Serialously with Annie Elise - 212: Was it the Husband? | The Shocking Death of Karen Swift

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

44-year-old Karen Swift mysteriously vanished in the early morning hours of October 30th, 2011 after arriving home from a Halloween party in Dyersburg, Tennessee. Karen’s body was discovered about six weeks after she vanished in a cemetery about two miles away from her home. For years, the community was stunned as to what really happened to Karen Swift as the investigation went cold. But then there was an unexpected break in the case…    Audible Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit https://www.audible.com/serialously  Omaha Steaks Go to https://www.OmahaSteaks.com to get 50% off sitewide on unforgettable gifts and more. And use Promo Code AE at checkout for an extra $30 off. Thanks to our advertiser, Omaha Steaks! Athena Club Go to https://www.athenaclub.com with promo code AE for 30% off! SimpliSafe This week only, get 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan—this is their best offer of the year! Head to https://www.SimpliSafe.com/serialously Quince Head to https://www.Quince.com/ae for free shipping and 365-day returns   Shop the Merch: www.annieelise.com Follow the podcast on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_ SERIALously FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/ About Me: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [e-mail]      Sources: ABC 24 Law and Crime Court TV Action News 5 WBBJTV Audio Sources: ABC 24 Law and Crime

Hey true crime besties, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. Hope you are ready to start your week with some true crime because today's case is definitely a wild one. Some of the clips that I will be playing for you also are unnerving, bizarre, kind of scary, I guess would be a good word to describe it. But it's one of these cases that it's kind of been going pretty viral recently. I've been seeing it all over my socials. I'm sure you guys have seen it at one point or another on yours as well. But the more that I've been diving into it and researching it, I'm just left kind of being like, I need to talk to somebody about it. I need to share my thoughts about this case and the details about this case. So why not jump on the mic and talk with all of you about it?

So if you haven't guessed by now, or if you haven't seen it on your socials and you are like, Annie, I have absolutely no idea where you're going with this. What are you even talking about? It's the story of Karen Swift. Karen was one of those people who gave to everyone around her more than she got. She was completely devoted to her four children. She was also one of those people who gave to everyone around her more than she got. She was completely devoted to her four children. She was also one of those people who always wanted to make sure that everyone around her was comfortable and having a good time. She put everybody ahead of herself. And she also loved to let loose as well, but only if she wasn't going too far and maybe crossing a boundary for somebody else. But if you were hanging out with her, Karen was the kind of

person who would regularly check in with you to make sure that you were the one having a good time. Because truly, she wasn't having fun unless everybody else was. In 2011, Karen had been married to her husband, David, for 22 years. Their relationship wasn't without its rough spots, though. In 1999, about 10 years into their marriage, they went through a temporary separation, but they ended up getting back together. By 2011, they lived in Dyersburg, Tennessee,

and they had a pretty decent social circle as well. It was kind of like your typical suburban family. They had a good group of friends, they were friendly with their neighbors, and things seemed to be going well for them. And on the night of Saturday, October 29th, Karen went out to a Halloween party. David didn't join her, but Karen decided to invite her friends Bill and Kathy with her instead, and it was going to be a fun night out like she did so often. Now, Karen was very close to Bill and Kathy Bona. She and the Bonas had only known each other for about a year and a half since early 2010, but she hung out with them all the time. It also wasn't unusual for her to

invite them to go to a party with her. I mean, definitely not at all. Except there had been a little bit of tension between the couples. See, Bill and Kathy were apparently pretty easygoing. They liked throwing parties, they liked going to bars and concerts, really drinking, letting loose. But David, Karen's husband, didn't approve of that sort of thing. He was worried that they were a bad influence on Karen, encouraging her to make decisions that weren't good for her in the long term. Now, as for Bill and Kathy, they saw David as pretty uptight. They knew that he didn't approve of their lifestyle, and they thought that he just needed to loosen up and leave them and Karen alone. Like, let us all go out. Let us all have a good time. Why are you so uptight? Now, I'm going to assume that Karen was siding with

Bill and Kathy on all of this, since she kept seeing them and also invited them out to that party that night. And from the sounds of things, Karen was wanting to let loose again at this party. So much so that she fully expected not to go home, and she had already gotten permission from Bill and Kathy to sleep over at their place instead. Except things didn't go according to the plan. In fact, sometime after midnight, meaning it's now October 30th, Karen got a phone call from her daughter Ashley, who was also spending the night out with a friend. But Ashley was now feeling homesick.

She wanted her mom Karen to come and get her. And the thing about being a mom, I can tell you from a firsthand experience, because I'm a mom of two, it's that you don't always get guaranteed breaks, no matter what. Even if you think you're clocking out for the night, you're going out, you're having a good time with your friends, it's never guaranteed. Something may happen, something may come up, you're always on duty. And even though Karen just wanted to go out and have fun that night, she of course couldn't tell her daughter no. She felt bad. Being a mother was her number one priority. She also hadn't had anything to drink, so she was okay to drive. So she left the party, and she went and

picked up her daughter Ashley. Karen got home with Ashley around 2 a.m. on October 30th. Now, I want to jump ahead to the next morning because her husband David woke up around 10 a.m., and when he got up, David noticed that Karen wasn't anywhere in the house. She wasn't in bed. She also wasn't with the kids. Her car was gone, but where could she have gone since 2 in the morning? Where would she already be out, and why would she have left again? And as a matter of fact, it was definitely weird enough that David called the police right away. Right off the bat, he reported her as missing. But here's what's interesting. It wasn't a surprise to the police at all, because he actually wasn't the first person to report that Karen had disappeared. Bill and Kathy had also already noticed that she wasn't around. When Karen had left the party the

night before, she promised that she was going to text them first thing in the morning. However, they never heard from her since she had left, and she also wasn't replying when they tried calling her and texting her either, so they had called and filed a missing persons report on her as well. So right away, the police took Karen's disappearance very seriously, and since they thought that she might have been abducted, they had their pick of suspects to choose from, especially once they realized that Karen had actually filed for a divorce from David just three weeks earlier. Now, as if that timing wasn't suspicious enough, the circumstances around how Karen made that filing were pretty alarming on their own. She couldn't afford a lawyer to draw up the paperwork for her, so she borrowed $2,000 from her good friends. Her good friends Bill and Kathy.

This was so that she could cover the fees and filing. They also gave her a second phone. I guess this was so that she could talk to the lawyer without her husband David realizing maybe trying to go under the radar. And apparently after she filed, she did tell them that she was afraid to be home the day that David got the paperwork. I guess she already did see him as somebody with a lot of potential to be violent when he was angry. So Kathy and Bill invited her on a trip out of town that day. Stay away, keep safe, don't be there when he gets the paperwork, like let him cool down after he receives it. And in fact, Karen spent a week on vacation with Bill and Kathy and with her daughters. But at the end of that week, on October 17th, she and the girls went back home. Karen was still living with David, and she was in that house that they shared two weeks later on the night that she went missing. So basically, right off of the bat,

the police knew that David had a motive to possibly hurt his wife, right? She was afraid of him, she was going to all of these lengths to hide the fact that she was leaving until she was, you know, right then ready to file the paperwork. And he had access to her after she got back home a few hours after midnight on October 30th. It's the scenario that made the most sense, right? We also know from cell phone pings that Karen's phone left her house at 4 38 that morning, the same day that she disappeared. Now that was two and a half hours after she and her daughter got home. It was way too late for her to be going back to that party. She wasn't going to be meeting anyone at that time, so why did she leave at 4 38 in the morning? It seemed like there were three possibilities.

One, Karen snuck out for some reason. Possible, but unlikely at that hour. Two, somebody broke in and abducted her, all without David or the kids noticing. Also possible, but doesn't seem very likely. Or three, David did something to get her out of the house. And then, who knows? And that possibility fit the evidence the best so long as the police officers were concerned. So, they called David in for questioning. So you have a C4 right over there. What happened to you, man? Well, it was Easter morning. I had to have knee surgery. I had to have a total quadricep, a patella tendon rupture.

Yeah. It was at my daughter's soccer game. And I had to be taken by ambulance and had to have surgery the next morning and about a week ago, it's been giving me a lot of problems. I haven't been able to, you know, stay here and stuff like that because I had to pull sutures and drills and kneecap. It's restricted, but a little bit a week ago, I got work and turned wrong and so I had an appointment today with another specialist to get a second opinion, but I'm sorry. That's my name, Rick Gregory.

What's your name? This is something I've talked about before. A lot of the time when someone is planning on lying during an interrogation, they will just talk and talk without stopping. And I promise that that clip that I just showed you was from the very start of the session. He hadn't been read his Miranda rights, not that he had any intention of remaining silent, obviously, but he was just talking and talking and talking. But it kind of comes across right from the get-go like he was almost trying to take control of the questioning. You know, signal that he was the one who was going to be setting the agenda and talking about what he

wanted to talk about. In fact, before the interrogation even begun, again, still before he was ever even read his Miranda rights, David started laying the groundwork to point the finger at two of his least favorite people in the entire world, Bill and Kathy. That's the one that we've had, you know, that she's had on the Verizon account that I pay for. Right. Any other ones that you know of? That she has? Well, I found out yesterday that Bill and Kathy Bono had given her another cell phone. She'd been using it for... Any idea what that number is? I'd suspected because she'd been known in the past to have multiple phones, you know, prepaid phones and stuff like that.

About a year and a half ago, she had one that I had found. I questioned her about it, and I confronted Jamie Gurin. And from there, the interrogation just kept going like that. David talked to the police for over an hour. And I do mean David was the one talking. Because they barely even had to ask him anything. He spent the entire time just rambling about what terrible people Bill and Kathy were, how Karen had been out of control lately, and basically how all of her friends were apparently just terrible influences on her life. She's wanting to get some jobs and work and she's just recently started doing the YMCA and doing some training there.

So, and then Kathy and Bill pay her to come on Mondays to clean their house and pick up their kids and she stays there until 8.30. From like 12.30 or 1 until 8.30 and then she does landscape form and stuff. But listen back up for a second, where was his house in Trimble? It was 203 Walnut Street, Trimble. And she, her and Karen became really close friends, you know, our daughters went there and danced and then she was over there all the time. She was here and started sneaking out of the house and she would go be with Kathy and Bill. And I know even this past summer... And when you say go to be with them, would you be going to party with them? Go party and I'd find them naked in the hot tub in the backyard. I found Karen naked in bed with Kathy one night. This was after, there was once after Kathy's birthday party at the Country Club and we

all went over to Bill and Kathy's house. And Karen, there were several that just got naked in the hot tub. And anyways, we couldn't find Karen and Robin Alford said, where did Karen go? So she went in the house to go find Karen, but Bill Bono had already gone in there, in the house. And so Karen said, or Kathy, Robin said, I'm going to go check on Karen. And Karen was so intoxicated she passed out. She was on the couch naked. So we all went in there and we surprised her to go and they had to get her dressed. Well, Robin Alford told me later that she prevented Bill from raping Kathy. Said he was trying to take advantage of her. He said she's the one that put the towels on her and everything. After that all happened, I tried to pull Karen

out of the situation. I said, listen, it's not good to be over there. I said, I see what's going on now. There were school teachers that were over there that was involved, Brian and Shannon and Lee. They were naked in the hot tub, everybody was. And I didn't think anything about it at first. I thought, you know, and yeah, I just thought, you know. But then when I realized what was going on and I tried to pull Karen out of it, and then I caught her over there another time, naked in the back in the hot tub. And Dustin would come home at night and I'd say, I need to go check on your mom because there'd be times that somebody would have to drive Karen home.

Or I'd have to go get her and drive her home, they called me. And so I was always concerned and worried about her. And so, the night that she went to the country club with Kathy and Bill, she told me just Kathy, but I found out later that Bill went too. She promised me she'd never go get in the hot tub again, that was a bad judgment. I even confronted Kathy about it. Kathy said, oh, I now what? We decided not to do that anymore. But anyways, Dustin got home. As a matter of fact, I think he might have been over here or something, but he got home and I said, Dustin, I need to go check on your mom. I said, it's almost one o'clock and I don't know where she is. So, I went to park down the road. I went to Bill and Kathy's backyard and went around and I heard people in the hot tub and everything. There's Brian, Shannon, and Lee. It looked like they were engaged in sexual activity. They told me the way to get in the deal was getting out of the hot tub.

But I heard Shannon say, where did Karen go? And I thought, oh my God, you know, she promised she'd never do this again. And so I just went and went inside the door. Bill had already gone inside. I said, Bill. We were inside this door and I said, Bill, where's Karen? It's 1.30 in the morning. I'm worried about Karen. Oh, she's upstairs talking to Kathy. I just went on upstairs and I stood there in the doorway and I heard Karen.

I could see Karen was in the bed here and Kathy was over here. They were talking and I heard Kathy say, well, I think that's Bill coming up here or something back. Karen said, oh, well, if he wants to go to bed or something, he can kick me out or whatever. So I finally said, Karen, I said, what are you doing? I said, it's 1.30 in the morning. I'm worried about you. And she said, oh, she's going home. I'll be there in a little bit. I said, why are you in bed with Kathy? I said, what's going on? I said, have you been in the hot tub? She said, no. And then she got upset and started cussing. And so I said, well, get up. I tub? She said, no. Then she got upset and started cussing.

I said, well get up. I need to talk to you. I need to make sure you're okay. She said, just leave. I said, I'll be home in a little bit. I'm tired of you always checking on me blah, blah, blah. So I went over there to the covers and I pulled them back. She was wet.

She did have a towel, but she was totally naked. I asked her, why aren't you in bed naked with Kathy? And later on I confronted Kathy about that too. There's just a lot of stuff that's been going on that people have told me. When you confronted Kathy, what was her attitude? Oh no, not that way. It was by phone. It was just bad judgment. You didn't say anything to her that night? Oh yeah, she wouldn't say nothing. She was just over there. They were drunk and drinking and that's what always happens over there,

is to the point of all the partying. Then another time, and I've got dates, when she did this, but Karen snuck out. It wasn't that long ago. It was probably a month and a half ago, two months, I think, somewhere in there. Karen was sneaking out of the house again, which I'm upstairs. And even since I worked a third shift and we haven't slept together in years, the marriage was not bad until recently, until all this happened with Bill and Kathy. And that's whenever I confronted the situation, I got shunned.

Rob and Alfred got shunned because we confronted what all was going on over there. And that's whenever, you know, we got, you're not welcome no more, blah, blah, blah. And Robin confronted them too. And she, you know, they just shunned her. Now that clip had some pretty intense allegations in it. And they weren't completely untrue. I'm not saying that everything that David said was credible, not at all, but there was a grain of something real there.

I know that at least one time, possibly more than once, Karen did go over to Kathy and Bill's place, and they all decided to get into the hot tub together. And it wasn't an issue that Karen hadn't packed a swimsuit, because Bill and Kathy just had the idea that they could all get in this hot tub naked together. Now, in fairness, apparently this was something that they did with a lot of their friends. Sometimes they had people over, or one or more of them didn't have anything to wear to go swimming in, so they would just kind of strip down to their bra and underwear and get in, or get in completely naked, one of the two. One friend even told the police that they were at a party once and Karen was in the hot tub in her bra and underwear. And I guess she was feeling pretty good because she ended up kind of just like whipping her bra off, sort of tossing

it away while this friend watched, just going completely topless, which fine, your choice, your prerogative, do you? And apparently this wasn't something that Bill or Kathy or any of the others saw as particularly sexual or inappropriate, but everybody has their own personal opinions on that, right? I mean, I don't know, thinking for yourself, if there's a short list of people who you would be willing to skinny dip with, or if you're more, you know, absolutely not, never in a million years. I think that for me personally, I probably would not skinny dip with somebody who was not my husband. That's just my personal preference. But again,

everybody's different. Anyway, at least one time while Karen was at Bill and Kathy's place, she did suddenly start feeling dizzy and woozy. She needed to go lie down, so she climbed into bed with Kathy, who was already trying to go to sleep for the night. And later on, Kathy gave conflicting statements to the police about whether Karen had anything on when she got into bed or not. But you heard David's statement just now. He said that he went to Bill and Kathy's house and found Karen naked in bed with Kathy. Clearly, in David's mind, whatever happened in the bed between Kathy and Karen, it was a sign that she was cheating on him, or at least gearing up to cheat on him soon. And let's also talk about that other allegation that David made. According to Bill and Kathy, one night Karen was at their house pretty late, not wearing any

clothing, maybe after one of those naked hot tub parties, I'm not sure, but in any event, she passed out before she remembered to get dressed. So Bill found her lying there, naked, and just covered up with a towel. Again, Kathy and Bill both insisted that nothing shady ever happened. There was nothing sexual, certainly no attempted rape, but David clearly suggested that Bill wanted to take advantage of Karen in that situation. And I guess another person in their friend group also was spreading rumors to that effect as well. Now, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that Bill and Kathy were telling the truth. Their house parties were all just in good, clean fun. As somebody who has

been to a lot of parties, and my own fair share of parties, nothing about this sounds too over-the-top crazy to me. Sure, if you were going out every night, passing out naked with strangers, that might, yes, be a red flag, but sleeping over with good friends? Undressing in front of them? Not so much. It feels like something that's not that big of a deal. Again, in moderation. But if it is happening all of the time, every time Bill and Kathy had couples over, then yeah, I definitely do see the red flags there. And if there was something to those allegations that Bill was maybe into Karen and maybe willing to take advantage of her, then she disappeared right after she was supposed to spend the night at his place, then canceled last minute? Something feels weird there as well. So I could see why David would think that that was worth sharing with the police.

It all just came down to who was more believable, Bill and Kathy or David? It really does sound to me, and this is just my opinion of course because I can't prove it, but it does sound to me, and this is just my opinion, of course, because I can't prove it, but it does sound to me like David was pointing the finger as hard as he could at Bill and Kathy. He might have done it because he didn't want anybody looking too closely at him, sure. I mean, all of the signs were there, the rambling, the repeated insistence that Bill and Kathy were the real problem in this. All of those are signs that somebody could be lying, right? I also think it's interesting just how calm and collected he sounded during his interrogation. I know that everybody grieves and panics differently, and we definitely shouldn't accuse somebody of being guilty just because they're not crying or they're not into full-blown

hysterics when somebody they love goes missing, but after about an hour of him being very, very calm, very strategic, and talking and blaming everybody else, it almost felt like David suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be sad and scared. Because right as the interrogation was wrapping up, out of complete nowhere, he just turned on the waterworks. Okay, let's take this also into consideration. What if she has left with somebody? How are you going to take that? I just want her to come home and to be a mother.

If she doesn't want to be a wife, that's her decision. I can accept that. But if there's someone else, as long as they're not hurtful or harmful to the girls or whatever, I just have to accept it. That's not something that I want or something that would be hard. How did she file? Have you filed for divorce? you know that's not something that i want or something that would be hard she filed on the 5th and that's her attorney that creasy okay jason did you have an attorney yeah i got one uh right back tim nath nathy nathy yeah he was there the night he's the brother to the chris nathy that their dog i think it's so

wild that he was wiping his eyes like he was tearing up in that last clip, and it's not even clear to me if he actually was crying or if he was just trying to force it. But either way, needless to say, the police were definitely suspicious. And it didn't take long for them to feel even more suspicious. Because on October 30th, the same day that Karen had been reported as missing, some of Karen's friends found her car. But Karen wasn't inside of it. And in fact, this car was not in good shape by the time they called the police to come and check it out.

It had been parked and completely locked up, but some of Karen's clothing was still in the back seat. And you know what else was sitting right there, smack dab center on the seat in the car? Her divorce papers for David. When the police officers managed to get the door open, he noticed that he had absolutely no problem sliding into the driver's seat, which he's an adult man, so think about that for comparison. On average, most men are bigger than most women, right? So the fact that he didn't even need to adjust to the seat at all, push it back, make it more of an open space for him, it may have indicated that Karen wasn't the last one to drive the car. Another interesting detail was that one tire was totally flat. There was a screw in it, as a matter of fact. And when a tire

expert took a closer look at the tire, they said it didn't look like Karen or whoever was driving had gone over this screw by accident. It was more like somebody had actually screwed it into the tire on purpose, and by the time the car was found, the tire was then completely shredded. Now, there were no obvious signs of violence in the car. There was no blood or anything that was ripped or spilled, nothing like that. No clear indication that maybe a struggle had occurred. But clearly, the fact that her car was abandoned like this, it didn't look good for anyone who was still hoping that Karen would be found alive. And no surprise, right from the get-go, David was right at the top of the suspect list for the police.

And not just because of the divorce, but also some very interesting details that came to life about their relationship. There were a lot of allegations of violence and very alarming, controlling behavior when it came to their marriage. I mentioned before that David and Karen had separated for about seven months back in 1999. The reason for that was because David had cheated on her, and Karen found out. She wanted to leave him, but David wouldn't let things end that way. He couldn't stand to let her get away. According to some text messages that Karen had sent to her friends later on, she said that David threatened to kill himself if she ever left him. He literally put a gun to his head and said he would pull the trigger unless she took him back. And that worked, I mean, I guess, because the two of them didn't just get back together,

they had an entire new wedding ceremony on their anniversary. However, their marriage didn't magically get better after that, not at all. According to a whole bunch of Karen's friends, David was very controlling. When she was out having fun, he would call her over and over again, just expecting her to always tell him where she was, who she was with, when she would be back home. Sometimes if she didn't pick up those calls, he would just keep calling over and over and over again. I am talking 25 times in 30 minutes. That's an overkill, right? And just picture that for a second. I know that we have all had those times where we're trying to get a hold of somebody. Sure. Especially if you've been drinking. I definitely had my fair share of drunk dials in the past with past relationships. No doubt. Maybe

you're angry. Maybe you know that you're acting a little bit crazy, but you know, you don't care. But imagine calling somebody. You go to voicemail, you hang up, you hit redial immediately, the same thing happens, so you do it again, then again, and then you do it 21 more times after that. Because you can't even take a breather when you're trying to make 25 phone calls in a half an hour. That is not normal or sane behavior. That on its own is just a massive red flag. And for anybody listening right now who is in a relationship where your partner or your significant other is calling you like that all of the time when you're out or when you're not with them

because you're with friends, that definitely can possibly be a form of emotional abuse. So please take note of it. See if there's other red flags going on in your life because that is not healthy behavior. And that's not all that David would do. If he couldn't get Karen on the phone, he would sometimes just show up at her friend's house

completely unannounced and uninvited. A few of her friends would notice him and they would think that it's weird that he would just come to these parties that he hadn't even been invited to. And sometimes he would arrive super late at night, right, when everybody was about to head home anyway. Almost like he was there to grab Karen and just, like, drag her back home to make sure that she got home at an early hour, or a decent hour, according to him. And you know who else definitely noticed him acting like this and essentially being a walking red flag?

Karen's good friends, Bill and Kathy. David said that he didn't like them because he thought that they were a bad influence on Karen. But to my mind, it sounds like the real issue was that they were a good influence or that they were an outlet for Karen. She was able to confide in them. They offered to help her with those divorce paper fees. They got her a second phone so that she could safely navigate all of that. And I can see if somebody is very controlling and possessive, they certainly wouldn't like anybody who's coming into the equation and interfering with their ability to control a situation.

And someone like that certainly wouldn't like people being around that help remind Karen what a normal, healthy relationship looks like. So again, assuming they really were just a couple who liked partying, being around that help remind Karen what a normal, healthy relationship looks like. So again, assuming they really were just a couple who liked partying, liked having a good time, and they weren't rapists or swingers, which is what some of the local rumors were saying, they just were good friends. But honestly, even if they were swingers, so long as everything was consensual and nobody got hurt, what was the harm in that either? Who cares what their personal interests, habits, or choices are? Karen was a friend to them, and they were allowing her to stay at their house when she was afraid of David. They were helping her with those fees, as I mentioned,

with the phone. They really were trying to protect Karen. And because of his weird possessiveness, and his habit of just showing up at friends' houses unannounced looking for Karen, Bill and Kathy were apparently actually pretty afraid of David as well. But like I said before, David basically acted like Bill and Kathy were dragging Karen into this world of, you know, drunken, wild sex parties, corruption, all of these things. He told the police about that incident where Bill covered her up so that people, you know, wouldn't see that she was naked, and he said that it was predatory in some way, which to me, and I wasn't there, so I don't know, but it doesn't sound predatory. It sounds like the opposite, like he wanted to make sure that Karen's visible naked body wasn't just

on display for everybody at the party to see. But again, I wasn't there, and David's gonna say what he's gonna say. Now, even if we do want to say, okay, there is, though, a little bit of a gray area here, it does sound like Karen might have been letting loose a bit more than what was responsible around her new friends. If that was out of character for her, I could see how her husband would have grounds to worry, certainly. That said, Bill and Kathy weren't the only ones who said that David's crazy and possessive behavior was way over the line. You also have Karen's neighbor, a woman named Jennifer, who said that Karen came over one day, but before the two of them could

even relax or enjoy themselves, David just showed up acting like he owned the place, and he refused to leave until Karen came back home with him. Another friend said that she went with Karen when she got a new tattoo once. And David absolutely flipped his shit entirely when he heard about it, because he didn't want Karen getting a tattoo with a friend. He wanted to be there himself. He wanted to be with her. Just another illustration of possessiveness, of control. Then there were so many people, I mean so many,

who came to the police after Karen disappeared. And they all said that they thought that David was actually stalking Karen. They saw his car on the street when she was out running errands, anytime she was out hanging out, just kind of always lurking in the shadows. Kathy and Bill's neighbor even came forward to say that David came over one day

and asked if he could just hang out in her yard. Like he wanted to just eavesdrop on all of the things that happened at Kathy and Bill's house while Karen was there and he wasn't. Just kind of almost like, not a peeping Tom, but just like watching, just witnessing everything. Which, bro, you're not invited. You weren't invited for a reason. Like, back off, right? Give her some room to breathe. No wonder she felt suffocated and that she could potentially be in danger if she was filing for divorce, right? I mean, truly, this behavior just has a red flag written all over it. So as all of this came to light,

it was enough that David got yanked into a second interrogation just one day after the first one. In a lot of ways, it was pretty repetitive. It was more of him talking nonstop, barely letting the police get a word in, more of him acting like he thought Bill and Kathy were the real dangers in this situation. And in fact, when they asked David about how he even reported Karen is missing, he insisted that he called 911 before Bill and Kathy ever did, which wasn't true. It's very easy to look at the call records and see when everybody called in. But David just really needed to be the first one, I guess. And he basically tied himself over in knots trying to explain that he actually beat Bill and Kathy to that she hadn't heard from her all morning.

Was Bill calling you on the cell phone or landline? No, Bill called direct to the sheriff's or police department, I guess. So what you're saying, you and him never had a conversation? No, we never had a conversation. I didn't talk to Bill at all. It was just with Kathy. And how did you find out that he was on the line? That's when you talked to Kathy.

She called you. No, I called them. Kathy. Yeah. And I asked, where is Karen? Yeah. I asked if she'd seen Karen, that her vehicle was got a flat. Jennifer told me about it.

From there, it just sort of went on with all of the rambling and all of the blame gaming. And just like during the first interrogation, it felt like all of a sudden at the very end of this session, David just remembered that he was supposed to be sad and worried about Karen. Because again, he got teary-eyed and emotional. But when the police got up and left the room, it's almost like he turned those feelings off like a light switch. she um asked where she was going and she said I'm gonna go ahead and go to Walmart I said um this light and I said no I said you're probably really going to Kathy's aren't you and she said um no I'm not now I've got to say I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Robert Durst case or if you watched the Jinx I think it was on HBO but this totally gives me vibes of that and if you haven't watched

it you absolutely need to do it is a great documentary i think it's a docu-series actually but i had followed that case for years and years before the jinx ever came out and they catch him in one moment where he's talking about how he's innocent how he had nothing to do with anything not realizing he's still being recorded and as soon as these investigators leave room, I don't remember if it was in the room or the bathroom or what, he basically says, I killed them all. Of course I killed them all. And I'm paraphrasing there. So it feels almost as though even though there wasn't an admission or a confession, once the police left, it was like the emotions just dried up and he was back to, you know, unemotional. Now the thing

that really stands out to me in terms of absolute creep behavior came on November 14th, just a couple of weeks after Karen's disappearance. This is when the police seized David's computer. They looked up all of David's browsing history and everything that he had been doing on his computer since Karen was first reported as missing. And what they found on his computer and those searches was about to paint a true picture of who David was and what really happened to Karen. Police sees David's computer and they start going through his browsing history, his past searches, I mean everything that he has done. And between October 10th and November 14th, so beginning just a few weeks before Karen went missing and then ending two weeks after she disappeared, which was the day that the police

took the laptop, he visited the dating site Match.com. And he didn't just visit this site, he visited it over and over again. I don't mean like a handful of times, like three or four or even 10 or 11 times. No. In those 35 days, David went on Match.com and other dating websites 280 times. 280 times. And the first visit was that very same day that Karen served him with the divorce papers. And at the end of that window of time, his wife had been missing for all of two weeks, yet he was still searching Match.com and perusing all these other dating websites. And even if you think, okay, yeah, but she had filed for divorce, he knew that even if she did end up being found safe and alive

and returned home, they probably weren't going to stay together, so he was just checking out his options. But still, you would think that he would feel some type of worry or fear about her well-being. I mean, finding a new girlfriend wouldn't be at the forefront of somebody's mind, necessarily, if they actually cared about their wife or their missing wife. That's my opinion, at least. Just on a human level alone, even if he wasn't completely in love with her anymore, if you're looking for your missing spouse, how are you also finding time to be curious about other people and like perusing all these dating websites? It just does not make sense to me. And in another very bizarre thing, in those interrogation clips that I played earlier, you might have seen that David was walking on crutches during the police interrogations.

Well, apparently the day before the Halloween party, David went over to a friend's house to help him do some chores all around the farm. And apparently, it was very, very labor-intensive. I mean, difficult work. He was lifting and carrying these 65-pound bales of hay, and he was just fine. He had no trouble with it whatsoever. Kathy also spent some time with him and Karen that weekend, and she thought that it was weird just how easily David was getting around, even though he talked this huge talk about how he needed these crutches to walk. So the police went and talked to David's doctor, who said that there wasn't anything seriously wrong with David's legs. Although he did, yes, have a minor injury to his knee, but all to say, he didn't really need crutches. So was he faking this injury to make the homicide detectives think that

he wasn't physically up to abducting his wife or harming her in some type of way? It definitely looked that way. It felt a little performative, almost like he had this prop to make people think, oh, we got to rule him out. It certainly could have been him. He's on crutches. How would he murder somebody, dispose of them, and do all of this? Definitely not. So they were now trying to piece the puzzle together. And during all of these interrogations, everyone in

the town, investigators, the public, everybody came together to do these massive searches, really just trying to find Karen either dead or alive. Hopefully alive, of course, but the police did bring in cadaver dogs along local rivers just in case. And sadly, a month and a half after she first went missing, on December 10th, Karen's body was found. Now, where Karen's remains were found was more bizarre than I think we have covered in a lot of cases. See, Karen's remains were in a cemetery. Obviously not in a grave, but it was like somebody had just dumped her in the cemetery. And an autopsy revealed that she had been killed by a blunt force blow to her head. Literally, her head was bashed and bleeding when she died. The 17-page autopsy

report found Karen Swift's cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, possibly caused by a hammer. The consensus of the people I speak to is this was a personal crime, not a random crime. They think they know who did it, but they just don't feel like they can prove it. Swift's autopsy report says she was found naked with her underwear around her thighs. To this day, it's unclear if she was sexually assaulted. According to the toxicology report, Swift had Benadryl, Tylenol, and caffeine in her system, but no illegal drugs or alcohol were in her system when she died. So obviously, this was not accidental, right? Karen did not die in an accident. Karen had been murdered. As you heard, Karen's body was found completely nude below the waist. Her

underwear had also been pulled down. However, there was no male DNA in her groin area at all. No semen, no pubic hair, nothing like that. There was also nothing underneath her fingernails, I mean, the way that you would expect if she tried fighting off her killer or having defensive wounds. So basically, all the police had on David was circumstantial evidence. The fact that he was abusive, controlling, that he acted sketchy as hell after the disappearance and even during those interrogations. But there was absolutely nothing that proved that he was responsible for this. Was he? Now, David looked pretty guilty. I will say that. I mean, seriously, I can't imagine anyone looking at all

of this and thinking that there's a chance in hell that he did not do something to Karen. But one thing that we will see time and time again is that the police investigations can take a very long time. Sometimes it just takes a little while to get all of the evidence together, all the pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes they're just waiting for the right smoking gun to turn up, to make them feel like they have a real shot at getting a conviction. And in this case, from the time that Karen's body was found until they made an arrest, it was 11 years. I don't know exactly why it took so long, the police have not spoken out much publicly about what they were waiting on, but what I do know is that on August 8th of 2022, David was arrested and he was charged

with premeditated first degree murder. Still a little in shock. I had kind of given up. Even though Karen Swift died in 2011, Janet Ross still remembers her friend's personality vividly and fondly. She was just the kind of friend you want to have. She was a lot of fun. She was witty. She was kind. That's why Swift's unsolved murder affected Ross so greatly for so long. For the first few years, it just like it consumed me every day. That's all I could think about. And I knew that wasn't good for me or my health or my family. We're glad that it looks like maybe justice is being served, but this is very traumatic for their children. Dyer County Sheriff Jeff Bach said, we have literally spent thousands of hours on this case,

and a lot of that time was spent dispelling false information and rumors. Our investigators never gave up and just kept going through the evidence, and I want to sincerely thank them for their diligence in this case. The authorities in Dyersburg all of these years had been telling Karen's mother that this was not a cold case. They were still working on it, that there would be justice. Still, for Ross, David Swift's arrest felt bittersweet, considering the four children involved. Now, a lot can happen in 11 years. In David's case, by 2022, he had married somebody new.

Then he had also separated and gotten divorced. And just like history was repeating itself like we see so often, he allegedly was stalking his ex-wife. Now to lay this out a little more clearly, David's divorce for his second marriage was finalized in June of 2022. He was arrested for Karen's murder just two months later in August. He ended up bailing out and getting out, but then about a year later in July of 2023, he was arrested for first-degree stalking. Now this time around, the judge decided to not let him post bond, because clearly, I mean, this guy couldn't behave himself whenever he was free. And this, I think, is really telling. The saying goes, a tiger doesn't change its stripes, right? And it sounds

like David never stopped being a controlling, abusive, just shitbag to his partners. Even when he was facing literal murder charges for his ex-wife, he allegedly just could not hold himself back from terrorizing his second wife. Could not do it. So his murder trial began a little under a year after that second arrest. Officially, it began on May 28th, 2024. And I have to say this, but usually when I'm doing these deep dives, I don't get around to talking about the trial until pretty late in the episode. All because there's usually so much to talk about in terms of the evidence, the interrogation, all the things. But this time around, I mean, the stuff that came out during the trial, it was so out there, ridiculous, crazy,

whatever you want to call it, that I just really need to pause and now get into this in a very big way. Because you'll remember how while the police were interrogating him, David tried to make Bill and Kathy look like they were the guilty ones. He even suggested that Bill was a rapist who had attacked his own wife, who might have also wanted to hurt Karen. Well, those interrogation tapes were played during the trial, by the prosecution. My guess is that they were thinking the same thing that I'm thinking right now, namely that David wasn't doing himself any favors, just rambling on, pointing the fingers, and basically acting like he could throw the police off his trail.

But the defense took that footage, and they ran with it. They really did try to make Kathy, to some extent, and Bill, to much bigger extent, seem like these dangerous, violent people. In particular, they try to make it sound like Bill might have had a reason to want to hurt Karen. And they aren't the only alternative suspects that the defense put forward in order to say, like, hey, maybe David didn't do this. There was reasonable doubt. Look at these people. Look at these people. I know that this all sounds outlandish, but just three weeks before Karen's murder,

she and David actually called the police because they thought somebody had poisoned their dog. I guess someone else in the neighborhood had a dog that got sick and then died, and that neighbor could tell that the dog had been poisoned? So then, on October 7th, just a few weeks before Karen went missing, she and David had learned that their dog had wandered over to a home that belonged to a man named John Hogshooter. Now, I'm sorry, but I just gotta say this. If the name Hogshooter doesn't tell you right away that this is not a safe person to have around your animals, I don't know what to tell you. But anyway, when the dog came back from John's house, it was very, very sick. So Karen went over to John's place just to kind of ask, like, hey, what's up? Did you see anything that happened? Do you know anything? And she saw that John had left out this, like, pan of food,

almost as though he had given it to the dog. But the food had obviously been tampered with, and Karen could see that there was this residue, this crusty blue stuff that obviously was not supposed to be edible. So Karen headed straight back home and said that she thought that the dog had eaten some type of poison. She and David rushed to the vet, and luckily they got the dog the treatment that the dog needed, and it survived. But it does make you wonder, if somebody is willing to poison and kill their neighbor's pets for literally no reason at all, that's a pretty clear sign that they're capable of violence, right? I mean, there's not a clear line connecting John to Karen's murder, not by any means. Karen's dog wasn't even the only dog that he had hurt,

so it's entirely possible that this guy just hated animals and was lashing out at random. But I do know that John was arrested in November of 2011. The story about the dog poisoning came out while the police were investigating Karen's disappearance, and the testimony was enough to charge him with aggravated animal cruelty. He pleaded guilty to the charges, but when he got called to testify during Karen's murder trial years and years and years and years later in 2024, he definitely tried to make it sound like the entire dog poisoning incident was just some kind of honest mistake. They just was tearing up my yard, so I just kept going, you know. Okay. So after you asked them to keep the dogs in the yard, did they do that?

They did not. Okay. So what did you do next? I was having a bad fly problem in my house because of the dirt being hauled in because I was building a house there, and they was building a new school that consolidated and I would ask them if they could dump all their concrete dirt and debris there at my place and they said yeah well the dirt attracted the flies and then dogs I guess and so I put out some fly bait to try to kill off all the flies and the nafies dogs got into the fly poison okay where did you put that fly bait outside

by my front door okay um did mr and ms swift's dog also get into that poison i was told that they did i wouldn't know what their dog looked like okay did you ever talk to mr ms swift about that i did not did you ever have words with them or any discussion about the dogs being poisoned? No, I did not. I know it was the Nafee's dogs because it went to their house. It was just two big dogs. That's all I ever seen was their dogs. Okay.

So let's just unpack that for a second here. John's neighbor's dog is bothering him. So he goes to the neighbor to complain and it doesn't fix the issue. Then, by a pure coincidence, he also has a fly infestation. And he just decided to put fly poison all outside of his house. Outside his house, not inside, but outdoors, by his front door, at ground level. Not somewhere high up where only flies would get to it, but accessible for anything, any creature on the ground. And dogs are big, right? Flies are little.

So you don't need to be putting out quantities of this poison that are big enough to kill one dog and make another dog sick just to kill flies. Again, flies that are outside and not actually inside your house. So yeah, I don't really believe that at all, that John just accidentally poisoned those dogs. It sounds to me like this is somebody for whatever reason intentionally set out this poison because he wanted to kill his neighbor's dogs. But as we know, if you're violent in one way, say by killing an animal or killing a dog, it's reasonable to think that you might be violent in another way too. That's also one of the telltale signs of escalation.

Usually it starts by hurting animals. Now you're probably thinking, okay Annie, isn't that a bit of a stretch? Can we really say that this John guy might be a murderer just because he hurt one dog and killed another one? Well, let's look at some of John's other sketchy behavior. Remember how I said that it was suspicious that David spent his whole police interrogation basically trying to blame Bill and Kathy for Karen's disappearance? Well, when John came to testify during Karen's trial, he was pointing fingers as well.

He said that he was absolutely sure that David, who he apparently had never even met before, definitely was suspicious and that he probably did it. I can't remember. It was right at dark and he was talking to him and you could see him using his crutches while he was talking. But after he got done talking and they went in the house, he just walked like he didn't need crutches anymore. I thought that was strange. I just didn't think nothing about it at the time, but I was like, well, maybe his leg ain't hurting no more. I don't know. And that was after everyone else went inside? Yes. Okay. Do you remember the TBI showing up at Mr. Swift's house and doing a big search? Yes, sir.

Was you at home at that time? Yes, sir. Okay. I think they was actually there twice. Okay. Did you notice anything strange about Mr. Swift's house before the search happened? Yes. Tell me about that. If it had just been an ordinary routine run of the day, just seeing somebody on crutches, I probably wouldn't remember.

Later that night, I went outside and noticed an industrial chemical smell in the air. And thought it was really super weird. So weird, I went over to my friend's house that lived, David lived that way, and he lived right over this way. I went over and got him and said, man, can I hear a smell? And it was just a real odd smell. Now this testimony was especially surprising, because from the sounds of things,

John remembered this very specific damning behavior from David, but literally nothing else. Look at the front page and look into it. Now the night of October 29th through October 30th, you're not saying you heard any strange noises or screams or anything like that, did you? Sir, it was a busy weekend for me, and I was exhausted, so I didn't hear nothing. All right. I was in bed. I just didn't hear anything. All right.

You didn't hear any noises like a flat tire going by or anything? No, sir. All right. So this guy didn't remember getting questioned by the police, even though he eventually got arrested and charged with animal cruelty. He couldn't remember when any of this happened, but it stuck out in his mind 12 and a half years later that one time his neighbor was walking around with crutches,

but he didn't seem to really need them. Something isn't really adding up here. I don't buy that this was just the one thing that John coincidentally was able to remember. Again, I'm not saying that I believe that he was automatically the real murderer in this situation, but it's pretty clear that Karen and David were surrounded by some weird people, some interesting people. They had John the dog killer, Kathy and Bill, the naked hot tub party hosts. It just, there were questionable people around. I mean, enough to create some doubt. If not for the fact that David was acting like a possessive nightmare stalker,

I could even see somebody looking at any one of those other people as a potential suspect. And it's worth mentioning again, there was no physical evidence that physically connected David to this crime. Every single thing was circumstantial, which might explain why it took them 11 years to get around to actually making the arrest. And sadly, even though they were making the absolute best argument that they could in the courtroom, they just didn't have much in the way of physical proof. So given the evidence here, or lack thereof, if you were a juror on this jury, would you convict? So after deliberating for a day and a half, the jury came back with a verdict. Does the jury agree on the highest level of offense that the defendant is either guilty or not guilty? Yes. What is the verdict in that not guilty okay so the jury has found the defendant not guilty of first degree

murder yes okay has the jury considered the second level of the offense attempted first degree premeditated murder we did consider that is is there an agreement that the defendant is not guilty as to that offense yes sir there is an agreement has the jury is not guilty as to that offense? Yes, sir. There is an agreement. Has the jury considered the level of offense second degree murder? Yes, sir. Is there an agreement that the defendant is not guilty as to second degree murder? Not guilty. I have not asked you specifically, but are all of these agreements unanimous as to these levels of charges yes your honor okay has the jury considered the next level of char of charge attempted second degree murder yes sir do you all find the defendant not guilty of attempted second degree murder yes sir did each of you ma'am okay I'm looking at you because I want

to say I want to say and if you disagree just let me know okay now let's go back we did not do this as your first-degree murder charge that I'm told you found him not guilty of. Is that correct? Okay, I see head nodding affirmatively. And attempted first-degree murder. Is that correct as well? Okay. Has the jury considered the charge of voluntary manslaughter? Yes, sir.

Is there an agreement, or has the jury found the defendant not guilty of voluntary manslaughter? There was no agreement. No agreement? Is that the level of the offense at which there is disagreement? Yes, sir. Is that correct, ma'am? All right.

For manslaughter, the jury was deadlocked. They could not come to an agreement. That was probably one of the main reasons that they had been in deliberation for so long, that the judge had to declare a mistrial, meaning that David was convicted of absolutely nothing. When that was read out, David looked beyond shocked, and I've got to say, his tears looked way more authentic to me than those ones that he had squeezed out during his interrogation. It was almost like he was happier now about saving his own life than he was about his wife, who had been missing. And it really does seem, and this is just my interpretation, I'm just speculating here,

but it looked like David did not expect to be found not guilty for the majority of those charges. Like, he truly, genuinely didn't believe that anybody bought that story about how Kathy and Bill were seducing Karen into this life of sex and alcohol and may have gotten her murdered. But was this the right verdict? Or was everything completely backwards? I'll go back, talk with my staff. I'll talk to Mr. Taylor and we'll make a decision at that point. We're disappointed that we didn't get to complete the case one way or the other, but we're still thankful for what they did. Defense attorney Daniel Taylor says they are going to reevaluate the case and go from there.

Obviously, both sides would like to have this decided on all issues, but that's not the situation. So it's possible we will have to retry this case and we appreciate the jury for the decisions they've made. Well, two weeks later, a grand jury indicted David on voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault. Again. But there's a twist. At the hearing to talk about a retrial, his lawyers tried to dismiss the entire thing. They said that the statute of limitations on voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault had expired, and if the court agreed, David would walk free. Well, the judge didn't agree, and so now they are setting a new date for a new trial. But honestly, even if they do take him back to court, and even if they do end up getting a guilty verdict, it might not make a whole lot of difference. Because in Tennessee, the minimum sentence for manslaughter is three years. Given that David has already been in jail for almost two years waiting for this first

trial, it could be a while before the second one gets going, so he could possibly get out on time to serve, even with a guilty verdict. Depending on how things go with those stalking charges, which are still pending, it may not even be worth the bother. So could David end up behind bars for other reasons? Possibly. Of course, that doesn't automatically mean that that's what's going to happen. The maximum sentence for voluntary manslaughter is 15 years, so he could still go away for a while too. And I personally think it's worth trying, but of course that's not my call. But I do have to say, I find it weird that manslaughter was the charge that everybody was deadlocked on. I don't see any way that Karen's death was an accident, not any way, shape, or form.

I don't think it's possible to leave someone that badly beaten unless you're meaning to kill them. Also, she was naked from the waist down with her underwear pulled down. I mean, maybe if the argument was that he got so angry that he beat her up, but he didn't mean to kill her, but that wasn't the defense that David made. He said that he had absolutely nothing that he beat her up, but he didn't mean to kill her, but that wasn't the defense that David made. He said that he had absolutely nothing to do with her death. I almost wonder if the jurors felt like he did it, but they also felt like there was enough reasonable doubt with all of the shady neighbors

that maybe they couldn't give a guilty verdict on the more serious charges. I could see someone saying guilty for manslaughter if they saw it as almost like a compromise because they were split on murder, but I don't know. That's not how it's supposed to work, but sometimes people do things that they're not supposed to do. We certainly know that. I could be way off, and I could be completely wrong, and I'm just speculating, but I feel like it's the only way that that verdict even makes sense to me. That said, I do want to hear what everybody else thinks, so sound off in the comments. Do you think that David did this? Do you think that he didn't? Was it

somebody else? It looks like he has filed for an appeal on grounds that he can't afford an attorney, and we'll get in a decision on that in early November, so I certainly will be following this case, but let me know what you think. I will say one of the theories out there, I'm not agreeing with it, I'm not cosigning, but I just want to put it out there before you comment and tell me what you think. Some people do suggest that perhaps one of these parties, the party that she was at with Bill and Kathy, went a little too far and that maybe she had taken something, maybe the blunt force trauma was a cover-up, I don't know what the tox report said but something to that effect that she died at the party that of course wouldn't align with her dropping her

daughter back off at home unless she went back to that party and that's when it happened but the reason people are suggesting that is because she was found nude from the waist down and had something happen at that party would they dispose her just like that with the clothing again I don't think at all that that is the scenario, but I just wanted to throw it out there as another theory that's out there before you guys sound off in the comments. So let me know what you guys think.

Did David do this? Did he not? What do you think will happen at the trial? And what do you think the motive was? If he did do this, was it because he realized that he was losing grasp over Karen and that he couldn't control her anymore?

She was leaving. She was filing for divorce. She was out of there. And did he just snap? He clearly had similar patterns and behaviors with his next wife. So let me know what you guys think, and thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Serialistly. As a reminder, I will be back on the mic with you Thursday morning

with everything going on in Headline Highlights this week. That episode is exclusive to the podcast, so if you're watching this on YouTube to get access to that episode, you have to listen to the podcast. But we do that every single Thursday. They are podcast exclusive episodes. And if you guys do have an extra 30 seconds and you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple, I would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review. Let me know what you want us to cover in the next case let me know if you like these deep dives more so that we can cater this podcast to the information and the material that you enjoy hearing all right thank you guys again and i will be back on the mic with you in a couple days all right bye