National Park After Dark - Great Smoky Mountains Murder

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited National Park in America. When park rangers discover a jeep that has crashed off the side of the road and find a man inside who is deceased, they immediately suspect foul play. Their investigation brings them down a long family line of money, drugs, and death. In this twisted tale of a horrible fate - greed is the motive.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!BetterHelp: Get 10% off your first month of online therapy by using our linkAnaLuisa: Use our link to shop Ana Luisa's Buy One, Get One 40% OFF saleApostrophe: Save $15 off your first visit with code NPADStoryWorth: Get to know your loved ones better and preserve those memories forever. $10 off your first purchase by using our link.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Focus. Listen to work getting done with Monday.com. Relax. As AI does the manual work, while your teams are aligned on a single source of truth. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform, so flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice you're limitless.

Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope? It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a beautiful southern paradise situated in the corner of Tennessee and North Carolina.

It is a forested paradise for visitors from all over the country and the world. With rolling mountain views, winding roads through the dense forest, swimming holes hidden in the most beautiful crooks of the park and caving adventures, your time here will prove to be a memorable one. The daylight hours are very important. filled with songbirds, wild flowers, and the sounds of waterfalls. The nights here come alive with fireflies lighting up the trails and the stars illuminating the skies. Here in the dense forest, you feel so far removed from the bustle of everyday life. You can spend days or weeks, just wandering the trails, exploring and finding new things around every turn. These woods are full of enchantment, history, and secrets.

If you look close enough and spend enough time here, you might even come across a murder. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Say it isn't so. We're finally doing a true crime episode on a true crime podcast. Oh my God. It gets me every time. Like, anytime we say, what do you guys want to hear? And then if somebody says like murder, we're like, what?

We don't talk about murder on the show. All right. While getting back to our roots, our first episode was very heavily murder focused. Yeah, and we've done serial killers and we have done murder. We just tend to like go off on different subjects between survival stories and animal attacks and paranormal and wherever we venture off to. today everyone asked for a murder episode actually you guys asked for it a couple weeks ago when you're hearing this but you asked for a murder episode we certainly found one and we are going to the great smoky mountains but before we start it is your last chance to grab a ticket

to our moment house event which is happening at the crescent hotel in arkansas but you can stream it straight from your house we're coming to you you don't have to go anywhere and we are going to tell some crazy ghost stories, last chance to grab tickets, kind of, because if you change your mind and decide you want to come after the show, they'll still be on sale for 72 hours. But consider it your last chance. Yeah. This is really it. It's it.

It's it. It's it. It's happening. You're getting your free merch. Sorry, you're getting your exclusive merch or not. No, it's going to be so fun. And we're actually pre-recording this before we go, because we are getting ready to to head to the Crescent. We're super excited. We'll tell you all about our time at the show.

But yeah, go grab your tickets. It's at momenthouse.com slash NPAD. Yeah, and we actually got a email from a listener who was like, I have to share this with you right now. And they said that their great grandmother, they were going through their family's things. And their great grandmother went to the Crescent Hotel when it was a women's school in the 1920s. And she majored, or no, wait, 1905. I think it was, or 1907. It's the early 1900s, yeah. And she majored in piano, and they sent us a photo of the Crescent Yearbook.

It's just, like, wild. It's really cool. That people have, and we're really excited to go to the building itself, explore it in person, and also sit down and discuss its history, and kind of the paranormal happenings that are still going on there. And, I mean, it attracts so many people from all over the world because of that. So anyways, without giving too much away, we're stoked. and please come with us.

We'd love to have you. Yes, we would. We really would. But today we'll go into our murder story for you. We are going back into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So I won't do a huge dive into the park itself because we did. If you remember, we talked about if there were cannibals in the Great Smoky Mountains. And we talked about the disappearance of Dennis Martin in one of our more one of our first episodes, I want to say.

So we have visit this park. But just as a little refresh. of what the Great Smoky Mountains is and where it's located. It's located in the southeast. It's within Tennessee, and it extends into North Carolina. It is the most visited American National Park. It has over 14.1 million visitors in just this past year, just in 2021. So a ton of people.

It is also one of the largest protected areas in the country. It extends 522,419 acres, which is 2,11414. square kilometers. The elevation in this park ranges from 875 feet or 267 meters to 6,643 feet, which is 2,025 meters. And because it does have these higher elevations in the 6,000, 5,000 feet, plants and animals that normally reside in the northeast up here in New England have made their home in the Great Smoky Mountains. They have black bear, they have white-tailed deer, They have elk, which isn't in the northeast anymore, but they do have elk, which most of the time we see more out west. They have coyotes, bobcats, wild boars for plants.

They have red maples. They have tulip poplars, dogwood trees. They have pines, green briar. It's just lots of different plant life there. And for thousands of years, this park was occupied by indigenous people. The Cherokee people have historically been here longer than anyone and still reside in the area. European settlers came to the area in 1930 when President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act where many people were forced out of their homes.

But because of this, this park has a large history of indigenous people and a large amount of Cherokee people who are still there today and there's a ton of history to be learned there. On September 2nd, 1940, it was established as a national park after clear cutting was destroying the land. It was established as an international biosphere reserve in 1976 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. So this area has lots of protections, lots of interesting stuff here. This park is accessible by road with a few different roads that go through the park. One of the roads here that we're going to spend some time at today is the newfound Gap Road, which is more specifically known as US 441.

This is the main route through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. and it's actually the lowest in elevation. It extends 33 miles and connects Gatlinburg, Tennessee to Cherokee, North Carolina. It's the lowest elevation, and I say that as it's actually the lowest mountain pass within the park. So you pass over mountains, but you're at a lower elevation, and this road does have wintertime. They do get a few inches of snow every year, and sometimes the road is impassable, but it is open year-round. And it's a popular road to take for hikers, because there's a lot of, trails along this route and it's also a popular road just to travel through the park. There's

beautiful views and everything. You painted such a nice picture. It was a nice recap. Well, I think Dennis Martin was like episode eight or nine. It was definitely in the first 10. And God bless if you've been with us since then because you probably couldn't hear our description of Great Smoky Mountains in the beginning. I don't even know if we did a description the first time now that I'm thinking about it. No, you did. Episode seven. You definitely did. But I was just saying like audio is a journey, okay? And we've had our troubles, but you definitely did a description. Yeah, I think I did too. Yeah, we're here for a totally different reason this time. Very, very different story today. And our story actually takes place back in 1994. Okay. I was three. Those were the days. I was four.

Those were the days. You remember them fondly. Right. Yeah. Anyway, back in November of 1994, a group of travelers were driving. down the winding newfound gap road when they noticed that a Jeep had gone off the side. It was like 100 feet down. Off, it hit a tree, kind of out of reach, but they saw it as they were driving by. And immediately they called the park service who sent down a ranger to evaluate the situation. When the rangers arrived, they saw that the Jeep was nose down. The embankment with the end of the Jeep kind of up in the air, front first into a tree.

And upon looking inside, they saw that there was a man who had died in the crash. Immediately, the scene was unusual and sparked a lot of questions. First, when they got to the Jeep, they noticed that the man was not in the front seat. He had been actually in the back of the seat on the floor. So it's kind of like your Jeep, a two-door Jeep. There's no seats in the back. He's just like in the back part. And they're like, okay, this is kind of odd.

Maybe he was thrown during the crash into the back, but still, like, odd. They're looking a little bit further and upon further investigation. they found that there was an odd pattern of blood. Coming from the tail end of the Jeep, there was blood that had dripped down the back of it. And this immediately made no sense because if the nose is facing down and the tail is up in the air,

how is their blood dripping down the back of the trunk? Yeah, gravity doesn't work like that. No. So immediately they're like, what is going on here? Something is weird. They brought in investigative teams to evaluate the scene and a medical examiner was brought in to do an autopsy as well.

And when they first came in, they noticed that he had injuries to his head that were not conducive with the crash. You know, he hit this tree. The car wasn't even that messed up. The front end wasn't totaled. The car wasn't totaled. And he had severe head trauma.

So things weren't adding up. They do an autopsy. And during their investigation into the vehicle, they find a wallet in the car. In the wallet, find the driver's license of Kelly Lavera, a 32-year-old man from the nearby town of Severeville, Tennessee. Now, at first, they didn't know if this was the man who was in the car, or if this was someone else, if this car just belonged to him, they didn't know what was going on.

So they do the autopsy. They identify the person to, in fact, be Kelly Lavera, and they rule that his death was a blunt force trauma to the head. They also stated that there was absolutely no way that these injuries could have been from a car accident, not in the way that this car crashed. Okay. Kelly Lavera's death was ruled a homicide, and this launched a full-flood investigation to what had happened. Now, to find out to how we got to this point, we need to rewind to the beginning from where it all

started, because in small towns, everything is connected, and it all began with a woman by the name of Alicia Shane Mills. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L. Every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more.

Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Alicia, who had gone by her middle name Shane, her entire life, was born in 1966 to two teenage parents. Her parents were very poor and she grew up in poverty as a young child. Her parents ended up getting a divorce and her father left her life entirely. Then when Shane was just seven years old, her mother met a man by the name of Brent Miller. He was an extremely wealthy man who lived in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He was the president of the first national bank in

Gatlinburg, which was a bank his father had founded and his father had been the mayor of the town. He was an extremely influential person in the town and his family name was known by everyone. Shane's mother was a poor single mom in a less wealthy area. She was living in Johnson City, Tennessee at the time. And when she started dating Brent, there's some talk. You know, people are like, oh, why are you dating this woman? She's poor. She has a child. It's a very religious area. People were really not into this in a small town. You know small town communities. They all talk. They all kind of gossip. And people are like, come on, what are you doing? Despite all of this rumors and gossip and disapproval from his surrounding people and people he knew, Brent fell in love with Shane's mother and they got

married. After they married, he adopted Shane and he treated her as a daughter of his own. Shortly after, Shane's mother got pregnant and welcomed a baby girl into the world that they named Kim. So now they had an entire family. They grew up together. They were in a very loving home. They lived in upper class. You know, Gatlinburg is known as a very wealthy area. It's pretty much it's the entrance of Smoky Mountains National Park. It's the boozy, rich, nice, beautiful place to grow up. And she went to school there. She had a lot of luxuries that a lot of other people didn't.

She was regarded as being extremely social and fun to be around. She went into high school and she was flirty. She was beautiful. She grabbed attention of everyone everywhere she went. And when Shane was in high school, she was overall really happy. Her family was very stable. It was just a really great loving home. And she was kind of a daddy's girl. You know, it's like, oh, dad, can I take the car out? Can I buy this? Can I do that? And he loved her and took care of her. And she really just, she got whatever she wanted, essentially. Okay. Brent was running the bank. He was the president. And he was known to be a very kind and nonchalant person. He wasn't. a super stickler to strict rules at the bank. If he was making these rich business deals with people, he liked to be on the golf course,

drinking a beer and hanging out with his buds kind of thing. He was just very casual, kind person. And he approached banking in a very laxed way, which was different than his father who had run the bank, who was very strict, very tight-lipped about things. He was a lot more laxed and just accommodating, very kind, very well-known in the town. And then in the late 70s, a man by the name of John Rupel came to town.

He was a very wealthy man and he moved there and he bought a 12-bedroom mansion at the top of the mountainside. He clearly had money, but no one could figure out exactly how. Oh, that has Anadelvi vibes. It's like, who are you and why do you have all this money? It's like, my dad gave me money. You just said that. The bank will get it to you. No, wait.

Is that what she says? The wire transfer or something. She's like, my dad, oh, why are you the money? You have, you do that accent oddly well. I still don't really get it. I guess maybe because I never, I didn't finish a series, but it, the whole thing's just so confusing to me. And I don't understand.

She basically, she just walked in pretending like she had money and people believed her for some reason. But she had money to give to people. Like, she would tip people in like $100 bills. Like, where was that money coming from? I think she, I think she got like, loans or something that she was taking out. Like people were giving her loans.

Okay. I guess that makes sense. Because they thought that she had money to build. And she was just making that up. Yeah, she was just making everything up. Like she never had. And she told everyone she was like the heiress to some like German person or. Everyone's like sounds good. I'm like yeah.

I don't know. I don't. I think maybe I lost interest in that because that whole world is just it seems like an alien planet to me. Like it's just so far removed. The art world, fashion world. Yeah, same. Wall Street world. And yeah, it's just like, okay, so that was weird. And I guess moving on. Why is everyone so obsessed with her right now? But anyway, okay, so this guy, RuPaul. Yeah, going back to John Rupel, he, people, kind of the same version, how do you have

money? Like, where are you getting all this? So how did you buy a 12-bedroom mansion in Gatlinburg? But when people would ask, he would just kind of change the subject or he would just be like, yeah, business is really well, thank you. And that was it. Okay, shady. Yeah. Shortly after, two more men arrived into Gatlinburg, who he was acquaintances with or friends with, and one came by the name of Jerry Whittier and the other was Les Collins. Jerry Whittier wasn't as like closed mouth and secretive as John Rupel was, and he actually came into town and when people asked him why he was there, he said that he had some bad business

dealings with some cartels in Florida and he was on the run because there was a hit out on him. So why would you tell anybody that? No idea. But he goes out and he's like just talking to people like, yeah, I'm just kind of hiding out. I did some shady stuff in Florida and it didn't work out. So now I'm in Gatlinburg. So now that I'm here, I'm laying low by telling literally everybody. Exactly. All right. Some people aren't meant for this life. Okay. So the three of them, they're together. They obviously know each other. And the three of them walk into first. Nation's Bank where Brent, Shane's stepfather, worked, and they went in looking to start a business and open up a restaurant in town. After some conversations and their plans that they had together,

Brent and the bank agreed that they would help fund this operation. The reality of this was, is this business ended up being a front for laundering money and that these three men were actually drug dealers. Oh my God, this is the Ozark, Ozark, which I actually love. I love that. Well, this is real life. That's what they were doing is they were laundering money and selling jugs. And John Ruple was actually a kingpin cartel drug lord who primarily sold cocaine and marijuana. Okay. Gatlinburg was once this fun, rich town. Sometimes they would illegally make moonshine, but other than that, there wasn't really like a big drug population here. But when these three came into town, they got half of the town addicted to cocaine. Oh, shit. Not good. Yeah, not good. And then

people were smoking marijuana, whatever. It was illegal back then. So it was a big deal at that time. Now you look at it and you're like, whatever, but that's better than cocaine. But they kind of wreak havoc on this town. And in March of 1981, law enforcement officers seized 614 pounds, which is 278 kilograms of cocaine at the Gatlinburg Airport. And lo and behold, who are they investigating when they find all of these drugs and who it's linked to the bank that's funding them and hiding their money. Oh, gotcha. Which is Brent Miller's bank. So immediately they go under investigation and there was all this talk around town that

Brent was deeply involved in these drug operations. And then when they were doing their investigations, they found that there was actually an employee at the bank that was helping the cartel and setting up fake accounts for their money. Because Brent was the president of this bank, all of the blame fell on. to him. There was never any evidence that was found that Brent had direct ties to this drug operation or that he knew anything about it. But in this small town, this humiliating investigation, it caused a ton of stress on the family and it sent their whole family into shambles. They were the family of the town. You know, everyone knew them. Everyone knew about their family. They were very high up. They're some of the

richest people in town. They brought the first big bank there. They brought a bunch of business there. So when all of this happened, their family fell apart. They lost the bank. And one day, with no warning at all, Brent Miller's completed suicide. Oh, my God. Just all the stress and your whole life just crumbles. Yeah, and that's exactly what it was is just. And people weren't expecting it because before this happened, he was just such a happy,

go lucky guy. And then that happened. And kind of like a little side track of this is that John Rupel, his mansion is still in Gatlinburg and it's like this abandoned mansion now. I don't know if it's something you're allowed to hike to, but I know that people have. Let's just go out on a limb and say no. You say no, you're probably not allowed to, but it is this old abandoned mansion up on like the hillside overviewing the Great Smoky Mountains that he once probably did all his drug operations in. I feel like that's a whole different story. Is it for sale? No, I think it's literally just

abandoned. But I feel like that would be prime real estate. Maybe. Maybe someone owns it. Interesting. Yeah, I don't really know too much about it, except that it's nicknamed the castle or the marijuana mansion. Interesting. Why wouldn't it be the cocaine castle? I know. I feel like that has a better ring to it. The cocaine castle. We're hiking up to the cocaine castle today. The cocaine castle in the clouds. Because it's on a hill. It's like a New Hampshire castle in the clouds, but it's had cocaine to it. Yeah. Tennessee version.

Tennessee cocaine version. Anyway, after Brent Miller's death, more trouble came to the family. The rich life that they once knew and had was gone. Brent hadn't had any money set aside for the family in the case of his death. And in fact, they were actually a lot less well off than he had led his wife to believe. She thought that they had money and really they were in debt and they lost everything. How old is Shane at this point? Shane's a teenager.

She's 17. Okay. They lost the bank. They lost all their money. And their reputation and their name was ruined in the town. They became these like pariahs pretty much. Shane, who had loved growing up there and living there and was so used to being the center of attention for a positive reason because she was so outgoing.

She was so fun. People just loved being around her. Now she was looked down upon and her whole family was looked down upon. They were kind of shunned. And she was graduating high school at the time. This all happened right before she was graduating. And after she graduated, she decided that it was time for her to get away from Tennessee. She enrolled in a small college in Missouri.

And she made friends there. She lived a quieter, less known life, not as glamorous. She was a poor college student now living like the rest of us. She was just kind of making best of whatever she had left. When she was in one of her classes, she was in a swim class. And that was where she met Kelly Lavera. And that's where this all ties together. Here we are, full circle.

Yeah, and her pass is important and her life's important. So we started up with her. Kelly Lavera that she met, and she met him immediately saw. He's attractive. He's athletic. He was a bit of a nerd. He loved math and was studying math. And he's a very, very smart person.

He was well known and he was liked around the college. He was super outgoing. People were very drawn to him. And Shane noticed him immediately, and they were immediately drawn to each other. They were both attractive. They're both charming. And they both seemed to have a lot in common. And they started dating.

And it was really soon after that that they fell in love and got into a serious relationship. They ended up getting married fairly quickly, and they had two babies together. After a few years, Kelly was offered a job working as a teacher at a college near Gatlinburg. This would be the first time that Shane had lived there since she moved out of there and moved to Missouri. But they decided that this was an exciting opportunity and Shane was excited to finally go back to her home roots and get back to that area. So they decided that this job was a good opportunity and they should go. However, when they moved back to the area, it was nothing like her first experience living there. You know, she was in Gatlinburg. She's upper class. She gets whatever she wants.

She has everything she needs. Now they were living on only Kelly's income because Shane was a mother to two children and she was a stay-at-home mom at the time. So they couldn't afford the lifestyle that she had had before. So they moved to the nearby town of Seaverville and they moved into low-income housing in an apartment building that had been nicknamed Frog Alley. So quite different than what she's accustomed to. Huge contrast. I know you said that they lost everything and they were, you know, went from being very wealthy to being poor again. I mean, she still had the money to go to college. And that says something. Not everyone can afford to get a higher education. So she at least had access to that.

Yeah. You know, so I know it's probably comparatively a huge blow to her. But at least, you know, she had access to going, she could move away and go to school out of state. Yeah, she still had opportunities. But now she is back in before she was living in this beautiful almost mansion like home. And now she's in low income housing. Right.

Yeah. And there's something about moving home that just already makes it weird. You know. Yeah. And I'm sure leaving on the note that she left in and then coming back into such a small town. Right. It's like, oh, what's Shane doing? She has two babies and a husband and they're in low-income housing.

You know, I'm sure it was really tough with like the top in the town. I can imagine. So they move into low-income housing to Frog Alley. And this area actually earned its nickname because the people who built the apartment here didn't. Well, they essentially built the apartment on top of a swamp. and they didn't fully empty out the swamp when they did it. It was previously a marshyish land. So they did like enough where it was safe to build something on it.

But they didn't do enough that it got all the frogs that lived there out. So it was so loud with their ribbits that they were actually could drown out traffic and like cars beeping, things like that. There were just frogs everywhere. And there were so many frogs there that you would find them in your house. Oh, lovely. I mean, nothing against frogs. but I don't really want to. And they do get so loud.

So growing up in New Hampshire where I lived on the edge of the nature preserve. Are they actually called peepers, those frogs? I've always called them that. I don't know if it's a New Hampshire thing and people are going to be like, that's stupid to say. But whatever. It's not stupid. Either way. It's our New Hampshire.

It's our New Hampshire thing. Stop. But yeah, the peepers, they get so loud. Like to the point that, like, you know. Yeah, I've heard him. In the summer, you know, you have your windows open and stuff. And they're just like drowned, literally drowning out sound. So I can, that's all I imagine when you just described that is those peepers.

Yeah, but it's frogs and it's like the full. Wait, that is frogs. I thought peepers were the crickets. No. Oh my God. No. And like the grasshoppers. No.

Here it is. Spring peeper amphibian. The spring peeper is a small chorus frog widespread throughout the eastern United States and Canada. They are so called because of their chirping call that marks the beginning of spring. Okay. I guess I didn't even know what a peeper was because I literally thought like growing up my house, my childhood home is in an apple orchard. And in the grass, there's always grasshoppers and crickets that are so loud. And we would always be like, oh, the peepers are out. And because it's just like so loud with those noises. Are you sure you're not hearing the peepers in Vivians? No, they're definitely grasshoppers and crickets. Okay, I'm going to play you a peeper sound. Unless I've been wrong my entire life. Here it is. Wait, that's a frog? Yes. Cassie.

Oh, my God. I've been wrong my entire life. Oh, my God. That is so funny. We're leaving this in, by the way. Because Cassie just had a revelation. I'm, like, shocked. I'm like, there's no way you were hearing crickets that loud.

Well, and I live across the street from a river now, and I could hear them less. Okay, so it was Peefer's. Frogs, frog alley. We get it. Anyway, back to this story. I'm sick of talking about this. Oh, my God. They're living in frog alley,

Pupor Ali, whatever. And even though this was a low-income area, it was also an area that was filled with young people. And Kelly and Shane, being the super social people that they were, they made a lot of friends there. And they would often throw parties at their house and they would frequently have people over. Shane was a person who was frequently the center of attention

and she loved hosting people in their home. She adjusted to her life back in Tennessee, but she always felt like she was missing out on something. You know, they were getting by with the money that they had, but they didn't have a lot, and they certainly weren't rich, and it wasn't the way that she grew up. So after about 10 years of being together with Shane, starting in college up until now,

she started getting tired of her life. She wanted the luxuries that she had before, and she didn't really like just being in Frog Alley, hanging out, raising a kid, drinking with her friends. And she began spending money that they didn't have. And Kelly was their only income. Kelly bought a nice Jeep for the family. And then Shane wanted one for herself. And they couldn't afford two vehicles. But through a few arguments, she decided that she was going to get one anyway. So then they bought two jeeps. And then Shane started shopping a lot and she started racking up their credit card debt. This began a lot of fights between them. And often Shane would put the blame on Kelly for not

making them enough money and that it wasn't her fault that he couldn't afford the things that she wanted. So she was just spending whatever she wanted and being like, well, you know what, maybe you should get paid more. Ouch. And that's not something you really say to your partner. Also, she's not working. Right. So it's like, do you have a like to stand on? Probably not. I mean, well, I mean, you said she has two kids. Yes. So she is working in a sense of, you know, running a household. But as far as adding monetary value to the household income. She can't really so much. Yeah, she's not doing that. And I mean, it is, it's a big difference before she had her stepdad who was the man in her life, who was she could spend whatever she wanted. And it didn't matter. And now this man who's supposed to be like

her person, her partner taking care of her doesn't have the money for her to spend what she wants. And it's causing an issue and the relationship on both ends because he's annoyed because she's spending all this money and she's annoyed because she's spending all this money and he doesn't have more. And it's just a circle. She starts getting really frustrated in their relationship. She's also very bored in the relationship. And she started to flirt with a lot of men outside of her marriage. And she was doing it very obviously. Even at her 10 year high school reunion with her old classmates that she brought Kelly to, she was being weird. Kelly was off with her old friends, engaging with them, showing off photos of their children, talking about their life. You know the things that you do at a 10-year reunion.

While Shane was very close by, but she was at the bar flirting with the bartender the entire night. Yikes. So then rumors start about her having a bunch of affairs and that she's cheating on him and all these things. And it was true. She was having affairs. She was sleeping with other people and she was sleeping with one of her neighbors who had recently moved in. He had just gone through a divorce and would often vent about his ex-wife and issues that they were. having and how he was afraid that he wasn't going to get to see his own kids enough. And Shane would vent about Kelly, just saying her issues with him. And they kind of bonded over this issue that they were both having. But then one day, Shane joked around with him and asked him,

if you could kill her, would you? And he was like, yeah, if I could get away with it, I probably would. And it seemed like a joke at the time, you know, just venting like, oh, yeah, I could kill her. It's so frustrating kind of comment. But, they were venting another time about their ex and current spouses and having one of these conversations again and Shane brought up the idea of getting rid of both of them. She told

him that she had been researching and found a poison that would be easy to use. She asked him if he would want to go halves on buying it and they could each use it. She was like, here, you want to go havesies on this and then you pay for it and you give it to your ex and I'll give it to my husband and then

we'll just get rid of both of them. This is dark. Yeah. And that's what he thought too. He's like, hold on. She's not joking anymore. And he's like, appalled. And he explains, like, he's just venting. He would never harm his ex-wife. And he has no, like, ill intentions. He's just mad and he's frustrated. And she's like, backs off after that. She's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too. Oh, same. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, okay, this is, this went a dark turn that I'm not into. And he ended the affair, like, very shortly after that conversation. Well, congrats to him because. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a huge red flag. Yeah. In the summer of 1994, Shane's sister Kim ends up moving into Frog Alley into a neighboring apartment. And she rented an apartment that had two bedrooms and decided that she should probably get a roommate and started searching for people. On one afternoon, she had a meeting set up with a potential roommate. And she asked Shane to come along with her. The person that they met was a 24-year-old mechanic by the name of Brett Ray. He had previously served in the Navy.

and had recently moved back to the area. He was a handsome Southern man, very carefree, just looking for fun, a bit of a partier. He was nice. He was friendly, outgoing, a little rebellious. He had some small little troubles as a teenager with the law, but he was just kind of like that bad boy, southern bad boy kind of vibe to him. But he's very friendly, attractive. And Kim's like, yeah, sure, you can move in.

Like, great. So Brett moves in, and soon after, he quickly becomes friends with everything. He makes friends with everyone in their group. He kind of becomes almost like part of the family. They all get along really well. They all like to party together. You know, they're all like in their 20s and just like to have a good time, pretty relaxed. And he became friends with Shane's husband, Kelly, and even would go and help him with his car if he needed it. So they all got very close. Things were really going well with the roommate situation with Kim. You know, she was happy living with him. He was happy living with her. Things were good. It was a happy time. And not too. long after this, it became obvious that Shane and Brett had this like flirtation thing that was going on.

And it was obvious to people around. And then things escalated quickly. And it turned into a full-blown affair. Did Kelly know any of this? I think he gets more of an inkling like further in, but at the beginning, no. Okay. Shane began sneaking out of her apartment and she would actually sneak in through Brett's window into his apartment. So she'd like run out of hers, jump into his window. their neighbors, and they were sleeping together frequently. And Brett started to fall in love with her. You know, they were together all the time. They talked a lot.

He was seeing, he was in love with her. He really enjoyed her company. And they were seeing each other very often. And sometimes they did it like pretty much under Shane's husband Kelly's nose. There were times that they would be having sex and they could hear Shane's children and her husband outside in the yard playing because they all shared. They're like in an apartment complex. They're all up in there.

Yeah. Yeah. That is take some serious detachment skills or compartmentalizing. I don't know. Maybe there's some type of like thrill of it where like you could get caught is like the thing that I could think. But it's really. By your children. Like that's.

Yeah. A little much. Yeah. I agree. And just to like, I don't know. If you hear your children playing and your husband being like a nice husband to your children while you're doing this, like there would be some. deep-hitted part of me that would be like, you're wrong. Like, you're a shit person right now. Yeah. Maybe we should do this in like three hours. If you're going to go down that route,

at least just maybe wait. I don't know. Just a thought. If you can literally see your husband out the window, like maybe not a, yeah. Yeah. And my thought is like maybe there was some weird thrill that they were getting out of having it there. But I mean, they were really just, it seems like they just didn't care. Okay. Yeah. Well, there's also that. And then we're one night, Shane and Kelly decided to throw a party from their apartment, which was something that they did pretty often. They invited all their friends from neighboring apartment complexes and just friends in town. And guests noticed that night that Shane was being very flirtatious with a lot of the men that were at the party, you know, and she was pretty used to being the center of attention.

It was common for her to be like kind of flirty, very loud upgoing. But she was especially flirtatious with a lot of the guys. And then she was especially flirtatious with Brett. people saw this, but they saw that Kelly was ignoring it. So they're like, okay, maybe he doesn't care. I don't know. And Kelly was ignoring it so much. He actually went into a side room of the apartment and he went to play cards with his friends. So they're up drinking. They're playing cards hanging out. And they're doing this until about two o'clock in the morning. Kelly gets up and he's like, you know, I've drank too much, guys. I'm just going to pass out on the couch, which happens to be very close to the card table that they're playing at. So they're like, all right, man, like good night.

They keep playing cards for about an hour, and around 3 a.m., they go home. That was the last time any of his friends ever saw him, was drunk and asleep on the couch. The next morning, police arrived at the Lavera residence, and Shane answered the door. The police delivered the devastating news that Kelly's car had been found inside of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and that he was no longer alive. Shane appeared stunned to police, but not as emotional as they would have expected her to be. She was very quiet. She didn't cry. And they thought, maybe she's just in shock like this is her processing what we just told her. But immediately, the chief of police, who was one of the officers who informed her of this, felt like something was off. In all of the times that he had arrived at family's homes, informing them of their deceased loved ones, they had all asked the same one question. And that was what happened to them. Shane didn't ask this question at all. When they told her that he was found in a car and he was in alive, that was it. She didn't ask if he crashed. He didn't ask if someone crashed into him. Nothing. There were no fault questions. Then they asked if they could come inside of her home and talk to her more, which she agreed to

let them do. They sat down in her kitchen and began to ask her questions. They wanted to know what they had done last night and when the last time she saw her husband was. She explained that she hadn't seen her husband since the party the night before. She explained that she had gone out with friends to get some fast food in the early hours of morning. And when she came home, Kelly was asleep. on the couch. She said that when she got home, he woke up and he was super angry. He started yelling at her, saying that she needed to spend more time at home, accused her of having affairs with other men, not spending enough time with him, said he was very drunk, he was very angry, yelling at her, and then she said that he grabbed his keys and drove away quickly in his Jeep drunk. As they

are talking more, one of the officers notices a pair of glasses on the kitchen table. When he finds out that they belong to Kelly, he puts them on. This officer happened to be near-sighted, and when he put on these glasses, he could see perfectly. It was in this moment that it raised the question, if Kelly needed glasses that were as strong as glasses that he needed, why would he leave the house to drive without them on? With no further evidence or reason to believe that Shane was behind any of this, they left her house. But it was very shortly after they left her house that they received a phone call that would be a huge break in this case. A man by the name of Jim Bernie called into the police department. He had vital information for the case, which no one had even heard about yet. It wasn't in the news

that he had died, that the Jeep was found anywhere. There was no information anywhere. This is the morning directly after. I was going to say it's so quick. Yeah. So to get a call-in of a tip of what's going on, it's like, okay, you have to know something because no one even knows this happened yet. Right. So he called to let them know that earlier that morning around 6 a.m., he had received a frantic phone call from one of his friends. It was Brett Rea. He had called him from a payphone in Gatlinburg in a panic, telling him that he was stranded and had no way to get home. Jim agreed to go pick him up and he rushed over to get him. When he arrived, Brett was distraught. He was sweating and he was covered in mud. When Brett got into the car,

the very first thing he said to him was that he pushed Kelly down a hill in his Jeep. He explained that they got into an altercation at Shane and Kelly's apartment that turned into a fight. He said that Kelly had overpowered him and in a moment of self-defense, he grabbed a bat that was inside their living room and hit him over the head with it, in which he immediately died. He then drove his Jeep to Great Smoky Mountain National Park and pushed it over the edge of the road to make it look like he was in a car accident. He just told his friend all of this? Yeah.

He just like gets in the car and immediately starts like spilling his guts. Oh my God. Okay. And then he said that it was actually Shane's idea to put the car into Great Smoky Mountains and have it crash into a tree because Kelly had an insurance policy that if he got in a car accident and died, she would get twice the amount of money. And then he spills his guts even more. And he says that this isn't the first time he tried to kill Kelly. The first time he tried, he actually cut the brake line on his Jeep so that he would crash while he was driving. But it turned out, that Kelly realized his brakes weren't working, he got off the road and was unharmed. And then, the worst part is he actually went to Brett because they were friends and he was a mechanic to have it looked at. Oh my God. That is really heart-wrenching. It's like, who are you? How can you do this? Well, okay, I guess you'll explain it. But so he said that in the heat of the moment, he hit him with the baseball bat, but then in the same breath, just said that, actually, wait, I attempted to kill him

before, which is a totally different now set of circumstances. We're talking about premeditated murder versus like an active passion, like heat in the moment type of thing. It's like, oh, by the way, this happened. I'm really distraught, but also I was kind of planning this and tried it before. Right. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. And I'm sure his friend in the car is like, what the, what did I just walk into? You know, like, I thought you were stranded. Maybe you were stranded. Maybe you got drunk hooked up with a girl, she kicked you out. Now you're like walking around Gatlinburg normal. Right. Yeah. 6 a.m. Sunday morning call. That would be my first thought. I'd be like, oh shit. Like you got too drunk. You don't know where you are. You're on the side of the road.

Like, okay, I'll come pick you up. Sorry that's happening. And then this all just, it's like word vomit. He's just like spitting out one thing after another. After this phone call, the police obviously go straight to Brett's apartment and they arrest him. They tell him the information that they found out and he admits to being involved in everything. He does say during the story that he's the only person involved in that Shane and her children were asleep during the altercation. But the police have a very hard time buying his story and it's for a few reasons. First, if he had gone in, had this altercation with Kelly had gotten in a fight and brought him out to the Jeep, the apartment they were in was very small. It was very hard to believe that two grown men who were drinking could have an

entire altercation in this small apartment without waking up kids or Shane. Right. You know, they're right down the hall. Yeah. They're like, this doesn't make sense. How are they not? How is she not involved in any way? But with Brett insisting that he was the only one involved and Shane was not involved, they formally charged him with first-degree murder. But they were very suspicious of what he said, and they started questioning close friends and neighbors. And it didn't take too long before police found out that Brett and Shea were having an affair. And in the police's mind, this created an entirely new motive. Before, it was just a drunk altercation between friends. Could have been an accident, but now they had something that could implicate Shane in the murder. She was involved in this affair

with this man, and now there's a whole other twist that wasn't there before. Still, they had no physical evidence that Shane had any involvement at all, and they needed some way to be able to get into their apartment and searched the crime scene. They knew that a judge wouldn't issue a search warrant with this far-fetched confession of self-defense. So they had to think of another plan because from their view, Brett is saying, yeah, I was in their apartment. We got it in an altercation. And it happened. And they're like, this story doesn't make any sense. We don't even, he wasn't even in the apartment. He's in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. How can we get a search warrant for a place? We don't even know if this confession is saying the real spot. So an officer goes back to Shane's

apartment to ask a few more questions. And again, she allows him inside being the cooperative, nice southern bell woman she is, lets him in. And during their conversation, the officer notices something that he did not notice the first time they were there. And that was Kelly's diploma. He went over to get a better look at it because he noticed that they went to the same school together. So he's like, oh, I have a diploma from here too. Goes over to look at it. And when he gets a closer look, He notices a small amount of blood spatter on the corner of the frame. Oh boy. This was enough to get a search warrant.

And shortly after, police came back with medical examiners and the search warrant to search the property. When they arrive, Shane is not her sweet, bubbly, southern bell charm self. She is not cooperative. She's refusing to get off the couch that she was sitting on. And the officers have to physically move her. They have everyone step outside. and they begin to spray the living room with luminal. And luminal is a chemical that reacts to certain enzymes,

including enzymes that are in blood. So it reacts to these enzymes by glowing. And even with extensive cleaning, blood can leave leftover proteins that will still show up. But it lit up like a Christmas tree in there. Sure did. They turned the lights off and it reveals a shocking scene. There was remnants of,

of blood on the couch pillow and the back of the couch. The amount of blood suggested that Kelly hadn't moved at all when he was hit with a bat and actually suggested that he had been asleep when he was hit. Marks then showed his body being put on the floor and then dragged. Following the blood patterns, they saw drag marks that actually went past where his children would have been sleeping between their beds and then dragged out of the window and across the grass in the backyard. What?

my god can you even imagine the kids are really young at this point like this is something that they're not i think they were like toddlers at this point you know they're not going to have any clue what's happening but still like just through your next to your children yeah whoa and that's their father okay so at first my theory was that brett was just taking the fall for her but clearly he must have at least helped she can't do that all on our own, can she? I mean, he's a big guy. Right. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't know. Well, that's exactly what police thought. With Brett's confession, they're like, hold on, there's no way Brett could do this by himself. Kelly was a lot larger than Brett was. He was bigger. He was more muscular. He weighed more. And to carry him and drag him that far and put him

into a jeep would have been almost impossible to do by himself. Also, the autopsy report revealed that there was more than likely more than one weapon that killed him. While a lot of the injuries look like it came from a baseball bat, he had other injuries of a weapon that could not be identified. And in their minds, that indicated that there were two killers. This is so messed up. I just don't like the amount of, I want to say rage, but there is, it doesn't seem like a rage thing. It just seems like a selfish. Oh, I don't want to be in my life anymore. So I'm going to kill my husband. And, you know, in like this Brett, what is he really even? It's just pure evil. You know, that's what it is. And that's why it's just such a hard story to digest. Well, and there's something different about, you know, when you hear about passion murders where people are in the heat of some crazy argument and things escalate and something happens. And, you know, there's time to process and be like, oh, my God.

Like we, things just got out of hand or like, whatever it is, something's going on is one thing. And it's, it's horrific either way to be like, evidence shows that he was asleep on his own couch. Well, there's that. But then it's also, there's now two people hovering over you with two different weapons. And you have no chance. And you're drunk. You just were partying with your friends. You went to bed because you couldn't function anymore.

There's no advantage for you at all. Like, you're not doing anything. your sleep on the couch. You just had a fun night with your friends. Yeah. Oh, God. Okay, I guess tell me the rest. We've gotten this far in. Yeah, you got to know the end now. Well, police, they see all this. And of course, they start questioning Shane, like, what is going on here? What is all this? And she's like, oh, my God, I didn't even know, like, I was asleep. And then she starts saying, you know, it has to be Brett. He's madly in love with me. He's obsessed with me. He did it alone. Like, he wanted my husband gone, starts completely blaming Brett for everything.

Brett, after being continuously asked who had helped him, you know, they're like, okay, you didn't do this alone. We don't believe anything you're saying, tell us. We know it was Shane. Tell us. And he's like, no, no, no. She didn't help me at all. It was actually her neighbor.

She had an affair with him. And we did it together. What? And so, yeah, the investigators are like, what? What is this? Like another affair? Like, what's going on? So they go over.

to question him. And he denied all of it. He's like, what are you talking about? I ended things with her a long time ago. And then he tells them about the poison that Shane wanted to poison her husband. Right. She's like, no, this is nothing to do with me. And I guarantee Shane's involved because she was talking some weird things with me about wanting me to help her kill her husband. So they're like, okay, this is so much indicates Shane. We have more evidence. There's all this blood in her apartment. there's no way she's sleeping, and they formally charge her with murder. Shortly after their arrests, they each posted bond and they resumed their lives. The trial was not set until a year later.

So Shane claimed to have ended her relationship with Brett because he killed her husband, and she ended up moving outside of her apartment and into a friend's house outside of town. And Brett continued his life there and continued to work as a mechanic. While they think they're like, oh, we're not together, we're not doing anything. no one notices anything. They didn't realize that the police were keeping a really close eye on both of them, and they actually put a tail on both of them to watch their activity during these months before the trial. And shortly after they were released, they found them meeting up in hotels for late nights,

and they obtained proof that they were still in a romantic relationship. On March 26, 1996, the trial for Kelly Lavera's murder began. For Brett Rea, it was a very easy case. They had a physical evidence and a confession. from him and that was enough to put him away for life. For Shane, it was a little bit harder. She never admitted to any crime and there was very little evidence. Her testimony remained that she was asleep during the entire thing and that Brett acted alone.

And Brett this entire time was maintaining his story? Yeah. He loves her. He is holding tooth and nail that she had absolutely nothing to do with this at all. That's insane to me. That is right. Absolutely out of this world. She's literally like pointing at him being like, it's him.

And he's like, yeah, it's me. It's not her. Imagine being in that type of like warped sense. Relationship. Yeah. I don't know. I guess I've never loved somebody that much to do that. You know, like I would never do that.

Sorry. No, especially if like it's going to help you save your own life. And she even went on stand and she testified that. that he was the one who did everything and that she was sleeping. And he was sitting right there, watched her. He never came up on the stand. He had the opportunity to testify and be like she was involved. She asked me to do it, whatever, never came up.

And so the prosecution, of course, harped on if he killed your husband and he was behind all of this, why are you still sleeping together? And her answer was what? She claimed that he was threatening her and that he was. forcing her to have this relationship with him. Police, though, were tailing them. And they saw their intimate relationship up close. You know, they were really watching them.

They even saw her bake him a cake for his birthday. Yeah. And like they were doing things that couples do. It wasn't a threatening. It wasn't like she came over once a week and they slept together and he was angry or like, you know, like it was like they were hanging out all the time. And she was acting like a lover to him. Right.

And you know that. behind closed doors during all of those meetups, they went through this whole thing. You know, babe, I'm going to, you know, point the finger at you, but don't take it personally. Like, this is the plan. You know, and he's like, okay, I'll hold up my, you know, it's like a whole act. It's a whole thing that was discussed at length, I'm sure. And I don't know any of this for fact or anything, but I imagine the conversation went something like, I have two children. They don't have a dad. I have to take care of them. We'll blame it on you. you'll get out, you'll be out in 25 years and then we'll be together, like something like that,

you know, or we'll stay together through jail. I'll be there for you for everything, but like I have two kids. I can't go to jail. Yeah, that's a very valid point. I forgot about that. That's what I imagined happened. I don't know that for a fact. I'm just putting that into my brain. But that's what I picture. But the prosecution is questioning her. Like, okay, you're still sleeping with this man. She's like, he's threatening me, blah, blah, blah. And she never backs down from any of these claims. And Brett, like I said, never counteracted what she said. And they still didn't believe her story, though, you know, especially because they did their own investigating and they found that if Kelly was to die in a car accident, his insurance policy

would pay twice as much. So they very much believed that they both carried out the murders. They both put Kelly into the Jeep. And then Brett drove to the Great Smoky Mountains and Shane stayed home and cleaned everything up because that was another thing that was missing. It's like, okay, so you're saying that just Brett killed him in your living room. room, dragged him out of the back window, put him in his Jeep, came back, cleaned up your entire house. Without your knowledge. Without your knowledge, you were just dead asleep this whole time.

And your kids totally asleep, nothing happened. This is very, very far-fetched here. Yeah. It's like one thing, you know, if you lived in a mansion and it happened in your library and you're like, you're on cocaine castle. Yeah, if you're in cocaine castle over there and like, you're like, I was asleep the whole time. I had my white noise machines on and I was two, acres away. I was in the West Wing and yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's like you're in a two-bedroom apartment and it's like 300 square feet. Right. They don't believe a word she says. It's just annoying as hell when people think that they can trick law enforcement, especially when it's something so blaringly obvious like this. You know, it's like, all right, just give it up already. Like you're wasting

everybody's time and resources and you're dragging this out. I'm sure. shore for Kelly's family, whatever family and friends that he has. And it's just so blatantly obvious. And yet you're just going to go down with the ship of sticking to this stupid-ass story. It's just, it's so disrespectful and it's so, I mean, I don't even know what else to say other than it's just wrong. And I just don't get it because it happens all the time. Yeah. I agree. It's so wrong. And it's just like, for me, it just shows that there's no remorse there. Because if there's remorse, you're like, okay, let's just reach your plea bargain. I don't want to put the family through this.

I've done so much destruction and heartache already. And it's your family. You've been together with this person for 10 plus years. Yeah. You know, it's like people that you've grown to know and love. And yeah, it's just such a lack of empathy. And yeah, like you said, no remorse at all. Yeah, just horrible, horrible people.

They're in trial. They go through all their testimonies, closing arguments, and everything, and then the jury comes back. And the jury didn't believe her testimony either. They come back very quickly after deliberations, and they issue a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder for both of them. There we go. Before their sentencing hearing, though,

Brett and Shane made a deal with the prosecution. They made a deal that they would plead guilty to first-degree murder with no ability of appealing their conviction, but they would each have the eligibility to be paroled after 20. years. Shane Lavera's first parole hearing happened on October 22, 2020. The board then delayed another hearing to have her undergo a psychological evaluation. She had another hearing on April 29th, 2021, and voted four to two to grant her release. Oh, come on. Come on. Come on. She was released from prison in January of 2022.

Oh, good. That's... Don't even... And so Brett is still in prison. Brett is still in prison. She is now a free woman and she's out. Okay. So there we go, everyone.

There's your murder story. There it is. And I hope it holds you over for the next one year because we're not doing them again. It's just like it's so awful to hear that, you know, Kelly lost his life for no reason. and now she's out and living hers. And it's just, I think it's very infuriating because it was such a senseless death.

And then her children lost their father, you know, and their mother, too, you know, went to prison. And her children went to live with her mother who ended up raising them. And I don't know, like, where they are now or what's going on with that now. But it's a lot. And it's a very, very sad case. Yeah. Like you said, it's just the word to describe it is senseless. and that's why I think it's very difficult to discuss things like this and stories like this

because there is no silver lining. There is no lesson learned. There is no like anything to take from it. I guess the lesson here that I get the thing that I take from this is if you need a sign to get out of your shitty relationship with a person who doesn't treat you, right? This is your sign because this kind of stuff happens. You know, like, and I mean, Kelly was treating him horribly. believe for a long time. She's flirting in front of people, spending all his money, doing all this stuff, and then she goes around and then literally kills him. Everyone, if you're listening and you're in a

bad relationship and someone is treating you really badly, I know this is extremely excessive, but it does happen. Like, this is your sign to go live your best life and be your best self, and you don't deserve that, and you need to go out and go be single or whatever, like, because stuff like this really does happen, and this is a form of abuse, and this is an abusive relationship that just unfolded. Yeah, it is. But it also makes me sad because obviously we don't know what Kelly's side was, but to me, just based on the very minimal information that I have that you just gave and context is that he was a loving father and husband that wanted to make his marriage work. That is what I got from that. And so that's why it's also really difficult because it wasn't like this hostile relationship

dynamic that they were both at each other's throats and he was beating her and she was having affairs on him like it wasn't like that so no it just seems like he was a very he was just such an innocent in this and he just got you know his life taken away senselessly so i mean we could go around in circles about it all day but that's just i guess why for me it's just so difficult because every time there's a story like this when it comes to relationships and murdering spouses and things like that. It's like you can just get it to force. That's the thing that you can do. Yeah. I mean, this was definitely fueled by greed. You know, she saw if he dies in a car accident, we're going to, I'm going to get twice as much money if he then if he died under a different circumstance. You know, this is definitely money motivated. She didn't like her husband anymore. She wasn't into it. She's having affairs. She wants her rich lifestyle back. And that's the only motive, which is horrible. A horrible.

motive and it's just it's extremely sad and horrible and everything I read about Kelly I didn't read one single bad thing it wasn't like you know he was mean to her or he was abusive like you said I didn't read one negative thing about him at all in any research that I did so this reminds me of the one you did in Rocky Mountain National Park yes Harold was that his name yeah or whatever henthorn yes yeah yeah same type of thing fueled by just greed and obviously having no compassion or care for their significant other. Yeah. I just hope wherever Shane is, she is making better choices and being a better person

because she really has proved to not be a great one. But she is out and yeah, that's my story for today. Everyone wanted a murder story. This is certainly a murder story within a national park. second time visiting great smoky mountains. I think that's everything that I have for today. Well, thank you so much for telling it, I guess. I did, you know, every time we do an episode, I enjoy it in some way, but it's just some are more difficult than others. And this was one of them. And speaking of murders in national parks, fun fact.

Fun fact after a murder. A fun fact. Obviously, we're heading to Arkansas for our moment. Sure are. Sure are. Pop Quiz, everyone. Think about this. We both know the answer. But does everybody know what National Park,

the first National Park Service employee, was murdered in the line of duty in? We'll revisit the answer in our next episode. Yeah. Or maybe during our moment. Or maybe both. Well, I guess maybe we just gave it away because we said Arkansas.

And people could just. Oh, now you're giving it. No, people aren't going to be like, wow, I really don't know the answer. And I'm going to wait a whole week to figure it out. It's in hot springs. It's hot springs. Wow, that was like not even. You didn't even give people like a minute.

Well, come on. They got it. Like pop quiz. This is the question. Here's the answer. I'm just excited to say. Yeah. So we don't know if we're going to have time to go to the national park because there's just so much to do in the area we're going to be in.

But we'll keep everyone updated. please go to momenthouse.com slash NPAD, grab your ticket to our show. It's right around the corner. We can't wait to see you guys there. It's going to be a lot of fun. So there's that. Yeah. But in the meantime, if we don't see you in a few days for our moment, we'll see you whenever our next episode airs.

We have no idea what's happening. We don't know what our schedule is. Like episodes just come out all the time and we're just recording all the time. So we'll see you when we see you. And in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Bye everyone. See you at the moment.

See you at the Crescent. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Become an outsider. by joining our Patreon where you'll gain access to monthly bonus stories and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our partners, you're supporting our show. To access our special

discount codes along with source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For information on the show, to shop our merch store, sign up for our newsletter and more, visit npaddpodcast.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. To show you how easy it is to file a claim with Geico, we hired a scary movie victim. Oh, no, a tree fell on my car, and there's only one thing to do. Trip over my own feet and pull myself across the lawn while yelling, help at a barely audible volume. Sorry to interrupt, but you filed a claim with Geico, so you've got a designated claims team to help you.

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