Small Town Murder - #278 - STM Express - He's Dead... Where's My Beer? - Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

This week, in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, a terrible feud brews, within the walls of one trailer, leaving everyone around feeling quite uncomfortable. One afternoon, a backyard bbq, among friends & family ends with with drunken screaming, accusations of dirty goings on, and some amateur auto mechanic work. In the end, a very drunk party goer ends up at neighbor's house, with a statement & a question... "I think he's dead" & "You have a beer for me?", sending the whole neighborhood into chaos. In the end, the wait for a court appeal turns out to be longer than the sentence, making the whole situation completely free of competence!!Along the way, we find out that never go to a bbq, if the hosts hate each other, always keep your car hood locked, and when you kill someone, in cold blood, you shouldn't tell all the neighbors!!Hosted by James Pietragallo and Jimmie WhismanNew episodes every Thursday!Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!Follow us on...twitter.com/@murdersmallfacebook.com/smalltownpodinstagram.com/smalltownmurderAlso, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, 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 app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay! Yes, yay indeed, Jimmy, yay indeed. My name is James Petrigalloo i'm here with my co-host i'm jimmy wissman thank you folks so much for joining us stm express we love it so much because it's just so much crazy packed in brand new oh it's so much crazy packed into one little capsule and we love it so much so quickly before we get to that just want to say thank you for your reviews rate and review it does help the podcast we don't know why but it does also Cinco de Mayo May the 5th we are going to have the virtual live show it's available for 72

hours after that you can purchase it then you can purchase it early you can re-watch it you can do whatever you want with it have fun it'll so just like a live show except in your living room instead of in a theater so much fun so do that shut up and give me murder.com is where you get that and all your tickets for live shows patreon.com slash crime and sports is where you get all your bonus stuff right goodness do we have bonus stuff for you this week i am excited first of all you get everything five dollars or above you get everything Our whole back catalog of bonus stuff. Small town murders bonus, crime and sports bonus, everything. This week, crime and sports, you're going to get the fabulous Moolah, who is a female wrestler who also ran a, we'll call it a stable of girls for both wrestling and allegedly other purposes as well. Pretty bad gal.

It's pretty gross stuff from what everybody says. And then some people say, not at all. She was a perfect angel. So it's very weird stuff from what everybody says and then some people say not at all she was perfect angel so it's very weird it's very weird and then for small town murder we are going to talk jeffrey dahmer stuff and some very specific things really about how he got caught how he didn't get caught some really weirdidences, and just how the whole strangeness of the whole thing went down. Some very specific things. Trust me, it's really weird and really gross, and you're going to love it. So check that out, patreon.com slash crimeandsports.

Well, we have a lot of show here, so we've got to get to this. But before we do, before we get into the murder, I think it's time to sit back. Let's clear the lungs, Jimmy. Let's let everybody hear it. Sit back and shout shut up and give me murder let's do this jimmy great let's go on a trip over here um be nice we are going down south today we are going down georgia oh it is this is heavy georgia here this is walker county georgia which is extreme northwest georgia i mean it's out there it's close it's chattanooga it's right by basically it's on the border of tennessee up there it's it's out there so um the town this

i've never we've never had a case that's been less publicized than this case ever, literally ever. This is an insane case, and somehow no, I think because it's rural and just nobody cared for some reason, that no newspaper decided, eh, that sounds interesting. We should run even a small something on it until 20 years later, which is the weird part. So the town that I believe this happened in, and this is an educated guess, is Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Fort Oglethorpe. Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, in Walker County, an extreme rural Walker County out here. It is the, like I said, right by Chattanooga.

The U.S. army established a cavalry post at this site it used to be called hargrave which was uh it's next to the chickamauga national battlefield which is a big civil war battle if you don't know about it especially bloody one as a matter of fact chickamauga was it was an especially nasty one and the existing settlement was named for a guy named william hamilton hargrave who was a confederate soldier so in night soldier he was a confederate soldier that owned the land there he owned most of the land in the area him and his wife and they were well known you know in the area and things like that and then the army came in in like 1902 and said we're buying all of this.

It's ours now. People were like, it's not for sale. And they said, I don't think you heard what we said. We're buying all of this. And they bought all of it. And that's what it was. They turned it into the base for the 6th Cavalry. And, yeah, it was later named Fort Oglethorpe after James Oglethorpe, who was the founder of the colony of Georgia. The colony?

He's the founder of the whole place? Of Georgia, yeah. I guess he's the starter of Georgia here. During World War I and World War II, this area served as a wartime induction and processing center and also held German POWs as well. So it's been used quite a bit here. And it was also a major training center for the Women's Army Corps during World War II as well. So it's been used quite a bit here. And it was also a major training center for the women's army core during world war two as well. So they did that.

And the, uh, the land was declared surplus in 1947 and returned to civilian hands, which that formed the center of the town, which was incorporated in 1949. So this is the army had it used it and said yeah i don't know it's all fucked out you can have it back and they were like let's make a town out of it and everybody did least desirable piece of america literally so our town is surplus

that's what their motto should be surplus like that's all you need we're down it's considered dead weight just surplus that they just did it wasn't worth keeping on the payrolls anymore if we keep it we got to have people like mow it and stuff and it's just not worth it right it's just you can have it it's all overhead you can just have it here i don't know who owns it now you do i guess i don't want it this whole place is operating expense it's all it is that's what i mean it's all it's all red we're gonna repaint this building red because that's all it is that was given away the first surplus town ever people had a investment dump it the mowing is just so expensive over there we gotta cut it down

that's fucking laughable it's amazing isn't it that's never heard of that my wife neither did i i was like what is happening in this town? Between the story and this town, I'm like, is there some kind of poison in the groundwater or something that's messing with people's heads? They're not worth it. Shut it down. Did they do a lot of chemical poison testing here? They've got to do something. Give it back to the people. Too expensive to fix.

Yeah, and they were like, I don't know, let people live there. They won't bother anybody. If they start killing each other, nobody cover it in the newspaper. Make it really difficult for podcasts to research it 25 years later. So population, somehow they have like 10,000 people here too now. Is that right? The whole county only has 69 000 people in it the entire county so it's a lot of little tiny rural communities yeah and i feel like this happened

outside of the main town as we'll talk about it's in a rural area outside fort oglethorpe right now 9973 people the quickly things to do i'll just give you the list quickly because tell you what how there's not a lot to do here here's the top five things to do in this town. The Chickamauga Battlefield, which Civil War battlefields are cool as shit. That's a huge thing, yeah. They're cool. National Military Park is there as well. That's number two.

More military. The Sixth Cavalry Museum is number three. More military. Number four, the St. Gerard Catholic Church. What? number four the saint gerard catholic church what if you've gone to all the military stuff and you're still not quite you haven't gotten all your your your itches scratched they have the saint gerard catholic church to party down and then when you're done there the number five thing of the day you can round out your night at the vfw post 3679 a little more military more military but there's

beer there that's the difference. You betcha. That's how you wrap up the day. That's how you wrap it up. See all the military, get the God and guns in you, and come on by for a drink. For a drink now. And that's the top five things to do here. So there you go.

Very quickly, also, two reviews I have to tell you about because they're so fucking funny. One is Five Star. It's so diverse, you can find anything here there's so many shopping and food opportunities the jobs are incredible little caesar specifically that's five stars that's someone's review that five stars is same amount of stars as the cost of the pizza and then five stars we went to lowe's looking for a washing machine and dryer the salesman bo was very nice and knowledgeable he showed us several different options and explained the differences gave up approximate uh gave up approximately time for delivery we always visit lowe's great store and employees and that's five stars town review then he slid

across the hood of the truck jumped in through the window and delivered that motherfucker it was a jump over a ravine it was wild and he landed and then here's another one with a very strange thing to do here one star hated it i've been going to fort oglethorpe to have dinner several times to golden corral but this time I had an accident. Two planes of traffic made a hole to let me through to the parking lot, as there's no punctuation here, by the way. That's why I'm reading it like this. As traffic was backed up, my car cannot be driven, so it had to be towed. The officer asked if I had a

preference. I said no, because I'm not from the area, so the officer chose Guy Yates to tow my vehicle after just two weeks trying to get repaired facility to take the vehicle. Tried to get this car moved was a problem. Then the magic number. Pay the bill. The town gives this business a license to steal. A bill of $1,060 for a simple tow and two tows of no more than 30 miles and then 19 days of storage or theft. One star.

That's no punctuation in the entire thing. No period. What I got from that is I got diarrhea at the Golden Corral. My car wouldn't start and I had to shit in the driver's seat. I shit up my ride. And then somebody had to tow it for me. And I couldn't get there because my pants were full of shit. That's possible.

I think that's probably pretty accurate if you want to see into this person's life. So we went a couple minutes extra with the town, but those were, I think, important things we needed to discuss. So knowing the setting now where Little Caesars is considered a wonderful employment opportunity. I mean, job's a job, but don't say it's a great Little Caesars. I've worked in food. It sucks. It's not. You don't go, this is a great Little Caesars. I've worked in food. It sucks. You don't go, this is a great employment opportunity here to be making fast food.

So let's talk about a murder in this place. As you can imagine, it's going to be very straightforward, obviously. Nothing crazy about it here. They're very impressed with Golden Corral Lowe's and Little Caesars. All of the reviews were about a specific business is the weird part. That's why I read them all, all three of them. This is so weird. So this murder, we have to go back to 1997. We'll talk about a woman at this point named Margie Owens.

Late 40s Margie's in at this point her and her husband margie has some problems uh to say to put it lightly we'll say and her husband also not not that wonderful either this these two are like oil and water they're you know they don't go some there's there was there was turds in people's beds in this fucking in this relationship probably coming from both buttholes is what i'm getting at this is a bad match-up but yet they stay married for a long time and keep it up and it's just not working out so one of them is gonna post a blind six uh page six article and it's all gonna hit the fan it's all gonna hit the fan that's all and

the next thing you know we're gonna be discussing their text messages imagine every time this is why you don't sue your significant other for anything because at some point everyone's gonna read all your text messages which you don't want don't want that you don't want that to be read in court and then have you sitting on the stand trying to react to it i don't know it seemed like a good good thing to say at the time your honor yes seemed right i mean you know you know when you're when you're no you don't know never mind shit read the 20 text previous sir i swear in context it's perfect you know when you're a movie star and you know how it is and your security team and then your significant other fucks Elon Musk. You know how it is, right?

It's normal. And you're in your 50s but can still bed every woman in the country. You know what that's like. You know what that's like, right? And your girlfriend is in like superhero movies and stuff. You know what that's like, right? Obviously. So we're on the same page, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

Like, this is ridiculous. So anyway, these are normal people here though well yeah we'll call them normal uh looks like margie had from what i can decipher here and don't this i'm about 90 on this one so uh looks like she had a battery conviction in 1987 in florida which would make a lot of sense because these two, we'll talk about it, these two are always fighting. Her husband's name is Randall Owens, and they're always fighting. They were more physical fights in the first few years.

Seems like as they get older, their desire to beat the shit out of each other seems to wane a little bit, but they still fight like cats and dogs, though. So it's turned into more of that it's really not a good situation spend any significant amount of time in florida that weather will piss you off enough to there will be blows thrown oh i'll yeah i if we spend more than a weekend in florida i i'm gonna end up in jail so i that's why we i'm good and mad that's why we smushed our Tampa and Orlando shows to two nights rather than four because, really, it's just too much. It's a lot of Florida. I will get violent in the summer in Florida. Now, April 21st, 1997, Margie's sister and her daughter, who's an adult woman at this point, both of them went to court to obtain a court order this is how out of

control margie is at this point by 1997 her sister and her adult daughter went to court uh obtained a probate court order involuntarily committing her to a mental hospital involved margie committing margie to the hospital involuntarily so to involuntarily have somebody taken in in the 90s you know because you used to in like the 60s you could just be like i don't come get they'd come and get you like it's great but in the 90s by then it was a it took a lot for that to happen like a specific kind of uh out it. Yeah. A court order needs to be happening. And that's what ends up happening here because of her apparently excessive use of alcohol. She was just drinking, like not eating, not sleeping, just drinking, wandering around, extremely violent behavior to everybody around her and what they called constant threats

to kill her husband randall holy shit while she's shit face been up for three days and taking a swing at her kids you know what i mean like it's she drinking her meals drinking her meals yeah so it's it got to the point where they were like we don't know what to do either we're gonna tie her to a chair or you guys gotta tie her to a chair but someone's gotta tie her to a chair kind of a thing. She's a danger to herself, others, anyone else around. Specifically Randall. Randall, woodland animals, I don't know. Pick it.

She's probably a danger to it is what we're getting at. Oh, boy. So they released her like three days later, though. They kept her on that hold, and then she dried out for three days. Sober her up, get some lithium in her, and she's still as a rabbit. And she also, I think by this time, she knows the drill, too, where she knows to be cool if you're being held for something, and then they'll let you out. You know what I mean? You get that hint.

Now, there's been a lot of problems. Randall, not a good guy here either. So this is, like I said, these are two people that just don't belong together. And we don't know how it escalated, who started it. It really doesn't matter at a certain point. When there's just violence everywhere, it's just terrible. So the daughter at one said that, this is her adult daughter, that at one time in the past few years randall uh knocked her teeth out with a punch yeah oh boy yeah um they live in a trailer in rural wherever the fuck here in fort walker

yeah not to be whatever but that's the situation he's knocking her teeth out um shoved her at one time that she saw the daughter saw pulled her down a hallway by her hair at one point as well when in rome you know what i mean this is fucking horrible um now they all say they've seen The daughter saw pulled her down a hallway by her hair at one point as well. When in Rome. You know what I mean? This is fucking horrible. Now, they all say they've seen the other side, too. They all say they've seen her drunk and attack him for no reason and scratch his face and do shit like that. So it's a it's it goes back and forth. It's terrible.

Jesus Christ. Her sister also said that she'd seen Randall verbally abuse Margie and punch her in the face. Randall. And Margie's niece also says that Randall had, quote, backhanded Margie and busted her mouth at one point. So, yeah, whatever I guess made her bleed busted her mouth, I would assume. Hitting her about the head and face, that's too much. Way too much. I would say, Jesus Christ, that's for anybody to be doing anybody.

So they also say that Randall, everybody says Randall began, or she says, Margie's thing is Randall began abusing her after they'd been married for about six months. Randall began abusing her after they'd been married for about six months. And after that, he hit her and choked her on multiple occasions, knocked out her teeth, threatened to kill her, and at one point shot at her as well. She's gone. Oh, yeah. So this is the type of volatility that's going on. It's accelerated. That six months was not peachy either, I'm sure. I can't imagine it was like all romance and flowers and you know

chances are every week oh just you know what i mean i can't imagine expecting nothing yeah just like that's for you baby i'm gonna go cook dinner now like i gotta go to work yeah i think that happened very often and And then all of a sudden you just. Yeah. Probably not. Nine hours. We don't know. We don't know. I'm obviously making jokes.

There's nothing funny about any of this shit. But this is. It's fucking crazy. Right. It's fucking crazy. And it's like I said it goes back and forth. And it's it's bad shit. So May the 17th, 1997.

This is less than a month after she is committed to the hospital. She's home. She is drinking heavily again. I mean, just on a bender after this. Complete bender. You just got clean. Yeah. Well, I mean, she got sober for three days. But yeah.

She got straight line of sight. that's all about it they let her back out and again and she went right for the fucking boone's farm and that's what happened here so she there's a cookout at the trailer of randall and margie now a who the fuck wants to go to these cup this couple's house for anything these are the people that you avoid like the plague you don't want your kids around them this is like holy shit we don't want to do that they've seen them fight when they announce a barbecue people are like oh fuck jesus christ do we have to go to that we'll go early we'll go early before everyone gets too drunk and then we'll leave early saying we have to go we're going to your mother's that night okay it's your it's your father's birthday and we're going there make sure you your dad sure has a lot of birthdays

it was the last two months if whenever uh margie cracks her third beer get the fuck out of there because it's about to it's about to pop off so she invites uh her daughter and her niece over. Daughter, niece, niece's husband. That's who come over there, okay, to the trailer for the cookout. That day, by the time everyone got there in the afternoon, she's already stumbling shit-faced drunk. I mean, belligerent, nasty, arguing with everybody, starting fights. nasty um arguing with everybody starting fights uh she apparently started a big argument with randall while he was just sitting there and this is according to her daughter and her niece and her you know niece's husband these are people that are all you know that that back her up on abuse and also say that goes back and forth and all this and they say this is what happened here

he's sitting there and she is uh repeatedly arguing with him and yelling at him and repeatedly over and over threatening to kill him. I'm going to kill you, you son of a bitch. You're fucking dead today. I'm going to kill you, you bastard. While he's sitting. Yeah. Well, he's sitting in one of those, I'm sure, vinyl lawn chairs with the crisscross pattern. You know what I'm talking about?

What the hell? That weird material. It's a vinyl it's a it's a it's flammable as fuck as all the strings break oh once those strings pop if you light them they go yeah but they eventually all separate to cause an asshole to you know where you just sink into them they don't see that are those or those plastic ones that when you leave them in the sun for three four hours they burn and get all cracked yeah yeah those those uh the ones that are like a like a beach chair but small they have a little tiny yeah they get all dried out it's like it's like straws like mcdonald's straws that thickness

of plastic yeah but you leave them in uv rays and they are brown and and terrible and crispy and hot sit on one of those on a hot day jesus fucking christ you'll have burn marks across your back see we both grew up pretty trashy so we understand these chairs and how they feel when you sit on them when it's hot don't take them camping and leave them near the fire that's oh they're gonna melt second yeah you'll sit and it'll just pop explode because it's all soft yeah and then those shards yeah they'll give you burns it's made out of mcdonald's milkshake straws and birthday clown balloons that they can the long ones that's all it's made out of jimmy it's not made out of much and a cheap shitty metal frame oh god the cheapest metal they could find and those gears

because it folds in those gears never work right fuck out of here you sit down and they fucking snap back and hit you in the back of the head ever get your finger caught in one of those gears skin take it it just takes a chunk out of your hand ah it doesn't even bleed for like four seconds that's how much it takes and then blood pours out of it let's try to get comfortable now i'm bleeding yeah fuck it i'm gonna sit like this i'm just gonna sit forward like i don't feel i don't care anymore no this is great very relaxing just i don't know how to make it go back now i gave up if i put it down anymore it's never gonna go back and then it's useless so i'm cutting my losses they're

like 12 they're pieces of shit if that fucking awful so now she's yelling at randall he's sitting down and got her daughter their adult daughter niece niece's husband they're all sitting around um she's yelling at randall she's very drunk everybody's trying to like kind of chill her out every there's a drill by now of the you know hey let's try to placate and calm margie drill so at one point out of nowhere seemingly just you know they're eating one minute you're you got a burger in your mouth which i'm picturing vacation real tomato ketchup randall nothing but the best oh nothing but the best so she at one point bursts out with wow um randall you've been fucking my daughter oh you've been fucking your stepdaughter and also yelling at her saying you've been fucking randall wow this is not happening by the way this is just not a thing that's going on her head she's just drunk and

angry and trying to figure out what to be mad at and she decides you're fucking her she's screaming at everybody then she repeatedly and as the court documents say crudely suggested which i have to agree that her daughter this is from the court document that her she crudely suggested that her daughter perform oral sex on him right there why don't you just suck his dick right out here in front of everybody sitting in these plastic mcdonald's straw chairs why don't you just blow them right here now? How about that? Think she said suck his dick? I'd like to know the exact word.

Why don't you put his little lip dick in your mouth? What's he going to do with that thing anyway, Randall? So she's yelling, why don't you swallow his load in front of your grandma? Come on. I'll invite her over. Hold on. Mom. She's two trailers down.

Mom. Yeah, I heard. I'm coming. She's going to blow Randall. I know. I'm coming. I'm on my way. I got the camera.

Don't worry. She probably said suck his dick, right? I'm sure. Yeah, that. Don't worry. She probably said suck his dick, right? I'm sure. Yeah, that she didn't say. Why don't you perform oral sex upon him here in the company of all? I doubt that's what she said. Shit-faced. Wandering around a rural Georgia trailer yard, accusing her husband of fucking her daughter.

Why don't you perform a light show with an audience? accusing her husband of fucking her daughter. Launching her phone for a light show with an audience. So it went from, I'm mad at Randall. Fuck you, Randall. I'm going to kill Randall, too. Randall, you've been fucking my daughter. I'm going to kill you, Randall, for fucking my daughter, too.

I'm going to kill my daughter for fucking Randall, too. I'll kill both of you. I'm going to kill everybody. At one point, she threatens to kill everybody, essentially, there. Over different, not just like in a spree, like I'm going to kill you all, just like I'm going to kill you for this reason and you for that reason. I got reasons to kill everyone. Yeah. Number one reason, Mad Dog 2020. That's my number one so she then told her daughter that she is quote gonna go get my gun

and shoot randall right now right now i've that's it up the trunk on him yeah it's it's escalated so i'm gonna go get my gun and shoot randall by the way when i'm done i'm shooting you too oh boy you have husband fucking little pussy i mean that's that's what's happening here yeah she's when i'm done i'm shooting you too oh boy your husband fucking little pussy i mean that's that's what's happening here yeah she's like i'm gonna go get my gun and kill my daughter and my husband because this is out of control okay so how do you get here you know what i mean years of this is a long leap this is years and years and years of this and we don't know how long she's been up on a bender for. We have no idea.

She's got a bad alcohol problem. Carl Lewis can't jump this far. No, this is fucking crazy shit. So this is she. Anyway, eventually, after all of this, she's saying, I'm going to get my gun. I'm going to shoot you after a bunch of threats. Eventually, Randall says he's had enough okay now when i first read randall's that enough i'm like oh no this is gonna get much uglier but instead randall's just tells stands up and says

i am fucking sick of listening to you i've had it today and he went inside to lie down in their bedroom that's what he did i'm taking a nap she so belligerent, she put him to sleep at this point. So he said, I'm going in and I'm going to lie down in the bedroom. I'm done with this shit today. Which I mean, yeah, after a while. With babies, it's lullabies. With adults, it's accusations of banging your stepchildren. Yeah, that's what you do.

In front of friends. Go to sleep. You fucked my daughter and I'm angry. Gonna shoot you between the eyes. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. You bastard. Go to sleep sleep i'll cut your throat i'll make sure that you never wake up he's asleep and she walks away

so um he went to lie down eventually um they, the daughter, the niece, niece's husband, and Margie all stayed outside. I'm sure having a wonderful, amiable chat. How'd you like to be the poor niece's husband at this point, too? No, thanks. Because he's not related to these people. No. So he's like, Jesus Christ, can we fucking leave? Why do I have to marry this?

It's not this bad when we go to my family's house, is it? If tell me we'll stop going because i married you not this can we go yeah they're a little freaked out uh welcome to the small town of chinook where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper in this new thriller available exclusively on wondery plus 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. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor. I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother****er lied. Like a liar.

Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes you should tune in to our podcast morbid follow morbid on the wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts you can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining wondery plus and Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. But eventually she said, I'll be right back and I'm going to go yell at Randall again and went into the trailer down to the bedroom. And they all said they could just hear her screaming at him in the trailer down in the bedroom there. Because the trailer projects noise.

It doesn't muffle it. It's like a giant bullhorn yeah it rattles through the tin and somehow that shoves it out into the world much better like a megaphone wouldn't tin is is the cops should just park one of those in front of hostage situations and whisper inside they'll hear you everyone's gonna hear you don't need a phone everyone's gonna hear you you don't gotta do anything so um at that point when she's inside yelling they're the three of the guests are outside and they all go we should get what we should yeah like they're looking at each other what do you think i think it's time i think it's time

the guy's like i'm not done with my hot dog. Shut the fuck up. Shut up and get in the car. There's meat on the grill. We can't just let it waste. You're right. Jesus Christ, what was I thinking? You're right.

You're right. You're right. They're like, you dumb shit. So they all fucking creep around the trailer to go to leave at that point like a fucking like a monster she pops up in the front yard where their car is there and like a wild banshee she says you're not leaving yeah goes over to the car to her daughter's car pops the hood and starts ripping wires out of the engine like a gremlin jimmy i'm not where's this go don't care she starts tearing wires from the

engine just indiscriminately reaching in there's a bunch of wires i bet those are important and fucking yanking them out and throwing them in the yard god damn it my check engine lights on now oh my god jimmy handfuls of wires till they can grab her like what the fuck are you doing what so okay go on this is crazy this is like how drunk do you have to be to do this so this is obviously gotten out of control here you're not leaving i'm taking the wires. So the daughter tries to, I guess from what I can gather here, the daughter tries to kind of keep her at bay and talk to Margie while the niece and the niece's husband try to put the car back together, put the wires back in that she's torn out of there. Literally.

Connectors? Yeah, they're trying to plug shit back in. Oh, it's in the bushes get me the other one in the bushes up front by the newspaper that no one ever picks up find the blue and white wire blue and white what i said god damn it brown you had a brown one well well i'll try to plug it in there can't hurt so they eventually fix the car miraculously which i think is amazing anyway i'm i'm impressed with that putting the configuring out where all the wires go again putting it all back together because she got some apparently she got some working on it before they got to her

so um then they all get in the car and they leave sigh of relief for them right they pull away this is what they do randall and margie so they're like let them go you know she's gonna yell at him and whatever so some time goes by this is the afternoon this all goes into the evening obviously and uh some time goes by and about about 11.30 p.m. She's still up, by the way. Still up and still drinking. She ends up at her brother-in-law's trailer, which is obviously adjacent to theirs. Just a few lots away.

How many of these stories does the whole family live in adjoining trailers, essentially? The same part, yeah. Yeah, he's right there. She goes to her brother-in-law's house, which is Randall's brother, I think, or maybe it's her sister's husband. I don't know. Either one. She pops up and says, hi. Now, the Owens don't have a phone, obviously.

She pops up and says, hi, can i use your phone to call 9-1-1 oh boy okay so he said sure i guess that sounds important yeah go ahead and use the phone so um she called 9-1-1 at 11 30 p.m and said they said can we help you and she said 11 30 p.m and said they said can we help you and she said i may have shot my husband yeah may i may i think it's possible i shot maybe a couple in his direction i think maybe may have shot my husband so then she hangs up the phone hands her brother-in-law a gun and says yeah i'll keep this and then walks out okay yeah they're watching her like holding the gun watching her like

wander out into the yard like did she shoot her what the fuck is going on here so that's why I got to assume it's like her sister's husband because if it was her husband's brother I would assume he'd probably be more he'd probably be more the urgency would be there yeah I'm assuming so so either way she leaves the gun there, wanders off, not back to her house, over to a neighbor's house, knocks on the door, and asks for a beer.

Y'all got a beer, Akebar? And they give her one. Wow. Of course they've got it. They give her one. And they give her one. Wow. Of course they've got it.

They give her one. She's standing out in front of this joint with the neighbor, drinking a beer. And the neighbor's got to just be like, whoa, this is a mess, right? What is happening? Yeah. Neighbor has no idea of anything that's gone on. This is just my next door neighbor came over, knocked on my door, asked me for a beer. Yeah.

I gave her one. She's sitting there. All of a sudden, there's a bunch of sirens they hear kind of like in the really getting oh boy those sirens are getting close out they never come out here i wonder what's going on yeah calmly takes a sip of her beer and she goes oh that's probably because i shot my husband oh my another sip of the beer the neighbor's like pardon what the probably wait what are they coming here because did you shoot your husband and are they on their way here for that or did you not shoot your husband and there's an accident down the hill like what the fuck's going on so it's pretty interesting uh they're probably coming because

i might have shot my husband so the police arrive obviously um they find they walk into the trailer hoping she's just drunk and doesn't know what she's talking about. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. She's shot two into the ceiling and he's still sleeping in there. You know what I mean? So when they find walk into the trailer, nothing in the living room or nothing right away. Then lying face down on the floor between the kitchen and living room, not even in bed. Yeah.

With a trail of blood leading all the way from the bedroom is Randall. So he got in there and he wandered out trying to get help. He crawled out to go try to get, they don't have a phone, so she crawled out, I assume, to probably try to get out of the house, and he made it as far as the kitchen slash living room area of the trailer and dropped dead on the floor. Damn it. So they follow the bloodstain into the room.

Hey, they don't know if there's any more injured people in there. They have no idea. So they follow the bloodstain into the blood drop trail into the room, and they find a big bloodstain on the bed, which is obviously a pretty good indication of what happened. Shot here, crawled out. There's a whole trail. So they still haven't

encountered margie yet by the way she's still over there drinking beer margie's like three doors down having a beer she's she has not joined the party yet so holy shit that's what's fucking amazing they're just like wow what oh boy they marking it off. Crime scene in it and the whole deal. So as they're outside, the officers are interviewing neighbors who everyone in the whole every fucking trailer dweller in this neighborhood has gathered around all of these. It's a complete gathering of the. It's a block party now. There's more people grilling. Beers are getting passed out.

So the purple drink is plentiful there's purple drink and groundhogs being grilled and thrown at everyone it's a party it's a hoedown kebabs babe that's right oh man so this is fucking crazy so as they're interviewing everybody and they're like oh yeah those two are always fighting blah blah blah this one heard a shot this one didn't whatever the fuck that happened here as this is happening here comes margie oh boy she wanders up i mean she is as described by the police report quote intoxicated upset and belligerent oh she shot him she can't be belligerent at this point. She's good and drunk and mad about it. She's mad at the cops for being there because she shot somebody, then called them and told them about it, which is pretty silly. So they said they looked her over.

She had no visible signs of injury at all on her. She didn't have any bloody blood or black eyes or anything like that on her, no fat lip or anything. bloody blood or black eyes or anything like that on her no fat lip or anything um but she said that she was in an argument with my husband and i think i shot him and they're like we can confirm that that yes you definitely did shoot him because he's we didn't know about the fight but we certainly knew about the shots it's yeah he's in medical terms as the uh medical examiner put it dead as a fucking doornail in there so it's i understand that's a medical technical term i'm sorry to not use like layman's jargon but dead as shit roadkill is what that guy is in there so um nothing we can do nothing we can do so she's upset she's pissed off uh i've been in an argument, blah, blah, blah. The officer ends up going to get the gun because the brother-in-law is there and is like, she came over and gave me a gun.

Is that important? And they're like, yeah, probably we should. You know, let's hang. We'll hang on to that. What is that? Almost, actually. It's a lot. It's probably most of the case.

So why don't you go ahead and hand that over? So they get the gun. Inside the home, too, there is no signs of a struggle there's nothing knocked over there's no like there was no signs of any kind of like ongoing physical confrontation before the shooting it doesn't look like you know there was a fight beforehand just a shooting and from the physical evidence after putting it all together it shows that randall was lying in bed smoking a cigarette and tried to he turned his back to her when she took the gun out he like rolled tried to roll away from her okay to get away from the shot i think he was getting away or if he was just like

sure whatever yeah no shit right yeah all right and just turns over with a cigarette whatever you say but and then she shot him in the back uh and then he crawled out of the but she shot him in the back and then just got up wandered out the door handed the gun over went over got a beer you know all that shit while he was crawling out to the living room and dying. So that's what they figured out. So she's obviously arrested for this and taken in here. And she's tried for this in June 1998 is her trial. So about a year later. In her trial, she testifies.

Oh, boy. Which you kind of, if you're a a defendant here you kind of have to put a sane face to this yeah she's been in there for a year so she's probably by now pretty sober yeah that's what i mean i don't think the prison toilet wine is going to get her quite to that level of belligerence so i feel like you have to put a face on it because otherwise if you just read the descriptions of everybody else you sound like a wild animal you sound like a fucking wild person that needs to be put away somewhere so she's got to be she's got to humanize herself and and testify here um and there's no doubt of what she did she told everyone what she did she told three different people she told the 911

dispatcher the cops everything so i mean it's not like she can say it wasn't me. I wasn't there. So she's got to say why she did it. So she's going to she's doing the battered person defense. That's her. That's her defense here. She's saying that she was battered person and all that. And that's probably true that she was battered also. But this was it's not the way it's been escalating lately where she's being the aggressor and you know

ending a an argument with a gun that's more than uh more than you can really claim at this point so they said that she claims this is her story on the stand on the day of the shooting uh here beginning about 10 30 a.m uh randall cursed at her about the breakfast she cooked oh cursed her out about breakfast yeah this groundhog i said medium and it is at least medium well and i i see no fennel seeds on i said fennel rosemary time are you fucking stupid so um that's her claim that he yelled at her about the breakfast shoved her and followed her around the home cursing at her as she tried to clean up then he she said he slapped her um which there was no physical swelling or anything later on but we could have been a light slap we have no

idea either way slaps a slap you can't slap somebody um and put a gun to her head and said, quote, bitch, I'll blow your goddamn brains out. Then apparently after a few minutes, she was going to go somewhere and he threatened that he would, quote, beat her goddamn brains out if she left the home. So he's going to either shoot them or beat them. Your brains are coming out today. One way or another, you won't have those. And then she also claims he cut her arm with a box cutter at that moment. But the wound didn't match up to what she's saying, though, is the problem. It was an older wound.

Probably wasn't from a box cutter. It looked like a scratch from a screen door or something like that. They don't think that's true, the box cutter thing at all. So she said, testifies, we had a cookout. And after the guests left, she calmly went into the bedroom to ask Randall to, if you could please extinguish the charcoal in the grill because I'm concerned of a fire hazard, obviously. These things go up really fast. Yeah, you know how it goes here. It's terrible now this goes against all of the other witnesses who have you know they're her family and they all

say that this is not how it went down at all um they didn't hear anything about charcoal but they did hear screaming and yelling after she tore out their fucking engine wires like the like the twilight zone thing on the plane on the wing with john lift gals looking out the window what's happening oh god eating the engine that's what i pictured happening now they're abs lights never coming off never never forever it will say low oil, even if you just got it changed and fixed. So this is all going on. She said, yes, she asked him calmly, according to her, that after she said politely, if he would please extinguish the charcoal in the grill for safety's sake, he got she claims that Randall got on top of her and started slapping and choking her so she said but she had no no proof of this yeah no no marks on her neck no anything like that at all no marks on her face no marks on her neck

because you could say a slap at 10 30 in the morning the swelling could go down by 11 30 at night but if he slapped you an hour ago and choked you you're gonna have marks finger marks on your on your neck yeah yeah so you can't just make that up you know what i mean if that's happened in the past i get it but you can't say it happened that day if it didn't and then shoot somebody so she um she said that she he was on top of her choking her slapping her so she was feeling around for something to knock him off of her with and she just must have grabbed the gun on the table as the closest thing. And she said she just took a swing at him

and she heard the gunfire. And next thing you know, he was shot in the back. She's got some long arms. That's her story in court, is that I tried to hit him in the head while he was on top. He's sitting on me, choking, slapping. And to hit him in the head while he was on top he's sitting on me choking slapping and i hit him with the gun and he got shot in the middle of the back it's a magic ass

bullet yeah that's a she must have shot one it ricocheted up came back that's all i can imagine because that's there is no fucking way of physically possible that happened right you know what i mean so it's not a great story at all i mean no if you're gonna make one up that's not the good one to make up so she said she didn't even know at the time that she'd shot him at all so she had no idea so i just blood didn't indicate huh didn't even see it she said i heard it fire but i didn't know what happened he was off of me so i said cool and i left and went over to my brother-in-laws gave him the gun and then you know had a cold one because what do you do so jesus christ other witnesses here uh but she also testified as to her history of their domestic violence toward each

other and him specifically knocking her teeth out and choking her slapping her shooting at her in the past which doesn't seem like a great guy randall we're not no we're we're thrilled with no one here is what we're getting at this is not a matter of oh this is just bad they need their heads slammed together yeah this is terrible shit here um other people here uh she had other witnesses who like her family who recalled the times of previous domestic abuse with randall like that we talked about earlier. Now, the jury instructions are important here because the jury in the trial, the judge instructed the jury on three charges in the indictment. legal team's request, one of them was voluntary manslaughter on a lesser offense of both malice murder and felony murder, and also on self-defense, including justification based on battered

person syndrome. So they have the full array, everything from malice murder, which is the worst, to justified self-defense based on battered person syndrome. So anywhere in there the verdict comes in with that array of choices uh guilty obviously you got to be guilty of something here uh a voluntary manslaughter they find her guilty of um as a lesser offensive malice murder so not malice murder but that but they also find her guilty of felony murder based on an uh based on aggravated assault different laws in georgia and also possession of a firearm during the commission

of a crime okay so and all the the aggravator of the of the uh felony murder must be based on the alcohol content the alcohol usage right it's weird felony murder based on aggravated assault so i don't know how you would not assault someone by murdering them you know i don't know how murder yeah assault falls under the murder umbrella you know what i mean it's all in there it's all under that shit dismemberment charges it's all that sound so much worse than uh voluntary manslaughter sounds like they really do they would have they would have given her malice murder but they were trying to be lenient i don't know what's happening there well this is what they end up doing um they end up

merging the felony murder and manslaughter convictions into one sentence it's basically a concurrent sentence and that is you ma'am, may fuck off life in prison for the felony murder and a consecutive term of five years on the firearm during a commission of a crime. So life plus five. No, no, no. It's life with. Life plus five, which is a lot. That's a long time. Yeah.

Life plus five is a fucking lot. And I don't know. This isn't a life plus five to me on this one. This is a fucking disaster of a mess. And I don't know. So 2017 comes along. Okay. That's 1998. All right.

In 2017, just to give you an overview, right after the verdict, she filed a motion for a new trial. There was, okay, she had a bunch of different appellate councils that got shifted back and forth. There was eight years of delay in preparing the trial transcript and shuffling of her appellate council. Eight years. Until finally, July 14, 2006, her motion was amended through a new counsel. Eight years later. What the hell happened?

So, July 21, 2006, the trial court held an evidentiary hearing, and on August 11, 2006, the court entered an order summarily denying her motion. So she waited eight years for nothing. No thanks. So then waited eight years for nothing. To hear no thanks. So then she appealed that denial of the motion.

So on September 25, 2006, a trial court entered an amended order, again denying her new trial motion, but adding a specific finding that she did receive effective assistance of counsel. So they try to make it so like you're don't try to blame it on your lawyer okay so another 10 years goes by trying to get another the appeal going okay 10 she is she's gotten like basically a quick hearing in 18 years she's about to serve her time that's the thing that's like 40 i think in georgia's life so and then there's another five for that so that's plus yeah it's a lot it's a lot and she's you know

was in her late 40s when this happened so she really wants to get this going so this was certified june 1st 2017 and uh it's the it says the clerk notes a delay in the transmitting of the record to the Supreme Court. Appeal was filed in 2006. Current clerk took office in 2009 and only recently became aware of the appeal in 2017. It took you eight years. Eight years to get comfy in that office to find the paperwork? The entire Obama administration for you to figure out that there was an appeal pending here. Holy shit.

Oh, look. It's in my spam folder. Oh, Jesus. I didn't even know this was here. I don't even check the promotions one, you know what I mean? Because it's just always like Subway and stuff. It's always bullshit. I don't want to see that.

It's a damn appeal sitting right here. Car warranties. That's an important one. car warranties that's an important one so finally in 2017 the appeal comes in and there she gets to actually have a real appeal after 18 fucking years which is unreal or 20 years at this point almost so that's too long right it's insanely ridiculously long and we'll find out what the court says about that so uh one is ineffective assistance of counsel. She says trial counsel ineffective in failing to call four witnesses to testify about her husband's violence toward her over the years and in failing to offer into evidence photographs from her hospital visits showing injuries that Randall caused when he beat her. OK, that's what she claims. She contends these witnesses and pictures would have proved her defense of justification based on battered person syndrome. And at the trial for a neutral or at the motion for a new trial hearing, the council explained that she made a tactical decision.

The lawyer did at trial not to call the four witnesses and present the pictures, given the other evidence that they presented. So they said the trial council had a strategy that's their strategy did not perform deficiently or anything like that and they say the four witnesses that she references were not called to testify at the motion for a new trial hearing and no hospital pictures were put into the record so you had eight years to gather this shit and say because this was the most important thing you said your lawyer didn't do. But then when you went for a new emotion, when you could have presented this, you didn't have it to present. So you never had these pictures and these witnesses is what that says.

Either that or you're really fucked up. We fucked up by waiting so long. But also your paperwork sucks. Also, you don't have the things you said you had as evidence because when you had a chance to when they said what do you got you said nothing i got this so that's not that doesn't work exactly which like i said i'm sure there is pictures and shit but if you got to produce that if you're going to say you're producing it other legal terms anyway you know not not in the court of public opinion maybe maybe, but the court needs documentation here.

So they said that also the trial, or yeah, they weren't called to testify, none of that. So they said that mere speculation about what the evidence would have shown, had it actually been obtained, doesn't satisfy the requirement of showing prejudice. That's fair. Also proved to, she failed to prove either prong of ineffective assistance of counsel. So they denied her claim there. Now, the jury instructions. The state does concede that in light of the jury's finding that she was guilty of voluntary manslaughter, the trial short court should have vacated the jury's guilty verdict on felony murder. So she was judged and sentenced incorrectly wow because it should have been voluntary murder that's the lower one kind of overtakes the higher one in that situation you

can't say so anyway uh yeah there's that so uh they said this court held this was another edge versus georgia here that the uh is the case quote, where the jury renders a verdict for voluntary manslaughter, cannot also find felony murder based on the same underlying aggravated assault. That's the law. So you can't. And that was a 92 was that case, that precedent. So this was after it that it happened. So there's no excuse for it here. So they said, accordingly, they're going to vacate the conviction and sentence for felony murder on that.

Now, there's also the delay and they're going to re-sentence her for manslaughter, which would be time served at this point. Obviously, it's been 20 years. So the delay is the part that's important for the whole rest of the world, like the rest of anybody going through courts. anybody going through courts. They said, in this state of Georgia, a defendant convicted after trial has the right to a direct appeal and the right to counsel for that appeal. Appointed

counsel if the defendant is indigent. So many are. Okay, so blah, blah, blah. This case endured extensive and largely unexplained delays between her sentencing and her appeal arriving in the court 19 years later. Wow.

It's a little much. Appellant has enumerated no error arising from that delay, and therefore it does not affect the outcome of the appeal, but they note that the maximum sentence for voluntary manslaughter is 20 years in prison. That's the max. And there is no mandatory minimum prison sentence, so even with the consecutive five-year sentence appellate received on the firearm count on remand the trial court would be entitled to impose

sentence many years shorter than the time she has already spent in prison can we give her some change this is yeah what do you what do you do i don't know a shiny new trailer and what the fuck do you do for this lady that's a mess mess. You can't give her change on time served. No, you're just in there. That's, you just, through your golden years, basically. So they said that the obvious sentencing error, not on appeal, but the motion for a new trial stage, the court may well have corrected the error then, rather than having to do so more than 11 years later. So they're saying in 2007 when she was filing shit, maybe it could have been looked at then. Yeah. Rather than that, these delays put at risk the rights of defendants and ensure that the appropriate post-conviction motions are filed litigated and decided without unnecessary delay this is the georgia supreme court so they're like they're doing this on purpose to put it into

the record here yeah because you're gonna somebody's gonna sue us for millions yeah that's that's what i mean it's it's probably margie but she doesn't hear. She said, and even if long last long delayed appeals rarely result in outright reversals of convictions or only retrials or resentencing, these extended and unjustified delays in resolving criminal cases make our state's criminal justice system appear unfair and grossly inefficient. Yeah, gross is right. So they said some delays inherent in any legal system, particularly one as busy as Georgia's, but we all must work to prevent delays, particularly in the most serious of our criminal cases that cannot be explained or justified to the parties in those

cases, victims of the crimes and the public we serve. So judgment affirmed in part, vacated in part, remanded with direction. So Margie, I would assume, is let out of prison at this point. Fingers crossed, yeah. She did 20, I mean, on a max 20.

So, I mean, I assume they time served her and let her the fuck out. But if she went back to drinking, James, she's back in. Oh, that's the problem. Who knows? We can only hope that in prison she, I don't know, reconstituted her life as something doing something different other than drinking and fighting with people because that you can't act like that man that is crazy when you're ripping wires out of the car that's that's crazy we've heard a lot of people killing each

other on this show that i've never heard of that before like you're not leaving and start tearing what just ripping wires out is fucking crazy that's like karen hill taking the keys you're not leaving and start tearing, just ripping wires out is fucking crazy. That's like Karen Hill taking the keys. You're not going out tonight. Not without your keys, you're not. I'm going to go get them, Karen. Not without your distributor cap wire, you're not. What? Not without your coil wires.

So anyway, that said, Margie, and I couldn't, I could not find her on the current Georgia inmate list. So I believe she's probably out at this point. So there you go. So look out if you're going through rural Georgia, through the trailer parks. Some, if a drunk lady asks you for a beer, give her one and be very friendly. Let's just say that. She might trade you a pistol for it.

Who knows? Who knows? Let her use the phone. I don't know. Let her do what she needs to do. She's got a lot going on and and she's she had to wait a long time just to go to court which is terrible so that said hope you enjoyed that crazy goddamn show obviously uh small town murder express always coming through with the crazy and we're gonna keep coming back coming through with the crazy choo-choo, motherfuckers.

That's all I have to say to that. Hope you enjoyed that. We'll be back next Friday, of course, with another episode. And listen every Thursday to the regular length Small Town Murder episodes. Thank you so much for joining us, everybody. See you there. See you later. 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. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment. While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit, but would never be seen alive again. Leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more.

Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case, covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try to discover what happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.