. I know. I'll listen to that.

Those ones are good. There's been a lot of good stuff lately. Yeah. Anything else right now? I've just been back at work. So I don't. That's right. There's a lot of things on the way to and from work.

Yeah. And that's about it. Well, we have one more episode left of fucking the sinner, which I'm sorry. This last season episode was so good. It was so good. The kid, the actor is so good. I love him. The little boy.

Yeah. Julian. Julian. And of course, Carrie Coon. Oh my God. Who started following us on Facebook. I mean, on where are we? Twitter.

On Twitter. Oh my God. That's right. It's really hard. It's like her cool assistant. I love people. She doesn't have time. She's in every TV show.

She's in every show. She like hasn't looked at Twitter. She's killing it. She's like, Michelle, my assistant, who's cool. Do stuff on Twitter. Right. You're naming her assistant Michelle? Uh-huh.

Oh, okay. Yeah. That was such a natural piece of dialogue that I thought you had an assistant named Michelle. No. My assistant named Michelle is DVRing Carrie Coons' TV show for me. No, I love it. It's so good.

I know. I know I'm going to, that's one I'm going to be sad when it's over. Me too. Yeah. Maybe there'll be another season though. Yeah. I hope so. And I figured out we were looking it up.

I think it worked because it was, we were talking about it. One of the guys that directs The Sinner was a producer on that independent movie Martha Marcy Mae Marlene, which was, is Elizabeth, um, oh thank you, Stephen Olson, Elizabeth Olson. The child bless her. Oh, no. Nope. No, no.

The great actress Elizabeth Olson, who, um, in that independent movie is herself in a cult and gets out, it's one of the best movies. If you haven't seen that movie, it is so fucking creepy, Martha Marcy Mae Marlene is the name of the movie. Okay. And it's similar in terms of the look and the feel to The Sinner. Okay. And so I just love when things connect.

Like that. We were like, I like this and I like that. Of course that person made that. Yeah. Okay, that's fun. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping, and prepping handled, Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in

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Goodbye. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges.

Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Who goes first this week? I think it's me. Oh, because Vegas was last week. Oh, right. Yeah. Ted Binion.

Well, sure. Ted Binion. I'll go ahead and go first. Well, then sure. Why not? I'll try it. This is one of those murders that normally wouldn't have even probably looked twice out, but it's in so many of those weird small town murder lists.

Every time you see one of those lists, this murder comes up in it. Okay. So I just saw it so many times and I was like, okay, I'm going to look into this a little bit and it's it's weird for sure. And then also like kind of it's it deviates. So this is the Coons family murders. Coons family. KUNZ.

This is it takes place in a small town in Wisconsin and it's on every one of those like small town murders you haven't heard about that fucking rock this small town and you also haven't heard of the small town. Okay. You know what I mean? Yes. Is it Wisconsin? And remember when we drove, we were separate, but we drove from like somewhere to somewhere

else in Wisconsin for the Madison show. Maybe I was with Michelle Balloon and you and Vince drove together. And we stopped. Didn't we stop at at that big barn? The Ozark land? Maybe. Oh, that was the way home. Okay.

But anyway, I've just immediately my mind is like when you're in, in like small town Wisconsin, you're far away from things and people. And this is this. This is here. Okay. So I got a lot of information from this website called mysterious heartland.com. And it's an article written by a guy named Scott Whitman. And I think I've used this website a few times because it's kind of like you can't find a

lot of details about these murders. It's like, you know, number 10 on this list. So you don't, it's just two paragraphs, but this is actually a long article. And then there's a couple of really good comments that like list theories and shit too. Okay. So it's cool. You love that small town gossip. Dude.

I mean, that's the best way to fill in any story. It's all true. It's all true. Yeah. You know. Um, so this is a town called Athens in, um, it's a, it's a quaint rural town in north central Wisconsin. And the population is a little under a thousand people.

Oh shit. So it's fucking small town for sure. It's like a post office. It's a post office. It's less than, uh, two and a half square miles in size, like that's fucking it. The like little town where the post office is. So teenagers just drive around the outside of town every Friday night. Right.

Donuts in the fields, cows, tipping. I don't know what cows tipping teenagers over cars over, you know, mayhem. It's got that small town atmosphere. There's a course, a close sense of community, which is why on the night of the fourth of July, 1987, the whole town of under a thousand people is shocked when five members of a family are all murdered, all shot in the head in their, uh, home with a 22 caliber rifle, fucking execution style. Everyone's just like, wait, what?

This is insane. Like shit like that doesn't happen here. So the Koons is, I'll tell you about them. They're reclusive, super reclusive, kind of like the town, like these are the, this is the weird town. Don't go to their house. People, they're like, we're in creepy. Um, they live together in a dilapidated old farmhouse in the outskirts of Athens on 108

Baker farm, um, and the family's made up of four elderly siblings who live in this farm house. Irene is 81, Clarence is 76, Maria is 72, and the youngest sibling is Helen, who's 70. They all live together in this dilapidated farmhouse. Brothers and sisters in their 80s and 70s. It just, you just took it into creep zone five. Well, okay. So there's this episode of that was only aired once of X files that they, everyone, it says

it's based on this family and it's creepy and weird. And they took it and it's like, it's not creepy in like alien ways. It's creepy in like, what, yes, it's called home. Is Jack black in it? You remember? Is this the one where they, the boys are playing baseball and they step on something and blood comes out of the ground. It's, it's, I know that's the episode Giovanni Robisi where there's like lightning.

Okay. Yeah. I just got chills when you mentioned that. Okay. Let me read. Okay. Let me read the description of it. Do you remember it?

Cause it's really hard to find. You can't, it's hard to find online. They like, as soon as it airs, there got so many complaints cause it was so creepy that they took it down. Was there something under a dresser? Yeah. There was like a, they kept the mom under the, yes. Yes.

Okay. Okay. I saw that one. Let me read you the description of it. And I couldn't even find it. I wanted to watch it and I couldn't find it. It's home as a second episode of the fourth season of the, of X files, blah, blah, blah, blah, erred in 1996.

It's a monster of the week story, a standalone plot, unconnected. The initial broadcast, it was the only, first episode of the X files to receive a viewer discretion warning for graphic content and the only carried a TVMA rating. So yeah, it's just essentially just a creepy family story. But it's not, it sounds similar, but it's not, it wasn't apparently based on this story. Okay. But everyone thinks it is. So the four elderly siblings live there.

And they also live there with Helen, who's the youngest sibling, her two adult sons. Okay. Randy is 30 and he lives in the farmhouse with his aunts and uncles, uncle and mom. And then Kenneth is 55. He lives on a trailer on the property. He's like, I'm not fucking staying with these people. So their ramshackle farmhouse has no running water and no indoor plumbing at all where they all live together.

They use an outhouse and all the food is cooked on an old wood burning stove, which also is used to heat the house. This is in the 80s. Uh-huh. Okay. Um, the family keeps to themselves, they don't, they don't like party with her friends and shit. They don't party.

Uh-uh. Then fuck them, man. Oh yeah, they don't like to hang and party and you know, have, I don't know, socials and tougher parties and. Go to fish fries. Yeah. In your town. Make a hot dish.

Got it. I'm going to be hoarders, which includes a large collection of pornography. They're like super in and I hate to talk ill in the dead because I'm not like, they were gross on this and that. It's like, these were the rumors and they were actually like confirmed to be true once the family died and they went through the house. Not common though, to have family collections of pornography. Yes.

That's different than the usual. Yeah. Because it's like everyone likes something else. It's how you agree on what movie to watch. That's right. You know, it's hard enough to just with a standard movie, right? Action drama. Right.

Romance. Porn. Porn. So the they have a huge collection of porn, including male order VHS tapes, because that's how you had to get porn back then, probably especially in fucking rural, rural Wisconsin. That's right. Right. And magazines and they're, but they're hoarders.

So it's like everywhere and then the family would watch the tapes together. No. And then there's rumors also that there was incestuous happenings. Well, that one would be get the other, right? One would think. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you can stop now. And this is one of the creepier stories that we've ever told. Yeah. It's, it's definitely got some things. It's also rumored and found to be true after the murders that there are large amounts of cash like hidden around the house. They're hidden in drawers, in boxes, under floorboards. And it's just like huge, like, like 20 grand is talked about being like found in one place.

And, but it's weird because there's only one member of the family, one of the sons, Kenneth, who actually has a job. No one else has a job because they're fucking 81 years old and shit. And they don't have running water, but they have all this cash everywhere. God. Is someone selling porn out of like a back window? That's a great question. You can walk by, hold up a $5 bill.

Right. But they don't want anyone to get that close. Do they? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they have one of those grabbers from the store. Great. I love those.

I need one of those as someone with a tall husband. It's like, I need to make a video of me trying to get something down from the fucking cupboard when Vince is like putting the crackers here and it's like three feet taller than me. Oh, and speaking of crackers, Kenneth, the one who had a job, worked at a cheese factory. Oh. Which I'm like, sign me up. That sounds fun. It smells bad though.

I bet. You're right. Yeah. Okay. So none of the siblings had ever, none of the older siblings had ever married, but Helen had these two sons. They were given birth to her first son, Kenneth, when she was 15. And she said that the pregnancy was a result of their, the family's neighbor, a dude whose

40 years old name, Frank Gums, he's a convicted bootlegger. And she said he raped her and she got pregnant with Kenneth, who she had at 15. Frank was tried and convicted shortly after Helen gave birth and he was sent to prison. And he died after he served 18 months. He had denied that he had ever had sex or raped either way with Helen. Wow. Um, years later, Helen gave birth to her other, her younger son, Randy, wouldn't name who the father was.

Um, hey, let's, related, let's talk about sleeping arrangements at the farmhouse. Oh no. They're weird. Um, Helen and, uh, her youngest son slept in the same bed together. And Clarence, who's the 81 year old uncle dude, he sleeps in the living room with his other two sisters. Okay. Irene and Marie, they all sleep, like it's kind of like, um, uh, Willy Wonka, everyone

in the bed together. Yeah. That's what it sounds like. Yeah. And I actually looked, tried to find a photos of, I can't find any photos of the family, but I could find a photos of the farmhouse and you look at it and you're like, if someone told me that that was like a quaint villa in Italy, I'd be like, oh my God, it's so quaint and cute.

But then you're like, no, no, that's like a farmhouse that's falling apart. It's like weird. So it kind of looks almost maybe historic or something. It looks very old and very like quaintly, you know, dilapidated. And then it's like not quaintly dilapidated. It's just dilapidated. And there's just people spooning each other all over the inappropriate place inside. And that's not quaint either.

No, it isn't. You can put the word quaint in front of a lot of shit and it makes it okay. Does it? That's not one of them. No. Yeah. Um, da, da, da, da, da. So Kenneth, who's the one who's like absolutely not living, uh, in the house, he lives on his

own trailer, he ends up spoiler alert being the only surviving member of the family. He doesn't die in those executions. Oh shit. So he's still alive and he later claims that his father was not the rapey neighbor, but the, his own uncle Clarence. Oh no. He's like, she, that was my fucking dad. He also thinks that it was his younger brother's dad too.

And he also said that he had seen Helen and his uncle Clarence engage in sexual activity when he was a kid. Oh no. And he's the one who's, who's saying that there's incest stuff going on. Yeah. He would know. Um, I wrote, it's like if the grandparents from Willy Wonka moved into the psycho house. Oh no.

Yeah. And everyone just kind of lost their, lost it. Yeah. No more fun songs and pajama stuff. Nothing cute about it. No. Um, so the murders occurred on the 4th of July, as I said in 1987, the town had their big firework show celebration, I don't know what to call it.

And then, um, what do they call it? Celebration sounds good. Show. Fireworks display. A show makes me think of people kind of doing like line kicks and stuff, which they absolutely could have up in Athens. Yeah. They could have had the like, the guy plays Abe, Lincoln, for some reason, Abe Lincoln

would be there for sure. That doesn't make sense. You know, like a, yeah, like a 4th of July parade with a big, a big tall Abe Lincoln. Yeah. Oh, and then there are pets that have like, that get dressed up too. Yeah. The town queen, it's crowned. The probably, maybe the, um, cheese factory queen.

Yeah. The princess, the cheese factory princess. The Wisconsin cheese factory Athens princess. And she rides on a rolling wheel of cheese right down the main street. She throws cheese curds to the audience and they're not the, the spectators. Yeah. The spectators who love cheese curds. Who doesn't?

This is one of the greatest holidays in this country. Let's go this year to Athens. To a thing we made up. Yes. And I'm like, why? Where is it? Why don't they have it? Where's fucking Abe Lincoln?

He was never a thing. You fucking idiots with your stupid podcast to just believe in shit, just showed up here. Um, in the movie, there's going to be a 4th of July parade. Absolutely. With a giant Abe Lincoln. And we'll be there. And we'll be there writing it. So, uh, Helen and her younger son, Randy, had been last seen leaving this parade.

That's not a, that's a parade. That's not a parade. The 4th of July show. Yes. Okay. It is a quote corroborated that they were last seen leaving this made up thing. And sorry, it's the youngest son and the youngest son and the mother. Yeah.

And, uh, so they're last seen leaving that. I already said that. Okay. So sometime that night after they get home from the, uh, parade, um, and say someone broke into the, their decrepit home and shoots the family execution style. They're not discovered until the next morning when the other son, Kenneth, who has the job when he comes home at around five a.m. and discovers the body of his aunt's uncle and brother.

Okay. So, uh, Aunt Marie is 72. She's found on the steps just going into the house, like maybe running into the house. Um, his kind of brother, Randy is 30. He's laying on the kitchen floor dead. Irene, uh, is sitting in a chair in the living room having been shot and Clarence, uh, his maybe uncle, maybe dad is discovered in his bed shot. They had all been shot twice in the head with a 22 caliber rifle and, uh, his mother, Helen

is fucking nowhere to be found. Whoa. Yeah. And, uh, she's gone. Where is she? And when I get to that part, I, you know, when, when I hadn't known about the story, I'm like, oh, she killed them all. Like what's going to happen?

She didn't. But listen, so, uh, suspicion initially falls on Kenneth, the son who found them, but police rule him out quickly because he has an instant and like extremely low IQ and he has trouble answering questions from the detectives and is painfully shy. Okay. I don't know how that would rule you out from murdering someone, but I'm hoping that they, they figured it out, shyness, shyness would just rule you out entirely or being really stupid and shy, be too shy to approach anyone with a gun.

Yeah. And I'm too, my IQ is too low to figure out how to shoot a gun. I don't know. Maybe, maybe the cops, it's also the thing of like small town police where they're like, we know these, we know this guy, he could never do it because we've, we've known him. It's fucking Kenneth. He works at the cheese place.

Yeah. He goes to, you know, he, everyone knows it's not him. The community is shocked at the gruesome murders, of course. And they're like, we got to find Helen, like maybe she was kidnapped and she's still alive. We need to find her. They create t-shirts and buttons with where's Helen on them that to help find her. And they believe it, leave it a massive search, the police, search the fields for Swampland on the 108 acre farm of the Coons family, as well as the property in wetlands surrounding

it. So I think it's just all rural shit. And they're just like trying to find this body or this person. Yeah. Especially equipped FBI airplane also scans the area well, the Bannon Shacks are inspected, garden is dug up on the farm land, neighbors are interrogated, but everyone was kind of like, they, they kept to themselves, nobody knew them. No one was like, pretty much nobody ever went to that house or was allowed in the house.

You know, they were like very secretive and reclusive. So they have no friends at all either to speak of. But Helen's, their only friend was porn, which we know is a fickle, fickle friend. She's a fickle lady that porn. That's right. Her disappearance becomes a nationwide search and over the next couple of months, because like, they feel like finding her is going to find out what happened. That's like the only way because they can't figure out why anyone wouldn't want to kill

this reclusive family who had anything against them. But until residents are like speculating that she, she did it or that, you know, she's on the run or she's kidnapped, everyone's of course, like trying to figure out what happened. And they, they do find out too that, that the week before the murder, she had purchased a 22, she had purchased 22 caliber bullets, which are the same type of ammo used for the murders from the local hardware store and that she had had a conversation with the clerk who was like, what are you these for? Which I guess is a question that's okay to ask when someone's buying bullets.

Might as well. I mean, you should probably. Yeah. And she said that they were her, for her son, Randy, who was going to kill some blackbirds that were on the property, but speculation then comes to a halt because nine months after the night of the murders, Helen's skeletal remains are found near a creek about 19 miles from the home in Medford, Wisconsin. Just as her siblings and son, she had been shot in the head and it only complicates this

baffling case, but the murder investigation then starts to focus on a 22 year old local car thief and like fucking like nefarious, near do well kid named Chris Jacobs. So he's kind of this troublemaker, you know, so of course the cops turned to him and are like, did, you know, did you do it and they find out that he's one of the few non family members to ever interact with the Coons is at their home. Whoa. So he had been in their home before apparently, and it makes him the prime suspect he had was there because he had purchased some old cars from the Coons is in the recent past.

And when questioned by police, he had no alibi for the time what they suspected was the time of the murders, which was 1030, but like who knows if that's correct. He was in his car the night of the murders and then he went home. His mother's like, yeah, he was totally home with me and I remember that night because he helped his mother give birth to a calf. The mother didn't give birth to the cat, but the cat was birthed. Thank you. I don't know how to say that.

And they lived about eight miles from the home and he's like, it wasn't me. And then they found tire tracks left on the Coons' property that matched one of the tire or a car that he had on his property. But he was like, yeah, I fucking fix old cars up. So there's like a, like there's a reason that that, of course, you're going to find a tire like that. And then it comes out that the tires are pretty common under different names, but they still are like, nope, we think it's you.

And they take him, they arrest him and take him to trial after the murders. So the prosecution's argument is that when Chris had gone to buy the car, he had noticed that there was money everywhere, even though the defense was like, well, the money was hidden everywhere, but maybe he knew it was there. And he told a witness that he intended to get his hands on it. But investigators found out that like 20 fucking grand in cash after the murders at the crime scene. And the defense said that it was like laying out, but prosecution said it or no way prosecution,

you know, but maybe it was laying out, maybe it wasn't, we don't really know. The defense has a theory that Randy and his family were shot as a result of a drug deal gone bad. So it was known around town that Randy, the son who was killed, was dealing drugs in the area. And at the trial, the defense brought a witness who claims that he had purchased cocaine from Randy in the past. And it was also, well, it was the area was in a drug crisis at the time as fucking every

area was in the 80s. A cool woman testified that the night of the murder, so she's going through this, she's driving through an intersection about a hundred meters, a hundred feet close to the crime scene. And the 100 arms length, yeah, a hundred baby steps, a hundred paper clips away, a hundred feelings, a hundred blinks from the crime scene. So she's driving through this intersection, it's like a rural area, and so she's driving through and she sees that there's a car, just a truck parked by the side of the road facing

in the area where Kenny would have had to drive up the area, the direction he would have been coming from if, like after cheese factory work, if he were coming home. And it looked like they were waiting to, like for a car to come home. And so she sees the car going through the intersection, she looks to see who's in the car, but the car shines a light in her face so she can't see anything, who's in the car or anything like that. And she says, I know, I know, I know, like if that happens, I know, I know, I know, if that happened to you, or you were like, I wonder what this is over and then the person

is already, oh, yeah, they're like, we don't want you to know. And then as she's driving past the Coombs farm, the fucking truck turns around and starts to follow her. And she's like, oh shit, but as soon as she passes the farm, the car goes back and sits back in the road. It's like, clearly they're waiting to see who's coming by. It's not just someone pulled over, like making out or whatever, like taking a nap. And the car doesn't match the description of the dude on trial, his car.

So the defense theory is that Randy had planned to meet his suppliers that night and pay them the money that he owed them for the drugs that he had been selling. And Randy, the kid, the son who was dead, they think that Kenny, the brother who was alive who had the cheese factory job who wasn't very smart, that he had given Kenny some drugs to sell at the cheese factory. And so that Kenny had, and then it's also known that Kenny had large amounts of cash on him that night, the night of the 4th of July. And he bought a huge amount of fireworks, and I mean, what would you do with a huge

amount of cash on 4th of July? Absolutely. Piccolo Pete's for everybody. Right. But he never set them off. And then he went to a bar and bought more fireworks and like bought alcohol that night and was like hanging out and drinking. So like, why does he have this huge amount of money on him?

Maybe he spent the drug money that he was supposed to go give to his brother, not knowing that the brother like owed a debt to these drug dealers and the drug dealers like, we're going to fucking wait here till your brother gets home. Don't lie to us. Like, we're going to get this cash. And meanwhile he's out just, just binging fireworks, binging fireworks and alcohol. And then maybe he was like, oh, shit, if I go home right now, my brother's going to know I spent all this money.

I'm just going to sleep it off in the car. And so he sleeps in his car that night, which is why he didn't get home till 5am to find his family dead. Oh, no. So they think that maybe what happened was the drug dealers were like, this is taking forever. Like, let's go in. We know you have money hidden in the house.

Let's go in there. They go in there. Maybe they take Helen in the car to wait with them, like kind of hostage. Oh, right. And when they didn't show up, maybe they took Randy and his mother hostage and then wait at the intersection. They don't show up. They go in the house.

There's maybe a fight that breaks out and then the suppliers kill everyone in the house. So there's no witnesses. They come back to their car where the mother is hanging out, doesn't know what's going on. They drive away and they kill her and leave in this remote swamp and they kill her and leave her body there. So like that's how, like, because why would she not have been in the house is always this weird question, you know, right?

Like why take the one person somewhere off campus and kill them, right? But leave all these other bodies just out. Yeah, that's super weird. And so that's a good way to explain why she was found in a different location. Yeah. She was, right? Yeah. So there's no fingerprints or footprints at the scene, which is weird because there

was tire prints and Chris's car had no blood saying the guy is on trial has no blood saying or any evidence that Helen or Randy had ever been in the car. And because of all of this, the trial is super brief and because of the circumstantial case against him, he's acquitted for lack of evidence. Oh, good. He's like, great. Yeah. But hold on.

Oh, wait. There's more. Okay. So they aren't able to find more promising suspects. They still think it's this kid, this dude, Chris. But that is until 1993, five years after the killing, this dude, Chris Jacobs' ex-girlfriend Stacy Weiss comes forward and she's like, oh, I forgot to tell you guys this. My ex-boyfriend, Chris Jacobs, admitted to shooting the family.

He said he did it. Oh, no. He told me that. But she had been recently caught in Minnesota as an accessory to robbery and she had threatened when Chris broke up with her to get back at him. So she basically had this bargaining chip. Yeah. Okay.

He told me he killed them all. Right. And they're like, well, you're like, well, wait, like that doesn't, that doesn't sound right. And he had already gotten acquitted from this case. So we can't try him again. There's double jeopardy while they arrest him again. Oh.

And they're like, well, we're not arresting him and prosecuting him for the murders. It's one day before the statute of limitations runs out on kidnapping that they, they arrest him for Kellen's kidnapping and take him to trial for the kidnapping. Oh, shit. One day before the statute of limitations. And he's charged with her abduction. And this trial, this time for a different crime, he is convicted based primarily on the same tire track evidence, but they had, they said it had been, quote, enhanced by the FBI.

So somehow like looking at the tire treads closer, where they were able to match it to the tire this time. Okay. Don't worry about it. And then after he gets, he gets convicted, his ex-girlfriend is never brought to her charges are never brought up on robbery. So it's like, okay. So the defense said that the defense's only argument in this trial is that it was Helen

that killed her family and then later dated into a swamp and committed suicide. So clearly his, his defense wasn't, he didn't have the money to get anybody good for that second trial. Yeah. That second trial, he had spent all his money on that first one. He had like the, the lawyer with the flask in his pocket. Yeah. I'm going to think it's some good day.

Your honor. Your honor. What'd you privately? Your honor. I have a secret. I just used to go to a secret really quick. Is it a secret? Sli bar.

Sli bar. Sli bar Secret. The drunk lawyer. Everybody. The drunk lawyer. So he's found guilty. He receives a 31 year sentence. Fuck.

Yeah. And he is scheduled to be released in February of 2020. So he's just been serving, I mean like that's just like that's it for you, he got served. Fuck. And so he was like 27. When that happened? Yeah. anyone when the murders took place.

It's horrifying. And all the rumors, there's all these people who were like, everyone knows it wasn't this, everyone knows, it's like either in town, the cops were corrupt, or that everyone knows it was these drug dealers and it was more than one person, which sounds like if you're gonna kill four people, or five people, yeah, you're gonna fucking,

it's gotta be more than one person, one would think. Yes, because it'd be really hard to just walk through and kill everybody also. And farms like that, they all have guns. They have shotguns in the house, very common. Yes. It's a necessary tool on a big old ranch. Well, it just makes sense that there's one person

who's keeping everyone where they are with one gun and the other person shooting them, I mean, or like two people, whatever. At least, at least two people. I mean, that's the theory that I think makes sense, but who knows. Okay, so that's what's going on with this guy, Chris Jacobs, and it turns out, looking back into the Koons' family,

this tragic fucking thing that happened to them, and it's like, no matter how insane and incestuous they were, they didn't deserve to be fucking killed execution style. No. You know, in their own home, and not have anyone really ever get brought to justice for it, it sucks. And it turns out that this isn't the first time

that there's a murder tragedy in the fucking Koons' family. So, let's go way back to 1905, when these siblings, these five siblings, their parents are living, the parents are named Ignats and Anna, and they live with Ignats' mother, Mary, in her home in Manitowick, Wisconsin. Okay. That's where the...

Uh-huh, that's a... Making a murderer. That's right. So, Anna, the wife, comes home one day, and finds her mother-in-law, her husband's mother, fucking dead in her bed. She had been bludgeoned to death by her husband's brother. Whoa.

So, that son is sent to live, who also lives in the home with the family, that son's lived, sent to a fucking insane asylum, where he lives out his days, alongside his other, another brother who had already fucking been institutionalized before the murder of his mother occurred. Oh, no. So, those two brothers are hanging out

in this fucking institution. One of the brothers had bludgeoned his mother to death. Whoa. So, Ignats and Anna are like, shit, man, this sucks. They moved to Marathon County, which is where, I think, where Athens is. He works for a logging company.

They have these children. They're raised in an 18 by 20 crudely built log cabin. They're poor as fuck. They don't go to school. They only have each other to rely on. And they stay that way, living together in a farmhouse until 1987, when they're all killed together. Whoa.

And that's the fucking creepy, weird, small-town murder story of the Coons family. Good. I know. Now, let's all go track down the X-Files home and watch it. If someone has it, please send it to us on DVD or some shit, I don't know. I'll tell you that just the one scene I remember from that,

there are things that scuttle on the ground from under a bed to under a dresser. People say it's very Texas Chainsaw Massacre-y, which is another one of those. They say it's similar to this story, too. It's just like this weird family of people who might be inbred and it's all creepy. They live together.

There's no reason to not have electricity in running water. There's no reason. Especially 20 grand in cash. Yeah, no. There's something about that that's very like, something's happening, the dynamic in that family is happening where it's like they refuse. To be like, we're too poor for running water.

It's like, great, that sucks. We totally get it. But you have fucking cash hidden around your house and you don't have a toilet. Do you think they forgot about the money because there was so much porn, they would just get distracted. Every time they'd be like, we can get up,

oh no, look at this. Man. Look at this filthy thing. Yeah, or we don't want the electrician to come out here because he'll see all our porn. There's nowhere to put the porn. We can't move the porn to put in pipes. The hoarding situation alone is like,

you can't expect normal shit from people who are hoarders. It's like. It sounds like untreated mental illness was the song this family liked to sing. From way back in the day. So it's almost like the stigma of it where it's like, keep it all in, don't let anybody see. And that's how terrible, weird, you know,

households full of no lights and no running water start happening. That's right. Oh, it's so crazy. One big bed in the living room and that's it. And here's young Georgia and young Karen driving in a car and we are out of gas. Oh no.

And guess we have to walk over to that farmhouse over there. We were on our way to the parade. Whoops. We ran out of gas. We were going to be in the big show, but now we ran out of gas. That's right. We'll walk over there in the snow.

Karen was going to get crowned fucking. The fucking cheese factory princess. Cheese factory princess. I was finally going to make it happen. That's right. That was horrifying. Thank you. Good job.

Thanks. I mean, that's what we do. That's what we like. That's what we've decided to do. It's like, and it's hard to not think of, now I will think of that story every time I drive by any house that's just off the road that looks like it, they might not have lights.

All right. This is my murder as I was finishing it up before I came over here. I started thinking about a time in your old apartment where I was like, has Georgia done this one? Because I start, the details started coming together, but I don't think it is. We've just talked about it, maybe.

No. I think there are so many stories like this. Yeah. That it's very similar, but you please red flag me the second you think it's the same. I'm not going to because then, and then what? The episode's over? No.

Then we just talk about other stuff. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it is though. Okay. It's just another one of these stories. Who will know if I'll even remember? I mean, let's just see. Let's see what happens.

This is the murder of Joan Dolly, D-A-W-L-E-Y. So let's start. Okay. It happens in Silmar, California, 1991. I don't think I did this one. Okay. Because it's, Silmar is the northern part of the San Fernando Valley.

So it's near where we are right now. I've never thought about Silmar in my life, so I don't think I've done this murder. Okay, good. I'll just keep on checking in with you the entire time. Okay, great. All right, so it's Easter season, 1991, and 55-year-old wife and mother, Joan Dolly,

she's working part-time at the Crown Hallmark Store in Silmar, California. Okay. Remember when there were hallmark stores? Yeah, I loved hallmarks. Any, whatever the occasion, they'd have a card. Chachki's galore. I mean, they had like, Hummell-type figures, they had,

it was like gifts. Like a little glass pet, like little glass animals that were mounted on a little card, I loved those. I like calling them gifts for people you don't know that well. Or gifts for grandma. Gifts for grandma. Do you think grandma would like this bell made out of china?

It's the thing where one time you said she liked penguins, and now every fucking gift you get from your kids is a penguin. And I'm saying that because my fucking own mother gets a fucking penguin from us. That's like my mom who, she said she liked chickens. Oh yeah. And that, and four years later, she opened up like a chicken cookie thing.

She was like, if I see one more fucking chicken, I'm gonna kill somebody. Well, it makes it easier. My mom is penguins, my grandma is monkeys, my sister's black cats, I'm Siamese cats. Yeah. Well, stop. My friend Patty Riley in high school,

at some point in grammar school told somebody she liked frogs. It was all she ever got. It makes life easier. Yeah, it really does. Me, I like money. Okay. So. My favorite animal is a gift card.

Oh, I like to pet them and spend them. Love them. Okay, so she's working at the Crown Hallmark, dusting those china bells. Get it. Get after it. And she lives in that town with her husband of 32 years, Dennis Dolly.

Okay. Dennis, because it's Easter season, Dennis has volunteered to come down to the Hallmark store and dress up as the Easter Bunny, so kids can come in and take pictures with him. That's so sweet. Isn't that nice? Yeah.

And Jones co-workers describe Dennis as the kind of guy who do anything for a laugh. It seemed like they had the perfect marriage. Uh-oh. And of course, anytime they say that, oh, sorry, this, from, I got this from a Wikipedia page, but also, of course, to show deadly women on the ID channel. Yeah, fun.

I mean, not fun, but you know. Oh, wait, well, now I know what's going to happen. I'm going to kill her. Well, you'll see. Because anytime on a true crime show, if they say they seem like the perfect couple, you know some fucked up shit is about to start happening. Sure.

Because no one's the perfect couple. Thank God, Ben's and I don't seem like the perfect couple. But we kind of do that, don't we? You do. Once tall, once short, and you really seem to like each other. That's all that matters. That's how we know fucked up shit is happening. When Steven and I leave this apartment,

he's putting crackers so high up, you can't get him. I can't reach the chicken in a biscuit. Give me that clubcracker, you son of a bitch. OK, so Dennis has been retired for 15 years, and he decides he's going to get a part-time job at the local golf course to supplement his pension. Because he's good at golf, although his real passion is fishing. He likes to go on lots of fishing trips.

He dreams of owning his own fishing boat. You can't get a job at the fishing course. No, you sure can't. No one will hire you to fish. Why don't they do that? They just don't need it. It's not... Got it.

If he's not financially feasible. It's not the point of fishing. It's not the point of fishing. It's not the point of fishing trips. It's the point of golfing. So he always goes on these fishing trips by himself, which is fine with Joan, because she hates the water. But because she hates him and loves when he leaves.

She hates his fucking dad. For the house. OK. After 32 years of marriage, I'm sure she's like, sounds great. It's around this same time, 1991, Joan inherits 70 grand from her mother who dies. Damn. 70 grand and a house.

Damn. Yes. And Dennis tells Joan, you should put the house in the deed of that house in my name. Well... And let's... Because he wants to sell it. OK. He wants to go sell it and then they can take that money and spend it.

He wants a fishing boat, he's got a bunch of plans, but Joan says no. She keeps telling him, she's keeping all that money and the deed of the house as a nest egg, quote unquote, in case something happens. Nothing worth $70,000 happens. Right. Like something over net. Yeah. I mean, what is she planning?

Well, here's what it is. She finally confides to her friend who also owns the Hallmark store. She keeps it real tight in that Hallmark store. Is it a franchise? It is that woman's franchise. Oh, good for her. She is a small business owner. I'm happy for her.

She's a good friend to Joan. Yeah. So Joan confides in her and is like, I think Dennis is having an affair. And so that's why she's like, I'm not giving him any money because he's spending money like crazy lately when he goes on these quote unquote fishing trips, but she doesn't know on what. Fishing trips should be cheap. Everyone knows that.

What do you need? Worms? Worms? You eat food out of a can? Yeah. You got your hobo in your bowl? I don't know why I'm suddenly, he's a hobo. He jumps a train to get to the pond.

He jumps a train to get back. There's no. You eat the fish. Oh, that's what you eat. Yeah. That's right. You don't need food. You don't need anything in a can?

No. Save your 89 cents. So she is suspicious. Okay. So basically she's preparing to get a divorce. Oh, shit. And Dennis, when she won't give him any money or let him play or to really do anything, he's starting to suspect that she might want to get a divorce.

And if that happens, she will get half his pension. Oh, shit. And if that happens, he will be financially ruined. So don't fuck around then, kid. Right. So let's go back to the early years. Joan and Dennis Dolly were childhood sweethearts. They got married in 1956.

He was in the Air Force at the time. He was a missile technician. Shit. You got to be smart as fuck, right? He knows his shit. I mean, one would hope. You got to hope. I mean, if you're tinkering around with people to be smart, you don't just, you don't just

put any old, it's a guy that keeps turning the instructions over and over. What does this blueprint say? It's just Ikea instructions with that little dude. It's a guy next to a missile scratching his head. They get shipped to London right after they get married. Joan loves it. She loves the idea that she gets to be this military wife that travels the world with her missile technician husband.

Well overseas, she gives birth to their first daughter Debbie and baby named Abra. Here we go. Right. Five years later in 1961, they moved back to the US. Joan has another baby girl named Lori. They have there. There's lots of family home movies where Dennis is playing the devoted father dressing as Santa every year at Christmas.

And of course, as the Easter Bunny every year at Easter 1968, they, the dollies have transferred once again to the military base in Lompoc, California, which is north of here. The girls are 12 and seven. And by all appearances, they're the perfect American military family. It's the height of the Cold War though. So Dennis keeps having to leave on missions and not explaining where he's going. And Joan by this point is tired of moving all the time. They've moved a ton of times.

She hates uprooting the family every time. And as the girls get older, they don't like it either. So it's all becoming a little problematic. 1974, the family stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, Debbie graduates college a year later, Dennis retires from the Air Force and the whole family moves back to California. And they settle down in Silmar in the northern San Fernando Valley. Is that like a super suburbie? Cute.

Do you know it? It's super suburbie. Not that nice. Oh. A little bit. A little bit. I mean, like I'm sure it's fine in general, but there's a little crime up there. Okay.

It's not the regular San Fernando Valley that we know of like Encino or whatever. It's a little further. See me valley. Yes. Yeah. It's got some crime happening. It gets it. It gets a little risky out there.

Yeah. Okay. So just a few weeks after Easter on April 17th, 1991, Joan doesn't show up for work at the Hallmark store and it's very unlike her. She doesn't call. She just doesn't show. And her good friend and the owner, that woman's name is Marilyn Rush. She knows how weird this is for Joan, so she immediately drives over to Joan's house.

She lets herself into the house with the extra key that she knows where it's hidden. And the whole house is in a shambles. There's been, there's clearly been a robbery. She walks into the master bedroom and she finds Joan bludgeoned to death in her bed. Oh no. I was hoping she'd be a deadly woman. She's not a deadly woman. So she's been murdered.

So she's been severely beaten around the head. She has a broken finger and she has other defensive wounds on her arms and hands. The forensics team, luckily, so it's 1991, the forensics team scrapes the, because they see that there's tissue underneath her fingernails. She fought back. Yeah. Yeah. She fought.

So they scrape it and they save it. And they know that DNA is now a possibility, but it's the very early stages. Yeah. Paul Holes is just a baby. That's little Paul Holes with the, this is when he had puffy cheeks. He had puffy baby cheeks, but he wasn't, he was into forensics. He was the, yeah. Okay.

So Paul Holes isn't even part of the story anyways. He's across the bay, north, he's north and west. So the police determined that the point of entry was a break-in in the back of the house. So they just put it together. It's with all the, I would say ramshackledness with all the rummaging that's really gone on. It's a break-in. Ransacking.

Not ramshackled. No. That's from my story. I'm starting from your story. I'm putting it into my story. I mean, it sounds like golden state killer style. Right. That's right.

The bludgeoning. Yeah. So when the family finds out Dennis and his daughters are distraught, obviously they're total disbelief that they're, that Joan is gone and at such a young age, Dennis can barely function. How old is she? 56. Okay.

55 or 56. That's awesome. Like living this kind of like retiree life. Yeah. Like finally, yeah. Trying to put it together. Sure. Dennis can barely function and he tells his daughters he can't stay in the house.

Obviously that's where his wife is murdered. And that he just needs to go away on a fishing trip. His daughter Debbie doesn't think it's a good idea for him to be alone. So she says, if you want to go, I'll go with you. And he says, no, I really need to be by myself. I just, I have to be by myself. And so he goes on his trip. We don't trust him now.

Um, the police don't trust him either. When they talk to Dennis, they feel like he's giving no, absolutely no signs that he is even upset that his wife has been bludgeoned to death in her bed. They're getting real weird vibes. That's a police thing. We know that sometimes people don't act like they're in grief, but you can tell vibes. Yes. I mean, I think that's the thing too is that like so much police work is like, are you

a sensitive investigator that's feeling vibes or are you a police monster right to like, you're not crying. Your brain's out. Yes. So you don't care. And you did it. So I am now going to find the evidence to put you in jail no matter what. I guess it's probably the thing of like, we know no one reacts the same, but you can

be like, this person is clearly in shock right now, not this person isn't crying because they killed someone. Yes. It's like this person in a week is going to fucking lose their shit or like in a month, whatever. It's like why the, their pupils that they're in shock or whatever. It's like with all these things are in, you know, like it's context. It's just what is the actual situation here.

And they all were like, this guy doesn't feel right. And then they find out their hunch is right because it turns out Dennis did not go on a fishing trip to grieve the sudden loss of his wife of 30 years because he's caught on casino surveillance tape in Las Vegas fishing days. He's just in a canoe fishing in the middle of the Binion's casino will pull Ted Binion back in Binion's back Binion's back baby. He was casino thing instead. He was gambling at a table with an unknown woman laughing it up and having a time of

his life on casino surveillance footage. Stupid idiot. You fucking dipshit. I mean, listen, I hate you. You're a killer. Go to prison forever. But like, what are you so stupid? People are really stupid.

They're really stupid. But this guy's especially stupid. Yeah. Because also there are a lot of places you could go that don't have going to a casino in Las Vegas is like, I want to be on film. It's also like, you got to assume maybe you're being tailed. They don't know what who the murderer is. Yeah.

Like the first person that cops always look at is the husband. There's going to be one like rookie who's like gets sent to follow you that day. Right. So this was two days after the funeral that he went to Vegas, like you can't hold for two weeks. Yeah. You can't just let the feelings die down a hint and like maybe like help your daughters grieve their mother's fucking death.

Guess not. Monster. So the woman that he's with gets identified and her name is Brandita Taliano. That's not a real name. That is Brandita's real name. She is a sex worker from the San Fernando Valley, which the idea of that makes me laugh. Because to me, the San Fernando Valley is a series of strip malls and Starbucks. Yeah.

So in a courthouse or two. Yeah, exactly. So there's somewhere there's a there's a there's a strip that some sex workers like to walk. Um, I guess that happens everywhere. Yeah. Um, so Dennis had been spending a lot of time with Brandita. They call her Brandi and lots of money on her.

And that's Jones. So he wasn't fucking around like he wasn't, didn't meet some chick at the hallmark on the other side of town and start dating her. No. He, he started paying for sex with Brandi. Um, so when Jones suspected that her husband was having an affair, she was right. But what she didn't know was that he was having an affair with the sex worker that he was sleeping with, and he also began to pay her rent.

He bought her a car. He basically became her sugar dad. How did he get all this money like, oh my God. Well, he had his pension and separate. He thought he was going to have money with Jones and Harrington. Um, and when Joan was like, you're getting any of this money, he realized that this lifestyle he was kind of secretly living this other life was going to get cut off. And then if Joan divorced him and he lost all that money that Brandi would never see

him again. Yeah. Cause that's not how it works. That love would dry up right quick. So in the winter of 1993, Brandi is arrested on a drug charge. And when they search her, they find Joan Dolly's jewelry in the bottom of her purse. So this gives, um, there's a detective that's that was the first on the scene and is, um, his name is detective Tippin.

I want to say Dave Tippin, but that's just me. I don't think it is. Is it Dave Tippin? I bet it's Dave. Hold, please hold. Hold for Dave check. Hold for Dave. We do, we are thorough now.

We don't call people Tippin unless we do a thorough check. That's right. Cause we ain't tipping out because that ain't, we ain't cat. This isn't a cat tip, you know, here's a quick tip. Don't just call people Dave, um, seems like I didn't write anything. Yeah. About Dave Tippin. Hold on.

Mr. Tippin. God damn it. Tippin. Call me Mr. Tippin. Yeah. That's what he always says. So Stephen's got it. Stephen's got it.

Paul Tippin. Motherfucker. Um, okay. Paul tips. So you get the last name wrong. Uh, okay. So detective Paul Tippin realizes when he, when this, uh, jewelry is matched to Joan Dolly's jewelry, he's like, here's what we're going to do.

This is, this is going to get me the warrant so that I can take her DNA and test it against the fingernail scrapings that I kept from under Joan Dolly's fingernails. Is she the deadly woman? Oh my God. I got it. Oh, I actually did this one. Did you know? No, I didn't.

He, so he sends, uh, Brandy's DNA to the evidence lab. I did not think that twist was coming even though it's called deadly women. The TV show. Right. You thought the one woman was dead and that was, that was your only choice. Shit. It's the early nineties. It takes one year.

No. The results to come back on this DNA. Dan, I get your shit together. Guys, you don't even understand how important you are. But in the meantime, detective Tippin, detective Paul Tippin starts looking into Brandy Taliano's life. So he's not surprised to find, and I'm sure the other policemen that work with him, maybe he didn't do all this work.

Sure. But they find that she's been in and out of jail for the past 10 years for drug charges. She's a heroin addict. So a lot of the stuff she's doing is purely just to get drugs. What does surprise them is they find that while she has been in jail, um, in the more recently Dennis Dolly has visited her in jail 14 times. This guy has no chill. He's really not smart when it comes to like basically thinking any of this shit through.

He's like, okay, here, hear me out. If he goes to visit her in jail all the time and just to fucking see her because he, he's like in love with her. Yes. Because like he's not having sex with her in jail. No, they can't have sex in jail. You would be surprised that they are not allowed to have sex in jail. So he's visiting her because he fucking misses her and is in love with her.

Yes. And also, second only to a Las Vegas casino, where is the one other place you're going to get recorded and taped on security cameras more than in fucking jail. Great point. So they're having conversations about things that are being recorded. He is apparently smuggling heroin into her and keeping her commissary account filled with money so that she's like, gets what she needs in jail. I got to get that top ramen.

I need that one color of lipstick. The only one that's available. Right. Wet and wild. I need that. It's the 90s. I need lipstick. I just need my brown lip liner.

Just brown lip liner and then maybe a light white gloss. So basically immediately they're like, oh, holy shit, we've got the husband connected here. And in one of these conversations, he tells Brandy that he needs her help. He needs her to find him someone that can take care of what he calls a big job. And so this is before the murder. This is before. So Brandy introduces him.

I bet I know what that big job is that it's not fishing. It's not fishing or what was his job explosives. I don't know what he did. The missile. He was a missile technician. Right. So Brandy introduces him to a career criminal named Gary Ware and Gary's felon associate who it will not be named for kind of serious.

Okay. I don't have it. Sure. They. I thought he was serious. No. I don't have it. And I thought felon associate would be a good standard.

So I guess Dennis brings him back to their house, his house when Jones at work. This guy sucks so bad. He really sucks shit. And he tells these two fucking felons that he wants them to kill his wife and he says he doesn't care what they do to him due to her in the while they do that. He says you can rape her if you want to as long as she ends up dead. Yeah. His childhood sweetheart, the mother of his two daughters, his fucking lifelong wife.

Not lifelong, you know, up until this long. What a monster. Monster. In fact, one of his nicknames later on is American monster. Oh my God. So they make this plan that these two guys, Gary Ware and the associate and associate are going to kill Joan, but soon after Ware is arrested on an unrelated charge, so the plan falls apart.

Yeah. And that's the problem with career criminals is you just can't rely on them. You can't because they're so ambitious in their career of criminality. So Dennis knows that Joan, at this point, he's like, she's going to divorce me. And if the divorce happens, I will lose half of, I will lose, she needs to die before she files for divorce. Exactly right. So he's in big rush.

Luckily for him, that's right when Brandy finally gets out of jail and he says to Brandy, you have to help me killer. So on the night of April 16th, 1991, while Joan Dolly is asleep in the master bedroom, Dennis Dolly lets Brandy Taliano in the back door of the house where they where the cops thought it was a break and they sneak into the master bedroom together. Dennis is carrying a golf club and he begins beating Joan with it. Joan wakes up, tries to fight him off, and that's when Brandy starts to hold her down so that Dennis can beat her to death with his golf club.

And when she struggles, that's when she gets Brandy's skin underneath her fingernails. Oh my God. And then they go, once she's, once Joan is dead in bed, they go around the house and try to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. But as we know, then that's around the time that the cops find the Las Vegas footage of him two days after his wife's funeral in Las Vegas with Brandy at the fucking craps table living his best life. They had actually taken Joan's money, gone to Las Vegas, they had shop, they had gambled.

It's all on security cameras. They took home movie footage of like they went on all these trips together. Dennis Dolly was so stupid. He claimed Brandy as a dependent on his taxes. What? He bought new cars and put the titles in her name. And her name was also on the deed when he bought a vacation home in Big Bear. What the fucking butt?

So he basically went out of his way to tie her to him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I got as awful as the sound. It's like, I'm glad that it wasn't like the right part to me is so horrific and the whole thing is awful. But like, you know, thank God that one guy went to fucking prison. It's the whole thing sucks, but like, wow.

Yes. And like no thought of like the girls are going to find out how their mother died and what happened to them. Yes. And he's like, I don't care what you do. Because well, that's what narcissism is and like this kind of extreme, you know, whatever he was as an extreme narcissist or a psychopath, where they don't think about, they don't care about other people.

I mean, I get him not caring about his wife, but like, I don't get it, but like his daughters, he must have loved them and not wanted them to maybe, but clearly he was, he may have been on drugs too, but he was obsessed with Brandy and he was like interested in keeping her around more than anything or just what he was interested in really, I think, ultimately was just getting what he wanted all the time. So he killed, he, he bludgeoned his wife to death so he can buy himself a boat, a jacuzzi, a waterbed and a gazebo at the end of the day. It's like that second more than trifecta of tacky as shit.

Yeah. It's tacky as hell. Um, I mean that gazebo, so, so a year later, the DNA test comes back, the, the evidence under Jones fingers male fingernails is a match to Brandy Italiano's DNA. When detective Tippin puts all of this evidence together, he basically has an open and shut case. Yeah. Um, and then at the trial, it's a three month trial in 1997 and they bring, um, uh, uh,

to Gary where the guy who Dennis Dolly tried to make a deal with, who had an associate with a mysterious associate, Gary where has testimony where he tells them that, that Dennis Dolly said, and you can rape her if you want to. And they, that's like, that's when it was like over and done. A criminal makes good. Yeah. And also the daughters testified against him too. So both Dennis Dolly and brandy, Taliano were found guilty of first degree murder, um,

and sentenced to life in prison, uh, Dennis Dolly got life in prison without the possibility of parole and he died in prison in 2003. And brandy Taliano also sentenced to life in prison, um, is still in prison today, although there's a rumor that she is being considered for parole. No. And that's the murder of Joan Dolly. Holy shit, man. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not a lot. And, you know, people recommend murders to us a lot.

I get so bummed out because there's just so many of these fucking husbands that just kill their wives for money. We don't do a lot of them because it seems like it's so simple and like this one clearly is not, which makes it's fucking fascinating. But yeah, it's just like there are so many and it's just sad and shitty and awful. And, and like you're saying, it's baffling that they don't think past. Yeah. Like you're going to go, you're going to get caught and modern technology is going to

get you caught. Yeah. Also, you're a monster. Just like break up like you're a monster. You're a monster. And if you, I feel like it's that thing of, if you're starting to have an affair that you're then obsessed with this person, like, yes, the divorce is like, I mean, he's, his mentality is like, fuck her because she's going to ruin me because I'm going to lose

half my pension in the divorce. It's like, yes, but this is the woman who raised your children who moved to every single city. Right. You had to move to. You don't deserve the money. And she doesn't. It's like.

Right. It's this, it's the intense narcissism and selfishness. It's just so crazy. And also they were in their fifties. It's not like he couldn't have gotten another job or like made some kind of adjustment. It was just like, I got to keep my money. I got to keep my girlfriend. Totally.

Psycho. So psycho. Shit. That was a good one. Such a bummer. Yeah. I'm glad. I'm glad it wasn't the one you did.

Because I remember you doing one. And it was something, but I think yours was about a lawyer who killed his wife. Do you remember that one? Tell me more. But it was like, I honestly think it was like within the first three to six months of us doing the show. It was really early. I just remember being in your old apartment and listening to you tell me about it.

And that's, I started getting these pictures at the end of like finishing the story up and I started getting these pictures. I was like, God damn it, if I did that, but you're good. It doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like I, I guarantee you I didn't do that one. Okay. Shit. Great job. Thank you.

You too. Fucking hooray. Oh, how, how was your yoga challenge? Oh, I've sailed my yoga challenge this week. Um, I, although I will say I did a lot of meditation. Oh, good for you. Yeah, because I feel like we're, there's some stressful things going on right now. We're about to start our fall tour.

You started in the right before we started our fall tour, you're, you started a new writing job at basket or went back to baskets. Yes. So you're just like, you know what I want to do? Double down, double, triple down as well as, um, and we're simultaneously working on our network. And so podcast network, I wake up at five 30 in the morning and then answer emails, drink coffee and answer emails, like a lunatic.

And then I'm like, uh, worked up alone in my house. And then I'm like, okay. It's good to work. Yeah, exactly. So I've been doing really nice. It's just 10 minutes, but it's just that thing of like, I get upset because I think all these things are happening at once and they're not, I have these reactions where it's just like, I just need to come back to reality and to real life and just be like, we're in the present.

Everything's fine. Everything feels like a cacophony and then you need to realize that they're not there. And that we're like the luckiest people in the world having the best time and like pretty fucking good. We're doing good at all of it. It's difficult to keep that in mind now. It's just like whatever. So, so at that, I would say my fucking hurry for this week also in the room, my friend

Teresa, who works at baskets with me also has plantar fasciitis. So we get up three times a day and just start stretching. What a great thing to have a buddy at work with. Yes. Who gets it and she's like done all the research. So we do lots of stretching during the day like fucking weirdos. That's yoga. I mean, it doesn't count as a full class, but I feel like my two part thing of trying

to like, it's just that thing of when I'm by myself, my mind goes fucking crazy. Yeah. Of course. Especially when you pour coffee all over it. Yeah. Which I understand. Yeah. Me too.

Yeah. When I have a caveat, yoga, I didn't go to a yoga class, however, I started working with this girl named, woman named Sarah Olive. She's a personal trainer a while back after a friend recommended her because I just can't work out of my own. She is the most lovely person ever and I stopped, I did the thing where I just stopped doing it and never emailed her again. And she'd be like, Hey, check it in.

Hey, check it in. And even though like she wasn't trying to get money, like I had classes that I had already paid her for and she was like, we should do this. And then I posted some like obviously depressing thing on Instagram a couple like months back and she was like, I'm coming over and we're going to go for a walk today. Like straight up, like didn't need to be there and was there. And so since then every week we've been hanging out and like hiking and shit together. And so, and she didn't listen to the podcast before when I was working out with her, but

she does now. And so every time we go to hike or do something, she's like, I asked me questions from the zips and she's really fucking sweet and lovely. And so this time around she was, we went for a hike and then she was like, okay, we're going to do five minutes of yoga. So you can say that you did yoga because I know you didn't go to yoga. She's a mastermind. She's great.

Her, her Instagram is this underscore fit underscore mom, this fit mom. She's got like two adorable kids. So she did that for me and it was really like, she's just, I'm going to cry talking about her. So it's, she's lovely. And that's like, that's my yoga and my fucking hooray. That's great. Is that like, she's really gotten me and it's true, my depression is so much better when

I'm like working out and doing things and I'm sore and I'm happy and it's much better. Yeah. We can, we can generate our own dopamine if we actually just do it and fight, fight those bad feelings. I say as I've, the stretching I described as the only movement I've done, but, but I'd like, here's the thing, I'm not giving up on this yoga challenge because I like that something's hanging over my head and it makes me think about it every week and it makes me go, okay, if you're not going to do it, what are you going to do or do something?

Well, yeah, we'll keep it, we'll keep it going. And I think that since we're about to leave for the, the fall tour, which is this really stressful thing of its weekends, but it's like, we have to be in different city every day and we have to leave the day early, come back a day, but you know, it's a lot of hotel rooms, a lot of eating like shits. And so it's a good thing to have in our head as we start this process, I think of like, just do something. I mean, you can.

You better not say anything to me about it. Oh, I'm not going to talk. I'm not going to call your hotel room and say, let's do yoga. Oh my God, did you order broccoli? Lobby yoga. No, but you know what's really funny is the, we've tried to be good on the road. It's not impossible, but it's just that thing of when you come back like to your hotel room at night, you're just like, well, the late night menu, you're like, I'm not going to

eat a salad at 11 o'clock at night. And I also want to know like, what is this? I love regional food so fucking much that it makes me crazy. Like that is my all time favorite thing. So I want to know what your fucking weird thing is. And I guarantee you it's not a fucking steamed broccoli is not your regional fucking food. It's not fun. Like, yeah, the best times we have is like, when we go to a place and then it's like,

oh my God, look at this place around the corner. Yeah. It's like, looks up a restaurant that's like, we have to try this thing there to have this good thing there. We're starting in the Carolinas. You know how much I love barbecue? It's one of my favorite things in the fucking world. So it's going to get ugly this weekend.

It's going to, you know, we're just going to say what we're going to do is stay in the moment. Uh huh. We're going to be stay conscious. Yeah. And then if macaroni and cheese happens, it happens. Yeah. And it's going to happen.

And it's going to happen. That's right. So we'll see you guys this weekend who's coming out. And um, thank you guys for listening and you know, you guys are the best. Uh, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie or cookie?