Small Town Murder - #257 - Bloody Jealousy - Woodstock, Illinois

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

This week, in Woodstock, Illinois, a seemingly perfect young, small town couple, both from seemingly perfect families, who are good friends, and all from a seemingly perfect little town. What could go wrong? Well, jealously, anger, and absolutely heartless, cold blooded murder! A terrible attack, leads to a ridiculous manhunt, that lasts 3 years, with paths crossing with everyone from a fashion designing cult leader, to Dolly Parton. As crazy as it gets!!  Along the way, we find out that some Chicago is synonymous with "The Old West", that it's not safe to be an unknown actor, when there is a national manhunt for a murderer, and that some people just won't die, no matter how many times you stab them!! 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/@murdersmallfacebook.com/smalltownpodinstagram.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.

You're listening early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. 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 Woodstock, Illinois, a terrible slaughter in a family home leaves everyone reeling, but the carnage turns into an even weirder story once the hunt for the killer begins. Welcome to Small Town Murder. hello everybody and welcome back to small town murder yay yay indeed jimmy yay indeed my name

is james petrogallo i'm here with my co-host i am jimmy wissman thank you folks so much for joining us again or if it's your first time thank you for giving us a shot we are excited well it's a weird thing to say with all the murder here but uh yeah it's a crazy story and we're gonna try to have as much fun with it as we possibly can around the terrible things that have happened but thank you for joining us uh if you have not done it yet give us a review five stars would be wonderful you can do it on spotify now so thank you that does help drive us up the charts so thank you so much for that everyone who has done that also uh shut up and give me murder.com get all your tickets all your merchandise

everything of that nature announcement here uh the next i guess it's like almost 60 days worth of shows january february shows these are n, Tampa, Orlando, Oklahoma City, Austin are all rescheduled now. They're going to be it'll be in this calendar year. Don't worry. It'll be sometime before December of 2022, I guess now. But yeah, we have no choice. We were advised that apparently the clubs and different places are having everyone will go down sick at the same time. So there's a lot of places across the country where performers will get their crowds will be ready. And that day they'll say we can't open tonight because we don't have a staff and then everybody's screwed and they all have to. have to so we stop taking it out on us it's not our fucking fault yeah people we've got a couple people mad at us we're we're trying to make a living so you know we we would love to do the

money until until we do the show so this isn't a bake sale like we don't have a lock box with everybody's money ticket money in front of us it's a you know no we don't it's it's all we don't get it till we perform so that's the way it works we'd love to perform and get it over with and get the money and have you be happy with the show we don't get it until eight perform so that's the way it works we'd love to perform and get it over with and get the money and have you be happy with the show we don't get until eight weeks later there you go so we're we're hoping that chicago will be our next show chicago minneapolis i think that chicago might be sold out minneapolis might be like supposed to be about sold out so close get your tickets now i don't know what to tell you good luck we can't wait to get out there you got stop buying tickets to us on stubhub or any yeah don't buy third party don't know what to tell you. Good luck. We can't wait to get out there. Stop buying tickets to us on StubHub or any fucking third party.

Yeah, don't buy third party sites. Don't do that. Because then you can't get refunds in case some weird shit happens. Or you can't get. And that's your problem. Don't do that. Don't do that. God damn it.

Buy it from legitimate places. You can go in the Facebook groups and you can get them. Other fans sell them and stuff like that. That's a much easier way to do it. So do that. And if you can't get them, you can't get them. We'll be back next year. We'll be back next year we'll be back to tell you jesus so patreon.com slash crime and sports is where you get the good stuff oh this week so much good stuff and you get

anybody five dollars or above you get access to crime and sports and small town murders uh patreon and if you don't listen to crime and sports start this week with jerry the king lawler because everyone knows who he is and there's not a lot of sports at all in that. Just a lot of weird stuff. So this week, you're going to get, like I said, access to everything we do. This week, we have crime and sports episode is going to be a year in sports crime. Nineteen ninety five. And it's just like two hundred arrests.

And we're going to go over them real quick. It's going to be amazing. Just a fast rundown of so many people getting arrested. And then small town murder, we're going to do one of our more requested ones here. We're going to talk about JonBenet Ramsey and that whole problem.

And not so much the murder because that's been covered and it's pretty gross, honestly. It's pretty awful. But all the stuff afterwards, what's up with the parents? What's up with the letter in the house? The ransom note? Who writes a ransom note? You know, does multiple drafts of one after you slaughtered a little girl. It's insane. So crazy stuff. Patreon dot com slash crime and sports is where you get that. And you're going to get a shout out. Jimmy will mispronounce your name most eloquently while trying to pronounce it properly. Or you can just go to PayPal. use our email address crime and sports at gmail.com and get your name totally totally messed up so that's the way that word quick disclaimer because we have a lot of show here this is a comedy podcast we're comedians there's going to be jokes also the stories are 100 true there's no no kind of embellishment for comedic effect or any of that garbage this is the facts and we are going to dance around the horrible stuff and find the humor and there's

plenty of it there there's a lot of silliness that goes around around a murder like thinking i'll get away with this murder that's pretty silly so we're going to make fun of that that's what i mean what we're not going to do though we're not going to make fun of the victims or the victims families why because we're assholes but but we're not scumbags and that's how that works so if that sounds good to you welcome aboard if you think true crime and comedy should never ever go together you might not like this but i bet you will actually just uh don't complain later that's all we're asking for everyone i think it's time to sit back clear the lungs and shout shut up and give me that murder.

Let's do this, everybody. All right. Let's go on a trip, Jimmy. What do you say? Let's do it. We are coming from Utah last week. All the way, remember that? Cedar City, Utah.

Southern border. We're heading for the Midwest this week, baby. Right in the heart. Woodstock, Illinois. Everybody's got one, evidently. Everybody's got a Woodstock, and Illinois is no different. What the fuck is that about? Woodstock, Illinois. It's a northwest

suburb of Chicago. It's kind of a longer-away suburb, but it's a suburb. People commute in to work. It's about an hour and eight minutes, hour ten minutes, to downtown Chicago from here. It's a good suburb, you know,

to drive in from is about an hour, 40 minutes to Madison, Wisconsin. If you want to go over that direction and about three hours and 35 minutes from Mount Zion, Illinois episode two 17, our last Illinois episode, which was the doggy DNA.

Remember that there was dog DNA that got a guy busted because his dog's dna was on the it was crazy man it was a whole family that got arrested it was a wild scene so how did we not make a bunch of dog fucking jokes with that we do you think we didn't i mean you don't remember them because it was almost a year ago but i i guarantee you there was some there was some dog coitus humor. Some doggy style mentioned? Weird. It's in McHenry County. Area code here, 815. The motto here for this town, they do have a motto, true to its past, confident in its future.

Oh, okay. That's interesting. True to its past, confident in its future. I don't know about that path, Dan about that well let's hear about it a little bit with a drop of history we gotta buzz through the town stuff because we have so much show here this is just a weird crazy twisty case so we gotta get into this fast it was uh it's it was named in all america's city in 1864 or 1964 not 1864 it was sorry about that one of the first it started it was named centerville to begin with and i got thought i guess they thought that sounded just kind of

too boring too vanilla so they renamed it woodstock and there you go uh this was in the 50s so i don't know if it was like after snoopy's friend or what this wasn't like there's less centerville's than there are woodstocks yeah probably uh it was also it's a certified city in 1987 i don't know what that is but they're proud of it uh it's a national trust distinctive destination in 2007 wow a lot of titles and then in the last few years it it became a Preserve America Community. I don't know what that means either. That doesn't sound good. I don't like that.

It sounds aggressive. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places and rests the Woodstock Square. The downtown is all historical shit. It's been around a long time. They also say, and this is from their website whether visiting for a day a weekend or living in woodstock we're glad you're here thanks for whatever reason glad to be here uh in the 1900s woodstock became known as typewriter city because it was home to multiple typewriter factories the emerson typewriter factories, the Emerson Typewriter Company and the Oliver Typewriter Company.

How much do they hate computers? They're like, fuck the town that computers killed, is what the name of this town is. The town that word processors killed. Yeah, right here is an ink ribbon. What's an ink ribbon? Yeah, right here is an ink ribbon. What's an ink ribbon?

In 1922, the Woodstock typewriters were accounted for more than half the typewriters in the world. Oh, damn it. So coming from this place. Why is it, by the way, that you get these towns that will become that industry's town? Like we make typewriters here. Why did the second business open there also when there's already a typewriter company there wouldn't you think the second typewriter company be like let's move to a different town so we can be king shit of fuck mountain and typewriters here i don't know james perhaps the weather there is so perfect for typewriter it might be just the

ribbons come out just right i don't know the right humidity like rum in the bahamas yeah um but but the factories were like the main town you know like everybody worked there everything revolved around them they had social clubs and baseball teams and you know oh they were always playing each other and shit like that it's pretty why they even had a band one of the emerson factory had a band um they all they were all closed down by 1970 though i mean people had typewriters and they were like thanks a lot apple already have one we're good yeah did you have one in your house i had one in my house i am sure there was one there i don't fucking know there

wasn't much typing going on in my house really we had one just in case mainly yelling in italian it was a different just in case somebody felt yelling in Italian. It was a different system. Just in case somebody felt like. Just yelling in Italian, that would be. I figure Italians would be real good at typewriters. You guys talk with your hands so much. Yeah, you'd imagine, but nope. Or no use for them because you talk with them enough. Yeah, your hands are up here.

You can't type. You go, ah. You got to get them down here to type. It's too far. Too far. Too far away from the typewriter. If we can mount it on the wall, possibly. So also Orson Welles was here for a while.

The actor Orson Welles was obviously a giant, famous actor, director. And I guess in 1926, he was enrolled in the Todd School for Boys when he was 10. And he was there for five years. That was his only formal was there for five years. That was his only formal education was five years in Woodstock. And in 1960, they asked him in an interview, what's your hometown? And he said, I suppose it's Woodstock, Illinois, if it's anywhere. I went to school there for four years. I try to think of it as a home.

If I try to think of a home, it's that. So apparently shaped him a little bit they uh they film several scenes in planes trains and automobiles here no shit shit yeah the scene where the rental car is being towed away was seen if it was filmed here and uh woodstock is most famous for being the the town square is the location of the movie groundhog day which is no kidding supposed to be in pennsylvania pennsylvania but no they picked a town square is the location of the movie groundhog day which is no kidding supposed to be in pennsylvania at all tawny pennsylvania but no they picked a town square that was good to film in and apparently it was this one and plus it's by chicago bill murray's in it think about it he'd

be like let's pick one so i can get to a cubs game once in a while rather not go to philly so um i guess apparently it was a non-specific the square the woodstock square where they pull the you know groundhog out and everything they said that really looked like you know small town usa right for what they were looking for and we're what's his fuck uh trips over the uh the water puddle every day phil yeah is it phil yeah phil phil there's a lot of Phil. A lot of Phil's going on. Yeah. So now he, oh, Ned. Ned Ryerson. Ned Ryerson. He calls Phil.

He calls out to Phil. He's Phil now. Phil. Now, the outdoor street scenes were filmed all around. Everything outside was pretty much there. And a lot of the real businesses were there. And there is all sorts of plaques. And there's a walking tour for visitors to, you know, whatever.

So reviews of this town. Five stars. This one. They love it. I mean, five stars. It's perfect. Love the town of Woodstock. Love is all capital letters, by the way.

So it must be real. So many things to do in the historic Woodstock Square with many local shops, cafes and restaurants. Also, the town where the movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray was filmed. Perfect. Is there another one? Three stars. The other Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day 2. It's a darker tome. It's a different thing. It's got Jean-Claude Van Damme in it where he hunts down the killers of his wife and children. And he finally gets them on Groundhog Day and slaughters them in front of the groundhog, causing him to go back into his hole. There's no repeating this day. It just happens once.

Then he wakes up and it's February 3rd and everything's over. And he's got blood all over him. And then he goes to prison. And he wishes it would just start over again. And he could just not do start over again and he could just not do all the horrible shit he just did that's right so three stars woodstock is not the kind of town you move to when you want to have loads of fun occasionally there are some fun things to do but they happen so often you see the same people there definitely not enough to do i

would assume this person thinks there's not enough to do here based on the three different sentences they said it three different ways in three different sentences and then summed it up succinctly after growing up here i personally hate the location you are far away from any major cities or towns an hour away from chicago is not that far the main type of people who live here are usually farmer families or Hispanics. Okay. Jesus. What the fuck? I don't like farmers or Hispanics.

Woodstock is an old town stuck in old ways. Reminds me of a loaf of moldy bread. Wow. Good lord. Interesting. Let's see. One star. Moved here a few years ago. Unwelcoming and discriminatory toward newcomers.

No places to really shop for a family. The Walmart is never stocked and doesn't carry a full selection. Wow. Even the Jewel Osco doesn't restock regularly. The Jewel. Even the Osco isn't restocking. Well, if Osco's not restocking, this town is going down, clearly. Is Osco the Jewel Osco? Is restocking. Well, if Osco's not restocking, this town is going down, clearly. Is Osco the Jewel Osco?

Is that the brand? Jewel Osco is like a drugstore. Remember, they used to have them in Phoenix, the Oscos. Yeah, but it was just Osco Drug here. But the Jewel was part of their corporate name always. I thought they were saying like the Jewel of the town. The Jewel of the town, the bright shining Osco on the hill. Don't bother to try to get involved or volunteer if

you haven't been born here low class and even less educated but they know all corruption is rampant schools are poor especially the elementary even the drivers don't follow the rules of the road it's just what is it dodge city and the fucking wyatt irp need to come in here and lay down the law? Oh, my God. This is the fourth state I've lived in and by far the worst place I've ever lived. Can't wait to move away from here. Upside is train station to Chicago. So, yeah, you can leave anytime you want. By the way, just a reminder, we don't write these reviews.

We're just reading ones that other people wrote. So people will argue with me over a review someone else wrote.'m like that i'm sure that could be true i don't know that's why we're laughing at the review yeah one star agree with the reviewer who stated unwelcoming and discriminatory to newcomers don't bother to get involved low class less educated but they know quotes this review is just a quote of the other review. Yeah. And then said, if exclusion in small town gossip is your thing, you'll fit right in here. Hell yeah. So, wow, they're angry. People in this town, 25,097.

So it's a decent sized town. It's exactly 50-50 male-female, like exactly on the money. So no one die or move or be born. We can keep the ratio. We nailed it. We we nailed it 36.1 is the median age which is like a year younger than normal here married population is actually a little less than normal which is normally 50 50 here it's a little less which you would think it'd be higher because it's a suburb usually we get those kind of family dynamics, but not really here. Race of this town, 71% white, 3.2% black, 1.9% Asian, 22% Hispanic.

So I don't have farmer statistics at all, but they were correct. There are Hispanic people here. What's the agriculture like? What's the agricultural population? What's the agriculture like? What's the agricultural population? Fifty four percent of the people here are religious, which, you know, that's seems to be a heavy. Illinois is very heavily Catholic. Whenever we do stories right around Chicago, it's and here it is.

Thirty five point five percent Catholic. So it's Catholics are, as we know, the Baptists of the northern Midwest region north of a specific latitude or longitude that's it uh you got almost eight percent lutheran you know a couple of presbyterians here there a pentecostal or two to toss around and uh 0.1 percent jewish so not a whole lot of jewish people here in the it's pretty close politically in mchenry county County, which is out here in this county. About 47.5% of the people voted Democrat in the last election, 50% Republican, 2.5% Independent. So pretty almost even there. Unemployment rate here is about normal with the rest of the country. And the median household income is $600 off the national average.

Is that right? Yeah, this town is as average as shit gets when it comes to all that kind of stuff. This is middle class USA here. So, yeah, the cost of living, 100 would be regular average. Here it's 96.3. So right on. The only thing that's less is housing, which is a 71. The only thing that's less is housing, which is a 71.

So median home cost $237,200, which is about $60,000 less than the national average. So if we've convinced you, damn it, you need to go somewhere. We have for you the Woodstock, Illinois, real estate report. average two bedroom rental here goes for 1225 bucks which is right about the national average so that's what the fuck pretty damn normal uh the only thing not normal about this show is the horrible murder here this is a very abnormal so there is a one-bedroom, one-bath little house. It does not list the square footage, which is never a good sign. No. It's a box. If you take, like, a box and then put a door on it and you say, live in there, that's what it is.

Just a perfect square. Yeah, it's like someone's detached three-car garage with a door instead of garage doors. $119,000 for that. Well, that feels weird. Yeah, it still seems like too much. Found a four-bedroom, two-bath, 1,700 square feet. It's a nice little family home built in 1900, so it's old. It's weird because the outside of it looks like a shithole.

That's the thing. You look at it and you go, oh, that house looks abandoned. But then the inside is completely updated and remodeled. Really? So they don't match at all. I like that. It's really weird. It's like it's in disguise.

It's like a drug dealer's house. You know what I mean? It's like an old patina vehicle. It looks all rusty and shit, but the inside's brand new. It's perfect in there. Really weird. Some strange colors are painted, but that's okay. We can live with that.

$215,000 for that, so still under the average. Then you're doing real well. You sold all the typewriters here. Found a four-bedroom, five-bath tea bowl for each and every b-hole, my friends. Absolutely. 4,610 square feet. So plenty of room. Really nice house.

Nice stuff going on. In the basement of the house, there's a sweet model train set set up, actually. It looks pretty nice. I don't know if that comes with it or not. There's no mention of a Lionel being thrown into the mix here. But maybe for the price, you could get it in there. $825,000 for this. It better be included.

Maybe it's included. That's a big house, though, so understandable. Things to do in this town. Plenty of things to do. Oh, plenty. Groundhog Day events. Of course they do. First of all.

Oh, yeah. From January 28th to February 2nd. That's a bit late, James. We're coming in late. We're going to reflect on Groundhog's Day. We're going to do it again in March. It seems to be good for the economy. It's reflective.

You have to look back on it. What do you know at the time? Hindsight's 20-20. They host a bunch of events here. Here we go. We have the welcoming of the groundhog, number one. On the 28th, they bring it home. I guess they're going to scare the shit out of this poor animal.

Trivia. I don't know if it's groundhog trivia or what, but just trivia. Groundhog Day dinner dance. Do we eat the groundhog? I think we ceremonially slaughter the groundhog and eat his split. Depends on what news he brings. More winter, slaughter the groundhog. Groundhog Day bingo.

Groundhog Day pub crawl. Walking till by then you'd be like, kill the groundhog, I'm gonna eat him. I'm eating him. Good and shit-faced? In the name of the groundhog? He looks furry and delicious. I want him.

Walking tour of the film sites jim may's groundhog tales some old guy standing there let me tell you about groundhog day 1961 now that was a special that was a special kind of hog his name was murray now um four different screenings of the film as well j Jesus. It's all about the movie, James. All the trivia is just the movie. That's it is. That's why I think this is just groundhog day. Nothing to do with the actual holiday.

There's also, there's even a groundhog mascot called Woodstock Willie who runs around and waves at people. Jesus. And then Don Lee's wild West town. Why is there a wild West Town an hour outside Chicago? I don't know. Who the fuck knows? Is it west of the Mississippi?

It is, isn't it? I mean, I guess. Explore the historical displays in the museum. Cowboy memorabilia with genuine articles, including guns, gun belts, spurs, ropes, whips, hats, saddle spurs, boots, and woolly chaps. Yeah. I'm a Chicago cowboy. In case you were wondering if they were those woolly ones or just those shit plain leather ones. No, no.

They're the woolies. You want to take a look at that. This is hysterical. Actual death masks cast from dead outlaw faces. Oh, my God. What? That sounds horrible. I don't want to see that and here you'll see the

woolly chaps and right there is a death mask here's the death mask of john dillinger how do you think of that wow but it's the old west stuff so it's even pre that uh handcuffs and badges from back then uh mineral and mining shit including gold and silver mine tools and equipment civil war displaying weapons civil war display with weapons medals a union soldier's diary which records the personal insights and experiences of a civil war soldier and then a walk down the streets of yesteryear be transported to a barber shop doctor's office pawn shop and so much more but they don't have that downtown they're gonna walk you around and go back in the day they needed a haircut and they would come to a place like this where a man with scissors would cut their hair it's uh we don't

have that anymore in our modern society but it's pretty awesome it's the invention of the flow yeah we don't have that plus there's gold panning pony rides a shooting gallery slingshots archery ranges lazy canoes hand carts carousels roping runaway mine car roller coaster wild west stunt show and the cp huntington CP Huntington train ride. I'm in. The West. I'm in. When I go to Chicago, I think I needed a really genuine, authentic Old West experience. That's why I came here.

That's why I came here. When Frank Sinatra sang about Chicago, half of it was about cowboys and shootouts. And the open range. And the open range. And your woolly chaps and you know things like that you know traditionally chicago is about that god that's so funny it's so weird and funny we're closer to montana that goddamn new york what the fuck is happening i don't know what's going on man uh crime amazing crime rate in this town jesus uh property crime is about it's a little bit lower than the national average a little bit about 25 and then violent crime murder rape robbery and

of course assault the mount rushmore of crime is less than half the national average. So it's safe here, apparently, from what I understand. No gunslingers. That said, let's talk about a time when gunslingers ruled the streets. Fantastic. And the marshal patrolled the town. 1988, everybody. Kept things safe. Let's talk about a murder, shall we?

1988. Let's talk about a murder shall we let's talk about a murder shall we partners let's pony up to the bar and i believe how hard they go on cowboy culture they're nowhere near it gonna have myself a shot of sarsaparilla and then i'm gonna go out and have me a gunfight. What the fuck, Sal? Let's do it. Have me a sarsaparilla and roll down the street to get one of them Chicago pizzas. One of them Chicago pizzas. I like it deep dish or cracker thin.

One of the two. Ride my trusty steed to a deep dish casserole. I'm going to ride my trusty steed to a pizzeria uno. Saddle up beside it. That's the shit they put out to the rest of the world. It's unbelievable. So this murder, let's get on with it here. Let's talk about a young lady, first of all.

All right. It's 1988, like we stated before. The marshals are patrolling the streets, keeping it safe. Very dusty, as you might imagine. Never mind. So let's talk about a young lady named Colleen Ritter. R-I-T-T-E-R, like John. No relation, unfortunately, for everyone.

We all love John Ritter. He was amazing. Hard not to love John Ritter. I grew up on Three's Company big time. Any sitcom that was on in repeats, I'd watch. Yeah, but not just. His movie acting. Stay Tuned is still one of my favorite movies.

I watched Stay Tuned a month ago. Do you know they're redoing it? No. Yes. You know what? They actually should, because that's such a great premise, and I don't think in 1990 they could do it exactly like they wanted to, or whenever it was from 92, or whatever the hell. Something like that. What a great premise, though, to get sucked in. It's such a great premise, and I don't think in 1990 they could do it exactly like they wanted to or whenever it was from 92 or whatever the hell. Something like that.

What a great premise, though, to get sucked in. It's interesting. You could do it with it. You could include the internet now. It's a good idea. And the graphics of cartoons now, because then it was just like rabbits and mice and shit like that. It was ridiculous when they get sucked into the TV. It looked terrible.

So good. Yeah. It's a great movie, though. I love that movie, especially when I was a kid. So Colleen Ritter is 17 years old in 1988. So you can imagine, she's got probably some hair. Yeah.

You know, Debbie Gibson is pumping out of the... Yeah, fuck yeah. Pumping out of the... What was the other chick's name? Tiffany. Tiffany. Yeah. Tiffany.

I think we're alone now. And the video is just her, like, singing at the mall which was hilarious her with like a mrs fields cookies behind her that was always all the videos wandering through a tower records yeah just looking and yeah so singing a song from 1965 so uh colleen ritter colleen is a she's a good kid she's a popular kid in school from all accounts here she's like a you know an attractive young lady and an outgoing young lady and doing pretty well popular she goes to Marion Central High School she's on the volleyball team so she's an athlete she's also

secretary of the student council so she's very active in school activities She ends up being elected homecoming queen At one point here So she's a popular girl People like her She does very well for herself here Bright future ahead of Colleen She gets good grades

From what everybody says She's got a bright future here Her parents are Ray and ruthann ritter oh so uh it's a lot of r it's a lot it's like wow ray ruth ritter that's a he was ray was like i'm gonna find me a lady with an r name because i'm i got a theme going and i'm not gonna mess it up for anybody my last name's got two of them i'm doing it starts with an r and ends with an r that's right so uh ray and ruth ann were married married young they married in 1969 and uh you know they were both young and uh you know just doing their thing so and by 1988 they've been married for you know 19 years now

they have three children together so doing well there they have a 17 year old colleen who we just told you about and they have two younger sons as well 14 year old steven 11 year old matthew fantastic every three years they had him again left a little space let's get that kid out of colleen steven matthew colleen it was like well let's wait till that one's out of diapers okay now we'll have another one so they even did that's what i. They're very smart people. They have smart kids. Things are going well for them here. Ray, as a matter of fact, he's 43 in 1988. And he just got a big promotion.

He works for Commonwealth Edison, which is he's an electric. He's a lineman. Good for him. Electric company guy. Beautiful. Good money. Secure job. He was a lineman for 21 years

and uh just got a good promotion so it's probably making some damn good money and it is yeah as we know like as i've mentioned before i don't know if anybody remembers but you obviously electric company and uh sarah's father was a lineman forever and still works for the electric company and he worked for in chicago as for an electric company so it's uh you know he's uh that's always a a sociable guy alignment yeah all the linemen are very sociable guys some of them though surly temper surly yeah yeah surly but until they've had enough of your shit surly but sociable it's a dangerous goddamn job too it's a very dangerous job it's uh don't bother me i'm busy guys get fried doing that and it's not uncommon so seen it um ray also does other thing he coaches little league as well and uh like the team his son is on this is not an orange

slice guy he's not like uh i'm gonna coach your kids and show up early and be weird he's not one of those guys he's yeah he's my kids playing they up early and be weird. He's not one of those guys. My kids play and they're like, we need a coach. He's like, well, fuck, I work 20 hours overtime this week. But you know what? I'll do it. I'll be there on Saturday morning, exhausted, shit-faced from some old styles the night before. This phone rings. The kids are on your fucking own.

Yeah, he's got to go. So, Ray, hard-working guy, good father from what everybody says and uh well-liked in the community here uh ruth ann as well she's a couple years two years older than him uh another very well-liked person uh she is uh just got a job in 1988 as the as a secretary at the dean Street Elementary School. So I think she was getting back into the workforce from, you know, just because the kids are getting older now, you know, 11, 14, 17. So I think she's like, all right, time to dive back in here. So yeah, she's going to do that.

So this is a very all-American family in a very all-American town. This is, everything should be safe and wonderful. And they're going to send all three kids to college. And then they're going to get middle management jobs. And then everybody's going to have more kids. And it's going to be very American dreamy going on over here, obviously. And then we have a show called Small Town Murder, and obviously that never happens.

So something bad is going to happen to somebody to somebody something's gonna shatter that drain so um now her she worked uh uh talking of mrs ritter here uh ruth ann she her boss said she was concerned about her family and wanted to spend more time with them she used to work at she had a different job before this but it was too many hours so she was like i want to get into the workforce i want to be in the workforce but not i still need to take care of my family and the fucking workforce yeah i gotta yeah i want to be home when my kids get home and stuff like that so uh she had uh worked at the saint mary's auction with uh this guy had also worked at the saint mary's auction doing charity work with ray and ruth so they did charity work as well here.

So they're nice people. He said that they were a fine family. He was the coach of – Ray was the coach of Matthew's Little League team. And this guy that used to employ her said, quote, Colleen used to babysit for us. We've had good times together, meaning them and the Ritters. We have good memories of the Ritter family. They're good people. So they're just good people. They like hanging out with them.

They live in a two-story house at 209 West Greenwood Avenue. It's a nice, quiet little street. Tree-lined. I mean, it's... You send your kid out riding their bike and shit like that. This is middle America right here.

And then the near them a few blocks away is Colleen's boyfriend. She's 17. So she's got a boyfriend. His name is Richard Church. He goes by Rick, but it's hard not to call him Dickie Church. I mean, I don't know how it's, you know, Dick Church, Dick Church. Come to the church of dick that's a 60 year old great man's name yeah dick church i've grown up with this bullshit name

he can say it with a straight face what's that straight face he says it to you dick church good to meet you and he's like yeah that's right go ahead and say something about it like i never heard it before yeah go ahead and try and be clever like I never heard it before. Go ahead and try and be clever. Let's hear it. Yeah, someone like that, you'd have to take a step back because you'd go, I just heard it all. I got to go deep here. I can't have my first thought.

So Richard here, Richard's two years older than Colleen. They met when he was a senior and she was a sophomore. So, I mean, you throw them all in the same cage, that's going to happen. It's fine. Two years is still in the okay category. So he's an only child, Richard. His parents are Eugene Church and Cherry Church. That's his mom's name. Stop.

Cherry. Cherry Church. Jesus. Gene and Cherry Church. That's his mom's name. Stop. Cherry. Cherry Church. Ah, Jesus. Gene and Cherry Church. Rick, like I said, he grows up just a few blocks away. The house he grew up in, his grandfather built. Of course he did. His grandfather built it, and then his parents live in it now.

Beautiful. Rick played Little League. Grew up playing Little League, which his father coached him in. In high school, he's a football player, does really well. In 1986, when he's a junior, he is the starting center on the Class 2A Division Championship team. So he's a big kid. Yeah, he's not that huge, though. To play offensive line in 1988 in a smaller community, you didn't have to be 300 pounds, I don't think.

Yeah, but I mean, he's tall. Oh, he's a big guy. Yeah, he's not a little guy. He's a formidable physical person. Knee is center. That QB is taking a lot of sacks. He might have a little trouble. Yeah, this might be a rough one.

He'll be running a lot. Oh, shit. Jesus Christ, Wisman. God, Jimmy at least take somebody's ankles out christ man westman diving his legs he's going over you just try to trip him i'm out of breath from running jesus you're just like a cleat marks on you like i'm sorry i tried i really tried i don't want anyone getting hurt out here especially me so colleen's father ray and uh and rick's father gene work together oh commonwealth medicine so yeah they're both there they've worked together for 15 years and for that long they've carpooled together as well

so the dad's drive to work together he's from a couple houses over you know big guy on the football team and gets good grades and all that kind of shit and you know so this is like the parents are happy with the relationship everybody's happy everybody's doing well and uh they start you know they're they're going out for a while there were friends growing up rick and collie and they always knew each other because their parents were friends and they began dating when he was a senior and she was a sophomore unifying the two linemen families yeah this is this is how this is so common this happens all over the place rick great student like we said uh seems to be a nice guy everybody says looks like a good boyfriend all of her friends are you know oh well you're so lucky what a good guy rick is you know he's he's cool and smart and treats you nice that's

fucking awesome uh rick is described by friends as handsome and intelligent and loyal and friendly as well they do say that he's over rough and a little unpredictable um and i was just gonna say he's a football player he He's a teenage football player. Hasn't figured that out yet. They also said he's a hard loser, which most good athletes are bad losers. Every pro athlete will tell you a story when they were a kid and their older brother

used to beat them. They'd like, you know, fucking, you know, throw a rock through the family car's windshield and like climb a tree and sit there for three days. They'd lose their goddamn minds. That's motivation to get better. And they also said he was a bit of a loner. This is where you get real conflicting stories about Rick

throughout this whole thing. Some people will say he's a total loner, doesn't want to be around anyone. And some people will say, what a great guy, one of the gang, just a great guy. When you hang out with Rick, he's the life of the party. You're like, which one is he? What is what is this guy? So it's it's a little hard to remember his football coach, Marion Central High School coach Don Penza said describes him as, quote, very intelligent, strong minded, but X, but an excellent cooperative student like most of our kids he got by in football using his head okay i guess i don't know if he means physically or mentally uh he said though saying he also had a stubborn streak but he took uh took to coaching very well as also so sounds like a teenage boy sounds like a teenage boy yeah that's that's what your high

school football coach you're kind of your job is to kind of mold that sort of thing if they want to go on with football anyway. So the relationship between Rick and Colleen, they would go out a lot, hang out with friends and stuff. I guess Rick liked to stay in and watch movies and TV and stuff and kind of became a little bit more home oriented, which for teenagers is a little different. You know, like teenagers don't want to sit at home and do that sort of thing. But I guess he does. And she got she didn't want to do that after a while. She was like, well, I want to go out and do stuff. Let's go do stuff. And he's like, no, I don't want to do that.

Fucking what is this? It's down at the Shake Shack. What is this? Eighty eight. Perfect Strangers 88 perfect strangers is on you know alpha's coming up i really got to stick around here balky is criminally under followed on fucking on twitter bronzen pin show oh it is embarrassing he's done under a lot of good shit terrific he's done a lot of funny shit in his day he has just. Just for Beverly Hills Cop is terrific. I believe he does voiceover for audiobooks. A lot of shit.

And I think he's the leading guy to read those now. He used to do Disney shit, too, all the time. Yeah? Voice stuff? Yeah, voice stuff. He's done really well for himself. He's so good. Good for Balky.

So that's what I mean. He wants to support Bronson Pinchot's budding comedic career. Yeah. You know, rise to fame. Rick wants to stay home. And Colleen's like, listen, I think Balky's going to do fine on his own. We'll watch it next week. We'll check it out later.

Then she started. She kind of got a little tired of he was kind of possessive, you know, a teenage boy thing. And from what everybody says it doesn't go beyond that he doesn't do anything out of bounds but just kind of annoying stuff like who you're hanging out with who's going to be there you know why why why were you talking to that guy at school you know insecure insecure jealous possessive shit you know it's that sucks too teenage boys that's a hard thing to get over and uh you got to work on that that's you have to actively work on that but it's almost like we uh i don't know

what the solution is obviously because i don't fix anything no i mean i don't know how to fix it i mean i know my personal shit was it was a lot of abandonment issue so i was always scared that everybody was leaving me. But I would take it out on me, not everybody else. Yeah. But most of the time, you were right. They were leaving you, right? So there you go.

That's what happens. Everybody left. Yeah. So you were just keeping your guard up. That's all. Yeah. This is why I'm terrible, and I'd be a bad therapist. I'd be like, you're right.

It does suck. Yeah. Well, aren't you you gonna tell me something good all the horrible and you know yeah it's all horrible it is it's hard maybe that's what some people need though they just need to know that they're not fucking crazy for feeling like this you know you know what you're not you should feel like shit right now they go all right well fuck all right that makes sense i'll get 75 of my therapy sessions are just going, well, yeah, obviously. Okay, well, there you go. Perfect.

I'm a pro. Obviously, you're white trash. What else do you expect? What do you expect? You have half a finger. Where do you think that came from? That's bad parental supervision. That wasn't.

Clearly, you were not set up for anything. Not set up for success, Jimmy Westman. So one of her friends said, quote uh if colleen said she already had plans he would tell her to cancel them and to go out with him she usually didn't though so she still didn't you know she wasn't going to give into all of it and that's why she kind of got tired of it she also said this friend he was always checking up on her to make sure she wasn't hanging out with other guys he was extremely jealous and he used to get really mad when other guys talked to her.

Colleen began losing a lot of friends all the, uh, because all the time she spent with Rick. So this is kind of cutting into her social life. And that's the thing about high school, like deep relationships in high school. It's impossible. If you want to be like a social person and have a deep relationship,

it's very difficult because they're always going to clash. There's always other guys and other girls and all that shit and it's it's hard for kids to deal with it's a lot to do so rick ends up going to college because like we said he was a senior so right he ended up going to college at northern illinois university and um so now he's away and so it's hard far though right not too far but he's not there so for a possessive guy to be away he's you know he's really trying to keep her answer that phone when i call well he's trying to keep his tentacles in there and he would call her almost every night even if he didn't want to have anything to talk about he was just calling her to keep her on the phone hey how's it going quiet on the phone what you doing i don't know watching perfect strangers oh me too all right

great that balky's fucking hilarious man that bronson pin show is really an underrated comedic comedic force that's so weird i feel like um i'd like to go to that island of me post and see what's going on there because if any of everybody's as funny as this fellow i think it'd be a great place to be and she's like i gotta go now have homework enjoy me posts our records has a sale i gotta go is that where he's i think that's where he was from i think i just pulled me posts out of my ass that's yeah that's a dangerous medical condition too i pulled a little meat posts out of my ass oh come right in a doctor will say. Come right in. Just tell them at the desk there was meat posts, and they'll send you right back. Don't worry.

I've already got a screw-up called in here. You're going to need an MRI stat. This is bad. Oh, boy. So he also plastered her pictures all over his dorm room walls at NIU. All of her pictures. That's what, yeah, hopefully he's not whacking off to it in the middle of the room. One side of the room had a bulletin board that his friend said was just covered with pictures of her, including a poster-sized photo of her dressed as Cyndi Lauper.

So I guess he had a Halloween had a like a halloween picture fucking blown up yeah like and put it made a poster thing yeah for his room um so when she wasn't around or had to work or something or had homework he'd get all pissed off like i tried to call you and she's like i was at work well damn it why you know you should have called me back so she would get annoyed by this and um eventually she told her parents about it. And they said, no, they were they loved the relationship. But they said, if you're not happy, then you should end the relationship. You're a young girl. You're 17 years old. You don't need to be beholden to some guy that's you know, you're not really that interested in. He's at college. And this is when you have to explain to a kid that, that like sometimes relationships have like a natural end to them.

Yeah. And that's what happens when you're a kid. That's why getting into a deep relationship sucks because they have natural ends of they're leaving and going over here and you're going over here to live lives. So it's hard. It's hard. It's what happens. So Rick's college friend here, who was a year older than him in school, Matthew Woodruff is his name. He he called church, said he had a temper and was an almost what he described as an obsessive desire to have things his way.

It's very like into something. He says, quote, He just had a short fuse. There would be times he was cool. So good to be around. Then he would just turn on you. He just had a short fuse. There would be times he was cool, so good to be around. Then he would just turn on you. He would throw things or come at you if things didn't go his way. As long as they went his way, he'd be happy. Last year, he told me he would get into fights around school, mostly at the bars.

He's too young for that, first of all. Yeah, he went to college and went to the bars and was just getting fights with people. for that first of all yeah he went to he went to college and went to the bars and we're just getting fights with people and uh he's kind of a malcontent at this point kind of a grumpy an angry young man that's not you know truly what the fuck man sounds like so mad i don't know but it sounds like a real dangerous uh volatile it's a volatile cocktail is what it is here so uh now rick eventually his goal was to be a corporate lawyer which i mean getting in fights and bars around campus isn't going to get you there probably but that's a lot of centers go after that that's interesting it's true yeah i mean like we said

he wasn't maybe he didn't get hit in the head that much that's good for him so but come 1988 we're in june of 1988 he's going to come home for the summer and he finds out that his parents have filed for divorce. Oh, and he's very upset about this. Way more upset than a 20 year old should be about their parents getting divorced. Worry about your own relationship, man. Like sad is one thing to be sad is a thing. That's totally understandable. But he's angry at them for he's angry.

He's angry like an eight year old would be if their parents got divorced that's like when you're 20 you're like oh that sucks well i don't live here anymore shake your life up at all man you've got a dorm room that's what i mean well i'm living my life now and that's their i don't know there's just a oh he doesn't deal with it well apparently here um so uh they end up selling this house that he grew up in his grandfather built and all that kind of shit. So the divorce is final in December of 1988. The mother, Cherry, ends up remarrying, and she marries a guy named Ken Cot, K-O-T, Ken Cot. Ken Cot, he's a pharmacist, and they moved to California, Huntington Beach. Wow.

So within a year, six months, a year or whatever, she's in Huntington Beach. She loves men who have the same first initial of the first name and last name. Yeah. She took her a while to find it. You know, it's like on Curb Your Enthusiasm where he was looking for his Mary Ferguson. He's like, finally,

I found him. So, Ricky comes home and parents are getting divorced. They're moving out of the house so you gotta, by the way, pack your room up

and do all that shit. Make sure to get all your He-Man and everything out of there. Every memory that you love. Everything. And he also finds out that he has not earned enough credits to enroll in his sophomore year. So he's not going to, like, advance.

He's got to do, you know, more classes over again. Get some junior shit. Oh, no. So, yeah, things aren't going well. And then Colleen tells him that the relationship's over as well. Holy shit, his whole world caved in. So his world kind of caved in on him. She told him he was too possessive.

She said she still wanted to be friends with him, you know, as you do when you're 17 and you're trying to let somebody down lightly. You know, I hate you and don't want to. The thought of being around you physically repulses me. But let's be friends. We can try that. Let's just try to hang out once in a while. So she apparently she had tried several times to end it. And this was kind of the one where she stuck to it and was like, no, no, it's over for real.

You know, because when you're a kid, too, you you take people back because you feel bad. You're, you know, you haven't figured it's hard to end that relationship yeah especially she cares about him obviously she's got a heart and she's a nice girl she hasn't she just hasn't been calloused over enough yet to be like nope over fuck off take a hike i had to pull over a car and break up with a girl in the passenger seat james because it took it took like eight months to try to break up with this girl that's the thing and when it's time it's time and that's that's what it says right there doesn't matter what this closed laundromat's good enough we got this is good me and you were going to sit outside the memory of

someone's dirty laundry and then i had to drive her home in her car that's the problem is when you're in the car yeah unless you're at the destination that's not really thinking ahead i really i really just had enough and had to have a talk were you like two days away from her house or were you 15 minutes uh eight it was it was down the street yeah you should have waited you should have waited you definitely should have waited it was a deck that way you could have just exited the car and the relationship all in one move rather than we had a very silent drive well not really silent she was crying hysterically obviously and then you stopped at arby's

you were like you want anything and she's like what they're four for five dollars will you eat two of them she doesn't want anything no curly fries though still yeah no keep them on there i'll take them fuck her very nice jimmy holding her parents driveway i got out and got in my truck and just drove away that's all you gotta do man yeah you should have waited five minutes on that one probably a better move so um a few weeks before or a few weeks after he gets home mid-summertime colleen goes on vacation and uh that's when she comes back and she's like i don't give a shit what he says because he was still thinking like oh i mean we're sort of broken up but we're kind of together we're taking a break or you know whatever the fuck that at that point she says

i'm done here. And her friend says, quote, so when she came back, she called him and broke up over the phone. Not because there was anything wrong with him, just because she wanted her freedom. Didn't hate him or anything. She just liked being free. She wanted to talk to other guys. She's 17. It's totally normal.

She broke up with him with the excuse of, I'm 17. I can't do this this is too deep for me at this point so for a while next couple weeks the end of july he's calling her they would argue and um their friend said he would pop up once in a while if he wanted to try to talk to her or something like that but it never really got anything out of control or anything that was considered dangerous or anything so um he was kind of obsessive, though. One of his friends said Rick always wanted it to be just him and her together on dates, not going out with their friends.

So they thought that was kind of weird because this was this is a co-worker of Colleen's. She worked at Woodstock Ice Cream Company, and she says about Colleen, she didn't like that. From what I saw lately, she wasn't unhappy about ending it with Rick. So she's happy to be done. Mid-August 1988 comes up here, and Rick quits his job.

He had a summer job. He quits his job as a groundskeeper for the St. Mary's Catholic Church. He worked there for the past five summers. I guess this is what he does every summer. He does the landscaping and maintenance and shit like that. So there's a guy named Ed Finkel who worked with him, and he said that Rick wanted to take some time off

before returning to NIU, and that was his, you know, he's going to be a third semester freshman, which everybody's happy for yikes so rick spent his last week on the job mowing grass and trimming bushes at the cavalry cemetery on jackson street and this finkel guy said rick seemed a little preoccupied and distracted that week each day after lunch he would return to uh he would go to the school and instead of the cemetery so he would like take off at lunch he would like ghost out at lunch and then on his last day of work for some

reason he demolished a large wooden desk with a sledgehammer like his way of his antonio brown moment where he was just like i'm done motherfucker he had motherfucker. He had a total half-baked meltdown. Just fuck you, fuck you, the whole thing. This guy said he was supposed to move it to another classroom, but he said it was too big. It was the last thing he did here. Quote, he loved to destroy things. He was strong. He would always jump at the chance to do the wrecking around here.

So he liked to break stuff uh they said that he beat the shit out of the desk uh like i just bashed it to splinters or the sledgehammer and um yeah so this is like i said kind of first week of august something like that um and he talked about he talked to a friend of his about wanting to commit suicide one day and then uh later on though he talked about that he decided that was bad and then he's just gonna have to move and he said that he's just gonna stay up at niu and try to try to do well in school and try to get over it basically try to get over he's like i got colleen breaking up with me my parents the house he goes if i just

stay at school and immerse myself in that maybe that's i can get through it that way so i mean he's trying so a uh weird thing happened here a there was an unpleasant bit of unpleasantness between rick and colleen's father Oh. Apparently, this was after the breakup, they ran into each other at a store, and Ray didn't talk to Rick. He ignored him. So Rick became angry and was said to, in the middle of the store,

has said, just because your daughter broke up with me doesn't mean you have to ignore me. And, which, I mean, that's fair. He's known him since he was a little kid. I mean, he could say hi. I mean, not like he beat his daughter up or anything. They just broke up. He could wave to him or something.

But I get it, too, if you're trying to stay out of it. I understand. There's that. And then also, if you're a dad, the best thing to say is nothing at all. If you have nothing nice to say. You know what I mean? That's what I mean right there. If you're a dad and you just want to look, I'm not going to get involved in this.

I'm staying out of this. Maybe he's frustrated with the way he treated his daughter. Who knows? Yeah. It's Ray's prerogative. That's what i mean right there if you're a dad and you just want to look i'm not going to get involved in this i'm staying out of this frustrated with the way he treated his daughter who knows yeah well the prerogative that's what i'm saying so he might have thought that maybe the parents made her break up with me or who knows so who knows what's in a kid's mind you know or a 20 year old guy's mind so the friend said after that that rick apparently hated her dad he was very mad he would talk about it all the time what a dick he was and how dare he snub me. He snubbed me. We're out in public and he's snubbing me. I got a reputation to uphold here.

Come on. Don't be snubbing me. I said hello, God damn it. You heard me. So August 20th, 1988 comes around. And that day, heading toward the evening rick and his mom stop at the video store oh boy that's a great phrase to say there's a lot of fun that night stop at the video store and they rent two films from russia with love and hang them high so fuck a western and a

kind of a classic so there you go go. Strange combination. I think probably Hang Him High was for him because that's the one he watched. They picked up a pizza on their way home as well. So it's pizza and movie night. It's a Saturday night. Rick's going to eat the movies, watch the pizza, and his mother's going out.

He's going to what? Did I say eat the movies and watch the pizza? You did. He's going to get real drunk, Jimmy. That's what he does when he gets drunk. He's got videotape hanging out of his mouth, and he just puts a pizza up and watches it, and he says it's boring after about an hour because this pizza is not. The storyline sucks.

There's no character development in this pizza. There's just pepperoni, and it's staring at me, and frankly, I'm not impressed. It's watching the cheese ooze out of that crust yeah cuz i'm just not impressed this is the part i can't believe you did that i can't either oh so tired it's been such a week i'm more impressed that i caught it to be honest with you i'm happy that you did catch me uh call me on it fuck me i mean who i'm it's been a week i haven't slept well i have problems the goddamn fucking suit taking four days to get my grandmother's funeral on friday i'll let you in on this i ordered a goddamn i had to get a suit

and i had to get it overnighted here and it shows up four days later so then i gotta go to some little italian man tomorrow and he's promised me he can fucking alter it in a day and I had to get overnighted here, and it shows up four days later, so then I got to go to some little Italian man tomorrow, and he's promised me he can fucking alter it in a day, and we had to tell him. He's an Italian guy. We had to tell him, his last name is Petrogallo, and his grandma died,

so please, and then he was like, oh, okay, fine. So this is what I get now. I got to deal with this shit. My fucking shoes that I ordered along with the suit, I get a box. I'm like, oh, great,

my shoes and my suit. It's a little light. That's because it's only a suit. That's why. There's no size 14s in here. Where are my shoes? Well, Texas, as you might imagine. Where everyone's shoes are. And will apparently remain in Texas until the date, my estimated

delivery date of May 22nd. And the ground is good and hard from burying grandma we're gonna wait till the ground thaws to send you them shoes so yeah this is by the way if you're listening in the future it's now like january 5th so that's my the funerals on the 7th that my shoes get here on the 22nd of may so this is my frustration and so here i am i apologize you eat eat movies and watch that's how you eat movies and watch pizza. That's how you end up watching a pizza.

Because I just put that there because that's what I did last night. I ate movies and watched pizza because my brain was so fried. I told Sarah, I said, put the sausage on. I want to see what that one has to. It's going to be a good one. Put the sausage pie up there. Let's take a look at it so my favorite one's gonna win an award beautiful right this is excellent is this up this is up for

oscars this year right i nominate the green peppers as best supporting actor my favorite part of this night that rick is having here is that him and his mom went out rented movies got a pizza and then she brought him home and went out so she's like he was 12 years old she's like well i'll rent movies and get you a pizza and then mommy will be back by midnight like that's what i'll feed you and keep you occupied for three hours and hopefully you fall asleep in that time before i get before I get home. This is amazing. So that's his plan. Now, according to him, he also drank beer.

Then he moved on to whiskey. Oh. Beer before liquor. That's not good. Never been sick of my friend. Smoked some weed and then took, and now he can't remember because once you've had you know all of that weed and beer and whiskey your your memory gets fuzzy he said he either took lsd which is a lot if you do you know if you're tripping by the way that's i remember just about every acid trip

i've ever taken because it was like that was an event you know it's nothing you're like did i trip that day um he either took lsd pcp because he would take them both once in a while or both he's not sure what kind of night to have alone pizza and pcp this is a great night pizza cp and hang them high let me trip out and drink whiskey and take pcp while i eat this pizza and and hang them high let me trip out and drink whiskey and take bcp while i eat this pizza and watch hang them high he is trying everything to fill whatever hole is in him he's just stuffing everything in it it's having a saturday night to himself here the neighbors said he was frequently going in and out that night too just popping in and out this is the duplex that his mother lives in now out you know because they moved out of the family home so he said he is just in and out constantly of the place

just running around which who the hell knows if he's all on all that shit anything's possible so um yeah he's doing everything like that uh colleen on the other hand went out with her girlfriends that night yeah saturday night her girlfriends amy quinlan and lisa affield they were both 17, her classmates. They both go to – it's a Catholic high school. They both go there. Amy also works with Colleen at the Woodstock Ice Cream Company. So, eh, normal.

Did nothing too important. They drove around, had a regular old American graffiti kind of night. Fucking drove around Woodstock having a dazed and confused evening. Eating a pilfered strawberry cone from the shop. That's all. Oh, you know there was a pilfered cone in there. No parties or anything. Didn't really see anybody.

They literally just drove around, stopped at McDonald's and that sort of shit. Sometimes there's nothing happening. Yeah. So now Stephen Ritter, he's the younger brother. He's the 14 year old at the time. He spent the night hanging out with his friends in Crystal Lake, which is a nearby town.

And Matthew, the 11 year old had a friend over a neighbor named Jake named Jack, who was, you know, his buddy from the neighborhood. He was sleeping over that night at their house, at the Ritter house. So that's what the Ritters are doing. And around midnight, Rick tries to call Colleen at home.

Colleen had already gotten home. Apparently they had only talked for a couple minutes, but it friendly no arguing and she hung up um so there was that now ray and ruthann the parents they were out that night at an irish festival in milwaukee oh yeah there you go they're gonna tie one on nice party that's a party an irish festival you want to talk about mixing two forms of drinking cultures together milwaukee and irish is about the two you were going to mix together and you're going to get something there dropkick murphy's play that festival every year it's the same yeah they probably still do it's the same one that has got to be the most genius group on the planet uh they're absolutely the biggest irish band and

they've got to play yeah there's an irish festival everywhere yeah i feel like all year long look ever since everlast went solo there's been a huge hole in the irish festival market ever since house of pain broke up we we can take this over yeah i think we can take it over thank you departed for making that song so fucking big we will play this forever let's let's learn jump around just in case they might they might expect it they're gonna be shit-faced we don't want to get them angry yeah so is that flogging molly oh it's flogging molly and dropkick murphy's both of them same thing yeah it doesn't matter it's the same shit it sounds exactly the same it would be funny if they were the same band they

just changed clothes and shit quick you play bass now and uh you've got guitar player play drums. Okay, yeah, no one will notice. I don't know what they look like. Guys will punch each other to that, right? Going down the box! Guys in Rob Gronkowski jerseys will punch each other with this, right? This will work, I think. Rob Gronkowski jersey and a fucking kilt. Punch him!

Punch him! So, they were out with their friends at the irish festival milwaukee so that's an hour and a half away now uh they're all there richard uh he called at midnight they had a little conversation he called back again a little bit later and he was begging her to talk to him again and let's hang out one more time and you know i'm going back to school soon come hang out with me all this shit um at one point he just asked a couple of questions he wanted to know well who's staying she's like well i have my friend here well who is it who's staying over like it matters and um what are you guys doing what's going on what are you up to and uh

at this point she had both amy and lisa over and uh lisa left soon after that because she had a contact lens problem she had to go home and fix that that's the worst that's a nightmare so my eyelid i can't move it oh god jesus it's bent it's bent i can't get it ah you do this with your hands oh you just wave your fingers in the air what What do I do? I've seen people do that. I'm like, whoa, contacts must suck. That is really weird. I wore them for a long time. It is a nightmare. I scream, my eyes.

Yeah, but I'm not letting anybody cut on them. Fuck that. That's just strange, even with a laser. So they end up getting home a little later, Ray and Ruthann from the Irish festival. And yeah, they do that kind of shit they get home and the girls are doing their thing the boys are you know going to sleep eventually it's two slumber parties and a and a great time parents who probably had a couple of beers that night and i don't know if they're drunk or not but they've had a couple of beers at the

irish fest i'm sure summer night yeah why not so um apparently um like we said while this is happening rick is going in and out of the condo all night long and um the last time they talked on the phone that night she told him look my friend's here and i can't talk anymore like this is ridiculous then she says listen i started dating somebody else too so it's over it's definitely over i started dating somebody else, too. So it's over. It's definitely over. I started dating someone else. So apparently Rick just got really mad and hung up on her at that point. Just was like, all right, well, that's that. So then he sat there. He watched Hang Em High.

Did all of the buffet of drugs that we talked about and booze. The accoutrement of a lonely man. The accoutrement of a lonely man. That's a good name for the episode that's a yeah that is a good country album it's a tear that's the accoutrement of a lonely man so it's quiet until about 5 a.m about 5 a.m um uh there's some things going on here. Um, Amy Quinlan, her friend is sleeping in Colleen's room outside her bedroom door. She heard the younger brother, Matthew, what sounded like moaning out there. So she nudged Colleen awake, said, Hey Colleen, what's something's going on outside your door

here? Colleen awake said, hey, Colleen, what's something going on outside your door here now? She she hears all of this going on. And at the same time, a guy named Tim Paul now is getting ready for a fishing trip across the street. He's a guy who lives across the street. It's about a little after 5 a.m. He looks out his window and sees Colleen run outside screaming. Oh, boy. Into the street.

Now, another neighbor, Chris Gerke, he said that he looked out the same window and saw a man beating Colleen, quote, like a maniac. Oh, boy. Jesus Christ. All the windows in another house is a guy named Jim Meisel. He's got all his windows open. It's an August morning, you know, of all the windows. Get some air before you have to close up. Lovely morning.

He said he heard the commotion in the street. He said it came through loud and clear. He said, I heard a neighbor yelling, call the cops, call the cops. I jumped up, put on my pants, and went over. At first, I thought it was a hit and run. What he found was Colleen lying in the middle of the street, covered in blood. So he figured she got hit by a car and he,

he's a, luckily he's a former rescue worker. So he's a good guy to be the first guy to get there. And he uses his hands to put pressure to cover up a large wound that Colleen has in the back of her head and another one on her body as well. So he's trying to, he's trying to, he said she's got multiple wounds, but he's like, these look like the two worst.

And he's trying to cover them up. Over by a Mad Max vehicle with spikes all over it. Well, let's find out what ended up happening was at 512 a.m. That morning, Ray Ritter woke up to find Rick Church standing next to his bed. And he said, what are you doing here? You have no business here. Get the hell out of here. He shouted out.

Why are you standing in my bedroom? is he pulls up a handmade gardening tool that he made that is on an almost it's a 25 inch long stick with an inch and a quarter round it's a 25 inch long inch and a quarter round wooden stick so like a big broomstick basically that has that's a big that's a big one like that's like a rake or like a hoe or something like a gardening gardening tool, like a sturdy one. Sturdy, yeah. With a large nail sticking out of one end of it that he's made. So it's just a giant poker, basically. It's like a spear.

It's like a spear. So he ends up attacking Rick with this spear and stabbing him many, many times with this hammer or with this, uh, with this, uh, nail implement. Yeah. At the same time,

Ruth wakes up next to him and he has a claw hammer with him and he just pummels Ruth with a claw hammer. And then also takes a couple of shots at Ray with it too, just for good measure. So he leaves them behind. Um, couple of shots at Ray with it too, just for good measure. So he leaves them behind. Now, Matthew is in his second floor bedroom and he hears someone coming up the stairs. It's five o'clock in the morning. It's not normal. Rick comes into the bedroom, presses a towel over Matthew's face and stabs him in the right side of the abdomen with the piece of wood with the nail in the end of it.

So the same one he used on the father. Then he grabbed. So he's got. Then he also has a seven and a half inch knife on him. Blade knife blade like a big fucking butcher knife that he keeps on him for. He's well armed. He's really. and butcher knife that he keeps on him for he is well armed he's really he came with some homemade weapons here and he then stabs him in the arms and the lower stomach with the seven and a half

inch knife this is when matt was yelling call call help me he's yelling for colleen because she's in the closest room nearby because the parents are on a different floor. Their rooms downstairs. It's one of those. So she here, that's when Amy hears that commotion and wakes up Colleen. Colleen, um, gets out of the bed. Here's Matthew runs into the hallway and finds Rick stabbing the shit out of

her little brother. Well, her brother, you know, begs for mercy. So, uh, she goes, you know, Rick, rick holy what the fuck what are you doing so he throws her down on the hallway floor colleen and starts to stab her with the seven inch knife stabs her so much that it's the

knife is later found with the bait the blade is bent that's how the fuck man that's how much he's stabbing people he pulled her hair while she's on the ground grabs her by the hair pulls her up into a sitting position with his left hand and then with his right hand stabs her repeatedly in the back of the head i don't know if he's trying to cut her spinal cord or what the fuck he's trying to do, but holding her, just stabbing, stabbing her like a madman in the back of the head. Wild. They were. Yeah, you could. She you could hear them.

That's how awful it was. So she's screaming for help at this point. Somehow, I don't know if she stabs her a bunch and kind of takes a break to assess the damage or whatever she somehow slips out of this and just starts running good for her colleen is fucking she's tough man she gets up she starts running bursts out the black the back door and into the driveway and that's when that guy was looking out the window saw her running out and then neighbors said at that point it sounded like a cat fight. They said it was just like noises and no words.

Screams, noises, moans. So they saw Rick beating Colleen, quote, with some type of club, which is his stick with a nail in it. That's what he's jesus that's what he's beating her with so um another guy here another neighbor this is before the the one got to her and thought she got hit by a car the first neighbor to arrive is timothy paul now and he ran toward them yelling at rick to stop so finally as he got close to this guy rick actually did stop because he was like oh fuck you know he doesn't know if this guy's gonna shoot him or something so he stops somebody

saw this during this whole thing colleen tried to defend herself she bit him in the hand at one point good girl uh while he was stabbing her in the back of the head he she got his hand and bit it and bit it at one point she didn't know what else to do. She told him, stop, I love you, just to try to get him to stop. And he didn't even pause. He just kept hacking at her. That didn't matter at all. At one point, before she got outside, she grabbed the phone and tried to dial 911.

She was trying to call 911. He ripped the phone away, threw it against the dresser, and grabbed her again. And at some point, he lost the knife in the bedroom. So the knife ends up staying in the house. So it's fucking,

this is horrible, man. So now after he left, the phone rings in the house, and it's the police who were able to track the 911 call. She called it. It hung up, but they tracked her. Yeah. Which is the opposite of a few weeks ago.

And they were like, it's probably a prank. Right. And my poor girl died from that. Poor woman died. Yeah. So Matthew answers the phone. He's been stabbed terribly. He's bleeding everywhere. He answers the phone, He's been stabbed terribly. He's bleeding everywhere.

He answers the phone, says, oh, shit, thank you. Yes, gives him the address. So they come over. Police and ambulance are there pretty soon. One of the neighbors had come out, like we said, and one of the neighbors there told the police right away that it was this guy, Rick Church. It's this girl's boyfriend. We've seen him forever. He went back.

We think he's still in the house. I think he went back in the house afterwards, they said. So police are searching. They block off the house as well as they can. There's like three cops in the entire department. So as we'll hear from this, the only person that they didn't send out was the dispatcher. Everybody else was like out doing stuff here. So they they do all of that.

Medics are attending to Colleen. They find Matthew inside the house. He's in shock. He's by the way, his friend is there. Yeah, that's a hell of a sleepover. His friend is completely unharmed, though. He didn't even look at Amy. Completely un completely unharmed wow completely unharmed neither of them even touched not completely but yeah physically maybe not mentally they're a little messed up but not

stabbed okay i mean unstabbed we'll call there we go so unstabbed no injuries every drop of blood of their own still in their body that's that's it so matthew ended up being able to like walk out of the house on his own power actually but he ends up spending several days in the hospital recovering from a stab wound there um colleen on the scene identifies rick to the police it was my boyfriend r. And the neighbor said, yeah, I saw him. It was definitely Rick. Then the police find the bodies of Ruth and Ray inside the home. And Raymond's body, very bloody here, is found at the foot of his bed on the first floor.

And his wife here, Ruth Ann, is on her back with a pillow over her face. So I don't know if he did that to fend off any i don't know what the fuck he was doing to try to make it quieter i guess so um it's and sometime they end up finding too and if anyone can find this i would love to know what the fuck he wrote but some point he grabbed like a sharpie and wrote on the on the refrigerator something. They just said he wrote quote wrote something indicating a possible vendetta. I don't know what that means. I don't know what he wrote on the fridge, but he wrote something on the fridge like trying to be like the Manson family.

I guess I don't know what the fuck he's doing. So one of the state investigators whose name is Queer Hammer, by the way. Awesome. Yeah. He says, you could say he snapped, and I'm sure the attorneys later will argue temporary insanity. But I think he just had a big ego that got flattened, and I think it was revenge. They find no evidence of a break-in, which they suspect that Church came in through a back door using a key that they kept in the garage that he would have known about yep because he's been with her for a couple years now so um

the jesus christ yeah the it's a spike driven in the end of a wooden broom pole they said that is uh one thing that they know it's kind you pick up litter with a stabby litter pickers that's what he used um and also a knife and also a hammer so um they uh the main investigator said only the individual who commits the crime knows what happened boy this case isn't going to be blown by something i said that some lawyer can ask me about later i'm not going to take those chances you want uh he says you want him to know as little about uh as little as possible so he can't fool you once we've got him we've got to try him and i don't want to jeopardize that case so actually that's smart not going well we think the evidence here now let me handle this for you put my fingerprints on it and really show you a lot so uh they said the evidence indicates that Ruth Ann was attacked in her sleep and that the intruder struggled to kill Ray because his body was found at the foot of the bed and she was found like in bed.

So they said because linemen are fucking tough and they're going to be tough. Yeah, he's going to be. He's only 43, too. He's going to be quite formidable. A 43 year old lineman will kick your ass. It's not a guy you want to really fight in the bar you know what i mean at the irish festival he'll probably you know he's going to put up quite the fight probably at least yeah there are a lot of those guys that served in the military

and then went into lineman work too they're stone cold killers yeah they don't care so uh they both died from brain injuries caused by massive blows to the head by a blunt instrument. And Ray was also stabbed. So they think the hammer actually inflicted the death blows here for them. Ruth Ann is declared dead at 6 a.m. and her husband at 6.01 a.m. Because that's the order they got to them in. Literally, that's the order of the medical examiner. Okay, examine her.

She's dead at 6.01. He's dead at 6. He's dead at 6.01. He's dead at 6.00. She's dead at 6.00. He's dead at 6.01. That's not when they died. We'll talk about here because that comes up. Now, Colleen and Matthew. Matthew, like we said, is released from the hospital.

Colleen's in critical condition. She's been stabbed 22 times. My Christ. A lot of that concentrated in the back of her head. Yeah. All over the place. All over the place. She suffered from a collapsed lung and a hole at the base of her skull.

The surgeon spent seven hours removing pieces of her skull from her brain. Wow. They feared that she might be permanently blinded or suffer irreversible brain damage. This is fucking horrible. They said the rescue chief, Ron Anderson, said in the case of Colleen, it was a major trauma. Yeah, I would say so. This guy, by the way, who saved her ended up receiving a certificate of merit for saving her life. So Colleen, when she comes around a little bit, says she believes that Rick planned the murders.

She says that, you know, the sudden decision to stay at NIU, all of a sudden he's going to go back. And he had a short, weird phone call at midnight that was a strange tone. And she believes that he planned on murdering Ray and Ruthann and then killing Matthew. So that way he could do whatever he wanted with Colleen and take his time killing her. That's what she thinks. But psychologists they're talking to during the whole thing, they're saying that it was probably more of an impulsive thing based on everything. They said people go into a kind of a frenzy and keep going. Whoever is around may be at risk.

Also, the dad was at the bottom uh floor uh that's i mean it's convenience it's convenient that's the first area of people when he knows that if you're gonna if you're gonna go in and kill somebody you're gonna first of all you have to take care of who's who's my obstacle my obstacle is dad dad's a 43 year old lineman he's my me at walmart so he's clearly got problems. He's my obstacle. I got to take care of the parents because they're adults. Then the kid just happened to fucking find him, and that's what happened there.

So the kid, he ended up taken out. It's crazy. So they said that you're supposed to – these guys have a thing. Guys like this will have a thing where they'll snap about somebody breaking up with them will make them snap. And we've seen this a hundred times. This is the way it works. So Colleen also says when he she talked to him on the phone, he didn't sound drunk to her. She said, quote, I would swear he was not taking drugs or drunk.

But that was hours earlier. He said he watched a fucking movie and drank and did a bunch of drugs between then and then so now the police they took several calls about the disturbance the first call came officially at 5 33 a.m um this is 14 minutes after an officer had arrested a drunk driver nearby we'll talk about that now Now, where the fuck is Richard? Because he wasn't in the house. Yeah. Where's old Rick here?

Well, he'd not been seen since 533 a.m. Sunday morning. So the police put out an alert for him in the police network at 618 a.m. I don't know why it took that long, but almost an hour, 645 minutes. So later in the day, the report was sent out on a national teletype. So they said that they contacted all the kind of local places around them, Chicago, even the Canadian border. They have warrants issued for his arrest on two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, home invasion. Initially, they think he killed himself really that's the first thing um then later on there's a confirmed sighting of him in the wisconsin dells area that makes them think he didn't kill himself at all um yeah they said this

is the first sighting we personally confirmed i think everybody speculated he may have committed suicide this gives us some reason to believe he may still be alive this is from a hotel clerk who told police that he recognized him from news reports and said that uh you know he checked in on sunday at 1 30 p.m and left monday morning and uh you know he said he stole some towels and a glass and soap from the hotel as well. I feel you, bud. They're looking for Rick and his 1981 blue Dodge pickup truck. That's how it's going. So, yeah, they said what ended up with a piece together is after he did this, he ran home on foot.

That's how he got home. He ran home on foot and he told his mom his mom was sleeping and he busted into the house fucking covered in blood covered in blood all a titter and he said quote i have to leave i just killed colleen and he grabbed some shit and left uh he told his mother that was right before he left so later from house, he ends up instead of going the complete opposite way, he decides to drive by the murder scene. Oh, he's going to drive by the house. Now, it's covered in cop cars, fucking ambulances, everything else, including two squad cars that are right near him so um anyway oh he also grabbed his college savings at his house eight hundred dollars in cash and six hundred dollars in savings bonds

that he's got to go um he's out what a terrible this will last me forever fourteen hundred dollars i'll retire i'm good I can run forever on this. So the mother tried to stop him, but she said he couldn't be stopped. So he's out. He ran. He goes by the house, drives by the house, and he's in there. By the way, the truck is his mom's, too. He took her goddamn truck.

That's pretty ridiculous. So now they can't find him around there. They don't even go to his house, the there they don't even go to his house the police at first they call his house hey they fucking call my chance no all right we gotta go they call and ask mom is ricky home like they're pals and uh yeah play this that's crazy so there's a lot of talk about well why did they let this so much time get by and him get away? So the police spokesman said that there was two or three squad cars that hit the murder scene within two or three minutes. Only the dispatcher was there left back at the station. But there's a guy named Richard Garza who was arrested at 519 a.m. And he says that two Woodstock officers spent at least 30 minutes taking his fingerprints and mug shots at City Hall.

And he was transported to the chief of police asked for help. They were like, if he asked us, we could have had the fucking thing shut down like that. Instead, this whole thing. Right. They sent two guys over here. They had somebody processing a DUI and they were like, nah, guys up at the Wisconsin Dells. We'll find them. Yeah.

Meanwhile, the chief said, quote, it is physically impossible to block all the roads in the county. You can block most of them, probably. So at 6.18 a.m., the Illinois State Police broadcast just a sketchy outline of the murder here. And so at this point, too, there's a shift change with police which is a problem as well and uh yeah there's that and they said uh later on he had this is about rick he had to run over a mile home i don't care if the guy's a world-class sprinter that alone would take him 10 to 15 minutes so he's saying he's giving you time and you're not taking it you guys should have been at his house before he was, is what they were saying.

You guys should have drove there. You should be able to drive there before he can run there. And so here he comes down the street. Hi, Rick. Here he is covered in blood. He's a bloody man running. So when he drove by the crime scene, they said as he was driving out of the town, he had a police car in front of him and another one behind him. of the town he had a police car in front of him and another one behind him he is boxed in by police cars and um they didn't pull him over they turned off eventually and he just kept driving so yeah

later on they'll say that he thought they were going to arrest him but they just turned off so he kept going he thought he was fucking cooked at that point i mean he's like oh cop car in front cop car behind they know it's me neighbors saw me i'm covered in blood this is bad shit um yeah he just kept going he went to lake geneva wisconsin to buy band-aids for his wounds because you do that much stabbing you're gonna have some cuts on you yeah and uh yeah he spent the night like we said in wisconsin and then he headed west from there okay yeah so big blue open well yeah before that he went into wisconsin he exited the i-90 94 in mouston 20 miles from the wisconsin dells stopped at the alaskan motor lodge have we talked about the alaskan motor lodge before

in this area i feel like we have he signed the register as ronnie quinlan which is the name of a friend of him and has in school named mark quinlan and he gave a neighbor's address on a neighboring street one of his friends and so they gave him uh room number 156 27 and 50 cents for a single bedroom with a bowling alley view gross A view of the bowling alley next door. That's where murderers stay. That's exactly where they stay. So he ended up, he had been shopping on Friday and bought some new clothes. So he had taken some money out.

So that's how they knew he had cash. And then he left sometime before 10.30 a.m. Monday morning with a motel blanket towels and a glass and soap he took the blanket too took the blanket too you might need that for later so uh the uh now around 7 30 or 8 a.m this was probably right before he left the hotel of the motel room i'm not going to say hotel yeah the northern illinois medical center where colleen is got a call from what they describe as a frantic sounding young man who said he's an out-of-town member of the ritter family who's unable to locate any of the in-town family members and wants to know if maybe any of them are in the hospital yeah so they said oh yeah actually we have this young lady so he asked about her condition and um they said by oh, yeah, actually, we have this young lady. So he asked about her condition.

And they said, by the way, there were highway noises in the background. So this might have been he might have left earlier than they thought he did from the motel. So the motel clerk, when asked by police, recognized Rick's photo from, you know, they had a photo of him. And then he said, after that, I saw him on a television broadcast. So that was the guy. And then he also reported the towel theft to police and they filled out a report. So he's got murders and stabbings for murder. But listen, can you do like a really petty larceny as well for fucking a dollar 80 worth of towel towels with all the softness of a triscuit yeah this thin fucking 10 grade sandpaper white towel for the towel that's only good for exfoliating

it's my exfoliator so over the next few days um the police take the pictures of rick to everywhere around there all the bars and restaurants and campgrounds and anything you could find no one else could identify the photo so he wasn't hanging around that area apparently so they sent uh they sent a teletype out saying that he might be going to his father's cabin in saint. Germain, Wisconsin. And it's a small little town up there. It's about 350 miles from Chicago. So they all went there and waited. Hands on hips. Never showed up.

Just standing around. He'll be here. I know it. He didn't go. That's the worst when you're waiting on somebody. Every car that comes up, you're looking real close. Is that him? No, it's not. It's that him? No, it's not.

It's the phone? No, it's not the phone. Shit. Uber makes me feel like I'm 17 again waiting for friends to come pick me up. Is that it? Check the license plate. This is my weed? So he never comes, though, so they have to come back.

The FBI at this point says, we're getting involved in this. You people are fucking morons, so we're do this here you're blowing it at that point august 30th is the next time we pick up his trail rick he is in he's cashing 700 in savings bonds in los angeles that 20 a time now he cashed him at once in a bank in los angeles 20 bonds from grandma every christmas probably this is all my christmas bonds i had a bunch of those when i was a kid i had a godfather used to give them to me all the time and when i was like 22 i got a fucking stack of these i was like awesome pretty money in for 12 more than they were worth yeah i think yeah they were worth like almost twice as much by then because i don't know since I was fucking seven or something. So, yeah, they were worth a lot.

Not a lot. They were seventy eight dollars or something, but whatever. So he's in Los Angeles now by all the way across the country. Yeah. The police said a measure of luck might be necessary to find him because he hasn't contacted family or friends or anything. One guy, one police officer said if he's willing to totally divorce himself from this area, it's going to be much harder. We're still out on any lead that's logical.

They said he was last seen and heard of in California, but the search is nationwide. We have no reason to believe he's there and no reason to believe he's not there. He could have visited all 50 states by now if he wanted to. What kind of thing is that to say? Okay. Colleen's doing better.

That's good news. She's in good condition at the hospital. Her brother was released in a few days from the hospital. And Steven, the luckiest one of all, the 14-year-old, wasn't even home. So he comes home to. He's up in Crystal Lake. Yeah, he's up in Camp Crystal Lake. He had another murderer to dodge.

So he's like, I go to Crystal Lake and I survive, but my family gets butchered at home. What the fuck, man? So people were shocked. Daniel Ricardas has great breasts. Great. They're terrific. So shocks the whole town, as you might imagine. And, of course, the college, too.

And, of course, the college, too. Also, one friend here, a classmate of Colleen's, said that Rick's parents are in the process of getting a divorce. And on top of that, Colleen's backing away from him. Something must have just snapped inside. Well, yeah. The principal from the school said Rick was, I would say, a typical high school boy. He really was never a great problem to us. he was a good student and a good athlete he never did anything or said anything that would give us any indication that something like this would happen don't blame us he didn't give us the signs he was he was fine

when he was here maybe it was niu blame them a classmate of his um that this is the guy who lost his starting job to church at center. He said he's a complete piece of shit and a pussy and I'm much tougher than I didn't say that. Fuck that guy. I'm so much of a better football player than him. No, he said. I'm glad that he's gone. I got my job back. Yeah.

Score. I'm 23 now, but you know what? I'm going to go back back i think i can really dominate now really can do well he said i knew rick as a teammate a normal kind of guy you wouldn't expect him to be capable of that sort of thing well yeah you wouldn't we would hope most people aren't right so the funeral pops up more than 500 people there for the funeral service. Everything in the church was full, plus standing room only on the sides. I mean, it was people waiting outside for other people to come out. They did a double funeral for both the parents there.

Colleen couldn't make it because she was still in the hospital. Everybody else couldn't be there, though. Both sons were there. And they said, Ray and Ruthann were slain without warning. These innocent and good people died by an evil act. We must admit to anger because it's there, but we must go on. They left their legacy of love and commitment to family, church, and community. We must not and should not lose to anger and rage.

So there you go. Rick's on the run. This search is going to go on for three years, by the way. Get fucked. Are you kidding me? Three years. They can't find one jackass

who's got $1,400 and his mom's truck from fucking Wisconsin. How the hell? It was a much easier time, James. You could just say who you are and they're just like, all right, here's a license.

During this, here you go. there's your new drive safe he had he had honest eyes i believe him look at his license right under eyes it says honest honest real honest and blue honest and blue is the day is long they they're faxing out thousands of wanted posters all over the place they're even faxing shit overseas like we don't know where the fuck he is so uh they don't even know one of the it's crazy they don't have a lot to work with as well they only lifted two fingerprints from his escape car and the murder weapon they have his picture and his dental and medical records that's all

they really have to go on i think i could have done a better job that's what i mean they said we're great this is one of the cops we were grabbed we're grabbing at air and trying to make our own look which is not what they know who did it and they still can't fucking find him we are completely unprepared for this he's not whitey bulger you know what i mean he didn't run a mob family and have every all sorts of connections and fucking millions of dollars hidden places and people are willing to help him and people will kill for him can't get beyond freshman year of college for christ's sake he's a dipshit third semester freshman which i'm a no semester freshman so i'm not sniping at that it might

probably take me even more semesters to get past it so So trust me. But I had the self-awareness, James, to know not to waste anybody's time. That's the thing. I knew that this is not for me. Now, Colleen recovers in the months ahead and works at a bridal shop in Woodstock. And she's going to go to McHenry County College. county college and all the kids the three ritters all live with um with ruth ann's parents now which is just a few blocks away from their old house which they sold yeah to somebody else and we'll talk about the new owners too so next few months go by he's in california rick is um they found his truck but not him at one point he eludes capture after both a parking

ticket he's got a parking ticket and he he uh cashed a 600 savings bond in that first month he even used his own license social security card and college id to cash the fucking bonds unbelievable so he's that wanted but he's giving you three forms of ID, and they're like, cool, here you go, bye. Happy spending. I'm a very wanted man. Can you cash this for me? Sure can. You want to hear it's even worse?

The bank even did a three-day security check to make sure it was all clear, and his name didn't pop up. Unbelievable. The FBI is involved in this, man. check to make sure it was all clear and his name didn't pop up so believe this is the fbi is involved in this man this is just piss poor and everybody's everybody's this is a shit sandwich in everybody's hand right now all sorts of shit so at one point he stopped at a 7-eleven rick does at about 8 a.m on september 12th and bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times. The clerk said he saw

Church walk up to the pickup and then his truck wouldn't start. So he just walked away. He's left it there. The next day, the truck was still there. The clerk called a towing company and apparently it was a $20 part in the starting mechanism that was wrong with it. They figured out once it got towed away. It sat at the impound for 10 days. And then on September 23rd, Cherry Church, his mom, received a letter stating that her truck was impounded. So her attorney called the Woodstock police because that's their duty. So Rick's father, Eugene, and his uncle all drove. This is amazing.

And Rick's father, his uncle, and a county sheriff's deputy from McHenry County all drove the truck back to Woodstock together. Picture these three guys sitting in the cab of a truck on the way back, like dumb and dumber all the way to Woodstock just they got the full all occupied bench seat that's that's exactly what i'm saying bench seat guy in the middle yeah or do they put the cop in the bed of the truck and let him enjoy himself all the way back across the country trying not to lean their legs too hard on each other to make it weird so this is a 7-eleven on sunset boulevard in west hollywood by the way as well here this is four days after he received a parking ticket

in santa monica so um that's the after that woodstock police sergeant uh flew out to los angeles spent six days in california and uh you know tried to get some help from them. They showed his photo around some places he might have been, including the Sunset Strip, the beach, and the 7-Eleven. All the hot spots. All the hot spots. Now, the 7-Eleven they might recognize him, but the strip and the

beach. He blends. Yeah, there's a lot of weirdos around here with halloween still got blood all over him i don't think you're gonna recognize him even then they might think he's like one of those performers that's gonna try to con you into taking a picture with them you know what i mean like maybe he's like from a horror movie that we haven't seen i don't know so uh have you seen this man there are millions of people here what are are you talking about? What is happening? So they said that they wouldn't say if he had any friends or family there as well.

They don't know if he had any friends or family there. So they kept going out. Another two after that, six months later, two more Woodstock police officers went to California for 11 days. days investigated for about two three hours we walked around the beach for 11 days i'm not gonna lie we did we were on the beach for 11 days and nobody's seen him it's weird we said over the course of 11 days we're bound to run into everybody that's been here so no we put an umbrella up and we had drinks with fruit and shit in it. That's what they did. It was great.

Saw some sights. Yeah, it was wonderful. Went down to the Chinese theater, asked some people. Checked out the tar pits. I always heard that was pretty cool. Not as impressive as you might imagine. Pretty lame when you get there, but it sounded neat. The history's wild.

The bill total for the investigation six months in is up to 40 000 bucks for all the shit it's a lot of vacation it's a lot it's a lot in the year prior to the murders a city police city police took home less than ten thousand dollars in overtime pay and it rose to thirty four thousand one hundred sixty two dollars after that so that's lot. Well, there are tapings of wheel of fortune and shit. Well, they're, they're following up on two to 300 tips. Uh,

they made five trips to Wisconsin, uh, all sorts of shit here. So, um, it's a lot. So there's a mayoral candidate that's trying to use this shit to get elected and he doesn't get elected, but he says,

quote, there's a number of unsolved murders that if they would have done the proper police work and not gone looking for glory, these things would never have worked out this way. He said that he would have entered the truck's license plates into a national police database. And then he would have been caught if his license plate number, not just the truck. Because they just put the truck serial number into the database, not the truck's license plate number, which seems like an oversight. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That has to be someone going did i do both i did both and then moving on right the vin number is so hard to see i can't you're not looking for i'm looking for a blue pickup with a vin number of that oh great well who the fuck would know let me get a magnifying glass and stop every truck in w. It sounds great.

And those ones were like stamped into the metal in the door panel. They were fucking hard to see. You had to open the door to see it. Yeah, they were difficult, man. So they said that license plates were too easy to change. That's why they would use the VIN. But you put it in there just in case. Right.

Might not have this plate, but if you see one with it that sure shit the one like we use that for amber alerts you know what i mean yeah and especially because when it when it got back to woodstock still had the same fucking plates on it so this guy could it should have been caught months ago here um instead they went out in helicopters and had fucking police dogs searching counties and all the neighborhoods and everything like that it's by the way neighbors said police never questioned them about what they may have saw or heard on the day of the murder unbelievable around his house or anything like that uh now the police chief says hey hey now not so fast he says there were people interviewed i don't know who

you're talking about here to a reporter uh one of the people is sandy holland who lived in the same building as the churches said police didn't talk to her at all she said i didn't hear about it until three days later unreal uh police didn't speak to next door neighbors chris and peggy grassley uh who lived or the two families who lived across the street either gary noonan also not questioned had guests the night of the murder they slept in the living room and heard a man across the street going in and out all night long so they all had saw rick and they could have put a timeline together no one fucking talked to her don't want to talk to these neighbors so back to uh rick over here okay so he ends up at this point this is wild he's at a mission for

the homeless in la yeah because fourteen hundred dollars ain't shit not going well so he meets a cult leader named tony alamo i shit you not not only is he a cult leader he is also a popular fashion designer wow no shit and when i tell you what the what the fuck he made you're gonna go oh my god i know exactly what those are holy shit homeless guy no no no no no no no no no that's he's a cult leader where does where do cult leaders find people you know the homeless shelter desperate yeah yeah there's a him and a priest right next to him and anybody who's looking for souls fucking scrounging for souls that's where you go so um yeah he ends up becoming one of alamo's followers yeah here um they travel

throughout the western states for a while my god he's everywhere he takes jobs at logging camps and other job sites um they put in they also put in 10-hour days doing manual labor all of these uh you know followers making designer jeans what this is a guy who made designer jeans made by brainwashed cult members brainwashed homeless and murderers. And well, yeah, murderers or whoever they could pick up. At least one. Now, Alamo is also a fugitive from federal agents as well. He's not on the up and up at all.

The FBI has been looking for him since three months after the Ritter killings. So, yeah, an 11 year old boy had told police that Tony Alamo ordered four men to beat him. And then so they've been looking for him. So over the next two years, after Rick meets Alamo, he travels with them. Two years. Alamo, a little background on him. He was an evangelist, apparently, who had a real radical conversion. One of these real hard Christian conversions where you go from, you know, Jesus is pretty cool to I will fucking set you on fire if you don't believe exactly what I believe.

Not just all of it. Exactly what I believe. So he did that. He founded Tony Alamo Christian ministries with his wife susan okay establishing their headquarters in dire arkansas uh it's a it's a cult it's been called it's been known as a cult here tony alamo christian ministries it's at the it's it sounds like like frank fucking reynolds sweatshop and always sunny you know what i mean like that's what it sounds like a bunch of lawsuits government actions and everything like that uh they

went after tony alamo for income tax evasion this is amazing theft of his late wife's body body jimmy i'll explain that to you and taking underage girls across state lines for sex what a good guy tony um yeah he according to alamo while he was in a meeting at a beverly hills investment firm this is how he came to the whole thing jesus came to him while he's at a meeting at a beverly hills investment firm yeah jesus came to him and told him to preach the second coming of Christ. Pretty tip. Hold on, guys. They're like, you need to use the restroom.

He's like, no, no, no. I got to go teach the second coming of Christ. Never mind. Deal's off. I'm leaving. So after both he and his wife, Susan, converted to Christianity, they established the Music Square Church and began a Hollywoodwood street ministry passing out religious bullshit and pamphlets and shit and preaching especially to quote drug addicts alcoholics and prostitutes so the ones that need them the most ones that need it the most uh they were part of what they

called the jesus people move here there's a lot of jesus people um there's a lot of the 60s hippies. A lot of those people were people looking for something. And by the 70s, that was over. And now they latch on to Christianity because they fuck their life up so much doing drugs and being a fucking moron for eight, nine years. Now they're like, oh, Jesus, I got to get it together. Then somebody comes up. I need Jesus. And they're like, Jesus can help you.

And they're like, really? And then they get into that headlong. So there's a lot of that going on here. Now, he had his his teachings was like paranoia. They called also extreme anti-Catholicism, really hated the Catholics here and called said that the Vatican is the real power broker behind the white house the united nations and the media oh boy and the media even though i think we've had one catholic president ever so that's pretty funny that's true yeah so 50 years ago so 60 years ago so but there could

still control the white house no we've had a catholic briefly. Yeah. It was quick. Yeah. The publications here they offered was the, this is funny, the Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance is one of his pamphlets detailing his conspiracy theories. And he claimed that UFOs are divine messengers from heaven and signs of the end times. Okay, got to go. We have to do this. Now, he gained popularity. Want to know how he gained popularity here?

What was it? Selling airbrushed denim jackets that his ministry produced. That was his thing? That was his thing, and it was one of the businesses that supported the ministry. The jackets were assembled by his people in a factory in Alma, Arkansas that was converted from a big restaurant. They had raw denim that was washed in a drum and did all the deal, and then it was cut and sewn into shape.

They did the basic stencil, a skyline or outline of a cartoon character that was applied using a silk screen, and then they had to actually airbrush everything here by hand. That was his thing. Then he had children man the rhinestone station. Little fingers do it a little bit easier.

Using their small fingers, they would drop in the, what are those, Swarovski, whatever the fuck they're called, stones? Yeah, Swarovski crystals, yeah. Those stones into the tiny. Yeah, they'd use those into the tiny. These are designer, these are expensive jackets. These aren't Walmart jackets. These are very expensive. Yeah, they'd use those into the tiny. These are designer. These are expensive jackets. These aren't Walmart jackets. These are very expensive. Yeah, we'll talk about this, who bought these things.

Terrible working conditions. Bleach fumes fucking up every day. They would work 14 hours a day. He had a whole big thing. Children's fingers would bleed from handling the rhinestones because they're pointy until they calloused over they would bleed the finished product was what was called a tony alamo of nashville jacket okay now um they by the way they were the laborers weren't paid as well for their 14 hour days it was in service of the of the church is what they were doing because

this this uh and yeah jesus work james they said this is our path to heaven well in the 80s they were a hot fashion commodity with celebrities these jackets they got they were the hot thing for a while uh let's see they were very expensive celebrities known to have worn them in photographs that there's photographs of them wearing them michael jackson his was a customized leather version on the cover of the bad album that was a tony alamo tony al of nashville uh mike tyson brooke shields burt reynolds and sorry to break your heart jimmy miss dolly parton as well oh yeah dolly parton's jacket made little children's fingers bleed everybody that's right so we've been looking for dirt on her we finally found it we finally didn't do she didn't do her jacket research that bitch how dare she not look up the exact source of every piece of clothing she

wore i wonder if that jacket from uh smoky and the bandit was that one the one with the fucking firebird on the back probably yeah it's gotta be burt reynolds yep so um that's it so the one of the people who was born into the cult a guy named benjamin resha he said we really thought we were making these jackets for god we did it with zeal that's why they were so great because people were really into me you think they paid those, James. They were really expensive. Apparently, I'll get you more to listen to this shit. He said, we really thought we were saving the world by making money for the ministry and spreading its word. Apparently, the jackets today are a big fucking deal.

The vintage jackets of this. People still don't realize where they came from people who have been uh nicki minaj miley cyrus uh fucking uh kurt cobain's kid right uh fucking who has the michael jackson one somebody important has the michael jackson one a bunch of usher or something a couple of rappers have that they've all been photographed wearing these vintage old school t of Alamo, Tony Alamo of Nashville jackets. Pretty wild. So Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. This is fucking crazy here.

Okay. Susan Alamo died of cancer in 1982. Tony Alamo predicted that she would be resurrected and kept her embalmed body on display at the Arkansas compound for six months before placing it in a mausoleum ew that is disgusting now february of 1991 he ordered his followers to get out of the compound because it was a big federal raid breaking it up and he said also when you're when you're leaving make sure to bring susan you. Oh, my God. So. She's still there.

We're about to raid this place. He took them with. The mausoleum was on the property. So a judge finally ordered Alamo to return the body in 1995 after a lawsuit by Susan Alamo's estranged daughter. So finally, after a three-year legal battle, his followers brought the body to a funeral home in Arkansas, and finally it was re-interned and finally laid to rest this poor woman.

So anyway, back to Rick. Now, 88 to 91, logging camps, making jeans, making fucking Michael Jackson's jacket, doing all this shit did mission work for the for the church as well made trips to oregon nevada california arizona arkansas moving around with impunity yeah doing whatever he wants and uh he spent most of his days doing out the jackets these jackets he this fucking murderer and bloody children fingers made these jackets, man. This is crazy.

Unbelievable. Somebody now famous on fucking Instagram is going to take a picture with one of these old jackets on. You go, a murderer might have made that you fucking asshole. Like a terrible murderer while he was hiding from murder. There's blood on that jacket one way or another. Oh, yeah. Now, he did this one day. Tony Alamo saw wanted poster with Church's face on it. Oh, yeah. Now, he did this one day Tony Alamo saw Wanted poster with Church's face on it.

Oh, God. And instead of turning him in, he told Church, well, you're a member of the family now, and I'll accept you, and I'll do whatever I can to help you as well. Yeah. So he does that. He gives you a job making these jackets forever because where else are you going to go? Jail? That's it. That's when he relocates him from California to Arkansas.

And there he can continue to work for him. But I guess this was in rural Arkansas all the way in the middle of nowhere. So it's like you're not going to run into anybody out there. Just stay out there and make jackets for me. So they said he could have potentially been there forever, except he was only there for four months when it was raided by the IRS. That's when the body was taken. Right. They everybody fled when the IRS raided.

They took Susan Church, fled into the woods during the raid and hit out and got away. This fucking guy. At another point, he went to New York City with group members. And got away. This fucking guy. At another point, he went to New York City with group members. He was arrested in New York City by New York City police because his traveling companion had kidnapped his travel. Had kidnapped somebody from his kid from his former wife.

So he was traveling with his own child whom he had kidnapped. So everyone in the party gets arrested there, including Rich. Rick gives the name of Jim Wall, W-H-A-L, like the haircutting thing, to police. Police fingerprint him, hold him for more than two weeks, then release him. Jeez, NYPD. Come on, FBI. FBI. two weeks then release him jesus nypd come on fbi are these bulletins not getting the people is it the police is fuck up what the fuck are they not getting it out are the fbi not getting it out or are people not seeing it when it go what is happening he has gone through every little crack in the fucking system that there is we're in the 90s at this point yeah so after his release he

goes back to arkansas and uh they move from city to city after that still doing work for alamo wherever they can here finally alamo gets arrested and the group fragments and um rick has nowhere to be now he's got no people so he ends up in salt lake city where police are still looking at him yeah they're looking for him um so uh he jesus christ during all this he's on 11 national television programs by the way this is a huge deal five showings on america's most wanted five five times on america's most wanted um which is insane john walsh couldn't get him no nobody could they said it was basically most the police said in woodstock it was basically most of our work for two years well it should be you didn't finish your work

yeah if you don't finish your work you can't have dessert work you have to fucking finish your dinner work before you get dessert pork chop for breakfast and then lunch yeah find this motherfucker it's not like we don't know who did it right yeah it's not a mystery find him you'll eat no more meat on that bone uh one of the detectives said someone called in trying to say that it was their son-in-law who was richard church and we would say how long has he been your son-in-law and they said eight years and we were like well that's not it um we've put in a lot of blood sweat and tears into this case. The detective said we've literally put in thousands of hours. They contacted the U.S. Coast Guard after receiving word that he was on a fishing boat in Alaska.

And just in case, they alerted the Armed Services, National Park Unions and the Dental Association. Said we had a lot of eyes. What we didn't do was put his goddamn license plate number on a simple thing. The most simple fucking thing you could have done, that would have done it. Fuck the Coast Guard. What is he going to be? Yeah, he might be floating a fucking half a mile out at sea. Let's make sure of that.

Before we run license plates on blue trucks from Illinois, what the fuck are we doing? Are you guys worried he's on the lake from Illinois. What the fuck are we doing? Are you guys worried he's on the lake of the Ozarks? What are we doing? What is the fucking point here? So it's at this point, by the way, the Ritters start to fight each other a little bit. The Ritter children file a lawsuit against their grandfather, who is Ray's dad, Harry Ritter, to stop him from getting Ray Ritter's insurance benefits. had Harry Ritter to stop him from getting Ray Ritter's insurance benefits. There's a $360,000 life insurance claim that Colleen says that should go to her and her brothers.

However, her grandfather has taken the money and put it in a revocable trust. So Colleen said, he must not know what my father wanted. We've been through enough. Everyone knows we deserve that money. You only make something revocable if you have an intention to use that power so um he uh she said that he's she's not sure why her grandfather would want that money she said that he hasn't visited her since her release from the hospital it's not like they're close and they want it. So it'll be for them, obviously, here. Yeah. So they said that the whole it's such a weird fucking thing, too, because the a lot of the a lot of the shit is like about who died first.

It's a technical thing. It's really weird. Colleen said she didn't know what her brothers might do with her money their money but she wants to she said myself i like cutting hair i wanted to go to beauty school and maybe start my own business terrific good good fucking business here so the the the coroner said that ruthann died at 6 a.m ray died at 601 but they said the times were arbitrarily set by the time they the medical examiner got to them so it's not like when they actually died so the grandfather's trying to say everything that she owns goes to her husband and then he died directly after therefore everything's

mine exactly and that's exactly what it is so he um harry ritter the grandfather said he was just trying to keep a promise to his son saying saying saying that to his son, he intended for him to handle the money for the life insurance policy. So I guess, uh, yeah, it's very weird. So anyway, it all ends pretty easily because in July of two, uh, what is it? 1992 or no, it's 1989. Harry Ritter dies. So grandpa dies and kind of ends the whole thing there. Great. So, not only five times on America's

Most Wanted, twice on Unsolved Mysteries. Unbelievable. Robert Stack got involved. Robert Stack and John Walsh talked about him. Both. Oh, not only them, how about Geraldo got involved in the whole thing. Is that right? Yeah, they said come on and hit Geraldo with a chair. Just come on over here. He loves it. It's great.

It makes everyone feel good. We all love over here. He loves it. It's great. It makes everyone feel good. We all love watching it. He loves doing it. Also, Donahue. So, Phil Donahue's show, A Current Affair. Remember that one with the triangle? Yeah, we both did this. It pops out at you.

That noise is awesome. And then it's a great, it's second to the law and order. And the tick, tick, tick of 60 seconds. 60 minutes, yeah. Those are all very good sound effects. And finally, also, Oprah gets involved. Get out of here. Oh, yeah, everybody's on Oprah.

Colleen Ritter's on Oprah with her big old hair back in the day and everything. Before we found out pushes wackos down our throat every year yeah no shit yeah that's a good point phony doctors yeah to stop it with your fake doctors so uh colleen appeared on the show she'd share her story and you know all that sort of shit here So Richard, they said that they were still looking. The cop, one county attorney, said we'd call each other at 2 in the morning. I'd say, are you still awake about that thing? I got an idea. None of us could sleep at night. Just terrible.

At one point, they said they got so many tips, but they turned into no leads. The one guy said, quote, it's amazing. It's just amazing how many people look like richard church a very common looking man here is that true apparently so they said it was a daily topic we'd sit around at lunch and brainstorm for hours about the whole thing at one point the one cop watched 500 people in a food line in california he walked the beach and looked at people sleeping on park benches and in trees. Quote, it was a quest. In trees?

That could be him in that tree. We're going to have to stay in California a couple extra days, Sarge. There's a guy who might be a tree. We'll talk about it. You're not going to believe how many people sleep in trees. They all look like him, too. It's crazy to go through all these people. We're going to have to stay out here a while longer. I'm going to

rent an apartment. Tell you what you what you got a nice place in uh pacific palisades something like that no no a little quieter i don't want to deal with all that shit just yeah somewhere you know it's got to be nice jimmy i got we got to fit in you know going to fucking glendale over here. We're going somewhere decent. It was a quest to get it done. Not a day goes by that we forget about the church, that we forget about Mr. Church. There's no place I wouldn't go and nothing I wouldn't do. This man should not be walking around free. Mostly Manhattan Beach. Mostly.

I'll walk around. There's no beach I won't comb. No five-star restaurant I won't thoroughly examine the tasting menu of. No street taco truck I will not investigate. No Ritz Carlton I won't stay in to make this happen. I will work tirelessly till my fingers bleed like a Tony Alamo jacket child's fingers. It's going to happen. There's no Burt Reynolds party I won't patronize.

Well, I won't. Oh, man. So stories had a bunch of things. One story had Church working as a bank teller on the West Coast. Another said he was walking in the park in the square with purple hair. They had to look for people with purple hair. The one guy said, this is a classmate of his, it's more of a joke than reality. A year ago this time, we were very, very, very concerned.

Now we're like, now there's purple haired fucking guys walking around. Now it's just crazy stories. Yeah. They're talking about a lot of the friends are why would he such a clean-cut guy and he was ambitious i don't understand why he would do this this is fucking crazy and uh the chief says unless you talk to the individual himself if he would tell you anything you'd have no idea what makes somebody do this i wonder why in this case i'm like you are we can all speculate but i don't think any of us knows

the real motive at this point only he does yeah we can guess i don't know it sounds like his whole world imploded and he took it out on a fucking family that's what it sounds like so now enter this asshole now sherman oaks california there's a restaurant there's a man eating there and uh oprah had recently been on adam and america's most wanted and a wanted flyer that they had there's a wanted flyer that they had shown in this restaurant so somebody recognizes richard church in this restaurant in sherman oaks and calls the police uh from stanley's it's a restaurant on ventura boulevard now the man richard church walks out of the restaurant with his friend and is immediately surrounded by police from Stanley's. It's a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard. Now, the man, Richard Church, walks out of the restaurant with his friend

and is immediately surrounded by police. Ten officers, guns drawn, moving in, tackling him, taking him to the ground, drag his ass in, we finally got you, and he's going, I don't know what you're talking about.

Who's Richard Church? He's doing that shit, you know? I don't know. Oh, God. Me? Who, me? They get him in there they're like yeah we'll find out exactly who you are richard church fingerprint him yeah they do it four times just to be safe it's not him it's just some dick it's the wrong guy it's some poor bastard named danny kaufman who's a fucking actor in la wow it's bad enough he's a fucking getting shit can from auditions for calcan commercials now he can't even fucking come on

this is terrible now he's getting arrested jacket i bought i swear to god he said quote it wasn't quite the kind of attention i was seeking yeah he's an actor he's like i've been trying to get noticed but but not like this. He said, as soon as I stepped out of the door, my arms were grabbed and pulled behind me. I was handcuffed in about a second and a half. I didn't know what was happening. I was scared. No shit.

They are doing this police work so wrong. So poorly. Fugitive squad detective Douglas Lamel said the officers and the employees of the restaurant thought he was Richard Church. Obviously, police officers explained the large scale response by the phone tip by saying he's considered extremely dangerous. And, you know, it's tough shit. Then they said, quote, he didn't come close to matching the prints, though. But on looks, it was pretty close.

Well, great. That's not really. So the spokesman for America's Most Wanted said, that's why we kept him until we. Oh, that's what the police said. That's why we checked them until we checked the fingerprints and we kept him. A spokesman for America's Most Wanted said they've never, ever in the past, ever once heard of a mistaken identity case being attributed to the show. Is that bullshit? Is that right?

Your ass. Your fucking ass. That many years? For every one they catch they tackle 10 guys who aren't the guy you fucking know it how many people are like it's my brother there he is his address jesus christ in the beginning they had to right absolutely so uh he had as far as soon as they identified him as danny k, they took him back to his Stanleys to pick up his car. One of the employees said he came back and he had bruises around his wrist from the cuffs. Poor bastard.

Poor guy. Kaufman said, this is Kaufman's lunch companion and friend, quote, I feel really bad about it. It was a nightmare. Kaufman says, though, he does see a little humor in the mix up, obviously. He said, I'm still perplexed about it. I don't know if I should worry about being a continued suspect or if I have this on my record now that I was held as a murderer. That's a good question you don't know about. And he said, I'm taking it seriously for now.

Maybe I'll laugh about it later. That is incredible, honestly, this poor bastard. And I looked up and there's no way to know if it's the same guy, but there's a guy named Danny Kaufman, has an IMDB. He graduated from UCLA, so he was in LA at some point, and has made it as a director, as a producer, as a writer. He had a book of photographs published in 1994, and that would be like three, two years after this. It could be the same guy. I hope it is. I'm pretty sure.

I mean, it might be, but Danny Kaufman, that's a common name, too. Who the fuck knows? We don't know. If you're a listener, Danny Kaufman, either Danny Kaufman or if you're the same person, please fucking tell us if you're the same person, because I'm going gonna wonder about that more than what the hell dude wrote on the fridge how rough were they it's yeah exactly um someone called in like we said trying to turn their son-in-law in and all that sort of shit so finally he's in salt lake city richard church he is dating a 17 year old girl what um yeah uh she's one of at least four women he's been dating in the last five months all minors as well too by the way i mean young not in the ground looking for or so he was he worked his way up from uh from a cook to an assistant manager

at a place here. The manager's name was John Diamond. He was his boss and a friend of his who became a father figure. He received three raises in that time. Wow. And had a second job at the Delta Center where the jazz play. Get out of here. I swear to God.

He stayed in a shitty little motel and ended up being able to move out of there and rented an apartment in what they called a trendy downtown district. He's in a party. I mean, his 17-year-old girlfriend. In his application for his job at the restaurant, he said he was a born-again Christian who spent his free time, quote, reading the Bible. Oh, my word. Yeah. The Power Forward did the same thing, didn't he? They did the same. Maybe't he they did the same maybe it's carl malone church also had a relationship with a 16 year old girl for a few months

she said he was an extremely nice person but had a bad temper and would seldom talk about his past she said back when i went out with him he was nice sensitive and really sweet she said that she met him who she knew as danny carson while he was working at the broiler which was a restaurant after they began dating she'd ask him how old he was and all he would reply is quote over 21 too old for you she's not trying to sell you a beer dude she's wondering if your dick is too old um somehow he she ended up convincing a manager at the restaurant to check his employment file, which said he was 33. Jesus. So she thought he was 33.

Then when he's arrested, she found out he's actually 22. Okay. They said that he had 33 on all of his state ID cards. So, you know, that's what he was doing. The Salt Lake girl broke up with him about a month before his arrest because she said they were too opposite. She said, when I told him it was over, he almost cried. Yeah. She said.

He's a murderer. We're too different. You know how the Mormons murderers. The letters are very close. So she said he also got pissed off. She said, I can say he has a really bad temper and he would yell at her when they got in arguments. So she did emphasize he never physically hurt her or threatened her though after a fight he would walk away to cool off and then return to

apologize and then he'd say that he didn't mean to hurt her in any way so whatever maybe he's he's he didn't try to kill me with a fucking nail on a stick that's a it's growth right so while he's working here a salt lake city police officer officer named Craig Park spots him working as a cashier. Okay. So while Park is eating lunch at the Bennett Pit Barbecue, he spotted the nice kid behind the counter. He's like, where the fuck did I see his picture again? God, I know I recognize him. And then he went, oh, a wanted poster.

That's right. That's where i've seen him before so he asked his boss about him and checked a uh he for the forge social security number and uh learned that he was going by danny lee carson so um you know he sat there he said i eventually he said after they caught him he, I thought he would plead guilty eventually. He said, he's never any trouble with us. But anyway, he said, when I saw him, I realized he looked like somebody we'd been looking for before. And he said that he returned to the police station and rummaged through a pile of flyers just to make sure. And he said that he found the one with Church.

When he found it, he started to dig deeper. He contacted the Woodstock department. And on the 20th, he found the one with church. When he found it, he started to dig deeper. He contacted the Woodstock department. And on the 20th, he went back to the restaurant. So he goes back to the restaurant and talks to the boss and learns all this shit. But he's not working that day. The card said that the social security numbers on the card and his working papers didn't match. The ID said he was born in New Mexico the card and his working papers didn't match. The ID said he was born in New Mexico in 1958 and said he's 33.

He said, when I saw him and saw the ID card, it was quite obvious he wasn't 33 years old. So, yeah, the managers would prod him about obtaining an I-9 employment permit and get a Utah driver's license, but he kept putting it off and giving excuses. And the manager said that he liked him, so he just kept him around. He was a good worker. So finally, he did get the license under Danny Lee Carson, and he said that America's Most Wanted later on would ask him about, when they called to ask him once he was caught, would you know about him? He said, I don't even know Richard Church. I knew him as Danny Carson.

He's a completely different person. So, yeah, he would clean up after jazz games, by the way. That's what he would do. So, anyway, they go back to the restaurant to arrest him on his day off. So then they track him to an apartment at a downtown hotel, which is a nice place. There were an address they uncovered in their background check. they said, we went to his apartment Thursday morning, and all we had to do was ask him if he was Richard Church, and he said yes. He didn't put up a fight, but then he's not saying anything else either.

So he just said yes. Sounds like he was exhausted from running. He just expected it someday. He said yes and put his hands out. Cuff me up. His boss said, quote quote he was the nicest kid he was great he was a hard worker and he didn't even swear yeah didn't even see just murders that's all this is what i mean don't trust people who don't curse i've said it a million times they

might be a pedophile or a murderer right uh and on all american kids an all-american kid that's what he is that's what the guy said here not here. Not all people that don't swear touch kids, but all people that touch kids don't. Don't swear. Exactly. Jared never heard a curse coming out of his mouth. So Michael Jackson would fucking ask you not to curse in front of him if you cursed. He threw shit into a song once. But if people cursed, he would ask them not to curse around him.

I'm talking big stars would be around him. Could you not curse in front of me? I don't like it. Maybe not, yeah. Yeah, I don't like a bad Michael Jackson impersonation. Neither of us are good. Let's do it another time. Dorothy DeShazer, who's the manager of the apartments where he lives, said, quote,

I could not fathom a nice-looking man like he is doing what he did. He's too handsome. He was always quiet. He was the perfect tenant because he's hiding. Wow. She said that a woman who often stayed with him was also there when he was arrested. He had a girlfriend there. She was just as shocked as I was when the picture on the wanted poster was shoved in her face.

He just kept to himself and quiet. I used to think he was rude at first at another woman who lived there, but then realized he's just quiet. when the picture on the wanted poster was shoved in her face he just kept to himself and quiet i used to think he was rude at first said another woman who lived there but then realized he's just quiet now the cop who found him they said the police chief said he's quote one of our finest officers his name is craig park he's the only guy in this whole story with a badge who's not a complete fuck-up thank you craig park of the salt lake city police department the only non-fuck up in this entire story also the only thing he really did was say are you in and he said yes but no he he recognized it then went back and looked through a pile of posters and go it is that fucking guy

i saw two weeks ago that's impressive police work it's not bad commit a fucking guy i wanted poster to your brain for two weeks yeah and he could have just been like nah it's probably never mind it went on with his day yeah he did the work thank god the picture was right yeah that would have been far you know another danny kaufman yeah uh now he said this is park he says this is just one of those things that shows that oh he says i've been there a zillion times i can't take too much credit for not spotting him sooner he's like calm down i'd i'd fucking talk to the guy 30 times already and didn't recognize him so my bad uh but that's just being uh modest because he's doing well here now uh the officials in woodstock said you have to give this police officer a lot of credit i don't know him but whoever he is i'd like to buy him a new cadillac that's nice so um yeah they bring him in, and here he is.

They end up giving him an award, too. The FBI gives him an award. The cop who found him. Yeah, Park. And he said, quote, I certainly wasn't expecting the awards. They all came out of having lunch at the right place at the right time. I was just hungry. Now, yeah, it's fucking crazy.

Now, Richard, once he's in jail, Rick calls work. He calls work to apologize. He calls from the county jail and he says, this is Danny, when he spoke to Donna Diamond, who's the guy's wife there. And she said, quote, he just wanted to talk and wanted to let us know that he loved us. We all got close to him. He was just saying he was sorry we were going to have to go through what we were going through. It made me feel like Danny loved this area and loved us as much as we loved him. I just think he needed to know we're still there now that we found out about this horrible thing.

Maybe he needs to know there's someone out there who loves him. He said that he told Diamond he was sorry. Diamond Guy said that we were best friends, the best friends he ever had, and that he told diamond he was sorry diamond guy said that we were best friends the best friends he ever had and that he'd never forget us i said i guess i should call you richard now and rick he said i like rick he said i tried to change i'm not that person anymore and even though i know what he's done i'd still trust him with my two-year-old are you out of your mind wow that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard but okay um yeah um they couldn't believe it at first that it even happened uh

they said they knew him as a 33 year old likable guy a football fan got along well with women um you know he said danny carson did not do things like that. Richard Church may have, but Danny Carson wouldn't have. Danny Carson doesn't exist, you guys. He doesn't exist. This is when someone gets brain with a, it's just in their brain. That's what happened. I'd like to introduce you to a friend of his. Tony Alamo would like a word review as well.

He was making $4.75 an hour. That's what he was doing there they said at the time when he got hired he had a full beard looked like a country western singer they said but he did not object when he was told to shave it and when he did nobody was any suspicious they said he looked so much younger than 33 but it was like a joke like a baby face over here and he'd be like yeah yeah i'm a lucky guy you'll all love it when i'm 70 you know he'd make jokes like that i'll be lucky later on and that's what they'd all say and it's fucking fun they said he had the key to the store the key to the safe the combination had all that shit didn't take the money never ran just sat there they said he was set he had a new life with people

who loved him that's the diamond guy said he was. He was to come to our house for Thanksgiving. He wanted to come in on that day and paint the store, but I told him Thanksgiving was a day to be with the people you love. So we invited him over. Come over. This is fucking crazy. You almost invited, you did.

You invited a murderer to Thanksgiving. Yeah. Friends of his said they'd watch football and shoot darts and play pool and all that sort of thing and said he's just a good, fun-loving guy. He'd come over for barbecues. Yeah, it wasn't the person we knew who did those things. It was someone different.

A co-worker said who'd, you know, fucking hang out at the barbecue. One friend said he found a home here. This is fucking crazy. This is fucking nuts. He literally tried to murder four people, you guys. What are you talking about? One time, they said, one time he became nervous when police came to the restaurant and once told a friend the cops were after him. And he said, we thought it was for something minor, like stealing a radio, not butchering a family.

So, yeah, he'd, wow um this is fucking crazy so his friend said they'd see the america's most wanted episodes on him but they never made the connection he said we've watched it with him diamond here diamond said the two of her sons were joking with each other after the episode saying that looks like danny it looks like danny and i asked them why they didn't tell us and they said we didn't think it was him we were just like that's pretty funny it kind of looks like danny but he's not a murderer he he works at the barbecue pit or whatever the fuck you guys should be police officers in illinois no shit uh one time the pit the place he worked at was robbed so police showed up

and he said i can't be here with these cops and fucking ran away wow that is why nobody was any wiser they're like yeah i get it go home yeah we get it yeah we don't like him either i guess guess. Whatever. I don't know. He's weird about cops. So it brought a lot of relief to the Ritters here. The one Colleen's uncle said, I knew he'd be caught. I just knew it. You don't know how hard my heart was beating.

I'm happy. I'm angry. Everything's rolling inside me. Colleen said, I was shocked. I'm still shocked. I was thinking my life's going to go on now now she said she doesn't have to live in fear anymore good for her yeah a close friend of the family who uh ran to told colleen said quote no more locked doors no more locked doors is what

colleen yelled she was so fucking happy which you should still lock your door yeah it's just the only dangerous person isn't yes there are other murderers out there you just caught this one which is good less murderers is always good so uh they said now colleen said quote now the ultimate would be death for him she's into that and uh ralph ray's younger brother said i want to see him put to death if he can't if they can't find somebody to do it i'll volunteer to do it attaboy see that's the ones where we should okay well i mean if you want to do it fine but we're not going to do it for you listen here the state's only going to do so much colleen went to uh she she was trying to help the police she was on she was on tv 12 times on national television shows begging for fucking help this is why we should uh talk

about the death penalty in a in a much more serious we could barely catch him and now we have now we're you know what i mean now we're talking about we're gonna kill him you could barely catch him yeah you couldn't even fucking find the guy you didn't even know to put license plates in federal fucking checks like we're gonna trust these people to enforce an ultimate penalty christ almighty um now uh one of the residents said i think it was good he was caught well there's the most obvious thing i've ever fucking heard in my life i'm glad to hear it he needs to be brought to justice anything anything with any opinion here i hope they would catch him because you always want justice to be done he needs to face up to what he did they caught him that seems good that's like a basketball player you know how do you feel about

the game and he goes well we just tried to play as a team and take it one day at a time and you know everybody worked together at uh for one common goal and we can get to the championship that's what he just said and we won so that seems good happier yeah we won so i think that's pretty cool uh then he said the whole thing is unfortunate i feel sorry for both families anymore mr obvious anything else when they said do you have anything to say he should have said no and walked away i don't no uh gene church e Church, goes by Gene, Rick's father, he said, quote, we're really sorry about the tragedy. We feel sorry for the other family. And he said, we've known the Ritters all our lives.

We're just devastated by it. I don't know of any other word I could use. So he said that they said they never heard from him when he was on the run. They did visit him in jail after he was arrested, but they, you know, they wanted to talk to him. So they said they didn't know anything about his son's whereabouts. And his mother here said, quote, It's been the worst three years of my life. I didn't know where he was. I wasn't even sure if he was alive.

And, yeah, she said, Are you relieved to know now of his whereabouts? And she said, Yes and no. I'm relieved, but he's also going to, you know, he's in prison. So that's how that works. Now, they said that the father, when they asked, well, what kind of kid was he? He said he did everything any normal child would do. He never gave us one ounce of trouble that we're aware of. Other than that, he was a good boy.

Other than the multiple murders, he's a good boy. We don't know what happened any more than you do.'d like to know but we don't we're not psychologists i think he was tired of running and it couldn't have been easy to live life out there at this point so they uh yeah they said i think there's eugene then said i think there's two sides to every story and at least that's what i've been told hopefully we'll hear another side unless the side is completely. It was really Danny Lee Carson that murdered these people. And we've had a major thing here.

He changed his name to Danny Carson. And the guy that they caught was Danny Kaufman. Danny Kaufman. Yeah. So close. K-A-U. Yeah. Different spellings there.

But still a cut and a Danny is pretty goddamn close. Unbelievable. So, yeah, spellings there, but still, a K and a Danny is pretty goddamn close. That's unbelievable. So, yeah, they said that they're hoping this comes out well. His lawyer says that the best I could hope for would be an acquittal. That's what he's looking for. So July 24th, 1992, it comes to court. There's a lot of evidence. People saw him doing it.

Colleen lived. There's no way out of it so he finally cops a plea here richard does uh the plea what the plea does is take the death penalty off the table and that's it that's the only thing the plea does is we won't go for the death penalty so um yeah they uh the they said that it's his mother said or I'm sorry, Ruthann's relative said that this saved him from the death penalty. His attorney said, while some people might say it's living death, I don't think so. You can save a life where you can. I understand how families of the victims feel. Putting Rick to death isn't going to bring anyone back.

The state's attorney, who originally sought the death penalty withdrew their request in you know agreement with this thing here he achieved his goal he said of keeping church off the streets um so um the defense council said i wanted to try the case but i was convinced and he was that we could not avoid conviction what did you want to try what were you trying on you fucking kidding me so the sentencing comes around during that they're trying to plea for i guess life with parole is what they're going for his lawyer rick's lawyer says he doesn't even recall the early parts of this except for flashes he doesn't even remember this what are you kidding me the murders the

murders he said he knows nothing. He says, quote, I think he's truly sorry for the grief he's caused. He's so stoic. That comes from fear more than lack of remorse. Wow. He said this is ridiculous. He said, you know, he said that it's drugs and alcohol and the stress and all that sent him over the edge. He just snapped, doesn't remember. He said everything was coming down on him.

He had some whiskey, some beer, and marijuana. A few pills. He was blotto. Out of it. No idea what he was doing. Nothing. That's it. How many times have you been shit-faced, James?

And then just been like, I gotta go murder. I gotta put a nail through a stick and go stab my ex-girlfriend's parents with it and her little brother and her never never that means i've got to get off the couch fuck that that's ridiculous the judge says well you sir may fuck off life in prison with no possibility of parole zero um he will uh leave prison quote only upon his death good they said yeah they also sentenced him to three concurrent 30-year prison terms on two counts of first degree attempted murder and home invasion just in case there's some technicality on the life without so uh the reaction here is um you know the the the state's said, all I gave up is a request for the death penalty.

I had no assurance I would get it. While one or more family members understandably remain adamant in their conviction that we should pursue the ultimate punishment, the majority of the victims, including Colleen and Matthew Ritter, have agreed. Colleen attended the sentencing hearing. They said she sobbed as they described the attack on her and took off pretty shortly afterwards um at one time she was saying she wouldn't rest until rich rick church was dead she was the one pushing the media and the police to find him she said quote i just want rick to die i want one thing and that's rick to die is that a lot to ask for which sounds silly but in her only in her context

completely understandable she's the only person who could say that i sit down on santa's lap and he says what do you want for christmas and i say can you kill rick he goes you know rick church dead probably on your naughty list that one that guy just off with his head, run him over. Put him under my tree. After you get done with grandma, get him next. Hit him next if you could. Please. So, yeah, she said she agreed, though, that he could live, quote, a death behind bars only if he confessed, though. And that's what he did. He had to confess.

He had to cop to the whole thing. So not quite harsh enough for everybody, though, and that's what he did. He had to confess. He had to cop to the whole thing. So not quite harsh enough for everybody, though. Mel Ritter, who was Ray's older brother, said, I'm not completely satisfied. I feel bad for the church family, but they still have the option of seeing their family member. I don't have that option. Yeah. And another neighbor said that, quote, I'm just glad it's over now. Just glad it's over.

They also said one of the neighbors said that he wished Church had gone to trial and received the death penalty. Listen to this, okay? He wishes he received the death penalty because, quote, it would let it sink in what he did and make him think about it. Not for as long, I guarantee you that much. He wouldn't have to think about that for, yeah. That's not the reason why. Yeah. Life in prison is plenty of time to think.

I really want to teach him a lesson. Yeah. Revenge, you can say that, and I'll go, I understand that emotion. That's just a weird thing to say. So, yeah, it's fucking crazy. They're trying to say that he's a decent person. He only had one thing where he really kind of went off the deep end there. But it's a big thing here.

They said that people in the neighborhood don't feel bad. They miss the Ritters. And people are talking about how when they were sick, the Ritters would come by and bring them soup and all sorts of shit like that. It's a they were nice people. These Ritters, they were good goddamn people. This is bad shit. So the house gets sold in 1992. Oh, really? It is sold to 09 Greenwood Avenue. It is sold to Sean and Kelly Parker. They moved in there um they knew what happened to it um they've done some minor remodeling new kitchen some painting i would assume it says some painting redecorating and they said they also had to come to grips with the whole thing here they said that uh you know the ritters were such nice people more than, we felt sad, which is what you want when you move into a new house. You want to feel sad about it. Jesus. Sean said, it's a beautiful house.

One day, one night doesn't ruin the house. No? I think so. There were some beautiful times here. Everybody at Cielo Grand or whatever the fuck that is. Cielo Drive? Is that it? Cielo Drive.

Yeah. Tell all the Brentwood people in their neighborhood. He's a public city, a city public works employee. And he said the neighbor said they were relieved to have someone back in the house. He says, Sean, as far as we're concerned, I don't think there are any clouds hanging over this house. He said he's relieved to know that Richard Church is in custody, though. But he said, who's to say that he wouldn't come back?

He could have come back here and killed who's a, maybe it's the address. Maybe he wasn't mad at Colleen. It was just a coincidence that they lived at this fucking house. Who knows? It's a poltergeist situation. We have no idea. He said that we figured if he had made it from Wisconsin out to California without being caught, he obviously had it in his mind to run.

So they did say they had to put up with some curiosity seekers, particularly the anniversary of it. People will show up. Quote, we've had gawkers since we moved in. People slow down, point, and we see them talking to each other in person. But there's not much we can do. I guess not. In 2019, Habitat for Humanity of McHenry County began restoring the Ritter home, which was once dubbed the house of death by everyone in town. God, Jesus. The home had changed hands multiple times, but ultimately fell into foreclosure, which is when Habitat for Humanity took an interest. It met the requirement and volunteers rehabbed it. for humanity took an interest it met the requirement and volunteers rehabbed it it's a 400 or 1440 square foot three bedroom two and a half bath home and uh they said the woman who got it

said to be very honest this house was such a blessing to us that it drowned out the negative things i'd heard about it my girls are so excited and eager to start our new life there that when i finally told them about the history they didn't even reconsider it i was worried it would spook them out and change their minds so um my kids would never step foot in that place they'd be like what kids were stabbed here yeah the house i went to at lionel lakes when i asked the the neighbor who was out sweeping i was like which house was the one where that guy and he didn't even look at the house just nodded over his shoulder that one that one the one that people ask about like you all the time thanks tell everyone so uh one uh habitat for humanity person said coming into our new home is kind of like what i do for my families i can bring in the sunshine and the happiness to a situation

that can be very dark and difficult which which is exactly what we do, Jimmy. We might as well build houses for people who are in terrible shape because we do. We take a dark situation. We are nice. We try to add a little bit of light to it. And that's what we did here today. And that, everybody, was Woodstock, Illinois. Wow.

And one fucking hell of a story. That is a fucking bumper right there. Polly Parton's wearing a murder coat. This is crazy. We are starting off the new year right. That's how we're doing. We're laying down. We're throwing the gauntlet down.

That's what it's like now. You got it, motherfuckers? That's it. So if you like that shit, get on your goddamn podcast app that you're using whichever one we don't care and give us a review five stars would be terrific that was complicated as a matter of fact you can even review on spotify now so get on there and do that and boost us on up the charts check us out head over to shut up and give me murder.com right now all of your merchandise for crime and sports and small town murder, all of your tickets throughout 2022.

And we announced in the beginning of the show, and we'll say it again here, Nashville, Florida, meaning Tampa and Orlando, Oklahoma City and Austin have all been rescheduled. They're all in the process. They will all be done in this calendar year. They're not going to go into 2023 with this shit. It's just going to be tacked on to the end of what we have now, which is like through September. So it's going to be sometime around there. Don't know when.

Not our fault, everybody. A couple people have had some responses that are less than savory. They're saying that people are upset. They think that we're holding their think that like we're holding their money and we're not we have no first of all we were advised this by the people that set these things up by our agents they said listen clubs are closing on day of show because they don't have enough staff because everybody will get sick all at once can't do that we don't really want you to fly somewhere get there have your whole audience show up and have them go oh no no no show tonight

with the staff's all sick so rather than do that let's see if we delay it 60 days and see if it'll help so our first shows coming back are going to be in uh hopefully chicago minneapolis that weekend so we it sucks for us too like we explained in the beginning this isn't a bake sale where we have like a metal lock box with everybody's ticket money we don't get paid a fucking dime until we do the shows either. So it's not like this is like, oh. And if you want a refund, if you don't want to wait, get a refund from the venue. They'll give you a refund for delayed shows. But if you went to like StubHub or something, we can't help you.

We can't fucking help you. Don't buy tickets from those fucking people. No. Just get it from the venue. No. If you bought a car, if you bought a used car from a guy and then it broke down, you wouldn't take it to the Chevy dealership and go, you assholes gave me a car that doesn't work.

Well, I don't know what the fuck the guy between us and you did to it. It's not our fault. They don't know. So they can't do it. That's what the third party. For airport, for travel, for airfare. Both of us. I prepaid for my fucking hotel.

You think I'm getting that back? I bet I'm not. You know what I mean i mean so i get it we're out money too this is now going to cost us twice and we're not going to fucking break even if we're lucky for going there and all these stuff we're not happy about this this is not our doing we don't want this right up our asses too so trust us we would love to do shows we would love to do them and love to get especially the ones that have been on the books forever, get them the fuck over with and have a good time. We'd love to.

We will when we can. That's what we're saying. So that said, thank you for everything you do. And thank you for coming out to the shows. Thank you for understanding. They're a fucking blast and they're going to rock once we do get to do them because we've had a great time so far.

Now, speaking of rocking, patreon.com slash crime and sports. That's some rocking shit right there. That's where you get all the bonus stuff, bonus shit for both shows. And you get anybody $5 or above, you get access to everything. Both shows, Patreon, the entire back catalog. If it comes out, you're going to get it.

Period. That's it. And this week we have some good ones for you. First of all, for crime and sports, we're going to do a week in sports crime, or a year in sports crime. I'm sorry. 1995. And we're going to go over. It's a crazy list that a newspaper compiled.

We're going to go over hundreds of sports arrests in an hour. It's going to be amazing. Good shit. Really funny stuff. And then after that, small town murders. Oh, my goodness. One of the more requested cases there is uh we're gonna do the john benet ramsey debacle terrific what went wrong not so

much the murder because you guys everybody knows about the murder and uh i mean we'll give a brief synopsis but it's mainly going to be what the shit happened now what's up with the parents do we believe them do we believe him do we believe her was it the little brother? What's up with the parents? Do we believe them? Do we believe him? Do we believe her? Was it the little brother theory? What's up with the ransom note left behind three pages long, very specific, you know, on multiple drafts? What the fuck, man? We're going to talk about it all here.

Do that. And that's all going to be Patreon dot com slash crime and sports. And you'll get a shout out as well at the end of the show coming up very soon here where jimmy will try his hardest to say your name and fuck it up royally so that said also if you want to follow us on social media we are at small town murder on instagram at small town pod on facebook and at murder small on twitter and there's that and also if you want to make a donation, just get your shout out and have excellent karma.

You can do that over at PayPal using our email address, crimeandsports at gmail.com. That said, Jimmy, level me with the names of the people who would never ever, ever kill us and then make designer jackets for Dolly Parton. Hit me with them now. This week's executive producers are

Melissa Turner, Jordan Bennett, Susanna Platt, Tiffany on behalf of all of the best grandmas, Garrett Anderson, Jovan Gant, Natasha Harris, Megan Bartmanovich, and Brandy Lyman or Limone. I'm not sure. Either way, thank you all so, so much. Thank you. You're the best. You're invaluable. Other producers this week are Trina Cobb, Heather Callahan, Alex Ortiz, T.J. Young, Dawn of the Flamingo. I don't know. What is that word? Those are words.

Dawn of the Flamingo. I don't know what that is. Thank you. Flamingo person. Corporal Carl Kirshner, Zach's new son, Henry James Carano, Maddie Rydall, Swamp Queen Jess, happy hour in Marrero, Louisiana. He is a trucker and he checks in from everywhere he goes. That's actually home.

Baseball writer Peter Schmuck. That's a real person, James. Oh, awesome. Barbara Howells, Nicole Enaclarico, I think. Gary Howard and Truck Stop Murder Podcast, Steve Schnell, Sheila Wigton. Gary. Gary's there.

Gary got Heavy Metal Scientist. Steve Schnell, these are our buddies going up here. Todd Theroff, I think, Soulja Boy's droopy girlfriend, whoever that is. Kimberly Alves, Toru. Oh, it's 90 Day Fiance reference. Oh, is it? She is droopy, yeah. Oh.

Is she droopy? She's an older lady. She's an older lady and he's 32. And is it Soja Boy or Soulja Boy? Soulja Boy. He's a Nigerian rapper. Got it. Oh.

Good stuff. Toru Tanaka. I think that's the guy from- It's a wrestler. Yeah. Andy was in- Okay. Yeah.

Janice Hill, Brian Whitehead. Happy birthday, Brian. Happy birthday. Kara Burer's a wrestler. Yeah. Andy was in. Okay. Yeah. Janice Hill, Brian Whitehead. Happy birthday, Brian. Happy birthday. Kara Buehrer's birthday also. Happy birthday. Is it Kara? I think it's Kara. It might be Kara.

I don't know. Either way, happy fucking birthday. Peanut butter jelly and baseball bat, James. Keith Cole's son got him a Small Town Murder shirt for Christmas. Happy birthday. No, Merry Christmas. Happy birthday. Oh, cool. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Enjoy. Bethany Remillard, Frank Zecca, happy birthday, buddy. He's a New Year's baby. Kathleen June, Linda Brilla, Nicole Quintiliana, Quintilani. Fuck this. Jeff Shrewsbury, Rocky Reynoldsnolds brennan potter sally w david schmidt stephanie here uh de uh de erica candace williams uh lisa taylor michael evans nicole conry trevor kirkendall lacey holyfield cherry or sheree richmond uh carolyn anthoffer i I think Eli Faust, Juan Romero, Miles Mattingly,

Catherine Towns, Kelly Hobart, Jolie Hinenkamp, I think, Sam Crouch, Stephanie Oliveira, Cooper Smith, Angelica with no last name, Angelica. It's probably Angelica. It's probably not Angelica, I'm going to say. You know, just from life experience in general. Courtney Cohn, Danny DeVito's mom, also Danny DeVito's dad. Oh, both of them. Aaron Kozlowski, Rachel Sherwood, Michael Milzia, I think.

Soam Reelum? So Reelum? I don't know. Danielle Tihon, Jessica Austell, Matthew Fields, Chantel Friend, Nancy Swank, Kyle Powers, Brayden Conover, Misty Day, Faith with no last name, Tess Gill, Tyler with no last name, Tori Gallagher, Jessica Kemp,

Kiana Nicole, I think, Kiana maybe, Hannah Briggs, Andrew Boggs, Charlotte Moeller, Madeline Alexis, Terry Harkless, Nicole Bracken, Foomi Opal, Sarah with no last name, Holly or Haley? Haley.

No, that's Holly. Richards. Richards. They're spelled different. That one. Yeah. Is it an A or an O? I don't know.

Jay Isabel Delisle, Kenny Portillo, or Portillo, I'm not sure. Are you Italian or Spanish, Chief? Which one? Evan Campbell, Melinda Torito, Bill Hassinger, Beck and Sean McKenzie, Haley Hobday, Aaron Carlisle, Katie Thomas, Hannah Berkner, Megan Kayser, Audio Media News, JB with no last name, Gary Wilson, Daniel with no last name, Happy Days, Allison Hoberg, I think I said that, William H. Bonney. Oh, that's Billy the Kid. Christopher Badger, Mike Kelly, April Clausen, Ebony West, Michael Lloyd-Jones, Steve Ouellette, Tori with no last name, Faith McClain-Shermer, Troy Holly or Hale, Kimberly Araujo.

What? Araujo? Araujo. Arojo. Monica Wilson, Ashley Lalonde, Kimberly Hunter, Laura Coderre. Jesus, I choked on it. Kyle Trapp, John Faulkner, Jonathan Markell, Allison Crooks, Michael of the Month, Aaron Rose, Beach Bum Exotics, Adam H., Evan Wallert, Justin and Katya, Rachel K., Ashley Ward, Colby Gabbert, Kayla Erdzek, Chelsea Hanson. Ryan Higgs. Kara Norris. Bryce Schmidke.

Tara Gilchrist. Greg Bradshaw. Ellen White. Dustin Gregory. Brian Schell. Thomas Erbeck. Alicia with no last name. Josh Brackfield.

Zachary Gallagher. Gallaher. Gallaher. Aria Guthier. Kevin Poole. Mark Belazia. What? Ruben Zvasek. They check scott mcleod uh aaron aaron tillery graham davis rebecca saracino this is ridiculous dylan moore jen begley rachel

holschieser sizer he means his reading is ridiculous. Not your names, by the way. I wrote all this. Tyler Manfred, Ashley Wittig, Shenanica, Shenanican Skywalker, Matt Crater, Jessica Carbajal, Bryce Palm, Darren Madison, Mattson, David Alvira,

Danito Allen, Joseph Tiberi, Big Dick Daddy, Boss Man Fucking Sir. Those are all words. Marcus Miller, DJ. Die? Is it DJ or die? I don't know what this is.

It might be Die Prince. Alan Schultz, Kevin Mott, Stuart Glenn, Paul Warmth, Nyshal Sharma, Joe. Oh, boy, Joe. It's N-A-U-A-M-N-N. That's not a word. Nu-ah-muh-nuh. Maybe. Nu-ah-muh-nuh.

Is that a ramen noodle? I don't know what that is. I don't know either. Jeffrey Fiebig, I think, Fiebig. Casey Geitzelman. Ramen. Raymond. Raymond Wood.

Alex Bataglia. Aiden Youngblood. Lisa Selvidge. Frank Shelley. Ted Yaminski, Seth Rohrer, Madison Francis White, A.J. Horner, Ted Turd-Thompsons, Stephanie Taylor, Tiffany Valene, Matthew Martin, Matthew McDowell, Courtney Mc... No, just Rhodes, not McRhodes. Smokin' Wolf, Amy Krumenaker, Edward Key, Joan Tiemann, Precious Benjamin, William Menteo, Dame with no last name, Renee Knudsen, Homestretch, holy Christ, Don Euler, I think, Keelan Ryan, Ben Sneed, Julia Long, Thumb in My Ass, Jen Aniano, Rachel, nope, that's Raina, Raina R., Corey Lindsey, Rachel Gribble, Bridget Cohn, Shauna Cornett, Greg Wiles, Corey Ballint, Todd Bates,

Jess Ramsey, Hannah with no last name, Patricia Talsma-Reed, Joshua Robertson, Anne-Marie Atchley, Jennifer Fox, Justine Jeffries, Jen would know last name, Luke Kenyon, Jake Goldstein, Dawn would know last name, Fiona Shore, Nicole Neuer, Robin Bennett, Jolene Boucher, Ivan Natkin, Omaros Kolios, I think, Wendy Gonzalez, Leah Malik, Roxanne Hines, Hines, Hines, yeah. Matt, I had to talk myself into it. Matt Donges, Mario Sullivan, Belinda Richards, Sven, fucking what, Cack? I don't know what it is. Bridget O'Connor, Lindsey.

Sorry. Garrett Anderson, Jennifer Dalton, Devin Robillard, Matt Hunley, Julian, maybe. And Graham Wagner. And obviously all of our patrons. You guys are fantastic. Thank you. That was five pages of shit I can't say. Thank you so much, everybody.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A tremendous amount and even more because we have live shows being canceled and we're out a lot of money

so thank you for keeping us afloat always. You people are amazing and we really, really fucking appreciate it. Jimmy, what if they appreciated you? How could they tell you about it? Yeah, you can find me

on the internet. Thank you so much for appreciating me. Where can they appreciate you, James? You can Google search Small Town Murder and you can find us on the internet thank you so much for appreciating me where can they appreciate you james you can google search small town murder and you can find us both there we're there there's no other small town murder podcast and if there is tell us about it because we are going to hunt them down like fucking animals because this is our shit so look that up follow us keep coming back week after week it's going to be crazy from here on out and next week there's no different and until next week everybody it's going to be crazy from here on out. And next week is no different. And until next week,

everybody, it's been our pleasure. 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. 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. 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 Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.