Small Town Murder - #228 - Murder At Scary Bridge - Modoc, South Carolina

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

This week, in Modoc, South Carolina, where a teenage girl sneaks out the window, on a summer night, to hang out with her friends, but panic sets in, when she isn't home by morning. The only thing investigators have to go on were rumors of her appearance at a party, the night before, which leads to a story, so terrible, that it can hardly be believed. Along the way, we find out older people love to camp, that teenagers, who make pipe bombs are probably up to no good, and that some things are too horrible to even imagine! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman New episodes every Thursday! Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com & use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports! Follow us on... twitter.com/@murdersmall facebook.com/smalltownpod instagram.com/smalltownmurder Also, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts# See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week in Modoc, South Carolina, when a teenage girl sneaks out of her window for a night of fun and hanging out with her friends,

but never comes back home, no one could have ever imagined how terrible her fate actually was. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us once and again. We very much appreciate it. We have an absolutely insane show this week, obviously. I hope you enjoyed last week with the man fending the aliens off of his home there. That was quite the interesting one.

This week, not so silly, but definitely absolutely insane. So we'll get into that in a second. First of all, thank you for your reviews this week. That purple icon Apple podcast. Give us five stars if you haven't. It really helps out a lot. Head over to shut up and give me murder dot com right now. Very quickly. Right.

Right. As we're sitting here and get your merch and for crime and sports and for small town murder and of course get your tickets to live shows full slate of live shows next for 2022 and a couple left for the end of 2021 so check those out they're actually selling fast and a lot of them were you know close to sold out or even sold out from the 2020 because these are all rescheduled from 2020 so right you don't want to wait to get tickets or they won't be there because a lot of them are like people are telling us Boston isn't Boston

sold out already because it was sold out to begin with so ones like that are difficult so get your tickets right now and Patreon my goodness get your Patreon on patreon.com slash crime and sports the episodes we released this week

we are excessively happy with and we hope you will be as well because they are funny as hell. First of all is the crime and sports one, which you also have access to. You have access to everything if you're a patron. It's on the Atlanta Gold Club, which was a quote-unquote high-class strip club in Atlanta

where you can find out what Bill Gates, Patrick Ewing, and Madonna all had in common. So there you can find out what bill gates patrick ewing and madonna all had in common so there you go that'll give you there it was a scandal and people were forced to testify to exactly what happened what services were rendered and it's it's pretty funny and the small town murder one was on the sons of sam the more the theory than the documentary. The documentary is a small piece of the book that the guy, Maury Terry, who that's all based on, wrote called The Ultimate Evil, which I read cover to cover, and there is just some wild conspiracy stuff in there.

What a yarn. Wow. It's all in the details, my friends, and you need to hear this because it's crazy stuff. So Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports right now for all of that and more. You get the whole back catalog and everything else. We just uploaded a bunch just that we had older ones that weren't up there yet. So we just put a bunch up this week.

You never know when you're going to get some surprise bonus. Plus, you're going to get a shout out because you are our people and we love you. And so Jimmy will mispronounce your name to show our undying affection for you. Yeah. And if you just want a shout out and some good karma, you can go to PayPal. Use our email address, crimeandsportsatgmail.com. You can make a one-time donation there. And we have a huge, awesome, big announcement for everybody right now.

Yeah. It's a giant thing. huge awesome big announcement for everybody right now yeah it's a giant thing uh what we've been working on and it's hard not to tell everybody what we were working on when we're working on it but this is what's been going on behind the scenes for almost a year now a ridiculous amount of time people have been saying well where's vile human beings that's going to come but we that we had to do this first uh we started a network right so uh yeah we would like to bring to you shows that we think are good, that we would listen to. And that's our goal is to, you know, you know, whatever podcast app you have, it's saturated with lists and lists of different shows.

We want to give you things that maybe you wouldn't have found. That's exactly right. And or things that just we if we find it interesting, we want to present it to you. So we found a couple of shows here. And the first one, they're going to come out in the next few weeks, but the first one we'll talk about today is called Game of Crimes. First of all, if you've seen Narcos, it has the blonde guy in Narcos, that agent. The guy based on him, who's Stevephy is is one of the hosts of the show

and his and his buddy morgan right there old man who's also a very funny guy he was a cop as well for lifetime and these two are hilarious together and they're going to give you angles on stories that you've never heard before not just the pablo escobar stuff and all that although that's there and it's not just cops it's there they'll have hitmen on the show from prison they'll talk to. Interviews that you've never heard before, angles on things you've never heard before, Green River Killer stuff. They have all these episodes. It's amazing, this show.

And we have a trailer. The trailer's going to come out this weekend. But just for all of our people here, right before shout-outs this week, at the end of the show, you can hear the full trailer and get excited for it because we really are. So listen for that. And we're jacked for it. So that said. Great dudes.

And we have another show coming out that we're going to talk about here next week. We'll give you some info on that, which is amazing, too. It's so, so great. The hostess there, she's amazing. Both of them are. It's fantastic. It's a perspective that you can't get anywhere else it's good stuff so keep an ear out there quickly disclaimer this is a comedy show i don't

know if you've heard it before it's a comedy show we don't we don't make fun of the victims or the victims families why because we're assholes but well we're not scumbags that's a fact right there uh it's the way it is though we're gonna talk about murder and we're gonna be very nice to the people who are murdered and not so nice to the people who do the murdering. It's pretty goddamn simple. Yeah. That said, I think it's time to sit back, Jimmy, and shout, shut up and give me murder. I love doing it. It's just however we do it.

That's fun. Okay. That said, let's go on a trip, Jimmy. I'd love to. Let's do this. Okay. So we had a lot of top of the show there. That's fun. Okay. That said, let's go on a trip, Jimmy. I'd love to. Let's do this. Okay. So we had a lot of top of the show there. Sorry about that.

We have a network. We're proud of that. We want to know about the network. So we have today, we are going down from West Virginia to South Carolina. Right. And out of the frying pan into the fire here. We gave no mention of what the name of the network is,ames how much do we do we love everybody else and hate ourselves the upside down digital network right upside down upside down that's our name of our network so uh it's going to be good stuff

we're very very excited this is what we've been working on anything that you've put in tireless work behind the scenes on this insane amounts of work. So we got to thank her for that, first and foremost. And and also Aaron and Shelby and everybody that's worked behind the scenes. Thank you, everybody. Sorry to interrupt you there. But any time you hear upside down network, that's us. That's that's us.

It's going to be. Yeah. So Modoc, South Carolina. Now, this story starts actually in Martinez, Georgia, but it ends up and becomes very much a story of the Modoc area of South Carolina. Terrific. And it becomes into their lore. And this is this is a really messed up story. Everybody just right off the bat. I've got to tell you guys, this is just a boy. This is in western South Carolina. It's right on the Georgia border. Directly on it, there's water separating the states here.

Savannah's right there? Augusta. You'll tell me. Augusta. Yeah. Okay. It's about a half hour to Augusta, Georgia. All right. So like a lot of the people that live here work in Augusta.

Got it. Because it's, you know, there's more jobs there. About an hour and a half to Columbia, South Carolina, which is the capital of South Carolina. And about two hours and 20 minutes to Gaffney, South Carolina, which was our last episode in South Carolina, which I think was 178. That was that horrible strangler person. He was a bad, bad guy. So this is in McCormick County. It's been a while since we've been in South Carolina.

It has. I was just thinking that. Yeah, it's been a long since we've been in south carolina it has to come back i was just thinking that yeah it's been a long time uh area code 864 it's seven square miles but three of its water this is all lakes and it's all it's all sorts of water this town is meant for like it's like laughlin without the casinos from what i can gather it's like older people older people go there to jet ski they like drive their rvs there and like camp and jet ski and stuff is what it seems like it's a k-o-a campground kind of yeah but like kind of it's pretty it's very scenic uh motto down here um because have you ever heard of modoc south carolina no uh

apparently most people haven't a motto is quote we don't even know where the hell we are so i mean that's putting it out there for that one. History of this town. We'll just do the brief history and, you know, some funny stuff. This is a great quote from their historical thing here. Quote, a disastrous fire destroyed most of the business district on February 27th, 1910. Terrific. Every small town burned to the ground at some point between 1890 95 and 1915

every small town in america burned to the ground and had to be rebuilt so they they quickly rebuilt and uh had everything everything's been around now since like 1910 in main street and they they obviously uh made it not of wood the second time great so you know they expanded it they started putting some brick buildings in they put an opera hall in there so they're not fucking around now when you get an opera hall going on that's when you're high class and you're stepping it up here now the interesting part of this is there was a bunch of brick buildings on one corner on main near the corner of clayton street was the chero cola bottling company now i love like defunct things and you know old stuff like

that like old products so i went into this and apparently uh the pharmacist who invented chero cola was a guy named claude hatcher, Claude Hatcher from Columbus, Georgia. Nineteen oh five. He had a concoction, a ginger ale that he called Royal Crown. OK, which is familiar. And he went into business as Union Bottle Works. In 1910, he started making a cherry cola called Cherro Cola, which was, you know, pretty big and successful. So he changed the name of the company to Cherro Cola, which was pretty big and successful. So he changed the name of the company to Cherro Cola. Now, Coca-Cola was really pissed off because a bunch of people started making colas.

So they started claiming trademark infringement on the word cola. Oh, Christ. Which is pretty ridiculous. That's dirty. That's wild. So Cherro Cola had to drop the cola from its name. And then it was just called Cherro, which doesn't sound like any kind of good drink. That sounds disgusting. Yeah, and their market share went down, and they ended up discontinuing it in the 20s.

But what he ended up doing is he also, at the same time, concocted a fruit-flavored brand of soda called Nehi, which is great. Knee high was still around and he changed the name of the corporation to the knee high corporation. Then eventually he got into cola again and called his new company Royal crown cola. So that's RC cola. So there you go. RC cola came from this town and this guy, fascinating,

which is pretty cool. I thought it's really the most interesting thing that's happened in this town. So I thought that was pretty good you can taste the difference between coke pepsi and rc for sure there's a lot of big difference different formula by far the best booze mixer it is fantastic best for booze oh god what's what quality gives it a better booze mixing quality it's possibly it possibly because it's more sugary okay is it like more syrupy yeah yeah okay so it's a thicker 100 worse for you than probably anything else okay all right

now i'm sure it is the taste is it's unrivaled you can't that's what that's what rc is for it's certainly for mixing with booze but no one like no bars to ever have rc though nobody ever fucking has no it's a nightmare. It's in like a back dusty corner of a supermarket. We're like, can they still make that? Holy shit. And they've been holding onto the cans since 84. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, when I was a kid, I actually have like a phobia about RC. When I was about eight, I had an RC in a plastic bottle. Oh no. And it had some kind of goop in it like it had like congealed like the syrup or something no like in the bottle so like when you sloshed it you could like see it on the bottom like all oh it looked like it looked like if somebody spit out a chaw tobacco but it was just like all the it was all the like probably syrup it was all a syrup shit you could see it and

uh it's kind of made me not want to drink it. It came from South Carolina, James. It was probably the shift spit cup that they accidentally capped and sealed. That's a possibility. But I saw it and didn't want any part of that shit. You're not supposed to shake this, are you? This isn't good. I'm told you don't shake soda. Is that what this one's supposed to do?

So reviews of this town now once again i must reiterate because we just had somebody email us and complain thoroughly about our coventry coventry township ohio episode yeah about how we don't know shit about what they're talking about about coventry township oh and christ how can we How can we say those things about it when we've never been there? We don't write the reviews. These aren't a comedy bit. I take reviews that people write on the internet, okay? And then I read them to you. I'm a conduit of these. You can't be mad at us.

We didn't say this. We didn't write this. We had nothing to do with this whatsoever these are literally just if you read a yelp review when you read it is it your fault that it's there because you read it no it's not are you someone else wrote it that lady got bad service so reviews of this town once again not our reviews okay first one there's only two reviews i could find because it's a very small town so very few reviews two reviews uh there are two reviews and this one's two stars quote we only have one gas station one hair salon and a post office to be able to get to a grocery store it's a 30 minute drive to town i assume augusta we used to have a

firework station but it closed down many years ago due to the lack of customers that's a small town and they're like we used to have a firework stand but shit that closed down what 10 12 years ago that's you shouldn't remember that probably trying to trying to recount all the commerce that have been that's been sold here and you remember a fucking fireworks thing that's yeah well they only have like a post office a gas station and a hair salon otherwise so they remember oh this one this one is three stars the best review i could find now a lot of the campgrounds and lake shit are reviewed very highly so don't say this is just the town three stars quote i don't know of any homeless people that wander around our neighborhood it's an odd way to start any

exchange of anything i don't know of any homeless people that wander around our neighborhood all right were you asked that um my parents and name and our neighbors who have graduated college and have successful jobs work 20 to 30 minutes away from home. So not a lot of homeless people. Augusta, they work in. That seems to be the gist. Now, people in this town, population is 218. So small.

That's as small as we get here. That might be the smallest. Did we do one with 13 people or something like that? We did one with, I remember, 74, I want to say, in Ovando. We've done less, but this is in the top 10 of small that we've done here. Up 50% since 1990. Wow. And then it's dropped, though, since 2000. People have decided against it again.

Male and female population is normal. Actually, I'm sorry, a few more males than females, which is flip flopped. Uh, median age though is way higher. The demographics on age are out of the realm of normal here. Uh, median age is 58.3. It's normally about 37, almost 38. It says in the demographics that there are 0% of people are under 18. Wow.

So there's nobody under 18 and only four percent are under 45 is what it says holy shit so the whole town is 96 percent is above 45 years of age according to the demographics you can almost go ahead and throw uh let me see your id right out the fucking window if you're selling booze or almost anything. You don't even need to carry it. You don't need to carry it. You're fine, sir or ma'am. You're very much old enough. Fascinating. And so the stats are way off because of this, too, which makes it funny.

The married population is almost 80%. It's normally 50-50. Here's one, though. Single with no children, 0.0%. Get out of here. Not a town to go be picking up people and I'm going to go, oh, I'm going to hook up tonight. I'm going to find me something. I'm going to get somebody. No strings attached.

Strange. Just in case you get her pregnant, she comes with at least two. Well, here, you won't get her pregnant, but she'll bring her grandkids on the date is the problem. So you have to worry about that. She's 66 years old and she'll bring like her teenage grandsons on the trip. And then you have to pay for their dinner, too. They eat a lot, teenage kids. They are 19 in this scenario because nobody's under 18.

Nobody. Yeah, that's true. Well, no, they're just in visiting. That's all. They're there for the summer. They live in Augusta. They live in Augusta. They live in Augusta. Yeah.

So the reason this town are just no homeless people. You heard of golf? That's it. There's a lot of jet skiing going on. The race of this town is 100% white. So, I mean, there's only 200 something people, but they're all white people. Right. Religion, like we said, you would expect this.

It's down south. People are a little older. You'd say, oh, it's probably very high. Actually, no. With the older population, as we find, they're like, ah, forget about this God shit. 39.3% religious, which is under the average, actually. Methodists are actually the most people here than baptists obviously because they are the catholics of the south as we know a couple of lutherans a penic uh presbyterian or two

0.0 percent jewish that's not even a consideration here uh mormon mccormick county which it's in 47.2 percent of the people voted democrat in the last election 51.9 percent voted republican and under one percent voted independent as well interesting so yeah the elderly people tend to be less voting like in a third party they're like yeah i'm not i don't have a lot of votes to throw away here i don't have a lot of votes to waste this uh i'm gonna do this maybe three more times yeah i'm running the time um it's a two minute warning just went off i think i'm tapping my wrist here yeah so uh unemployment rate here is just about right with the rest of the country maybe slightly high uh household income is high here though i think if you it's one of those places where if

you have a good job and somewhere else you can live here. You know what I mean? Because it's kind of a scenic place and driving distance. Yeah. Half hour. That's an easy one. Within, let's see, median household income. Normally it's about fifty seven and a half thousand the rest of the country here. It's seventy two thousand, almost seventy three thousand dollars here, which is not too shabby. Yeah, that's good money. Thirty nine percent of% of the jobs here in the town are manufacturing jobs, which is, if that place shuts down, the whole town's out of work, generally. It's a little unstable, but listen, while it's good, it's good.

While it's good, it's good, yeah. The cost of living, 100 is average, par. Here, it's 104. It's kind of expensive. Housing is the high one one 126 out of 100 for housing median home cost here 292 100 which is about 60 000 over the national average so it's but i got 70 grand a year i don't give a shit well plus pretty much every house is on the water of some kind so yeah it's very hard to find a place that's not backed up to a fucking lake or brings the price up a stream.

Yeah. Yeah. It's scenic. So if we've convinced you that you need a nice place to retire, we have for you the Modoc, South Carolina real estate report. Your average two-bedroom rental here is about $700 a month, which seems pretty low when you consider that the housing is... That's like almost... That's like half the average of rentals. Yeah, that's super cheap. I don't know if anything's available, but that's what it is.

Yeah. I found a.82-acre lot that's right near the water. Like I said, there's nothing on it, but you'd have to knock some trees down and put a house up. Quarter of an acre, though? Yeah, more than that. Three quarters. More than three quarters. .82 acres.

Oh,.82. Yeah. Got it. Nice stuff. 99,000 bucks. Wow. That's kind of a deal there. That's not bad.

I found a three bedroom, three bath, 2,269-square-foot house. It's a nice house. Again, Lake Ajayi. T-Bulls and B-Hulls are great. This is terrific. Yeah. Yeah. Matching up T-Bulls and B-Hulls right on the lake.

$599,500 for this one. Oh, my. It gets pricey fast. That's a price increase of $4,000. They just tacked onto it. The market must be good there. Then, let's say you've done very well you you you know you you own half of augusta and you're going to relax on the weekends i found a five bedroom five bath most certainly t-bowls for b-holes here 3 700 square foot very nice backs the whole thing backs right up to the lake beautifully

it looks like uh dr marvin's house and what about bob that's what it looks like it's beautiful uh one million three hundred thousand dollars for this terrific not that bad if you got that kind of money to spend that's not a bad deal to spend it if you're retired or whatever things to do here uh well first of all outdoors it's all lake shit right anything you could think of on water and camping and all that they got the fire s'mores hell yeah just more s'more it up everybody then uh the only real thing to do like actual like you know thing that happens here is the is the modok dirt racing track oh just north of town hell yeah so they have a bunch of races and people win like if

you win the race you win like you know thirty eight hundred dollars or whatever they were showing like what they won yeah that you've you know you've spent like 40 grand since the last race getting your car ready and then you get like three grand big one of those yeah so i don't know what the uh i wanted to know what the experience of going there was not being a driver. So I found some reviews of the place that we'll read here. And most of the people liked it. But there's one kind of steady complaint through the whole thing. It's loud.

Well, no, here's five stars. This is from a month ago. Had a great time. Cost cost more a little high. Cost more a little high on tailgating and pit area. But had a wonderful time. Cost more a little high. Cost more a little high on tailgating and pit area, but had a wonderful time. Really enjoyed the race. Got it. No punctuation at all or any sense to that either.

Allow me to decipher that hillbilly shit for you, James. That means it was a little pricey to tailgate and hit the pits, but listen, I had a great time. But she really enjoyed it. Is that hillbilly ease? That's what it is. Four stars. Really great place to see some dirt racing. Ticket prices are also good.

Half the people say outlandish prices. Half the people go real reasonable prices. So I don't know what to say about the prices or who's saying what. Make sure to bring something to sit on because the seats are rough on the backside. All right. That's valuable advice right there. They're called steel bleachers, sir. That's rough.

They're probably splintery. They're probably just, you know, railroad ties. Love that you can bring a small cooler in with drinks and food. Just make sure you don't have glass bottles. If you don't want to go that route, just enjoy the food at the concession stand well no shit thanks a lot if you have to go to the bathroom just use one of the toilets really i'll be can't wait to do that if you like walk and do that with your legs yeah do that with your leg if you start to get light-headed you should breathe use your nose or your mouth there's two two options there. It's pretty good.

The lines do get long, and they are a little pricey, so bring some extra cash with you. Here's four stars. Four stars, great racetrack. But man, all that dirt flying in the air. Eyes were full of dirt after a few laps of super late models. I wish the dust was less to enjoy the racing more. Okay. And then finally, one star. This is the only person that really hated it.

Not worth spending the money. All you see is a dust race. Dust race. Track need to be redone. Other than that, it would be a good race track to go to with two O's, of course. Yeah. They don't got a water truck?

No. Sounds like it's depending on who you are it's pricey or not and uh it is i would imagine you know objectively dusty probably right sir it's a dirt track yes that's what i mean what do you you're running cars around dirt what do you expect if you water it down now it's a mud track it's not the same race so and cars drive a car across a muddy road it doesn't work well some of that water goes away you know what i mean yeah it's gonna still you're gonna get to the lower layers so crime rate it's just logic sir it's uh nope uh isn't it weird i went to a dust track and it's dusty. It's a weird thing. Went to a dirt race. I got dirt in my teeth.

Oh, Jesus. Crime rates literally called the Modoc dirt racing track. Dirt racing. Crime rate, property crime, slightly high, actually. A little above average, which tourist towns a lot of times. That's kind of the way it works. And then violent crime, murder, and assault the mount rushmore of crime is actually just under the national average as well which is kind of normal for a small town here and that's probably half like two old men

you know fight drunkenly fighting over an rv parking spot or something at a campsite is probably half of their violent crime there's just not enough people to have more i do want to point out somebody tagged us in a picture on instagram they went to mount rushmore and they tagged it uh murder rape robbery the mount rushmore words under each president that's fucking hysterical that's pretty funny so uh it's meant the other way but i guess the shoe fits i don't know so let's talk about a murder shall we because uh this here is uh this is a wow this was this one messed me up i'm not gonna lie here this is just um because there's there's ways to do things and there's a decorum to certain things and there's it's just certain like I've been listening to a lot of a book about a couple of different books about the Hillside Stranglers because we're going to have some bonus stuff about them eventually here pretty soon. and it's a singular person. When you hear about what Ted Bundy did to people or, you know, even BTK and you can think of the most horrible people or Jeffrey Dahmer.

There's something about one person doing that. That's not, I want to say comforting, but it's like, okay, it's a person. Yeah. They're at,

they're fucking wacky and they get away from everybody and they're all, you know, and you can avoid that one person and they can, maybe you could kick them in the nuts if they try to come at you or something. You know what I'm saying? Like you think about that. But like with like the Hillside Stranglers, there's two complete scumbags just sitting there being like, oh, let's do that. And then they're getting like they're encouraging each other and they're getting off on each

other's bullshit. And it's just there's something about that that makes it so much worse, so much, so much more terrifying. I would think for the victim to be like, you know, there's something just more scummy about that for some reason. And they're blood related and in it together. And they both have a common. There's so many more layers combined with that that they care so much about doing this and there's double it's like yeah there's two of them twins yeah yeah the double girls they're but it's like they're like when people get together more than one and they and they decide to like do something and they really go at it like that's something terrible there they turn into they turn it's like a feral thing like when you see a pack

of animals decide they can overtake something right you know what i mean like that's the mentality there and it's like it's creepy to think about people like just transitioning out of being human for a minute to just be like this weird pack mentality of we're gonna it's just creepy you know what i mean so whenever that happens whenever it's more than one person doing something terrible i always hate it so just uh yeah hillside stranglers coming up for some bonus stuff down the road here so this murder here to start the story off let's go back to 1994 okay so uh me we're we're teenagers here okay me and you are teenagers in 1994 you're what getting arrested shoplifting um genesis games from sears at this point the year before yeah yeah so this is a lot of trouble at this point trying to find my way i'm trying to

find my way i'm trying to find my way at this point too pockets full of gravity cologne and uh psychogenesis games i'm sure pockets full of weed for me at this point but um we need to talk about a young lady here her name is melanie k ritchie okay so melanie ritch uh, she's 15 years old in 1994. She is, she's a month younger than me. So this girl, so I mean, it's like, I, this is someone I would have went to high school with. I would have been in the same, you know, everything classes with you are P she might've been in my homeroom. You know what I mean? Like, so when I think of that, I can immediately like, um, a lot of these people. It's when we talk about the cases, whether they're newer or much older, it's, you know, you put them in a certain like news, like almost a capsule of like a news thing. It's you humanize them as you know, in your brain, obviously.

But I mean, like when it's someone who's like right at your age and you can see what they were doing at the time, you're like, oh, it very much like real for some reason i don't know why that is it's a very selfish human instinct i understand it's not like you know what tape was in her walkman you know all that yeah exactly that's that's what i'm saying i know exactly what she's doing and what her days are like it's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast morbid we're your hosts i'm alina urquhart and i'm ash kelly and our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor.

I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother f***er lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal. Or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor.

I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother****er lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal. Or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. And shit like that. So this is July 11th we're going to start at. Her birthday is July 23rd. So she's almost 16 years old, which is obviously a big deal, turning 16. So she was a high school sophomore the year before. It's summer vacation now.

And one night she decides to sneak out okay now it's the summer she's she'll be 16 in a couple of weeks this is very this is the most normal like teenage behavior going you know what i mean she's gonna sneak out and go hang out with her friends out for a little while you know like that's whatever. So maybe the most normal teenager behavior we've ever had on the show is we've had a lot of weird shit. She's not like married to her stepfather. She doesn't have two kids already.

You know what I'm saying? She's from like a decent family. Her parents seem like decent people. That's a nice, you know, she's well cared for and shit like that. She's just a normal. This is in Georgia. This is in Georgia. This is in Martinez, Georgia, a nice you know she's well cared for and shit like that she's just a normal here this is this is in georgia this is in martinez georgia uh which is just as an augusta suburb so she's there uh

she's a good student as well for more everything everybody says very friendly you know goes to church by all accounts she's just a really good kid that you know wants to go hang out with her friends because she's almost 16 years old and you know you're sowing your teenage oats and trying to trying to push brand what's it like to go hang out at 11 o'clock at night you know i've never done that before trying on some rebellion seeing how it fits all yeah it's very very normal stuff here um so her uh uh her father will say that she was i don't understand the timeline here because we have kind of conflicting reports i don't know exactly when they fall in so her father said that she was babysitting at a neighbor's house and she was supposed to be home by eight o'clock

but she never came home now i don't know't know if she, if like the father was asleep and she came home and then snuck out again or what, but she, I know for sure she climbed out of a window at some point during all of this because she must've been home. I don't know why she would sneak out of the neighbor's house while she's babysitting. So that wouldn't make any sense. You can walk right out the front door. Yeah, you can go out the back door, the front door. So that doesn't make, but she's supposed to be home at eight, which, you know, whatever she's babysitting that night.

So, um, either way she ends up, uh, climbing out of her window, I guess in her bedroom window. Um, we know this because while sneaking out, she cuts her foot pretty severely. That's not a good start to the night. No, she slices her foot on some metal or some glass or something. She's climbing out the window. So it's pretty badly cut. But anybody who's been a teenager and snuck in or out of anywhere at that moment when you're sneaking out, your adrenaline

is pumping. Every sound is magnified. You're like a deer in the woods. If you step on a stick 300 yards away, a deer's head will snap around. Is there ultra? That's a 15-year-old sneaking out of a window. You know what I mean? It absolutely is.

Any noise is like, oh, God, that was super loud. That probably woke my dad up, and now he's coming. Oh, shit. So in addition to hearing your heartbeat in your ears at that moment in time, you don't want to get caught. Plus, it's dark outside. So you don't want to see how bad it is until later. You just get like, oh, shit, and then you take off. And now there's the smell of blood in the air.

You got to get out of there before the bears come. Before the wolves come out of the – yeah. The wolves will be there soon. So she takes off into the night, okay? And there's that. Now, her parents will say the next morning she's they she's never she is not home. She didn't come home. So they go to check her room the next morning and she's just not there.

So they're like, OK, they thought maybe she fell asleep babysitting or some shit like that. So they're they start checking around as you would. But nobody seems to know where she is, which freaks you out if your daughter is 15 years old and you thought she was in her room. So her father says, quote, at this point for the first time in our lives, we didn't know where our daughter was and we panicked. Yeah, that's anybody, you know, even if you're in a grocery store, you got your kid and you look around, you don't see him for half a second. That's a that's a panic. You have a complete panic. If you're a good parent. Yeah.

You should have a complete panic. And then you realize that they're staring at the Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Right. And you go grab them. They're in the pastile. When you turn the corner, they didn't. Yeah, that's all. They saw something and kept on going.

Right. So, now, the weird thing is, if that's not weird enough, so the night of the 11th, that's when she's gone. And then the 12th goes by and they get no word of her at all. They call all around there. Like he said, they're panicked. They're freaking out. They're calling everybody they know, everybody she knows, everybody that they could possibly that could possibly know where she is. She's not the type of kid that would run away.

She's not. This is not her. She's a happy. She's a happy kid that, you know, doesn't have really. She's not like a problem. It's not like, well, she's been to juvie five times and, you know, she's got all this and she's got a 28 year old boyfriend that smokes meth with her that he might. She might have gone to West Virginia to be with him. None of that's happening with this girl.

She's just a normal kid. Every morning for the last 15 years, they've woken up, and their daughter's right there. And their daughter's home, and they understand that, and they can put that together. So it goes by the 12th, no word from her. So the terror as a parent, you can't even quantify here. So it goes to the night of the 13th, the next day. The terror, as a parent, you can't even quantify here. So it goes to the night of the 13th, the next day. The next day, her mother, Debbie, is on the phone with somebody,

and the operator breaks through. Okay? On a house phone, the operator breaks through with an emergency call. Used to be able to do that before call waiting. You could get the operator. Break into the call? Yeah, in medical emergencies, they'll break into a call for you. So she said, quote, Wednesday night, I was on the telephone talking to someone when the operator broke in and said she had an emergency call from Melanie. I waited there and there was nothing else on the line think about that and that

was it she just never heard anything what the fuck nothing came on so the operator somebody called the operator and said you know either that they were melanie or whatever and and uh either melanie called or somebody called to say there's an emergency call for me so and then nobody nobody came on the line so now called the phone line was busy so they called the operator i need you break into this line i got an emergency message yeah so now they're wondering is she being like held you know held against her will and they let her call like what's the story with you know she she they think well obviously it's a good sign and maybe she's alive also, is it somebody playing some kind of sick fucking prank or who knows?

Whatever it is, though, it's a fucking horrible thing to do if you're not Melanie. So anyway, they're in a panic. Obviously, they're looking for their daughter and she is. She's just gone into thin air, just disappeared. So let's talk about three guys at this point, three young men who I think two of them go to school with her here. One of them goes to school with her. I apologize here. First, first is Jeffrey Ryan Payne.

He's 17 years old. He's a junior at Lakeside High School, which is in Evans. I believe it's in Evans, Georgia, just outside of Martinez there. And he's a he was a junior the year before and then uh a guy named jamie lynn lee now jamie lynn is is hilarious because that's britney spears's little sister so old jamie lynn here and i just deduced that that is uh her dad and her mom's name slammed together. That's what that is. That's a guy. That's a guy, Jamie Lynn Lee.

I get it. Oh, you're talking about Brittany. Brittany's dad's name is Jamie. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. His name is James. Goes by Jamie.

Goes by Jamie. What is wrong with you, sir? That's a weird thing. It is. I'm a James, and I've known a lot of Jameses, and none of them go by Jamie that I know of. I knew one in school named Jamie, and he go by Jamie. I knew one in school named Jamie and he went by Jamie. And then I just found out recently that his real name is James

and I only know that because he's on TV sometimes. That's weird as shit. What the fuck is this James shit? And I was like, oh my God, that's his real name. James, why would you pick that? What the fuck were you doing as a kid, man?

There's other options for James than Jamie. That seems like that's what his mom called him. I think so. And then they picked up like Jamie. Everybody called him in school. Maybe. Yeah. Bizarre name.

This is his actual name, though. James is such a cool name, though. Why go by Jamie? I guess so. It's fine. But this isn't. This is his name is Jamie. That's it.

Jamie Lynn Lee, period. So Jamie Lynn Lee is 17, and he was a sophomore at Evans High School before this year going into the summer. And then there's a guy named Joseph Kelsey who's 16 years old here. And we'll get into his shit here. He's 16. He's got a weird he's like like the kid who, uh, gets, he moves around a lot. His dad's in the military and he doesn't really have a lot of supervision and it shows in his actions. One of those kids, the kind of a feral one here, his father was stationed at the military at Fort Gordon. And then since then, uh, you know, after later, after that, his father was transferred to Washington, DC.

They allowed, uh, Kelsey, the kid to remain in Georgia to finish the school year and also stayed part of the summer. And then halfway through the summer, he'll end up moving away. Like in August, he'll end up moving away from here. But anyway, during the 1994, he is staying with a friend of his, a 17-year-old named Mike Kirshner in Martinez, Georgia. So that's where Kelsey is at this point. So on July 11th, which is the same day, obviously, that night that Melanie snuck out of the house, Mike Kirshner leaves to go to work. And Kelsey is left behind at his house to hang out because he's staying with him and 17 year old jeffrey pain comes over to hang and then uh jamie

lynn lee comes over as well to hang out so the three these three fucking dildos are in this guy's house so that seems is this and i keep thinking is this it must be i believe this is that kirshner guy's house like he's 17 but he has his own place i'm pretty sure doing great i guess he's got a job he's going to work on a monday morning so there's that but either way the three idiots left behind uh here jamie and jeffrey and and uh mr kelsey this dipshit um joseph kelsey they decide because i mean what do you do you're a teenager you got at the house to yourself i mean what smoke some weed yeah chill there's beer involved for sure get some beer yeah whatever your proclivity is you're gonna do that hang out talk shit talk about how cool you are and blah blah these idiots have a different idea they go hey let's um i'm bored um i don't

know what do you want to do you want to go to the mall no i don't drive all the way to augusta that's boring there's girls there though yeah but still it's all the way there i don't know you know what hey let's make pipe bombs oh that, okay. That's what they decide. That's the thing. We're going to make pipe bombs, these fucking dildos. So they initially construct a bomb using copper tubing and gunpowder from firecrackers. Okay. Yeah. Now, I don't know if you've, did you ever dabble in blowing shit up when you were a kid?

Okay. I'm missing a goddamn finger. Yeah, but that was from legit fireworks though. That wasn't from.'m missing a goddamn finger yeah but that was from legit fireworks though that wasn't that was a legit bomb is what that that's what i mean that wasn't from a homemade concoction now i don't know if i did i did i did the typical dry ice ones uh i did the yeah yeah i figured though missing half a finger maybe that would keep you from doing shit with homemade you know like you know what guys i don't make homemade bombs i've already learned my lesson no because i could still use it to count

when uh when i was a teenager and obviously i'm not condoning this and nobody should do this at all you should never make explosives okay number one never do it but this was a long time ago uh we used to do the same a similar thing but in a cardboard tube you know so there's no shrapnel right that's the thing nobody could hurt right yeah we were literally like let's put and we'd put like uh like a pot that used to have a plant in it that's got some dirt in it still and you'd put that and it would blow that up and there'd be dirt everywhere and you go oh shit that's hilarious like that's what we were doing we weren't looking for like hey you know will this work as an improvised explosive device that's not what we were after

these guys are using copper tubing which is excessively dangerous and you're you know not good shit here so they ended up detonating a bomb that they made near a tree in kirshner's backyard this guy's at work and they're at his house blowing trees up. So after that, they decided, well, that was pretty cool, but I bet we could improve the bombs if we did this and this. So now they're doing trial and error, making it better? Making it better. This is what they're doing today.

There's nothing on TV. What are you fucking doing? It's 1994. There's great stuff yeah dude it's good watched we would have just sat mtv would have been on you because they actually had videos and stuff that they would play you'd watch that you could watch like go inside get stone watch the prices right and fucking laugh and what are you doing instead these idiots are making pipe bombs um so they wanted to make more sophisticated bombs. They're like, this is, you know, come on.

This is kid stuff here. Copper bombs. What are we doing? So they end up shoplifting pipe material and shotgun shells from pipe material from a hardware store and shotgun shells from a Walmart. Of course, it's Walmart. Yeah. They ended up stealing this shit from.

So, you know, they're going in heavy here for this. That's their right off the bat. Shotgun shells has ample explosive in it. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. So apparently Joseph Kelsey was the head bomb maker here. He was the guy who knew, I guess, something about this and kind of initiated the whole bomb-making process.

And under his direction, the three of these fucking morons built three galvanized steel bombs. Oh, wow. Yeah. This is like, you know, roadside Iraq shit that they're building. This is crazy. These are gas pipes. This is not good. This is wild.

One of which they took outside and set off in Kirshner's backyard again. Okay. The explosion produced a crater about four inches deep and a foot wide. Yeah, that'll do it. So it's a bomb. That's a big bomb. Yeah. That's a good-sized bomb.

It's not an M-80. It's not a blockbuster. That's something dangerous. It's a leg busterbuster it's not some that's something dangerous it's a leg buster this will take this will take some shit off of people oh absolutely um so it also left shrapnel in the side of the house and all in a nearby privacy fence as well in the fucking house in the house just shrapnel covered the side of the house and in this also in a wooden fence oh it's his own house it It's not his parents' house. Yeah, Kirshner.

But can you imagine, okay, you're 17 years old and you've managed to procure your own home and you have to work on a Monday morning. So you leave your friends in your house and they're blowing up your backyard, putting shrapnel in your house. Fuck your security deposit. That's what they're doing right your backyard putting shrapnel in your house and fuck your security deposit that's what they're doing right now they're doing that and is no one around is no one hear loud explosions and think well that's a problem should i i wish that landlord next door hadn't run into a 17 year old yeah i'm all for mind your business you know that but there's

explosions going off right next door. I'm like, that sounded like an explosion. That's bad. Should I call the fire department at least? Something? Yeah. Like I said, I do believe in mind your business forever and ever. I think it's everything.

Yeah, mind your business. Until it's affecting you. That's what it is. Until it's affecting you, yeah. Do whatever the fuck you want. I don don't care just leave it out of my life when it affects me we got problems mind your business is the greatest parable of all time just mind your business it's i feel like even you'll put it in a religious sense for you even though i'm not religious i feel like all of the ten commandments are just mind your business put

in different words yeah aren't they yeah they really i don't know them off the top of my head but like you know one is like don't steal well you got your own shit mind your business don't covet your neighbor shit fuck other people's shit yeah yeah don't what the fuck are you looking at his shit for mind your business what are you doing don't kill anybody well if you wouldn't have got so overblown getting involved mind another somebody else's business you wouldn't be mad enough to kill anybody right what do you care what that person's doing or somebody got in your business uh mind your business mind your business don't fuck with them mind your business don't mind don't worship don't worship this book not worshiping for false idols would be like, mind my business.

Right. I guess at that point. Mind your own business. And also, if you're going to mind other people's business, mind mine only. Maybe. I'm not sure. But I think mind your business is a good thing, except when there's major explosions going off, possibly.

Then you might want to just see what's going on. So they do all of this. see what's going on um so they do all of this uh they have two more unexploded you know undetonated right galvanized steel bombs that they made here and so they place them inside a travel bag and put them in the house yeah i mean bring that right on in here well just just put it on in the house no put it in the kitchen i say you know why not next to the bananas uh it'll be fine yeah they go bad quick anyway so they'll have enough room soon the bananas go bad in three hours so that's fine later that evening kirshner has a party at his house what a life this kid has this kirshner man he has a party and uh everybody's there jamie lynn right spears or whatever the hell he is jamie lynn lee

jeffrey pain joseph kelsey uh tom wortsinger is there april reese tommy spiegel joey ingram the whole list of people like a bunch of dudes that know one girl i was gonna say this april reese girl better watch her back is what I was going to say here. Or she's like that one cool chick that's just fun to hang out with. Or she's Worzinger's girlfriend. Or one of the girlfriends or something. Of course she's coming. So everybody's drinking beer here, obviously.

It's a beer-drinking kind of party. you know, beer drinking kind of party. At about midnight, Lee, Jamie Lynn Lee and Jeffrey Payne leave the party to go to a Texaco station nearby, gas station. Now, apparently this gas station is like, it's like a hangout for the kids. And we all know that gas station where like a kid works and so a bunch of people hang out, you steal shit and, you know, you get free sodas and then everyone hangs out and you can kind of see it's a central clearing zone clearinghouse for what you're doing that night. It's the meetup for where you go and where you go. And it's that.

Yeah. So that's what they decide to do. Go over there, see who's there, you know, tell people there's a party, get some snacks, you know, whatever the hell they're doing over there. So they go to the Texaco station. When they arrive at the station, they find somebody they know and uh standing near a telephone booth and that is melanie richie she is there um they notice that her foot she's not like putting weight on it she's like standing weird on her foot so they uh go up and uh you know go up and talk to her and she says that she was sneaking out of her house to meet up with her friend and she cut

her foot really bad so she's kind of dripping blood and all of that shit so Jeffrey Payne and Jamie Lynn Lee offer to take her to Kirshner's house and he's like there's a party and we got like band-aids and shit we can like fix up your foot. Yeah we got bomb making materials

of course we got band-aids. Yeah we got, like, Band-Aids and shit we can, like, fix up your foot. Yeah, we got bomb-making materials. Of course we got Band-Aids. Yeah, we got gauze. Are you kidding me? We got gauze. We got galvanized steel pipes, whatever you're looking for over here. So they end up doing that. They end up, you know, offering her that, which is a pretty good offer if you're standing at a gas station when you're 15 with your foot bleeding at 11 o'clock at night.

You know, that's not bad. Or midnight. You need two things. You just snuck out of the house you want booze and now you need uh wrap-ups and they've got both let's go yeah assume if a party of that nature is why you would sneak out of a house you know what i mean to go to some shit like that so um they end up she agrees and she says yeah sure so they take her to kershner's house uh they clean her up they bandage her shit uh so she's you know they get uh apparently they get back around there at about 1 30 a.m i don't know why it was to what took an hour and a half to get from around midnight when they uh they go to the texaco station so there's a lot of time it's unanswered answered for in here

but well martine's is quite a quite a distance from oh never mind there that's where the party is in martina yeah it's in there yeah it makes no sense yeah so i don't know what they were doing if they went and like got some mcdonald's or what but so uh lee pain and melanie uh all returned to kirshner's house a little before 1 30 uh lee and pain help her bandage up her foot, and then they all join the party. So everything's good now. Let's numb that foot up with some booze. Hell yeah.

Okay? So Payne and Richie, Jeffrey Payne and Richie, go outside on the back porch and hang out out there. Now, Payne, over the course of this time when they're out on the back porch, is just trying to talk melanie into having sex with him the whole time right he's just like come on we go inside blah blah he's trying to coax her into that sure she just snuck out of the house her foot's all fucked up you know what i mean like she's got off work i was babysitting three hours ago that's what yeah that's

what i mean so this is like a bad plan but i mean you know 17 year old kids do this and she repeatedly refuses him no thank you no thank you no thank you yeah not interested in banging you here thanks a lot anyway yeah so um at several points and the party keeps going on after this and at several points after this pain keeps telling lee telling Lee, by the way, Payne and Lee are like best friends. Jeffrey Payne, Jamie Lynn Lee are like best friends. Kelsey, he just arrived in the middle of the school year. He's kind of the third wheel of the group, but he hangs out with them. So these two, though, have known each other forever.

They're best buddies. And Kelsey's the bomb maker? Yeah, Kelsey's the guy who's like, hey, you ever make bombs? And they're like, no. He's like, I'll show you how. Don't you worry. Kelsey's the guy who's like, hey, you ever make bombs? And they're like, no.

He's like, I'll show you how. Don't you worry. Yeah. So Payne is talking to Lee about how the hell do I get this girl to fuck me? You know what I mean? Like, damn it. He's complaining at several points that, you know, Jesus Christ, this is ridiculous. She just won't bang me.

This is fucking crazy. Whereas as a teenager, you're like, I don't know. Maybe she doesn't want to i remember people being like upset like oh man i want to go find somebody else i don't know what do you want like she doesn't want to she doesn't want to sorry there's only one other girl here this blows yeah this is what ends up happening. So anyway, she's very frustrated, frustrated. Joseph Kelsey will say at one point he overheard pain. Tell Lee that he was so mad he could kill her. That's how mad he was. Damn it.

So pain tells Lee to do him a favor. He says, do me a favor. He says, you got some ecstasy, right? He's got like in pill form tabs like you know tablets not not tabs like acid so he said do me a favor crush that shit up for me crush up that ecstasy do that and uh you know give that to me when you're done so lee crushes it up and gives it to pain pain then um pours the pours the ecstasy the crushed up powdered now ecstasy into a mixture of tea and water yeah and gives it to melanie and says oh here's some tea this will help your uh she said she had a stomach ache earlier in the evening she might have just

been trying not to fuck him and was like i don don't know. My stomach kind of hurts. You know what I mean? I don't know. You know, girls have whatever. So this guy said, here, I made you. Here's some. You know, I'm obviously a medicine man here. Here's a concoction that I whipped up from some Amazonian leaves and everything that you can. This is. Are you trusting this guy for his stomach ache?

Right. Remedy. His old wives tale remedies. Right. I found some castor oil and tea uh throw this down yeah you're gonna fucking love it it's got sawdust in there too it helps constitute the system right so he gave it to her told her it would help calm her stomach ache and obviously didn't tell her that oh yeah it's got a bunch of ecstasy in it also. P.S. You're about to be fucked up. You're about to be fucked up.

Now, I don't know if this is the teenage. This is the thing I don't understand here. Is this the teenage thing of like you and especially in the 90s and like 94 ecstasy just had this like reputation as like you take it and then you'll start humping people. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I was just going to ask you, has he ever taken ecstasy before and doesn't know that it

doesn't mean that her vagina is just a waterfall that needs plugging he for everything around and especially when things happens i think in the 90s though that's people people thought that that was the thing so i don't know if he thought that or if, yeah, I don't know. Or if he just thought, I think ecstasy, like if you want to fuck somebody anyway, then you'll want to fuck them even more. But if you don't want to fuck anyone, it won't make you want to fuck them just because you're on ecstasy. Right. You'll be more annoyed by them that they're like annoying you while you're trying to enjoy your high at that point i would think even bill cosby right now if he's listening to this goes oh that's not how you do it that's not at all how it works so it's and this is disgusting behavior by the way

we're joking about it but they're they're trying to they're spiking a 15 year old girl's drink with fucking ecstasy to try to have sex with her. It's horrible. Absolutely. This is criminal behavior right here. Already. Yeah. Already. We're in crime land right now. But he also has homemade bombs, James. So he's a double felon right now.

He's a double threat right now. He really is. He can sing and dance. So now while this was going on, Kelsey said he wasn't hanging out with them while they were like concocting, crushing up ecstasy tablets and spiking girls drinks. He said that he was resting on the floor by the stereo and changing the music up when it needed. He's the DJ of the party here is his claim. He's the DJ of the party here is his claim. So around 3.30 a.m., they all decide that she decides she needs to go home now.

You know, if her parents get up early because it's a weekday. It's a Monday. Monday night. So I mean, it's about Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah. Tuesday morning. If that coffee pot starts going off at 5.30 a.m. at her house or what, I don't know. So about 3.30, she needs to go home.

So the three of them kelsey pain and lee all decide well we'll take you home no worries you know we we drove you here so it's only fair so they hop into lee's uh jamie lynn lee has a 1987 honda civic yeah which is the most 1994 high school car you could possibly fucking have that square one that i was just gonna say the goddamn square one with the hatchback thing with the oh man it's like it's like a six inches off the ground it's a real piece of shit it was essentially a street legal go-kart that'll do 65 70 miles an hour yeah while whining right really badly but i know a lot of people that had that car though that's the thing

in high school it's the most fun car to take apart you can do it in an afternoon the whole goddamn thing and then you just get some model glue to put it back together and you're fine smear your hands in that bird shit in the driveway and start sticking it in it that's it so they hop in his in a white 1987 honda civic oh boy oh boy now uh melanie ritchie is waiting outside of kirchner's house for them she's like okay um take me home they'll we'll be out in a minute so she's standing outside outside waiting for them it's at this point that pain asks jamie lynn lee do me a favor now i don't know why he's his errand boy crush up your own ecstasy tablets and and he says to quote get me something to knock her out with is what he tells is what he tells like heavy or like more dry i know I think something like to hit her with is what he's getting at.

So Lee goes into the garage and picks out a wrench like an eight inch long wrench. That's that's the tool he chooses. Twenty four millimeter. The inch and a half. Yeah. Some big honking wrench. So then Jeffrey Payne suggests that Kelsey also. Hey, Joseph, you grab me that.

And then Joseph, do me a favor also. While we're out there, who knows what's going to come up? Grab me those pipe bombs, too, that we made earlier, too. Because who knows? You know, who knows what's out in the world at 3.30 in the morning? We might want to blow something up. So Kelsey grabs the pipe bombs from his travel bag here. up so kelsey grabs the the pipe bombs from his travel bag here and um he uh he said that you know yeah they thought we were gonna go blow up a mailbox or some shit like that you know

teenage stuff that's that's his claim find a deer carcass yeah blow it up fucking you know whatever people do i don't know so uh they and and mel Melanie, the three of them and Melanie get into Lee's car to take her home. So Jamie Lynn Lee is driving. Joseph Kelsey's in the passenger seat. Payne and Richie are in the backseat. That's how it goes. Melanie and Jeffrey are in the backseat. So they ask for directions.

She gives them directions to the house. And Lee ends up going the opposite direction. Yeah. Then she told them to go she said where are we going he said we're gonna drive around for a few minutes you mind i just want to drive around let's go drive around for a while which is the again nothing that would raise a red as an adult that raises a red flag yeah as a kid you just go oh yeah i'm gonna drive around because that's all you had to do because your car you didn't have an apartment all you had was the inside of that car that's your only

autonomy so and this is a friend uh kind of acquaintance barely knows him i mean i panicked when we were in an uber and we missed an exam like no no that was it yeah oh god he's gonna kill us all kansas city that guy yeah he was just yapping the whole time. He's like, ah, shit, we missed it. Ah, fucker. I go off on the next one. We're like, we have a place we need to be. And he's just gabbing. He's like, no, I like you guys.

Just get us to where we got to go, man. He was drunk, right? Had to be, right? He was hammered, I believe, as an Uber driver. He had to be hammered. He was the type of guy that was like, I don't care. I just put vodka in my water bottle. No one knows the difference. That's the type of guy that was like, I don't care. I just put vodka in my water bottle. No one knows the difference.

That's the type of guy he was. Wasn't he? I keep it between the lines. We're all right. Hey, it's no worries. If he pulls you over, you're fine. Don't worry about it. You tell him I'm busy.

Leave me the fuck alone. So you say you're comedians, huh? Sir. Oh, Jesus. Next exit, please. Please. Oh, I thought you were going, at one point he said, oh, that's right. I thought you were, I forgot.

I thought you were going to the airport. We're that's right i thought you're i forgot i thought you were going to the airport we're like what just follow the thing on your phone you're telling you where to go your phone literally just said take next exit like four times and then panicked when you missed it so come on man so uh anyway um she asked where they're going we're going to drive around eventually they crossed the georgia border into south carolina which is pretty close to where they are it's not like that was a you know it sounds like a long distance for crossing a road it's right there so uh lee will say that as they were driving, the music was, as he called it, quote, obscenely loud. So, you know, teenage, as loud as it can go, to where you feel your heart rattling in your chest and you start to worry if that's okay. If it's an actual, like somebody installed, you know what I mean?

If it's just the factory speakers turning that shit up too loud, it's like, what are you doing, man? Wow, it just hurts it hurts i assume i don't in the honda civic 2 you can fit shit in that trunk people would always have systems in those things so um i'm assuming it's kind of a system and he's driving 90 miles an hour which is as fast as that honda civic can possibly possibly 7 000 rpms and i was just gonna go it is it's in the fucking red 9500 rpms right now that thing is singing especially with four people in it with weight holy shit but he doesn't know because the stereo's up so goddamn loud you can't hear that motor well the one thing we do know is from this just just uhally, South Carolina is definitely downhill from Georgia. We know that.

It's downhill. He was certainly not going uphill. And this is 94, James. So this is pre-coffee can exhaust. He can't hear shit from this car. Oh, that's true. It's just his loud-ass stereo, whatever the fuck he's playing. It's just it's just as loud as stereo. Whatever the fuck he's playing.

He's just cranking Allison Chains. Yeah. Yeah. He's just. That's like 90, though. These guys aren't playing that shit. Yeah, that's like 90. What's 94?

Sound Garden and Pearl Jam. It was grungy stuff kind of getting it and also really good hip hop, but I really doubt they were listening to Nas. You don't think they got into that? No, I doubt they... I don't think it got down to there for a while. Do you think you had Dre and Snoop playing still? Maybe Dre and Snoop, because I was four years old, possibly, or three years old at the time, so possibly

that. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, available exclusively on Wondery+, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair

form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. With an all-star cast led by Emmy nominee Sanaa Lathan and Star Wars' Kelly Marie Tran, Chinook is available exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment. While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit, but would never be seen alive again.

Leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case, covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try to discover what happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media would have to come to the conclusion that I killed my wife.

Hi, my name is Zach Stewart-Pontier. I'm one of the filmmakers behind The Jinx, and I'm excited to bring you The Official Jinx Podcast. We'll be revisiting all six episodes of Part 1 and watching along with Part 2 as it airs on Max, starting April 21st.

Bye-bye. The Official Jinx Podcast. Listen on Max or wherever you get your podcasts but they're driving they cross into south carolina now lee says at this moment he's driving and he notices speaking of the tack and uh the rpms he notices that his his tack his rpms go from 4200 to 6000 right now shoot up yeah right now so he looked down at the gear shift and he noticed that uh he saw melanie ritchie's foot right by the gear shifter and noticed that she had knocked the gear into neutral at a drive right so um uh yeah so they're doing that um and uh it's at this point that kelsey said he turned around and looked in the back seat and noticed that uh he saw pain choking richie

oh my god pain choking melanie he said that uh he had pain had melanie in a quote stranglehold type position and lee saw this as well if i or he says he didn't notice this as he's driving he noticed that her foot knocked it into neutral he just popped it back and drive was like oh crazy mistakes happen um a few minutes later though a few minutes later lee says that jill jamie lynn said he heard quote two quick empty thud type sounds good lord not like a gunshot just like a you know thump like if you yeah popped a punched a watermelon or something he said he turned around and that's when he saw that uh that pain saw had melanie still in a stranglehold there and he said that when he turned around he had still in a stranglehold there. And he said that when he turned around, he had her in a stranglehold. And Jeffrey Payne also had the wrench in his hand.

So he clonked her on the head with the wrench is the thud sound. I can only assume. Joseph Kelsey said that he had also turned around and saw that Melanie's body was pretty limp and her face was pale and her lips were blue. OK. All very bad signs that you really don't want to see from a 15 year old girl at any point ever um so a few a few moments later as they put it pain leaned forward to yell at lee to turn the music down for some reason he turned the music down so he turns the music down. That's when he stated,

Payne from the backseat said, quote, I'm pretty sure she's knocked out, guys. Because he strangled her and beat her with a fucking wrench like a piece of shit. So Payne then says, and this is the,

Jesus Christ, this is the worst thing of all here. This is when it gets really creepy, too. He said, let's go to scary bridge okay there's a bridge that's such a it's it's a it's scary that's why it's called scary bridge that's what we call it around her yeah at night there's no lights on this bridge okay a pitch black bridge in the forest that crosses over stevens creek which is the boundary line between Edgefield and McCormick counties.

Okay? Now, it's a 480-foot bridge. That's 650 cars a day go on this bridge. So it's not a very active. No. It's considered, quote, functionally obsolete at this point, which means that the bridge is not – it doesn't mean it's unsafe,

but it also means that it doesn't possess, it possesses inadequate features for modern traffic, such as lane width and shit like that. It's a shitty old bridge that was built in the 20s. It's dangerous. And they still use it. It's dangerous, it's dark, it's creepy. It's called Scary Bridge, which is horrible.

Built in the 20s for vehicles that weighed uh 1200 pounds yeah for day and for probably you know 12 a day to go over there just in case it was like you really want to build a bridge over fine fine we'll build the goddamn bridge if you're gonna whine about it you pussies so uh lee as he's the driver he drives to the bridge and the car. That's how desolate this bridge is in the middle of the night. No cars are going to come probably. And it's pitch fucking black out there. So they get out of the car, the three guys, and they leave the unconscious Melanie in the back seat.

Um, pain then Jesus Christ, this guy is a terrible fucking person. Jeffrey pain then tells Lee and Kelsey that he's going to go have sex with her. Now I'm going to have sex with her. That's his fucking plan. Yeesh. You utter and complete pile of human shit. That is fucking hideous what you're doing right now with a teenage fucking. That's disgusting.

So, yeah, he ends up gets in the car he takes off his clothes takes off uh you know her shorts and uh so a few minutes a couple minutes go by and lee you know knocks on the window there warns him that there's a car coming yeah down the road wrap it up here so they quickly get back into the car and start driving the uh vehicle ends up passing by them so then lee jamie lynn lee turns the car around and goes back to the bridge yeah it goes back because that's where they wanted to park i guess on the bridge because it's you can see things coming from either direction i assume is on my only my only thought here so then jamie lynn lee says that melanie was unconscious the entire time this was going on, but she was definitely alive.

He said just unconscious. Okay. Now, Kelsey, on the other hand, he says that he did some EMT training at some point or some bullshit, and he said he checked her pulse and he thought she was dead. And he said he checked her pulse and he thought she was dead, which if someone strangles you, your pulse rate is, you know, if you're passed out like that, your pulse rate goes way down. And if it's low, you might not be able to feel it unless you're really good at that shit. And if you were choked out, the whole idea is that the lack of oxygen slows the heart rate. Yeah. The whole thing. I don't you know, I don't believe his medical testimony from this jerk off 17 years old and makes pipe bombs in his friend's fucking yard. Yeah. The whole thing. I don't you know, I don't believe his medical testimony from this jerk off 17 years old and makes pipe bombs in his friend's fucking yard.

Yeah. So they said that Kelsey said what he saw was Jeff had his left arm around Melanie's neck. Her face was pale and her lips were a blue tint. There was enough light to see it. I guess there was. I guess it was lights on the bridge is what he'll say later on, but there is no lights on the bridge. Um, he said that he, once they parked the car, he had reached and felt, uh, tried to feel for a pulse on her neck. He said, quote, I reached in with my left hand toward her neck. At that point, I saw that her neck was black and purple. So at point um once they're i guess done with what they're doing or pain is he uh instructs uh lee to drive again so they drive about a hundred

feet down the road off the bridge and pain tells him to stop the car right off the bridge here and all three of them pull her out of the car and into the woods and up an embankment where they place her on the ground so she's alive here from what we understand here she's definitely alive and uh the carrier out of the car place her on the ground in the woods it's at this point that jamie lynn lee returns to the car he says i'm going back to the car guys i don't know what the fuck's going on but i'm out so he goes back he goes back to the car but he's still gonna wait for him yeah he goes back to the car to wait for him he's like i'm not gonna participation yeah he's not into praise just the the driver at this point so uh

pain and kelsey remained with melanie in the woods so um they're standing over her the two of these fucking monsters and while they're standing over kelsey says this is kelsey's words here he says that pain instructed him to put one of the pipe bombs in her mouth oh my god how do you get to this what kind of a fucking human being has that thought this is the most that's this is the most no story i've ever heard like how do you as a 17 year old how do you say she won't have sex with me i'm gonna drug her now beat her with a craftsman choke her out grab those pipe bombs what what is happening he's like the fucking he's like wiley coyote wants to get laid tonight it's like the i didn't see that roadrunner cartoon i never did but i assume it would end with the Roadrunner in a similar position to this.

This is fucking. This is horrible, man. This is disgusting. And honestly, the only the only, I guess, positive here is that this poor girl is unconscious. That's the only thing that's positive about any of this situation is that hopefully she didn't. You know what? None of this was taken into her fucking brain. Wow.

So he says that they did that. He says he did it. He put the pipe bomb in her mouth. He said, quote, he did it because this is Kelsey quote. I never been as scared of another human being as I was when he asked me for that pipe bomb.

That's what he says. It's afraid of pain he said that pain used lee's lighter uh that had the word god on it appropriate enough to light the fuse of the bomb they lit the fucking thing yeah so kelsey says quote just as i turned to start walking out of the woods about four four or five seconds later, I heard Jeff striking the lighter. About 10 to 15 feet away, I could hear the fuse sizzling. Holy shit.

He said the two ran, and a few seconds later, the bomb fucking exploded. Unbelievable. I'm speechless. I mean, it's... We have a lot of fucked up shit, but I'm speechless, man.

This is like i'm my arms are up i don't even know what the what the hell to say here i've heard of people doing terrible things to human beings but this is that's that's like that's a different level man this is like what you would fantasize about doing if you're melanie's father to these kids but not what you would do to yeah this is what you do to the guys that drugged your daughter. Forget anything else. This is what like a mob boss has done to somebody who, you know, who raped and killed his daughter. This is what they would do.

I want you to take him in the woods. I want you to beat him with a hammer. And then just before he dies, I want you to put a pipe bomb in his mouth and fucking explode it. Wow. That, you know, that that would be this is fucking insanity so um uh yeah he said that when they got lee said that when they came out of the woods they came running back out of the woods and pain says to him in an excited manner quote i can't believe it it blowed her head the fuck off oh good lord that's what that's what he said that's

the quote i expect from that kid that's exactly the quote you expect from that kid and that's an exact quote so um i didn't i didn't spice it up with any fucking regional dialect there um they returned they were like well let's go back to kirchner's house i guess and go to sleep been a long day of bomb making and shit so you know you know it goes girl killing and bomb making so he said the the he told wow this is fucking insane so uh he said pain told them to uh the next morning if anybody asked you say that uh you know we went to sleep and melanie was gone when we woke up and we don't know shit about it so um that's how that works now steven and debbie ritchie her parents are quite uh obviously distraught while looking for their daughter and uh they said debbie ritchie

spoke on the phone to jeffrey pain a few days after Melanie disappeared. Yeah. Because I guess she knew that they knew each other. And she says, quote, Jeff told me and my husband that he didn't know how Melanie left the party. We talked to Joe Kelsey. His statements were very brief. So they talked to these people. They're doing their own investigation, essentially. And these two were like, I don't know how she left i fell asleep that's all so um they're continuing to hunt for the they want to find melanie they're just looking

for her they said uh this is a a police officer here said two nights ago we started a body hunt in edgefield county and searched all night with no luck we searched all day yesterday again with no luck and so they're just searching and searching and searching this goes on until august 26th 1994 oh my god a month and a half a month and a half of the south carolina summer by the way there's no no so you can imagine the condition yeah there's not a lot of girls in that's terrible so yep they said uh they found they find the body this day said the body was found right on the side of the road between the road and the woods and so it wasn't even in a hard place to find just people drive right by it it's not a place where anybody stops to to see it so or to see her so she's found on

that day and she's found because uh jeffrey pain gets arrested for other shit because he's a moron and ends up giving up the whole thing and says that but he says kelsey did everything obviously but he says tells them where to find the. And so they go looking for the body. And, yeah, they do this. They find her out there, like we said. And you find what's remaining of her, essentially. It's not a lot. The cause of death was listed as blunt trauma to the head due to some type of bomb. That's the autopsy.

So that means she was alive when it went off, which is horrifying. They said that skull fragments from her body were found seven feet and three inches away from the main center of the rest of her body. That's how far they blew her head apart. The skull fragments came off. Seven feet. Seven feet, three inches. came off like seven feet seven feet three inches they also found an ace bandage found at the crime scene that numerous witnesses said uh that was wrapped around a cut on her foot by pain the night of the party they find that um also from the crime lab they perform the autopsy and uh the post-mortem

x-rays of the sinuses of the skull matched pre-mortem x-rays of Richie's sinuses. It's like she said that they said that's very unique. Quote, each person's sinuses are different from everyone else's. Apparently sinuses you can do like dental records or yeah, so that sort of thing is very, very distinctive. So this is obviously fucking insane. And for a small place like this, they've never had this happen here. No, this is. Listen, man, this doesn't happen.

Most of that didn't happen in New York City. That's what I mean. But it's not recently. But they can. But they have less than 10 of those. Yeah. Teenage girl fucking pipe bomb head explosions, probably a lot less than that. I'll go as far as any human head explosion.

I'm sure it's less than ten. This is a small-town murder first, and that doesn't happen very often. So there's a big reaction, obviously. And one of the the problem is with a big reaction like this is it's they don't it gets taken out of blown out of proportion in terms of the macro of this whole thing. The micro is these three are monsters. Let's get them put away forever. OK, let's do that. This person, though, Chief Deputy Junior Gable here from McCormick County. He says he has a different take on the whole thing.

He knew this was coming, he said. He said he knew that it was only a matter of time before the viciousness in nearby Augusta and even faraway Atlanta would drift into this rural community. Oh, come on, sir. And he's right god damn it he knew it he said space can't protect us forever he goes on jimmy he goes on quote this is an exact quote i'm not going to jazz it up for funniness quote i've been looking for this i've been looking for it i've been saying mccormick might as well look back look people. I'm sorry. I've been saying McCormick might as well look out for it because it's coming.

People doing a lot of devilment. They're coming to the rural areas. Oh, my God. There you go, everybody. I've been telling them. I've been telling them people and their devilment are coming to rural areas. And they're going to do their business. And their devilment's all on over the place.

And I know devilment is a real word, but nobody uses it after the fucking 1800s, right? Devilment? I'd never heard it until just then, and I still wish I hadn't. It basically means wilding. That's what it means. It's like that's the definition of it that I remember. There was a TV show on MTV in 94 called Devlin.

Devlin. Devlin. Yeah. People doing a lot of Devlin. And they're coming to the rural areas. Meanwhile, he said there's also a lot of there's a lot of secluded places. So there you go. He said there's a lot of lonely boat ramps.

There's a lot of these long highways, a lot of, quote, a lot of secluded places. He says, wow, this is the other thing to make sure you know that it's this is coming from the outside and these filthy, filthy city folk. He said, quote, none of this stuff is being done by people here because we know each other and we're family because families never kill each other right according to this show anybody that did this uh has a mom therefore has a family yeah oh my god clark's hill clark hills that's the town right next door has been known as a good place for family activities as a safe place anything that happens out here any trouble has been people coming in here from someplace else. Don't fucking blame me.

Telling you that right now. So they arrest these three dildos. Like we said, they arrest the two of them there, Lee and Payne. They arrest them in Georgia. They arrest Kelsey in Maryland, where he had moved. He moved to Maryland in early August. So they arrest him there. There is something about detonating explosives in a what you perceive to be deceased body

that makes you want to run for the fucking hills, I'm sure. Maybe I'll take off now. And I think the fact that he moves around a lot and knew he was moving around made him feel it was safer for him to do shit like that in places because then he'd be moving on to the next place right uh he ends up being arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle and failure to stop for an officer so they put the lights on bag yeah they put the lights on him he took off from the cops and then they pulled him over, arrested him and said, oh, yeah, you're wanted for murder. Dipshit.

Right. Bringing your ass back to South Carolina where this is taking place. He's arrested in Maryland and an officer slaving arrests him in Maryland. And he will say that when he is detained in the police car, you know, there was no questions asked. But Kelsey asked out of nowhere if he's going to be treated as an adult or a juvenile that's his main concern slave and told him like a piece of shit how about yeah how about hmm uh let me uh which do you which do you do an adult or a juvenile do you climb into the back seat and choke and beat with a wrench which one is that do you do that to an adult because then i'll treat you like an adult he said that he would be treated as an adult and then he said that kelsey

wanted to know uh why because he said that quote i was a juvenile when i did it oh boy so that's not good and um yeah that's a bad thing so they're both charged this is kelsey and pain are both charged with murder accessory after the fact possession of a pipe bomb desecration of human remains and conspiracy to commit murder so a lot um so they're wondering adult or or child for kelsey that's the big question here because he was 16 when it happened i could give a fuck be honest with you yeah normally well when they're when they're 12 you're like come on that's not an adult right but 16 is sorry you can have like a job and you're fucking and you can drive a car you're legally responsible for a lot of shit granted your parents are mostly on the hook for

it but look if you can do that you can certainly go to go to big boy prison i get that you don't know certain things and you might not understand the you know the weight of your actions and things like that but you know enough at 16 not to blow a girl's head off right head off of a body you know that much we could run it case by case where uh accidentally practice practicing wrestling moves you hurt somebody too bad okay uh we can we can consider that you blew a girl's fucking head what did you expect expect was going to happen? That's what I mean. If an eight-year-old blew a girl's head off, I might say they saw it on cartoons and might not have known that shit was real. They might not have known that they wouldn't just be like Daffy Duck and have some black marks on their face and some feathers that were slightly burnt up and have to turn your

beak around. Stand up and put your thumb in your mouth and blow and your head comes back. Yeah. But when you're 16, you understand that that means you killed somebody so they said that they were uh they're how they work that is uh the law provides that the family court may transfer jurisdiction to adult court if the court finds quote it contrary to the best interest of such child or the public to retain jurisdiction. So that's what they're doing here.

So after they did a hearing on the state's motion to transfer from family to because I guess you're automatically in family court if you're under 18 and you're arrested and then they have to do a transfer to get you to adult prison. So I guess they did that. The family court orders jurisdiction to be transferred to the adult court for kelsey so he's going to be tried as an adult the family court and that's a pretty easy judge i mean you go i would say there's a girl that's dead how did she die oh yeah ship them on out obviously that's it right there the they are they made a list of reasons why they

did it though which is you know, you know. Can we hear? One, Kelsey was charged with the serious and violent offense of murder, and the victim was a young girl. Okay, you could stop right there, I think. But two, it was likely that the grand jury would return an indictment against Kelsey. So even if we try him as an adult, it'll probably work. Three, Kelsey's two co-defendants were going to be tried in adult court. three kelsey's two co-defendants were going to be tried in adult court four if tried as a minor kelsey would only get 24 to 54 months if convicted on the murder charge this was not in the community's best interest due to the seriousness of the crime right and five kelsey would have less of a chance

of rehabilitation in the juvenile justice system because his sentence under that system would be brief yeah so we want to hang on to this asshole for a while now and and you know what the corrections part of it they're doing a piss poor job so in the in the interest of what this guy is capable of versus what society will tolerate get him the fuck out of here it's just seriousness it's it's crazy it should just say reason he blew up a fucking sophomore's head you understand that with a pipe bomb that he made that's all yeah thank you good night everybody that's a mic drop sorry that's your opener your closer and your fucking meat right in the middle that's all of it right there built sorry built said uh mechanism for detonation he did it at his own hands and then put it in in the mouth of the girl he did he lied it no not no no

but he knew exactly what was going to happen he tested one earlier in the day he saw what would fucking happen that's what i mean it's not like he made it went whoa i didn't think that would he knew it would blow a goddamn crater in the ground it's obviously going to do the same to a fucking head it's it's insane i i would i don't care if in the ruling they said also we t-bagged him right we lined up and we fucking t-bagged him just because we were that upset about the whole matter fuck this kid so or this asshole in general so also he wants a a change of jury a change of venue because as you can imagine this got a bit of publicity in this area where people are coming to devilments everywhere so there's that and also uh there's some some issue with the jurors as well here

during the you know questioning of the jurors here the trial judge asked all of the prospective jurors whether they had heard anything about the case through the news media. Of the 90 prospective jurors, 79 said they had heard something about the case. And the other 11 were lying out of their fucking ass. The other 11 were lying or, you know, they were unconscious or they're like, I don't know who they are, but you would have heard about this somewhere. The other 11 are drunk as piss for 22 hours of the day. Yeah, unless they're here in the court. Don't watch the news, the other two.

So the trial judge asked if these jurors had heard about it, whether they could put aside what they'd heard and base their verdict on the evidence presented at trial. 35 said that they could not do that. They had decided already on the whole thing because this is a when you hear this this is really this this will give you like a this gives you a reaction that you can't like you motherfuckers how you son of a bitches so i i get that the trial judge asked uh three of the remaining jurors after uh questioned them because the defense council was concerned about their responses.

And anyway, then they did the the change of venue and the trial judge denies the change of venue as well. You know, it kind of doesn't make sense. I would think just to, you know, make it easier on appeals. You just move it. Maybe he says that judge just wants to be a part of this shit. Yeah, he's like, I want to teabag this kid bad. I'm not letting somebody else have the last word in this shit. The juvenile court said teabagging him was a real joy.

I feel like I owe that to myself. I can't wait. He said, Mike, sound instinct, though, tells me that it just because these people have heard about the case doesn't know this is about the jurors doesn't have doesn't have to necessarily mean they have formed some kind of opinion at the case. To that, I think I would have to, in essence, assume that they believed everything they had seen or read and that, in essence, they were some sort of automatons that were dictated to by the news media. I don't think we can go that far. Of the 12 jurors finally seated, three had not heard anything about the case. So he's like, three out of 12 is pretty good. Okay.

So, yeah, they narrow it down to nine men, three women, and two alternates. So that's how that works. So no change of venue. They end up sequestering the jury overnight in a hotel. Oh, boy. Very exciting. I bet it was beautiful. 1995. a venue they end up sequestering the jury overnight in a hotel oh boy very exciting 1995 now they want to they're going to try pain and kelsey together they want to try them together

and obviously kelsey wants a severance here so they can blame it all on each other so yeah i could see his logic and reasoning but you stood next to her you both did it together it's you're in it you're in it to win it let's go lee lee is straight states evidence in this motherfucker he's not on trial he pleaded he is straight states evidence drives a sensible great gas mileage getting vehicle that's it he's pleading out pleading out and testifying not having a any part of this shit uh so he i mean piece of shit don't get me wrong to go hey what stop strangling a girl in my back seat you fucking absolute trash james yeah he should he should be

when you hear what he got he should be he should have got more so um anyway after the defense later on um anyway they end up saying no because in south carolina criminal defendants who are jointly tried for murder are not entitled to separate trials as a matter of right. It has to be. It's up to the court's discretion. So they're tried together. Kelsey's lawyer tells the jury in his opening arguments that the evidence will show that obviously Jeffrey Payne killed killed Melanie. He said that, quote, Kelsey is ready to be punished for what he did.

But Joe took no part in the murder he did not assist in the murder of Melanie Ritchie so he'll take responsibility but not for actually the thing he did so um he also Payne's lawyer says that he came forward on his own volition and told law enforcement directions to the body this was after he was already in custody for something else and they were asking him about it so it's not like he felt guilty and walked up to the police station he told us where the body is so clearly he should be sent back home what obviously they they said kelsey on the other hand he went to maryland had to be drugged back here by the cops obviously he's more guilty so that he said quote this is uh pain's attorney quote he ain't gonna get out of this one too many

people saw him with a pipe bomb the day before the murder not one physical piece of evidence points to Payne there you go so the evidence is obviously indicates that Kelsey was instrumental in constructing the pipe bombs they were his idea he told them how to do it

Kelsey was with Lee and Payne on the night of the murder he helped carry her into the woods as well and then when they were alone together in the woods kelsey does not deny he placed the pipe bomb into her mouth that's unbelievable does not deny it but he does say that she was dead when he did it that's his that's his way of i'm not guilty of murder she was already dead when I put the pipe bomb in her mouth. Because I took a class on CPR and I can read pulses. That was his whole fucking thing. So unfortunately for him, there's actual medical examiners who have slightly more training than him. They do this all day. Who do this.

Yeah. It's a thing that they do. So the trial here, the defense attorney's Jamie Lee has to, Jamie Lynn Lee has to testify, obviously, against both of them. Yeah. So they're cross examining him. And the judge says, what's your name? Jamie Lynn. Your name is James.

Why don't you go by James? Why don't you just go by James, man? What are you doing here? It's not as good of a name. I'll tell you that. going here it's not as good of a name i'll tell you that so uh this day will include explosive experts hair and fiber analysis forensics uh a jury a juror ended up being excused that day so they're down to one alternate the whole deal uh there's a surprise witness from the state this is a man david williams jr he testified that he saw a white honda description

matching the vehicle that she's taken in obviously parked on the bridge around 4 45 a.m on his way to work quote i saw two white men standing on the side of the road and saw standing on the side of the car and there were clothes and a pair of high top tennis shoes on the bridge so that was that was when pain was in the car seat oh yeah that's he's the guy who passed by where they went oh shit somebody's coming that's the guy he had his pants and his shoes on the bridge on the bridge he just piled them up outside the car door he got out of the car undressed and got back in that's how small a honda civic is and how much of a scumbag he is yeah he was naked on a bridge yeah on the on scary bridge and that didn't change his mind nope still into it what a fucking dirt bag um so uh one of the lawyers this is the uh prosecutor

asked um uh if if they do they get end up getting the necklace. They find the necklace among her remains in the woods, so they enter that and they make the mother put it into evidence. So it's a very, you know, it's emotional. And they have a photograph of her wearing the necklace also and being very much alive and all that sort of thing. They also are shown graphic pictures of i mean these these pictures are i haven't seen them but i can only imagine i don't want to see it i don't want to see that

it's got to be absolutely horrifying to see these and they especially when they're blown up and put on a fucking tripod in the middle of court so um they heard some testimony from other people uh billy joe abercrombie jesus christ uh he's a explosives guy he uh he's an expert in an improvised explosive devices and homemade bombs he produced two inert pipe bombs modeled on metal fragments and end caps with a strip and a strip and all this shit basically reconstructed the ones that they made, but made one that won't blow up. And he likened the destructive power and fireball of the pipe bombs filled with powder from a shotgun to that of a fragmentation hand grenade.

That's what he said. It's about the same type of thing. And they asked him, what type of damage would this do if you put this in a person's mouth? And he said there would be a terrific expansion of gases. It would do very, very severe damage to the skull. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bomb. It'll put pieces of your skull over Shaq's height away.

That's fucking insanity. So they said that the type of damage suffered to the skull was consistent with an explosive device and there was a lack of evidence to support suffocation. Also, when they brought up the other medical examiners, the one guy said, quote, the base of the skull was missing. It would take a tremendous amount of force to do that. About the only thing that could do that would be an explosive device. So that's that. A special agent with the FBI testified that he also found metal fragments

from a pipe bomb that matched these metal fragments in Kirshner's backyard, lodged into his house and in his fence as well from earlier in the day. And they introduced all of that into evidence. And at one point, this is evidence and uh at one point this is fucking funny at one point the prosecutor said or the defense one of the defense attorneys said is the allegation that miss ritchie was killed in south carolina or georgia and the guy the fbi

agent said quote well we're in a south carolina court so i assume the charges would be in south carolina like hey stupid what do you see that seal above the judge's head let's go by that look around dickhead yeah uh so ridiculous another thing they try to get in but is not allowed in is that pain looks differently now he's changed his appearance since then now that he's been in jail for a year this is a year later they're at trial so obviously he what he's done that as a way to be a different person well the the prosecution wants to introduce like his guidance counselors to say that he used to look different and used to be a lot whatever the fuck but you're not required to attend court in the same condition you were in when you committed the crime that's not

that's not required as a matter of fact they tell you to make sure to clean yourself up and put your best foot forward right you know you wouldn't go to a job interview looking like you did on friday night either when you were shit-faced and throwing up into a toilet ball do you have to walk by the composite to make sure that you match it before you sit down in the defendant's chair yeah that's him so they wanted to uh they wanted to call his guidance counselor from high school and talk to him about talk to her about his changed appearance and they said that that's fine uh it's basically it's not relevant to the case here it doesn't matter now jeffrey pain does not testify in his own defense no but kelsey does testify oh this should be good he's gonna get up there and explain it all away here he said that uh uh kelsey testifies that he put the pipe bomb in her mouth

but he did not light it he's on the stand for nine hours and he said that pain strangled her had sex with her in the back of the car then lit the fuse of the bomb after they dumped her in the woods he also one of his defenses is that he should be exonerated because there was evidence supporting a defensive duress like they pain made him do it um however in south carolina duress is not a defense to murder so if i hold a gun to your head and make you kill someone you're still guilty of murder that's a pretty wild law that's's a fucking South Carolina's crazy like that. That is nutty. That's wild. It should certainly be considered.

A factor, right? Yeah. I would say. So Kelsey also testified that, oh, golly gee shucks, I thought we were just going to blow up some mailboxes with those pipe bombs. I didn't know we were going to do murders he said that uh at the wrench he said that he thought pain he didn't know he was going to beat him beat the girl with the wrench he thought that pain wanted to steal a car bumper to give to kirschner the guy who owns the house his girlfriend because her bumper had been knocked off in a wreck earlier. So he brought one wrench.

One wrench. That's why. So we're going to steal a bumper and then blow some mailboxes up. That's what he assumed this was all for. So he does admit that on cross-examination that he placed the pipe bomb into her mouth. And he says, quote, she was definitely, without a doubt, dead. That's his point there. He said Jeff had his left arm around her neck.

He goes over that thing, says I felt her pulse. I know that she was definitely dead. He said that he and Payne and Lee carried her body into the woods and put the bomb in her mouth because he was afraid of Payne. That's why. And he said, quote said quote i never been as scared of another human being as i was when he asked me for that pipe bomb like i said earlier and uh that's what he said now under cross-examination the you know they they asked him

what were you thinking when you got into the car with pain richie and lee in a pipe bomb and he said you knew you knew you had a pipe bomb. And he said, yes. He said, you knew you were going to blow something up. And he said, yes, you knew you were going to commit a crime. And he said, yes. So he said, how could you see that her face was pale at 4am in the back of seat of the car? And he said there was lights on the bridge or Jamie must've turned on the interior light. And they responded, quote, Mr. Kelsey, there's no lights on that bridge yeah so i think you're probably full of shit there buddy and uh also questioned kelsey about numerous inconsistencies between his testimony in a hearing in december 1994 and all this type of shit um they also myers made kelsey the fucking prosecutor, made him put one of the FBI replicas of the pipe bombs into the prosecutor's mouth.

He said, put one of those in my mouth. So for the jury, he showed the jury this guy physically putting a bomb in another human being's mouth, which, wow. That is wild. I don't even know what to say about that in a lot of them they say as a lawyer you want to put the murder weapon in his hand but this is that is wild dead ass serious take this sword and shot my head off will you just like you did there you also asked kelsey if you're so scared when that car passed by why didn't you fucking run after that car and try to get help if you were scared to death of jeff payne why didn't you flag down mr david williams jr in his pickup truck what is fucking wrong with you and he

i that part's mine i don't think he added that i wish he said what's your fucking problem oh what the fuck are you doing the fuck is wrong with you right in his eyes i'm sorry your honor but i mean jesus christ he put a bomb in her mouth what do you want from me this is fucking ridiculous this guy's an asshole what the fuck is wrong with you so they ask him that and kelsey says quote and this is the dumbest response to anything i've ever heard quote i guess i wasn't thinking as rationally as you are now no shit probably not no considering you put a pipe bomb in a teenage girl's mouth i would say you're not then um he made kelsey and pain stand next to each other yeah to see who was bigger kelsey admitted that he's about an inch taller and slightly heavier than pain so he's like okay you're bigger than him so it's not like he could threaten you

physically he said quote what weapon did jeff pain have to make you fear for your life? And he said, quote, he had no weapon. Right. You had the pipe bomb. So he had a wrench on her. Jesus Christ. Then he said, the last time you saw them before you allege Payne was strangling her, they were embracing. Both Lee and Kelsey both say at some point during the ride over there they turned around and they were like and and uh pain and melanie like had their arm around each other like type of thing like they were you know

it's a honda civic that's what you have to do in the back seat of that thing you're touching you know what i'm talking about like they had their you know they were like hanging out like they were whatever cuddling or some shit but they weren't like making out or anything. So he said that then they said they got a they got chairs and they measured everything out to the size of a Honda Civic in the courtroom. And they asked they asked Kelsey how pain could have strangled Richie in the back seat without him knowing, knowing about it. He said, quote, there was nothing that would have led you to believe that they were in a fuss or a tussle. You never felt pain or Miss Ritchie hit the back of your seat.

Excellent question. If you're strangling a 15-year-old in a Honda Civic, she's kicking the fuck out of those seats. Right. She kicked the gear shifter. Right. She put that shit in neutral. Yeah.

And Kelsey said, quote, I think if someone would have hit my seat, I would have felt it. So there you go. Wow. That's fucking wild. So they said that they asked him all sorts of questions here. They said they asked him if he was lying about all this shit. And he said, well, they asked him if he was if he said the i was a juvenile

when i did it thing and he said well i didn't say that and they go well it's in the report and they had him read the report and he goes don't you see that it's in the report and he goes yeah but i didn't say it so his attorney moved for a mistrial okay because he said that they were pitting statements against each other so it's a mistrial meanwhile he's just lying on the stand probably yeah so that's probably what it is isn't that perjury they could have brought that that uh maryland officer in to say yeah he fucking sure did say that that's why i wrote it yeah they got his report in there also at trial they asked kelsey if Richie's mouth was bleeding inside the car, and he responded there was a small trace of blood on her mouth. And then that's where they trip him up because he had testified at a hearing to something different.

He said, do you remember the other guy said, Mr. Kelsey, was there any blood on Melanie in the car? And you said, no, sir, it wasn't. And he said, I don't remember that conversation. I mean, I tried to write down exactly what we talked about right afterwards. I said we had a brief conversation and then he gave me forms and I wrote it down. So he's saying that he doesn't remember whether he said that or not. You'd remember blood. That's one of those things that you remember. They also bring in an FBI agent, Harold Harrison. So Harry Harrison here. Yeah.

Jesus Christ. Name your kids better. Everybody. Fuck me. Do better. Kelsey sought to elicit testimony concerning statements Payne made to the FBI during the investigation. And they said that Payne's attorney objected, arguing that Payne's credibility could not be impeached unless he took the stand himself. They tried to go around that.

So anyway, so they ended up it ended up reveal. They did a proffer of it so they could read what it was outside of the presence of the jury. And they revealed that it didn't contain any admission of guilt, but discussed the sequence of events, which they already knew. So they said, fuck it, get everything out of there. Now, photos are a thing. He argued that the state, that the judge erred in admitting photos into evidence because they were so horrible. And the two of them especially consisted of a diagram of the crime scene and photographs

of various bone and bomb fragments and clothing found at the scene. of various bone and bomb fragments and clothing found at the scene. His attorneys note that Melanie's body was discovered some 46 days after the crime was committed. Good Lord. They suggest that weather or local fauna could have altered the crime scene during this period, and the state's depictions were inaccurate representations of the crime scene and therefore prejudicial. And so, you know fucking ridiculous right the court says eat dicks it's coming in um also prior bad acts i guess pain's attorney asked kelsey if he had any legal problems or been arrested before july 12 1994 he responded

that he hadn't then they asked him if he had any they asked him all this shit and they ended up asking him about asking him about a forgery charge. And he responded he wasn't aware that there was charges against him. So they basically tried to show that he was like a bad kid. Kelsey, they're like, yeah, he's a jerk off, but it doesn't get admitted. Most of it. The judge said, I've stricken the last question, but let me be sure and remind you that the attorney's question is not evidence that I have stricken all of that. So you will disregard that. Okay, that's that. So anyway, in this whole thing here, the attorney inquired into a prior act of forgery.

And I don't know if he ever ended up being charged with this forgery during the closing. Okay. They say, quote, this is the prosecutor. A few weeks before her 16th birthday, Melanie Ritchie disappeared. Four to six days later, her destroyed body lay in the woods while her parents searched everywhere. While officials from South Carolina, Georgia and the FBI searched everywhere. Both Kelsey and Payne are guilty of murder. They acted together, participated together, drug that poor child into the woods, put a pipe bomb in her mouth and lit it. OK, that's pretty. It's pretty good.

Also says, Joe Kelsey says the only reason he put the pipe bomb in Melanie Ritchie's mouth was that he's deathly afraid of Jeff Payne. He's afraid of Jeff Payne, who's armed with nothing but a Zippo lighter, and he's holding a bomb. He said two things are certain after July 12, 1994. A whole lot of lying started, and the partying never stopped. Kelsey said he was seeking help. So he'll do one more crazy thing. He steals a truck and goes to Myrtle Beach.

That's what he did. That's how they found him in Maryland. Melanie's body is in the woods rotting and he's going to the beach partying and also showed a picture and said uh tonight we'll go home we'll go back home when we leave back to martinez back to augusta back to mccormick county but one person uh won't go home uh but let her family take something home justice okay pain's attorney comes up and starts talking shit about kelsey of course he does he said this guy should be an nfl running back with his with his moves but now he sees the sand going down around his feet

the state hasn't even charged jeffrey pain with possession of a pipe bomb there's no physical evidence against pain clearly he was innocent instead of wow uh the defense of pain was based on the facts that uh that Kelsey killed Richie. He said, who designed and made the pipe bomb? Who carried and placed the weapon that shows malice in this case? That's Joe Kelsey right there. And he said that Kelsey was the most difficult witness he'd encountered in 17 years of practice in law. Con Sarnit, he's the most difficult sumbitch I ever did face.

He really did make a reference to football he absolutely did he could have been an nfl running back with his bee bopping and scatting left and right jesus christ fucking wild he also said quote he said that richie was killed in the back seat by jeff payne he said when i her pulse, I knew she was dead because this fellow right here put her in a stranglehold. That's Kelsey's lawyer. So there you go. Wow. If you've got three guys hooked up on something awful and two of them are best friends and one of them is the new kid in town, who do you think is going to get the blame? That's what Kelsey's lawyer says.

These two are concocting. That's what Kelsey's lawyer says. These two are concocting. So the jury instructions come around here, and they're arguing about a failure to instruct the jury that one's mere association with a person who commits a crime does not make a defendant an accomplice or accomplice or a co-conspirator to the guilty perpetrator. He's got a lot of balls to say. He's going hard. Yeah. As they're saying, well well he was she was dead when i put the pipe bomb in so that's irrelevant so at this point we're worried about was i an

accomplice in the car and i was just there i thought we were just going on for a ride and i didn't know that she was being strangled in the back seat which is a big big fucking stretch to for anybody to make um so yeah he also argues mistake of fact saying that the trial court should have not should have not refused to charge the jury on the law of mistake of fact he contends that he believed richie was dead when he placed the pipe bomb in her mouth he asserts that even if richie were alive when he did this his mistaken belief that she was dead negates the criminal intent required to be convicted of murder. I thought she was fucking dead.

What do you want from me? That's that's pretty goddamn. Why I blew up a human being. I'm not an asshole. Wow. So after deliberating for four hours for two people, right? We've had a lot of charges, which isn't a lot of time. hours for two people right within a lot of charges which isn't a lot of time they come back and find joe and jeffrey pain guilty of murder good so yeah both guilty of murder in the first degree

not surprising yeah so uh before sentencing the judge allows uh her father steve ritchie melanie's father to speak and he obviously wants maximum sentences for everybody. He says, quote, Melanie was a lot of things, a student, a member of our church, a sister, and maybe first of all, my daughter. The only remorse on anyone's part charged in this trial was remorse at being caught. The judge agrees. The judge says, well, we'll start out with Jamie Lynn Lee. Jamie Lynn Lee, you, sir, may fuck off. You're going to be pissed about this.

Ten years he got. Yikes. That's not enough. He lifted what he believes is an unconscious girl into the woods with two buds and then left them to do whatever they were. Did nothing to stop this. He continued to drive while people were being strangled in his fucking car. He Uber murdered all over town. Fuck this kid.

This is 10 years. That's wild, man. That's crazy. He pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact. That's what he got. And the other two, you sirs may fuck off life in prison for both of them for pain and for kelsey but with oh my with parole because of their age so um yeah so they said the prosecutor said that he was pleased he said quote i'm as tired as i've been in a long time and as

i'm as happy as i've been in a long time. And I'm as happy as I've been in a long time. Our stated goal was to get murder convictions. On both Payne and Kelsey. So 1998. Kelsey's trying to appeal this shit. Of course he is. He's appealing there. They said that you know.

This is ridiculous. He didn't know that she was alive. All this type of shit. The judge said on one of the motions, quote, I don't know of anything more malicious than sticking a pipe bomb in a person's mouth, dead or alive. Yeah. Either way, it's not sweetening the deal any that she was fucking dead. So, yeah, the appeals are on. Did the court error in Kelsey's directed verdict motions, insufficient proof, blah, blah, blah of conspiracy.

They said that they should have trans. They shouldn't have transferred it to adult court. Meanwhile, we we, you know, I gave you the reasons why they did. And they seem pretty reasonable. Pretty good. They they denied the change of venue. The judge said that, you know, talk to everybody. Everybody said they were good. Should have declared a mistrial when they pitted Kelsey's testimony against the police officer's testimony of whether he made that statement in the car.

Should have been a mistrial there. What else? What else is good here? Precluding Kelsey from introducing Payne's statement into evidence, which didn't really help him at all anyway when they looked at it. Motion for severance. Did the trial court err in admitting a diagram and photos of the crime? No. It's all the same shit that everybody goes on. But the most thing they're concentrating on, because that's the thing that Payne also concentrates on, is the jury and the fact that we should have had a change of venue because 79 of 90 jurors had heard

of the case yeah i mean sure all the other facts in this are fine uh i definitely had sex with an unconscious woman in the back of a very small car with my buddies outside the car on a bridge and then we i beat the shit out of her and drug her into the woods hold on quote from somebody else that's not a quote from you oh no no no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, okay. I did not do that. That sounded like you were like, yeah, I've done that. We've all done that, but we don't put a pipe on our mouth afterwards. I just mean, all of these things, I'm fine with telling this court and letting them judge whether I'm a piece of shit or not and what I deserve for that. For real.

But those people can't hear it. What? No, that's all right. But that group of 12 people are incapable of making a sane decision. They can't understand it. Well, 35 of them said they couldn't because they wanted to probably strangle these fucking kids. Or they found that as a good way to get off of jury duty also. You never know because people have, you know, whatever. So I don't know what the fuck it is, but they're saying that, what are are you talking about through this whole thing?

They note that they didn't even, I guess, accurately state the law in their motion. The whole thing's a goddamn disaster. So it ends up being upheld in 1998. The trial is upheld and the conviction is upheld in the same within a two week period. Both Kelsey and Payne have appeals rejected for this. So they go in. Now, they're in prison. I found Kelsey in prison.

I haven't found Payne yet, but I found Kelsey. And Kelsey is still in prison, but has projected parole eligibility. The day he was eligible for parole, September 22nd 2015 oh he is he's up for parole chief both of them are oh they're both up for parole because that's that's 20 years that's when you get your first look so i hope they just constantly tell them no i mean i mean you did a you did what no they're going to assume, because they were very young. So if you're 45 now or whatever, you're going to say, well, I'm a lot different than I was when I was 16. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They're going to let these fucking people out eventually. And it's scary that anybody walking around the streets has memory of blowing up a teenager's head. They just shouldn't. That's crazy. And possibly they won't, depending on whether or not they are a different person today. But even if they are a different person today, you can't put a pipe bomb in a human being's mouth

and say, I didn't expect that. No, especially a 15-year-old girl. It's not like you guys were rival drug gangs or something. This is an innocent girl that just went out to hang out with her friends on a summer night like this is crazy your expectation of what's about to happen and what can happen later yeah it can't be she's gonna be fine there's that's just not there so yeah 11 days before her 16th birthday she died and uh she um finally got a proper burial at least in westover

memorial park in augusta there so at least she's at least she's got a proper burial and for now at least two of the three guys are in jail the other one's been out forever christ he's been out he he watched 9-11 from his living room that motherfucker so or he didn't because he's still he went back to jail because he's a turd. That's the other thing. He's got to be back in jail. He's got to be an asshole. He's a squirrel. He was like the guy who just went along with everything.

He was like the lackey. He's like Payne's lackey. Crush up that ecstasy tablet. Go get me a wrench. Fucking drive me to the bridge so I can rape a girl and kill her. That's a lackey. That's pathetic. I could see that.

He's the most pathetic person here, I feel like. He really feel like he really is right yeah he didn't even have the balls at least i feel like kelsey was a little interested in what was going on here and was kind of into it pain was trying to get his fucking rocks off yeah and lee was just this guy that was too fucking much of a pussy to say anything about it because i don't think he agreed with any of this shit but he let it go he had a moral thought and went that's cool fuck it i don't want people to not like me yeah but crush up ecstasy get me a right there drive while i'm doing this in the back seat get out so i can fuck her what no this is a lackey a pathetic pathetic person and i don't feel bad for him at all so fuck these fuck all three of these people.

Truly. And poor Melanie Ritchie, we feel terrible. So that's an awful thing. I feel bad for her family. They seem like decent people that have been crushed by this whole thing. I can't imagine. She was well-loved.

I found a couple of articles where there was, from like 2005, where there was still classmates of hers posting on the comments like, oh man, she was such was still like classmates of hers posting on the comments like, oh man, she was such a great person and yeah, we really miss her and shit like that. So she stuck in people's minds and apparently was a really, you know, good person.

Whether she's good or not doesn't matter. That's a terrible way to go out. But in this case, seems like she was really a great person too. And it sucked. So this depressed the fuck out of me last night reading all this. I had a very depressing night, but that's okay because it was a crazy case and fuck these three so

that said hope you enjoyed that insanity uh if you did certainly certainly tell everybody about it if not go fuck yourself and don't bother but if you did yeah i'm just kidding but don't say the other way you're fucking yeah exactly apple podcast give us five stars it really helps out a lot helps drive the show up the charts head over to shut up and give me murder.com right now for everything crime and sports and small town murder related get your merchandise get all that stuff get tickets to live shows full slate for 2022 certain people have asked us like how come denver's not on there well denver was one of the four shows we got in in 2020 right before everything shut down so these are all rescheduled

2020 shows so denver technically we won't be doing to like 2023 because we got that in in 2020 so there's a couple like that that are like salt lake city's the same way i'm so upset you know yeah i love denver christ it's legal weed and it's beautiful you think i'm not gonna fucking that are like Salt Lake City is the same way. I'm so upset. You know? Yeah. I love Denver. Christ, it's legal weed and it's beautiful. You think I'm not going to fucking want to go there? I love going there. Last time we stood out in a huge snowstorm just smoking giant joints. It was a beautiful experience.

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And we think you'll be interested in all of them. As a matter of fact, try to do it. So they're kind of, you know, they hold a little different. It's a little more fun, a little more loosey goosey. And it's so entertaining. It really is. Our two shows this week are we did the Atlanta Gold Club scandal for the Crime and Sports one, which was a very high-class,

quote-unquote, strip club where famous people had gross things done to them, and it's pretty hilarious. And the timing of it made it go away really fast. Absolutely. Yeah, they had a big trial, and people had to testify to the gross things that happened there. And what I've been saying, you find out what did Madonna, Patrick Ewing and Bill Gates all have in common. Want to find out?

Well, here you go. Yeah, that's the way to do it. Patreon dot com slash crime and sports. And for the small town murder episode we did, we talked about the theory based that they based that Sons of Sam documentary on, that the son of Sam, David Berkowitz, did not act alone. And actually, he was part of basically a multinational conglomerate of satanic cults that has a very organized schedule of how they're doing things. And they assign people for murders on the other coast. It's a very bureaucratic red tape through this whole thing and all these satanist cults must that's probably what killed them all too much bureaucratic

all the receptionists they had to hire all the franchise data entry it's too much it's just too much so but uh we have the i read the whole book that maury terry wrote called the ultimate evil which is 25 hours of an audiobook on why it's a conspiracy and his very intricate thoughts on the whole thing and this episode is fucking hilarious you gotta listen to it patreon.com slash crime and sports plus you're gonna get a shout out at the end of the show because not only do we love you we feel like you need to hear your name and hear it pronounced poorly that's our goal so in this show if you just want to get a shout out and have great karma and earn our undying affection, you can do that very easily over at PayPal.

Also using our email address, crime and sports at gmail.com. And now it's time before we get to shout out. I want to like to play this trailer for everybody out there. This we're so excited about this. We worked so hard on this network. Like we said, especially behind the scenes, Sarah has gone above and beyond what any say normal person could possibly do to build some shit and do paperwork and and just coordinate and talk to people.

And this we're proud of this. We want to bring you shows that we think are good enough that we would listen to and that we're proud enough to put our name on. And that's what it is. As you know how we are, we're very much careful about what we put our name on. And these are shows that we have no problem saying we are happy to present this to you. And it's the Upside Down Digital Network is our network. Upside Down. And our first show that we're putting out is called Game of Crimes.

And it has Steve Murphy, who is Steve Murphy is the guy, the blonde guy in Narcos is based on. That's him. That's Murph. So it is. And he was a DEA agent. You can't even imagine the life this guy's led. That's Murph. So it is. And he was a DEA agent. He's done a, you can't even imagine the life this guy's led. It's absolutely insane. And the crazy life that his partner Morgan's led as well is crazy.

Morgan Wright as well. He has a crazy life. He was a cop forever. Kansas Wild Dog, right? All around. Yeah. Yeah. He did that.

And I think he was something federal as well. But he was, either way, these guys are going to present a case and they have a great sense of humor they're not dry like you know wow it's gonna read the facts to you they're really funny really sharp guys they rip each other and their guests they bring on we're talking you're gonna have colombian hitmen from prison they're gonna interview like shit like that guests that nobody can get your inside things on cases that you've you thought you knew a lot about and you don't know a lot about it because they're going to tell you even more more behind the scenes stuff this is the good shit i'm telling you with the research they do and the way they put their shows together you are going to

love this game of crimes what do you say we give them the trailer right now lift the veil roll the let's do this a special sneak preview it doesn't come out the trailer doesn't come out till this weekend even but we wanted to give everyone here a special sneak preview of game of crimes i walked across the street and i saw the bodies of Lindsay Liu and Martin Richard on the ground at the second bombing site. And so I knew that not only we had bad injuries, but we also had bodies. And this was going to be an international incident. These are the stories you won't hear anywhere else told by the people who live them. It's the ultimate game.

Welcome to Game of Crimes. You know, we've had these ups and downs before, so I wasn't quite sure what they had, but I felt like it was going to be pretty important. Tom lays out these three sheets of paper, Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, then he throws down the third sheet of paper and the title of that was Green River Killer. It matched the other two and I looked at Tom and I said, hey are you trying to tell me we've got the Green River Killer? And he didn't, he looked at me, didn't say anything, He pulled out an envelope

and handed it to me. And he says, yeah, his name is in here. I said, I don't even need to open that thing. It's here in Ridgway. He opens it up and pulls out the mugshot of Ridgway. And that's the mugshot that was taken of him when he was arrested for patronizing a prostitute in 1982. It's the only mugshot we had of him. You know what I should have had playing? I should have had playing a little Latin music. Kind of like the theme from Narcos, but we'd get our ass sued for that. I am going to insert into this him and I being co-hosts.

So, Steve, did you catch all that? Did I go too fast? You good? You did, but I'll read it in the notes later. And thank you for having me as a guest on my own show. And I'm in front of Tommy, and I go around the corner to peek in the door, do a quick peek. And I saw my reflection in the mirror and about cracked my pants right there. I think I knocked Tommy down trying to get out of the way. Hey, for Murph's benefit, would you tell him what pecuniary means? You're reading my mind, brother.

Is that like penicillin or is that what helps you with your zits? What is that? Is that huge spelled with an H or a Y? Like huge? Don't you understand

f***ing English? Hey, let me tell you, Don. I've been working with this guy for months and this is all I got. Man, I'm going to send you my English book. It's about four pages long.

It's f***ing you. What's up, you mutt? I'm getting off the elevator in the federal building, going to lunch with a couple of the other agents. And who is standing there at the elevator when I got off in the federal building is the crook. And I thought, oh, my, it's, he, he, he, it's done. I went over there. As you know, I walked up to the volcano house, which is his top of the island. And we headed out and I didn't want to shoot him. I just wanted to look at him. To be honest with you, I shot very few people in my life. More than five or less than

five? Let's go less. Subscribe for free wherever you're listening right now and join us for our first two episodes on June 28th. Hear from the people who have been players in the biggest game of all. The Game of Crimes. How great 28th. Hear from the people who have been players in the biggest game of all, the game of crimes.

How great is that? That's what it is. That's it's awesome. I'm to all the interviews are so cool. I've heard some stuff where I'm my mind was blown. Listen to some of the things they have already. It's so amazing. Seriously, you're going to listen to that and keep your eye out because I think the next week after that or two weeks after that comes out, we have another show coming out that is just as exciting and just as amazing. I can't wait. Somebody who's a real it's the point of view is really unique, really original and just a lot of talent there and a lot of really good stories and great stuff. Just a lot of talent there and really good stories and great stuff. You're going to love that as well. So we cannot wait. We're so proud to present the Upside Down Digital Network to everybody out there.

That said, I would like to thank everybody who's made this possible as well. So we would like to thank. You've pushed us so far in terms of professionalism and building something that we can be proud of. And we truly can't thank you enough. And you deserve more credit than we can offer. Absolutely. So thank you so much. And, Jimmy, please, please, please hit me with the names of the most fantastic people on the face of the earth who would never blow my head up with a pipe bomb.

This week's executive producers are Melissa Turner. Melissa Turner is her name, actually, Joanne Ahern, Brandon Kibler. First name. Brandon Kibler got full-time work. Congrats, Brandon. Good for you. And shared the wealth with us. What a darling. Why, thank you.

That was sweet. Other executives are Marion Arcon, Matthew Reed. He's an Italian chef in Boston, and he lost his job, or he quit his job. I can't tell. He just said former Italian chef. Hey, oh, I just went very Italian on him. Jordan Bennett, Alexandra Little, Daniel Shriner, Jill Locan, Luella Bryan, Agape,

okay, look, I'm going to do my best. Agape, Tiamapolo, Latterichoni, nope, Latteriochi. Fuck yeah. Jenna, Brissana, Tola, Marisolo. God damn. Wow. But it's a real name, I guess. Bunch of sounds.

Also, Kirstie Stevens, Amy Bryant, Aaron Basinski, and Leo Fair. Thank you guys for giving as much as it's incredible I can't thank you enough for what you do truly other producers this week are Corporal Carl Kirshner, Thomas Smith, Aunt Esther and her lover Grady I don't know what that show

is a reference to that's a god damn are you kidding me it's fucking Sanford and Son oh is it? it's sanford and son i don't know no i don't know great he was his best friend okay yes yeah no i don't know also thomas hammer alexandria parks peyton meadows fawn lebowitz she perished in a kiln fire that's a reference that's what. That's what happened, yes. Thank you.

I knew it was a reference to something. Louis De Palma and Jim Ignatowski. I think that's also Animal House. Those are taxi characters. Are they? Those are taxi characters. Oh! Louis De Palma is Danny DeVito, and Jim Ignatowski is Christopher Lloyd in Taxi.

That's who they are. Son of a bitch. And Rabbi Shmuelalovich. Still have to dig that one up it's from a movie too this guy yeah i'm sure gary's the best uh there's also carla broman jennifer stevens dana stewart james martyr uh happy birthday totsy whoever totsy is didn't give a last name uh james martyred uh where I go? I already said that. Margaret Cowan. Chelsea at Fresh Baked Goods.

That's PH Fresh in Denver. I imagine that is Weed Shop, right? Probably. Hey, hey. I imagine. There's also Ron Jeremy's Pet Snake. Chris Chirico in Happy Birthday from Skeeter. Jessica Masseri wants to be on Biggs.

Good for you, Biggs. Felicia Reed, Larry Butterfast. That guy is fucking fantastic, P.S. I really like that guy. Stephanie Rogers, Ron Rico. I don't know who Ron Rico is. Who the hell is that? That's a reference to something also. Jess Campanello, Janice Hill,

Shelly Roberts in Pew Pew, Texas. Over there in Gun Barrel. Thomas DeMello, Janice Hill, Shelly Roberts in Pew Pew, Texas, over there in Gun Barrel. Thomas DeMello, Stacey Nielsen, and everyone over on Discord. Courtney Fliggler, and Tyler Flores, because he's the best husband and dad, James, in case you thought you were in the running. You're wrong. Damn it. Jude Kendall, I said that, I think.

No, I didn't. Caleb and Delilah Destin. They got a new puppy named Otis. Adam Dugdale. Sweet. Cameroon Mitchell. Cameroon Mitchell Hall. I think it's Cameron.

There's no way that's Cameroon, right? It's Cameron, right? Cameron Mitchell is an actor that was in a bunch of shitty B movies, and it's a joke for the best of the worst. I hope. No? Okay. I doubt it's a joke for the best of the worst. I hope. No? Okay. I doubt it's the guy, but maybe.

Or Mrs. I don't know. Yeah. The guys at Glendale Customs, for all your Cerakote needs, Ashley Veo, Lori Olson, Cynthia Maddox, oh, boy, I think that's Jean,

Jeanne Hawn, Mary Kate Cantrell, Ethan Bentley, Mitchell Foley, Cody Murtaugh, Noah Fox, Rebecca Trong, Jordan with no last name, Ryan Mezzazia, Ashley Dorian-Medwig, Andrew Lamar, Samantha Schlieffenbaum, Zoot Steeples, Megan Fiera. What?

Why does it say ask? No way that's her last name. Ask? Is it Monica? I don't know. Robert Rigel, Wooley with no last name, Matt Caruch. Debbie Jones. Lisa Aris. Nat Freestone. Della Mead. Eric Langdon. Andrea Stanley. Amy Morrison. Debbie Gorsh. Paige Hardy. Zoe Littleberry. Jonah DeJuna. Benjamin DeJuna. Sarah Hyatt. Francois Lagrange. Cassandra Angle. Amanda with no last name.

Lindsay, what is it? You're a mess. I'm a dummy. Lindsay Delrimple. Matthew Johnson. Rudy Marshall. Nick Creech. Tyler Correct.

That's not right. I'm sure that's not correct. It's something else. I imagine my phone or my computer did that. Catherine Purves. Ingrid Moe. Spell corrected it. It's trying to. It's something else. I imagine my phone or my computer did that. Catherine Purves, Ingrid Moe. Spell corrected it. It's trying to fix my bullshit. Tim Emmel, Draca Publishing, Jenna, Jenna Wiley, Helen Avalos, Josh Bovee, Virginia Martin,

Lorna Bai, Anna Rodriguez, Anna Lee Mosier, Sean Slayton, Leah Cook, Troy Watt, Amy Hoffman, Justin Witt, Dustin Kisling, Catherine with no last name, and also Sean with no last name, Tammy Madrigal, Matthew Baker, Small Beef, Gray with no last name, Caitlin Butler, Yuki Rocks, LOL, so maybe not, Peter Mulholland, Katie Davis, Seth Nadeau, Sean P., Adeline Shine, Jill Wink, Alice Kosrivi, Eric with no last name, Chelsea Berman, Royal B, Alana, Skull Beard, Jennifer Drum, Janie B, Jamie Ellison, Colt Dupree, Susan Childers, no relation to the lady in Sling Blade, C.W. Glassworks, Courtney Arredondo, Paul Pesavento, blade uh cw glassworks courtney arredondo paul pesevento ashley lang jenna and kaylin no last name for either tony centeno uh what is this matt dennett keith and cassie pearson spider matt dale

dale artist hunter hoag randy with no last name, Renee Snelling, Amber Young, Scubalicious, Robert Cherry, Richard Shorter, Justin A., Rachel Moore, Joe would know last name, Benjamin Harry, Sharon Durr, the Monster Girls guy, whatever that means. Ronnie Moe, 1015, Rachel Jacobs, Whitney Holt, Kevin Powell, Beth Padgett, Allie Pryor, and also Alex Pryor, Elise Batchert, Renee Snook, Matt Glazer, nope, that's John, Rayfield, Sarah, oh, Sezinski? Sex-inski? Oh, boy. Izyzynski? Sex-inski? Oh, boy.

I don't know. Sexy-inski? Sex-i-nski. Robert Carroll. I don't know what it is. That's a problem. Crystal with no last name. Robert Carroll.

I said that. Denise McIntyre. Jess Campanello. I said that. She donated both ways. Thank you. Jennifer. Thank you. Jennifer. Thank you.

Jennifer Negro. Marshall. Well, I have to say it's slow like that and not sound like an asshole. It doesn't. Yeah. Right. Marshall Williams. Katie Farish.

Mandy Randolph. Cress Musgrove. Melissa De Santiago. John Doe. Julie Gallagher. Jasmina Kaminska. Andrew Kierse, William Christian, Alejandro Medina, Armand Smits, Rick, Sarah Neuchterlein, David Holtz, Sarah Jean-Marie, Kim Purpura, Holden Fart, are you happy about yourself? Are you proud? God damn it.

Tony with no last name, Kimberly Krupo, Edward Montoto, Luke with no last name, Caleb Kenny, Arjun had no last name, Brittany Leone, Brian Karbowski, Elena Robledo, Blair McDonald, Sammy Hall, Chelsea Smith, Dean with no last name, Emmanuel Cunt. I don't know what that is. Okay. Alexandra Little, Connor Johnson, Sarah LaFleur, Matthew Thurlow, Cara Vaughn, Jennifer Fassler, Kelly Ferraro, Mr. Sprinkle, Sparkle, sorry, Kira LaPartardee. Mr. Sparkle. Amity Kamizziak.

Jen Hobson. Russ Paxson. Nick Garcia. Scaffer. Scafire. Cassie Powers. Casey Powers. Clark B.

Canyon Drake. Chris Roda. Roda? A Weird Life. Dom Ferrari. Melissa Grimm. Bryson Anderson. Mason Hyde.

Collie Stevens. Will Kranitz. Ariel Chilcote, Ryan Freed, Desiree Ray, Aaron Phillips, Nick Ligon, Lisa Lee, Caroline Barr, Nate Neuschwander. I think that's a reference to Black Sheep. Chad and Alia. Shane Evans. Hunter with no last name. Jason Sibley. Tia Churchill. Ash Martel. Mothman with no last name because it's the prophecies, obviously. Jason Alford.

Bears Wild. Wayne Kerr. Jeremy Visser. Kevin Shook. Sarah. Oh, boy. Sarang Zahave. Chernobyl.

What? Maureen Lacey. Raina with no last name. Ryan Burgess. Lai H. Keer. Kerr. William Woods. Dave Van Hoff.

Dave Cantoff. Sarah Kersey. Susan Carlton. And Brandi Rawls. And obviously all of our patrons. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, everybody.

Honestly, from the bottom of our hearts. Feels good. Feels real good. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, everybody. Honestly, from the bottom of our hearts. Feels good. Feels real good. Thank you. Feels really good. We really hope you get on board with the shows on the network and give them a shot because we wouldn't put them out unless we thought they were just as good as what we were doing. That's a fact.

I mean, honestly, we looked high and low for stuff. This isn't the first thing that fell in our lap or anything like that. That's why it took a year to put the whole thing together, because we didn't want to launch with anything but the best. And we're going to launch with the two best possible shows we can. And so we're very excited about that. Jimmy, what if people wanted to tell you how excited they were about anything? How could they get a hold of you?

You can find me on the Internet, and you can also find James there. Do some Googling. Work that Google hard and find us both. You can find us on the internet. Yes, exactly. You know how to work that shit. You found our show. Yeah.

You can find that. Hey, Siri, where's Jimmy? Where are they? And then you'll find us there. Okay, that's pretty hilarious. That's not getting cut out, by the way. That's funny as shit. Where's Jimmy?

He's right in front of me, asshole. It answered sarcastically. It told me to unlock my iPhone. Stupid. Did it add stupid to the end of it? Because that would have been appropriate. Unbelievable. We're right here, asshole.

Find us out there. Keep coming back week after week after week because we'll be here. We're not going anywhere. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.