RedHanded - Episode 373 - Halloween Special Part 2: Art School Murder & Uncle John

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

This week, we continue our spooky tradition of swapping stories on All Hallows Eve, with two chilling cases of betrayal and deceit. From a death in the dorms to a long-buried family secret that changed a Midwestern teenager’s life forever, we’ll have you looking at your inner circle with a healthy dose of suspicion: how much can we really trust those closest to us? Happy Halloween!Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti.

And it's Scorpio season. Halloween. All Hallows' Eve. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And it's Scorpio season. Halloween. All Hallows' Eve. Yes, the veil is thin. The thinnest it is all year. So go and piss on Stonehenge for the equinox. Which is probably coming up.

I don't know. I don't look at it. No clue. I feel like it's probably around the same sort of fucking time isn't it sounds about right there a flood of druids storm the studio how dare you dare you get it wrong we saw you piss on those we didn't actually piss on stonehenge we didn't we pissed near it on the motorway outside of the car because we were going to piss ourselves. If this is the first episode of Red Handed you've ever listened to, we do things differently. When it is Halloween, we do a story swap.

I don't know Saruti's story. She doesn't know mine. Usually we tell one story together, but not when the veil is at its thinnest. So we have two different stories for you today that we have scoured the world for and i mean i don't know about yours because i don't know what it is but mine is certainly i'm not sure if creepy is the right word but i think it's a really good illustration of the feeling that humans are capable of having that something is wrong. Got it. And not knowing what it is, but you know it's there.

Uh-huh. Got it. And when we went on Dan Schreiber's show, it was the only thing I ticked on my tick list of things that I was like, I could believe. The idea that you know somebody's looking at you even when you haven't seen them looking at you. So I'm in. So, to tell you this story, we're going to have to go really, really, really, really,

really far back in time, all the way to the Dark Ages, the turn of the 21st century. The Black and White times. Well, importantly, landlines. Still a thing. In June 2000, 15-year-old Heather Robinson was living an ordinary life in the Midwest. She was a very ordinary Midwest American teenager. Ordinary she was, but also she knew that she was adopted. But it wasn't particularly

problematic. Her adopted parents were the only ones she'd ever known. They were called Don and Frida. Little baby Heather came to the Robinsons with a few things. Some clothes and the name Tiffany. Like quite a few adopted kids, Heather always felt that something was missing. She didn't know anything about her birth mother, but, as I said, her life with Don and Frida

had been pretty normal thus far up to the age of 15, so it wasn't really that much of a big deal. And Heather was 15. She's got loads of things to worry about. High school, MySpace, boyfriends, Facebook, I don't know. That's the nightmare. The millennium bug. That's the Halloween story.

Yes, that is the jump scare. What? You should wake up and you're 15 again. No, thank you. But on that fateful day in June 2000, the landline rang in the Robinson household, and with that ring came a call that would change Heather's life forever. It would cause her to question everything about who she really was. Heather picked up the phone.

And this really sent me all the way back. Heather picked up the phone at the same time as her dad no so she can hear him on the other line i used to do that all the time yeah i secretly listen in on phone calls just again why why passed i totally forgotten that it was a thing yeah if you've got siblings, they're sneakily listening to your calls. You wonder if your parents are sneakily listening to your calls. Just so much. And Heather did what we all did instinctively. After hearing her dad's voice, she hit mute and decided to listen in. All right, Heather. Sneaky. I mean, she pays quite a high price for it. Oh. What Heather heard shook her to the core.

She learned that her dad's eldest brother, who she called Uncle John, had been arrested on suspicion of the murders of eight women over three decades. Police had found the

decomposed remains of two women in barrels on his property in Kansas, and they found three more in a storage locker in Missouri. These women were 27-year-old Susan Troughton, 22-year-old Isabella Luica, 49-year-old Beverly Bonner, 45-year-old Sheila Faith, and Sheila's disabled 15-year-old daughter, Debbie. And if you've been counting, you'll know that there are some missing. Uncle John was also suspected of murdering two more women whose remains hadn't been found, but they had disappeared around the same time in the mid-80s, and they both had links to Uncle John.

And here's the kicker. Oh no. I don't want to be kicked. Hi-ya! One of those two women was... No. The police thought... No.

Pretty sure. Mm-mm. Almost 100%. Meh. Heather's biological mother. No, thank sure. Almost 100%. Heather's biological mother. No, thank you. Oh, God. Fuck.

Don't pick up the phone while somebody else is on it. Yes, yes. That is the major lesson. Not don't murder women and put them in barrels. Also that. That goes without saying. Oh, my God. Heather, obviously.

She did a roundabout look in the barrel. Don't look in the barrel. Heather obviously could not even begin to process what she was hearing. There's a lot to take in. Firstly, her uncle's a murderer. But secondly, he might have killed her biological mother. And Don and Frida didn't know what to do with the news either. Frida ran up and down the stairs in the house crying

in a panic. How could he do this to us? Our lives are over. And it was the first time that Heather ever saw her dad Don cry. But this is interesting. You know when we were talking about when we did the Children of God

and we talked about how children have an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong. Yes. And when we get older, we're somehow more capable of losing that. Conditioned to not trust our own instincts, I guess. Exactly. But Heather's still young, and interestingly enough, even though her parents seemed completely blindsided by the information, Heather wasn't that surprised to find out that her Uncle John was a serial killer. He'd always given her a weird, off-putting feeling.

She said it was like walking down a dark alley in the middle of the night when you know someone is behind you. So, when the news broke about Uncle John's crimes, Heather thought it was a confirmation of what she already suspected, rather than a revelation. She could never have predicted, though, the link that Uncle John would have to her own origin story. In a cruel twist of fate, Heather was finally about to get the answers on where she had come from. But they weren't the answers that she wanted. Don Robinson, Heather's dad, always looked up to his older brother John, who in his eyes was a successful entrepreneur down in the South. He seemed to have it all. He had a nice wife, four kids, beautiful house, several acres of land, a storage locker and lots of successful businesses.

Sure, John had had some run-ins with the law for fraud over the years and he also had done a couple of years inside. But John had always managed to brush off these incidents as legal misunderstandings and just what happens when you run businesses. I fucking hope not, John. So, he wasn't squeaky-deaky clean, but at his core, John was seen by those who knew him as a man with morals.

Or at least that's what Don Robinson wanted to believe. Oh, no. John had been the one to help Don and Frida start their own family, arranging the private adoption of their daughter Heather 15 years before. Could such a selfless act as giving a motherless baby a home be a cover for an evil truth? Short answer, yes. The Robinsons, desperate for information, were given some photographs by the police

and they pored over them. Kind of, what's the opposite of confirmation bias? Hmm, normalcy bias. Yes, yeah, they don't want to see anything they recognise in those photos. Which is a phenomenon that is quite well documented. People just like, ah, don't want to know. And even though they didn't want to know with every single fibre of their hearts and beings and souls and minds,

Don and Frida came across a photograph that they did recognise. It was a picture of a baby who had disappeared with her mother in January 1985. Oh, my God. And the Robinsons, desperate to confirm that this had nothing to do with their family life, got out Heather's baby album and they compared the photos. It was undeniable. Heather was the baby in that photo.

The clothes were the same. No. It was undeniable. Heather was the baby in that photo. The clothes were the same. No. It was her. There was no bones about it. Oh my God. So, you might be wondering, how on earth did this even happen? But let's remember, we're in the States where adoption is extraordinarily expensive. So, under-the-table adoptions happen a lot more than you might think.

When the Robinsons realised that they weren't able to conceive naturally in the late 70s, they found themselves blocked at every turn by red tape and waiting lists when they tried to adopt. So they started to look into private adoptions. Danger. In 1984, Uncle John mentioned at a family reunion that he could probably help them with this. He was involved in charity work.

He supported loads of unwed mothers and their babies down in Kansas City. Don and Frida were thrilled, and on John's advice, they got their house all ready for a baby to arrive. They booked time off work in October and bought all of the baby stuff in anticipation. But this adoption fell through, and Don and Frida never found out why that happened. They decided that maybe a baby just wasn't for them, it wasn't their destiny. Until January 1985, when Uncle John got in touch out of the blue

to say that he'd found a baby for them. He told them that a four-month-year-old girl had come into his life via tragic circumstances. The baby's mother had been disowned by her family after changing her mind about giving the baby up for adoption, and had killed herself in a motel instead of giving the baby up. Aww. That baby's name was Tiffany. And if Don and Frida wanted her, she was all theirs. So they flew from Chicago to Kansas City the very same day to collect this baby, and they renamed her Heather Tiffany Robinson, wanting to honour her dead mother's

wishes in some way. John had Don and Frida sign official-looking adoption papers with the name of several legitimate lawyers on them, which he had forged. That's not difficult. No. So this is when? Pasto. No, it's like in the late 80s.

Yeah, enough. Enough that you can pick up the phone and hear the horrible things you don't want to and enough that you can commit rampant forgery. Yeah, you just need a printer. Yes. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either

until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music,

or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from

grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Perhaps Don and Frida were blinded by love for their miracle baby, but they didn't really ask Uncle John any more questions and they didn't ever suspect that something may be amiss. Even though Uncle John asked them for $7,000 in legal fees. They started the next chapter of their lives as parents. Oh my God. So he murders a woman and then rips them off as well. Why does he need the $7,000? He's got a storage container.

They're very expensive. Sure, sure. So I'll murder this woman and I'll give you a baby, but you need to help me keep up my hobby of murdering women financially. The woman that Uncle John had murdered just a few days before was called Lisa Stasi, and she'd just come out of a short but turbulent marriage to someone called Carl Stasi, who was the father of her four-month-old baby. Shortly after the baby was born, the marriage broke down and Carl re-enlisted in the Navy and left Lisa high and dry. At Christmas 1984, Lisa was alone and desperate with a young infant. Her family didn't take her in, and we don't quite know why, but her aunt Karen drove her and her baby to Hope

House, which was a refuge for pregnant women and new mums, which was in Kansas City. And it was here that Lisa was put in contact with someone called John Osborne. It's obviously John Robertson. A businessman and self-proclaimed philanthropist who was setting up an organisation that he called Kansas City Outreach. Lisa jumped to accept John's offer of accommodation. But her sister-in-law, Kathy, expressed concerns. How much did Lisa really know about this stranger who was promising her the world? Hmm.

It seemed a bit too good to be true. Which children, as we have told you on this show many times, if it seems too good to be true... Ron, it is. Yeah. Get out of there. Kathy got even more suspicious when, rather than putting Lisa and Tiffany up in an apartment,

John put them in a crappy motel called the Roadway Inn instead. He promised Lisa that he would set her up with a job, and he got her to sign four pieces of blank paper and give him addresses of her loved ones so he could write to them on her behalf. Aww. Whatever misgivings Lisa may have had, she pushed them aside to focus on the hope that this would be a new start for her and her baby girl. She signed these blank sheets of paper, and with it, her fate. On the 8th of January 1985, a fierce snowstorm blew into Kansas City.

John Robinson, pretending to be John Osborne, collected Lisa and her baby from Kathy's house and told them that they needed to leave right away. Kathy watched Lisa disappear into the snow with her baby in her arms and said she knew, deep down, that that was the last time she would see Lisa. And she was right. And that nagging feeling kept nagging at Kathy for the next few days. Something told her that Lisa had walked straight into a trap. So she rang the roadway in and found out that Lisa's room had been paid for

by a man called John Robinson. Not John Osborne. Terrified, Cathy reported her sister-in-law and baby niece missing. But when a typed letter signed by Lisa arrived, explaining that she was making a fresh start in a new state with her baby, police dropped the case like a rock. But there was a problem. Another nagging feeling that Cathy had. She remembered that her sister-in-law didn't know how to type. Pasto. Mm-hmm. Pasto clues. Yes. But of course Lisa had signed those blank pieces of paper.

Four of them. Kathy urged the police to investigate Lisa as a missing person. But they didn't. And Lisa and her baby slipped through the cracks. The Stasi family had no idea where they were, or even if they were still alive. As the years ticked by, no one ever heard from Lisa after that first typed letter.

Their hopes of seeing either of them again faded. Meanwhile, Uncle John was free to do whatever he liked. And it was quite a lot the crimes of john robinson could take up a two-parter on their own like john wayne gacy he was a bit of a community hero he ran a string of moderately successful businesses that he spun to be much more profitable and influential than they actually were. And this is so pathetic. He pulled a very elaborate con, which ended in him being named Man of the Year by a local newspaper. Oh my God. Kill me.

He was, of course, not the Man of the Year. He was a pathological liar, a conman, a fraudster, a sexual predator, and, let's not forget, murderer. During his life of crime, John Robinson managed to get off with the lightest possible punishment at every turn. He was convicted for embezzlement and fraud at every company he was ever linked to. But usually he just got probation. He's kind of like the serial killer blueprint, even down to the model inmates. A sticker. And the fact that whenever he got out after his very short stints, John Robinson went straight back to his old tricks.

Sometimes he's referred to as the internet's first serial killer, because it was one of the ways he used to find his victims. Specifically, he used chat rooms to trawl for victims interested in forming a BDSM partnership with him, acting as his submissive sex slaves. Robinson mixed business with pleasure too. He couldn't help himself. He convinced several of the women that he connected with

for BDSM sex to sign up to work for him as well. These women signed slave contracts as part of their sexual relationship and also joined the payroll in his real-life, semi-legitimate

businesses. And then inevitably, these women would disappear. And the last thing their families would hear from them were typed letters signed with their name claiming that they'd run off and started a new life elsewhere. Of course, John Robinson had murdered these women, callously stuffed their bodies in barrels and also in that storage unit.

And the good news is, in 2003, he was found guilty of the murders of eight women, including Lisa Stasi. He's currently on death row at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas. But that's a story maybe for another day. I don't know. I've got another story. And it's Heather's. As the sordid truth of John's murders came to light in the millennium year, Heather's whole life was turned upside down. Everything she'd ever known about herself was a lie,

even down to the most basic fact of her existence, like her birthday. Heather had always believed that she was born on October the 12th, which she loved because that meant that she was in spooky season with the rest of us. But it turned out that Uncle John had lied about her age. She was actually born on September the 3rd, a whole month earlier. Heather spent her 16th birthday,

which is obviously the first birthday she has after she finds all of this out, locked in her room, crying in bed, wishing she was dead and wishing that she'd never been born. She felt like she didn't know who she was anymore. I don't know, Heather. After DNA testing confirmed, for absolute certain,

that Heather was the biological daughter of Lisa and Carl Stasi, she found herself with a whole new family who wanted to reconnect with her. They didn't know Heather the teenager, they knew Tiffany, the four-month-old baby who'd disappeared in the snow nearly two decades before. Heather managed to form a relationship with Lisa's mum, who's called Pat, and she encouraged Heather to forgive John Robinson, because she had, through Jesus. But while her biological dad, Carl, did want to be in Heather's life, Heather didn't really feel the same way. She already had a dad, she didn did want to be in Heather's life. Heather didn't really feel the same way. She already had a dad. She didn't want another one. And she stayed with the Robinsons and kept their name too. And just in case you don't feel horrible enough, I'm going to leave you with a message that

Lisa Stasi wrote in her baby book album for her daughter in 1984. No. when you are old enough to read this i hope that you will still be feeling the love i have for you because it is a love stronger than life itself that's a fucking bum yeah it's funny isn't it that like obviously we're at the age where all of our friends are kicking out babies left, right and center. And I was talking to my friend about it last night. And she was like, it's so because I've, you know, friends of mine who've had tricky upbringings have had this whole sort of can of worms reopened for them when they've had their own children. Yeah. Because they look at them and they're like, I could never do that to you. I could never treat you in that way. Yeah. And another thing that my friend was talking about last night was she was like, another thing that really took me by surprise that I wasn't expecting was that you realize everyone was a baby. Like even the most someone who's done something unforgivable to you. There was more likely than not a point in their lives where their parents thought they were the best thing in the world. Yeah. It just reminds me of that line from Matilda

where the trunchbull's like, I was never a baby. I was never a child. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I thought we were going to scare everybody. We're just fucking bumming everyone out.

Sorry. Maybe it's just reflective of how we're all feeling this year. But it's hard. Fucking send us some scary stories. We're trying to dig them up, but I don't know. This one is scary. Okay. But, again, kind of in a, like, rooted in real life kind of way.

Not paranormal, not anything like that. So on the afternoon of the 10th of September 2009, 20-year-old Ashley Olvera returned from her classes at the Art Institute of Dallas to her apartment. She'd been sent home from class to go check on her flatmate, Shelley, whose parents hadn't been able to get hold of her for a few days. And to be honest, Ashley was a bit irritated about this. She had to leave class in order to come check on her roommate. And it's not like the girls were joined at the hip. They were good friends.

But Ashley knew Shelley pretty well by now. And she knew that Shelley was an introverted night owl who was known to often stay up all night creating art and then sleeping all day and she suspected that's probably why she hadn't been calling her parents back. So knowing Shelley, Ashley reckoned that she'd probably just been holed up in her room and fallen asleep and fallen behind on her messages. And she knew she was going to feel so stupid when she finally dragged herself out of bed and realised that people had been worrying about her. Lots of foreshadowing. So Ashley approached Shelley's door,

which was slightly ajar, and knocked. Getting no response, Ashley peeked in and saw Shelley's shape lying still in bed. Bingo! Exactly as she'd suspected. But then Ashley shelly's toes poking out from under the blankets we dealt with so much feet stuff we really have last year we couldn't get enough of exorcisms you know we just love feet feet toes under duvets everywhere. And this immediately caught Ashley's attention because the toes were unusually pale. In her later words, she would say, as white as you can think of. And then she noticed around Shelley's head, a dark substance spread out like a halo. It was blood, congealed and dried like it had been there for a few days.

Ashley's 20-year-old flatmate, fellow animation student Shelley Nance, was dead, brutally murdered in her uni bedroom, with nobody having realised it for days. I realise both my cases these past two weeks have had the theme

of dead delay. So obviously the hunt was now on to find the person who had killed Shelley. As they say, everything is bigger in Texas. But Shelley's life actually started out in a small town. Spelt Italy, pronounced It-ly. I thought you'd have thoughts it's literally spelt Italy but it's Italy and it's just south of Dallas

the opening scene of American Gods is I can't remember which state it's in and this guy's like oh I need to get to Cairo and they're like no state it's in. And this guy's like, oh, I need to get to Cairo. And they're like, no, no, it's pronounced Cairo. So I don't think this is an isolated incident. No. Have you seen there's that new Netflix show with Jeff Goldblum?

Yes, I've seen the ad and I'm like, I probably would like that, wouldn't I? I don't know how I'm going to feel about it. But it was like, I was like, what's this called? I was just reading it in my head. And then you realize that it's chaos without the ch but a k instead i don't know don't know if i could do it i'll i'll do a test run okay and then let me know because we've got lots of flying to do oh yeah that's true man and i could use something to watch that isn't just whatever random fucking shit film they put on airplanes. Anyway, we're in Italy, south of Dallas.

I don't want to be. We have to be. And it calls itself the biggest little town in Texas. What I enjoy is that a lot of towns in America that we've come across, no matter how small, they got a gimmick. They got a little thing going for them. They do. And I just think you're doing too much. Not everything has to be a thing.

Maybe it's like there's so much land in America that you've got to market yourself. You know, you've got to be like, come here. We're the biggest small town in Texas. And you can tell everybody. You're moving to Italy. But here we call it Italy. I don't know. But just like the place in which she was raised,

Shelley also turned out to be a bit of a paradox. While she was shy and hid from the limelight growing up, she had big dreams. She had a passion for art. She dreamed of becoming a world-famous artist working for Hollywood animation studios. And it helped that she was genuinely talented. Her artwork had a fantasy tinge to it,

and it often included butterflies, angels, fairies, and celestial anime-inspired characters. When she was a kid, her mum Cynthia remembers Shelley excitedly telling her that the other girls at school were even requesting butterfly drawings in her unique style. And as she grew older, Shelley began to realise that her creativity was her superpower. After coming first place in a statewide art competition and placing fourth nationally, Shelley won a scholarship to attend the prestigious Art Institute of Dallas in 2007. What's your superpower?

Oh, I'm very good at cleaning. Does that help anybody except me and my extreme cleaning addiction? I mean, Sam's pretty beneficial. He benefits. He benefits from it. Apart from when I'm like, well, I just cleaned that floor, you pig man. But anyway. A house of pigs.

What's yours? This isn't even a jokey answer. It's probably my ability to remember almost everything that's ever happened to me that sounds awful it is also a bit of a curse because i don't it feels like everything only just happened uh-huh nothing fades you know but i can tell you like i was in america talking to my friend i've been friends for years he was like oh like you ever had panda express i was like ben i've been to Panda Express with you in 2016 and we went on this day and it was in this lot

and he was like, you're insane. Ugh! That does sound like a curse. Yeah. And you were wearing a red jumper. And the food was terrible.

Literally, yes. Always. It's so bad. It's so bad. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. But anyway, let's get back to what's going on here. So Shelley gets into this art institute in Dallas and it's here that she really starts to spread her wings. The things that had made her feel isolated back at high school were

now what made her attractive to her like-minded peers. She was still quiet and more at ease daydreaming in her room than at the centre of attention. But now she had a close circle of friends who just got her. Shelley and her friends loved cosplaying as their favourite Japanese manga characters, playing video games and proudly taking joy in artsy nerd culture. A far cry from the stereotype of a college student, Shelley didn't drink, smoke, do drugs or engage in casual sex. Get the fuck out of art school then.

It's what it's for. In fact, Shelley was a textbook good girl. So how had she ended up lying dead in a pool of blood in her own bedroom? First, investigators needed to piece together what had happened at the scene. The autopsy found that Shelley had been stabbed 42 times. The classic case of overkill. As she was found face down with the majority of her wounds clustered around her neck and back, it seems that she had been attacked whilst lying in bed. There was no indication of sexual assault, but it was clear to investigators that this had been a vicious personal crime.

Whoever had done this had hated Shelley with a passion. Based on the state of Shelley's body, the medical examiner concluded that she had been killed one to two days before she was found, most likely on the 9th of September. And this fit with data found on Shelley's devices, indicating her last computer activity was at around 6am that morning. And Ashley hadn't discovered her flatmate's lifeless body until Friday afternoon, which would have been the following day.

It was theorised that the killer must have made their way into Shelley's room some time after she went to sleep after 6am, before attacking her while she slept. But there was a pretty big catch for investigators. The killer had left zero DNA at the scene. And there was no murder weapon to be found, although two large kitchen knives were missing from a glock in the kitchen. The only significant piece of evidence

was a tiny scrap of blue material on Shelley's body, which was thought to have come from standard blue nitrile gloves, perhaps explaining the perplexing lack of DNA. Which is unusual, right? The idea that a killer would turn up at a crime scene sometime in the middle of the night presumably they're anticipating the person being asleep so they can attack them which is what happened and they bring gloves but they take knives from the scene itself i mean maybe it's very smart because then if you get rid of the knife successfully they can't be connected back

to you having bought them ah yeah good point so know, it's pointing to a cold-blooded, personal, planned, premeditated attack. So there were a few drops of blood, thought to be Shelley's, found in the girls' shared bathroom. But there was nothing linked to an outside party. And crucially, there were no signs of forced entry to the apartment. The police didn't know much, but they did know one thing. Whoever had done this was someone close to Shelley. Someone she had probably thought she could trust. But who exactly had the access and the motive to kill Shelley?

I feel like access to student accommodation is not hard. No, no. So police focused first on interrogating Ashley, whose reaction seemed, to them, well, weird. For a start, she'd been living in a small apartment with her flatmate's dead body on the other side of the wall for over 24 hours, and they thought that this was strange.

How could she not have had any concerns about this? Didn't she question why she hadn't heard any signs of life from Shelley, from a toilet flushing to the closing of a door during that time? Sobbing under the pressure of the police interview, Ashley admitted it sounded odd but insisted it wasn't unusual for the two of them to just live their own separate lives. Yeah, I buy that. Yeah, me too.

When I'm at uni, I'm like, I've got my own shit going on. I'm not keeping an eye on whether you're flushing the toilet or walking around or when you leave the house. And while Ashley claims to have noticed a small drop of blood in the bathroom that they shared, it never crossed her mind that any serious harm had come to Shelley. And in fairness, anyone who's ever had a period or attempted to shave their legs will know that bleeding is par for the course. Ashley vehemently denied having any beef with Shelley and insisted the detectives were barking very much up the wrong tree.

So if not Ashley, who else in Shelley's inner circle could have done it? Ashley told detectives that Shelley had recently started dating a guy in their friendship group called Nathan Shuck. It was described as an innocent relationship that hadn't gone further than holding hands over the past two months. Both were late bloomers and awkward souls, so their courtship consisted of cosplay dates at anime conventions and playing video games in each other's rooms. By all accounts, Nathan was smitten with Shelley. But according to Shelley's mother, Cynthia, Shelley had privately confided in her

that she was thinking of breaking things off because she didn't feel the same way. On hearing this, the cogs were already turning in the detectives' minds. With around 60% of all women who were murdered being killed by a former or current romantic partner, could Nathan be a spurned lover taking revenge on the girl who had friendzoned him? Yes, quite possibly. From an outside perspective, Nathan Shuck didn't quite seem like the type though. He was described

by friends as shy and as a mama's boy who was into the same nerdy pursuits that Shelley was. But detectives soon learned that Nathan had his own particular passion. Ninjas. And more specifically,

ninja-inspired weaponry. Throwing stars. Yeah. In his dorm room at a nearby apartment block, Nathan had a huge collection of samurai swords, throwing stars, as you correctly identified, Hannah, daggers, pocket knives, and more. His MySpace page, because yes, this is unfolding in the time of MySpace, even featured a photo of him posing in a ninja mask.

So far so nerdy, but murderous? Investigators certainly seem to think so. As they had done with Ashley, lead detective Paul Ellisey went in hard on Nathan, determined to make him crack under pressure and admit his guilt. He pressed Nathan for details about his sexual relationship or lack thereof with Shelley, trying to goad him into admitting a motive to hurt her. When he pushed the angle that Shelley had intended to break up with him, Nathan appeared genuinely hurt and shocked and insisted that he didn't know that. But throughout his police interviews, Nathan

never seemed to show any sort of emotion that the investigators expected him to as a grieving boyfriend. Dazed, yes. Troubled, yes. But devastated, shocked, desperate, not quite, they thought. And again, you know, we've talked about the fact that people's emotions, especially when they're under severe pressure, when something unbelievably shocking has happened, like your girlfriend being murdered,

they don't necessarily manifest in the way that you would quote-unquote expect them to. But playing bad cop, Ellice even called Nathan a psychopath for how he was responding to the shocking details of his girlfriend's murder. They had a niggling feeling that Nathan knew exactly what had happened to Shelley because he was the one to do it to her. And soon, the police got a lead that seemed to point a huge flashing neon arrow right at Nathan's shuck. Having discovered his creepy weapon stash during a search of his apartment, they also came across something strange in his bedroom. A clear Ziploc bag containing...

Would you like to take a guess, Emma? A clear Ziploc bag containing... Blue gloves. No. Oh. Several long blonde hairs. Oh. Streaked with blood.

Oh. Which testing soon confirmed belonged to none other than Shelley Nance. While Nathan insisted the bag wasn't there when he'd left the apartment that morning, this did not look good. Not only did he lack a concrete alibi for the day that Shelley was thought to have been murdered, but now a tangible piece of evidence seemed to link him. I mean, just hair in a bag? Creepy.

Still big red flag. But it's got the blood on it. He does have the blood on it, but because it's in a bag and not on his clothes or something, plant. Quite possibly. But the walls were closing in on Nathan Shuck. To confirm their suspicions that Nathan was their man, police also interviewed Nathan's two roommates.

This included a man named Daniel Willem, a 26-year-old photography student originally from Indonesia. Daniel was a few years older than the rest of their crew at the Art Institute, and he'd even served in the Navy for six years prior as a pastry chef. Detectives basically just wanted to get Daniel's take on their prime suspect Nathan, as well as his behaviour around the time of Shelley's murder. And everything Daniel told them seemed to corroborate what they already thought. Daniel indicated that his housemate Nathan had been acting strangely that Thursday bursting into tears for seemingly no reason and hiding scratches on his chest

Even more tellingly, Daniel revealed that he'd noticed some red flags in Nathan's attitude towards his girlfriend Shelley that had disturbed him He described Nathan as becoming obsessive about the relationship at the expense of his schoolwork and social life. At this point, police were pretty much polishing the handcuffs for Nathan. But then came a plot twist. In the police interviews, Ashley Olvera mentioned that there was one person who had a reason to dislike Shelley? Can you take a guess?

Bearing in mind, I've not mentioned very many people. The Dean of the Art School. Close. No. Our Indonesian pastry chef, Daniel Willem. Because while Daniel self-described his dynamic with Nathan as a big and little brother, this wasn't exactly the case. At least, not your average pair of brothers anyway. Daniel would regularly drive Nathan to classes, make him food and even clean up after him. More like a trad wife than a frat bro. While Nathan seemed oblivious to Daniel's doting efforts, it was pretty obvious to everyone else that Daniel had it bad. I would like to clarify that I laughed so loudly when you said Indonesian

pastry chef because it made me think of that Jack the Ripper suspect. Yes, yes, yes. Was it Jack the Ripper or was it the Austin austin oh yeah it's all the same isn't it well according to the theory well well well go listen to our live from south by southwest austin episode for all the details so yeah daniel's got it bad for nathan here which put Shelley Nance, his girlfriend, right at the top of Daniel's shit list. To put it mildly, Daniel hated Shelley's guts, and he made no secret about it. He complained to everyone who'd listen that she was supposedly a bad influence on Nathan, who he thought should be focusing on his schoolwork and social life. And presumably, him and his pastries. Even Shelley was growing tired of Daniel's repeated attempts to interfere in their burgeoning relationship,

telling Cynthia, her mum, that he was really weirding her out. But for the friendship group, Daniel's intense behaviour didn't come as that much of a surprise. Ashley described him as dramatic, while former roommate Chris Phillips had experienced firsthand how possessive Daniel could be whilst the two of them had been living together. It looked like history was repeating itself with Daniel and Nathan,

and soon a picture started to emerge of a one-sided infatuation and a simmering jealousy that could have been a motive for murder. In a seismic shift, the investigation now switched focus to Daniel Willem, and the incriminating gossip kept on coming. Ashley now told investigators that on the morning Shelley was killed, Daniel had bombarded her with texts asking if she was at home, which she thought was weird. Meanwhile, Daniel spun a yarn to the police

about a boring average Thursday, a trip to Starbucks in the morning, then a local lake, and then he was supposed to take photos for a school project but forgot his camera, so he came home. But Daniel, Kel's surprise, wasn't exactly telling the whole truth because he was caught on CCTV

at a local Walmart buying hair dye. He was known to touch up his greys. He was also buying zest soap and a pack of blue gloves. That's quite a clever purchase list.

Just use the gloves that come with the dye. They're baggy, man. They are. Aren't they the worst gloves ever? They are awful. For risk of just becoming like two hacky fucking BBC comedians who were like, oh, what about those gloves that come with hair dye? They are shit. They are truly shit.

I dyed my own hair for decades and I do not miss it. No. And so, yes, of course, these gloves that they saw Daniel buying were the same material as the tiny scrap of blue found on Shelley's body when press Daniel eventually admitted to making another stop that day to the Falls apartment complex where Shelley lived to allegedly visit a friend doesn't take a genius to connect the dots. Bizarrely, Daniel claimed that he didn't originally tell the police about being at the Falls apartment complex that day because he, drumroll please,

was mugged at knife point by a black male who stole his wallet and his backpack. Yes, the good old... Wearing a MAGA hat. Random black man defence that we've seen through the ages from Jessie Smollett to what was her name ah fuck

not Diane Downs we wrote about it in the book oh my god I can see her fucking face the one who pushed her kids in the car into the lake oh fuck oh why have you done this to me I don't know why have I done this to myself oh god oh fuck okay i'm gonna look it up

and then i'm gonna make you guess why that's horrible oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god it was in texas wasn't it yeah oh my god if i don't get this right, I have to quit. I wrote a fucking whole chapter about her in the book. Oh, okay. Carly! No. It's, um... I can see your fucking face. It's alliterative.

Okay, this will help you. When you told the story the other day about your friend in a meeting giving a fact when it should have been a fact about herself and she embarrassed herself what false name did you give her oh god i can't remember that either tell me i can't remember susan smith oh susan smith so yes it's a well trorodden outline for the police. He's just like, some black guy mugged me. Needless to say, though, the police, probably being quite familiar with this storyline, knew it was a bogus one.

They were certain that they had their man, and they even had an explanation for how he could have got into the apartment stealthily without forced entry. In her interviews, Ashley let slip that Daniel had once borrowed her car keys, which were on a fob with her apartment key. And he had borrowed these keys because he needed to give Nathan a lift at short notice,

like he's his fucking dad or something. Chillingly, police believe that Nathan could have used this opportunity to make a copy of the girl's apartment key. Yeah, and doy. Yeah. Just waiting for the right time to strike. Daniel was ultimately

charged on suspicion of Shelley's murder and brought to trial. But he wasn't going to go down without a fight. Sticking to a plea of not guilty, Daniel's defence team repeatedlyicking to a plea of not guilty, Daniel's defence team repeatedly tried to shift the blame onto Nathan, as having had more of a motive and opportunity to kill Shelley. I guess his whole love for Nathan that he was willing to kill for has gone out the window when he's going to go to prison.

Maybe he wants them both to go so he can be his prison wife. Oh God. But prosecutors argued that Daniel had killed two birds with one stone by murdering Shelley out of jealousy and then actually framing Nathan. The object of his one-sided crush who didn't return

his feelings. No, Shelley's in prison. Yeah. And so he has also planted this evidence. Because yeah, like actually, it's not like he's just saying it's Daniel. He planted that evidence of the hair in Nathan's room. And the jury agreed.

In November 2011, Daniel Willem was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Assistant DA Dewey Mitchell said that in this case, jealousy festered into hatred and then hatred ended in murder.

Overseeing the Shelley Nance Memorial Art Scholarship, a fund for talented creative teens in the town where Shelley grew up, Cynthia Nance, her mother, can't help but imagine what could have been if her daughter had survived college. Perhaps she would have made it as a big-time artist like she dreamed. Cynthia will never get those answers. But she still thinks about Shelley every time she looks down at the butterfly tattoo she got in her honour. For many young people, university is like a cocoon. A place to transform, find themselves, unfurl their wings and prepare for flight into the real world.

But for Shelley Nance and those who loved her, that chrysalis was cruelly cut short and by someone hiding in her innermost circle. Her case acts as a tragic reminder of how evil can be lurking in plain sight. No thanks. I think the Idaho student murders case was the one that gave me nightmares for the longest time that I can remember.

And, yeah, like, here you go again. Yeah. Just don't give people your car keys. Yeah, don't. Let them take their own fucking car. Yes. Don't do it. But I can totally, like, when I was at university, I remember distinctly having the thought,

if I died, no one would know for about four days. Easily. Easily. Yeah, I never came out of that room. Terrifying stuff. So there you go. That's it, guys. That is the conclusion of our Halloween story swaps for 2024.

A little bit of a different route we took this year. But yes, we'll be back next week, where we will have left Octavia behind, and we'll be back to normal scheduling. Goodbye! Bye! Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard

the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest

to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly

moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.