Small Town Murder - #28 - A Messy Murder Plot in Kendrick, Idaho

Episode Date: July 26, 2017

This week, we check out the rural town of Kendrick, Idaho, where a man's thirst for payback led him across the country, while producing some of the most ridiculous murder plots imaginable. Jealousy, revenge, and stupidity form an incredible tale of murder. Along the way, we find out how exciting it is to look at the railroad, how many people are needed for potato related businesses, and that the more people you involve in one murder plot, the worse off you are.Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie WhismanNew episodes every Thursday!!Please subscribe, rate, and review!Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!Head to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder!For merchandise: crimeinsports.threadless.comCheck out James and Jimmie's other show: Crime in Sports Follow us on social media!Facebook: facebook.com/smalltownpodInstagram: instagram.com/smalltownmurderTwitter: twitter.com/MurderSmall Contact the show: [e-mail] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week, we look at the tiny rural town of Kendrick, Idaho, where a man's obsession with revenge goes to a fiery extreme. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Your yay is not off. It's not far off the mark. It's on the mark this week. Pretty close. You have reason for yay. My name is James Petrigallo.

I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. And we have so much to yay about this week. All right. So, so much. First of all, guys, thank you so much for everything this week. Your iTunes reviews have been amazing. You guys have just, you've come through for us like you couldn't believe.

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Thank you for coming through. Yeah. And I've been up all week long trying to sort through all this shit. Thank you guys so much for your patience with it. I haven't gotten one email or one tweet. Yeah. Thank you. Where the hell is my shirt?

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Some of them are in the mail already. Yeah, there's already a batch in the mail. And tomorrow, I'm sending out all of them. All your internationals, everybody in the UK. My wife has been losing her mind. Oh, I bet. Well, thank you. Thank you to Lisa also.

And of course, thank you to Sarah for all of our social media and all that. The support staff here. It's amazing. That's our only support staff. It takes a village, James. It takes a village. Our village is very small. Our village is very small. Much like this town we're going to discuss here. Look at that for a segue.

It's not a segue because I have to throw the disclaimer. I have to interrupt it with this disclaimer. Damn it. Everybody, this is a comedy podcast. That does not mean that the facts are not true or real or the research isn't real or that we don't take it seriously. It's just that we're stand-up comics and we're going to make jokes. There's jokes.

They're going to come at the expense of small towns because we're all from a shitty small town. We are. It deserves to be made fun of. It does. Every town in the world deserves to be made fun of. It has something goofy about it at the expense of like a bumbling police force that can't put a murderer in jail or maybe a murderer who's a murdering asshole and we don't really care what we say about him. Not really.

But we make sure to never make jokes at the expense of the victims or of the victims families. That is our honest to goodness goal. As we've come to say here, our slogan here, we are assholes, but we're not scumbags. So, yes, that and we hope you find our ignorance charming. It's the only things we have as far as disclaimer. But if you're still around, if you're still listening, I shake your hand and say thank you. If you're not, if you think true crime and comedy never belong together, thank you so much for giving us the shot. But we're like a blind date that's not going to work out.

We apologize. I want kids. You don't. It's just, you know what? I'm into my career. Your kids are like this. It's just different. So it's fine.

We shake hands. We part ways. But everybody else. I do. Everybody else, get ready for murder. Here we go. Because we have murder. All right.

Give me murder. Give me murder, damn it. Let's head out west in the United States. Here we were in Connecticut last week in the nice beach town of East Lyme, Connecticut. Now we are way far away from that. We are going to Kendrick, Idaho. All right. Which is as far away from that as you can possibly.

I'm familiar with Idaho. Yes, you are. Yes. You've been up in that area. Kendrick, Idaho, small town in the northwest part of the state. It's where Idaho gets skinny. Oh, all right. Where it's crunched there by Montana and Washington.

Yeah. It's on the western border of Idaho, like on the border with Washington State over there, about four counties south of Canada. Yeah. So it's a stone's throw from Canada. This is up there. Yeah. It's in Latah County. And that is how you fucking pronounce Latah County.

Trust me, because I looked up local news reports, and that's how people in Idaho say it. So you can complain to the news locally if that's not the way you say it personally. It's near the Potlatch River. Oh. Potlatch. Potlatch. Yeah, I was looking at it, too, like, oh, maybe it's like an Indian word, and then I'm

like, no, it's Potlatch. That's what it is. At first, I'm like, Potlach, and then I'm like, well, I'm looking way too deep into this. Why am I trying so hard? This is Potlatch. What the fuck is wrong with me? The zip code here, 835

37, area code 208 in case you get any weird calls from Idaho coming at you. Very, very small town in terms of size. It is.40 square miles. This is less than half a square mile. It's a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

When you see a picture of it, it looks like a place just now. This is, I don't know anything about it. I've never been there, and I'm not sure people are from there. They're going to be like, no, no, no. Just on looks. It looks like a good place to go if you'd like to start a militia and eventually have a standoff with the 18th.

It looks like the place you'd want to go for that. So Dan Cummins. That's what I'm thinking. So Dan Cummins is from that general area, the Reagan's Idaho area. Yes, the Time Suck podcast, by the way. Yes, he's a great man. It's a fantastic podcast. Great comic and a great podcast.

So he's from Riggins, Idaho, and he describes his childhood growing up kind of like that. That's what it looks like. There's a bunch of people that will form a militia and be crazy. It really looked like that. Very judgmental folks. They're going to stockpile weapons and wait for the government to come a-knocking. That's what it seems like up there. I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but that's what it looks like.

Probably not far off. And I'm probably not far off, honestly. That or a meth shed somewhere in the background, I see. I got friends down near Blackfoot, Idaho, and that's down in the southern, southern eastern tip. Yeah. And it's very similar. Still like that. I think, yeah, Idaho.

Very strange, mountainy. Yeah, I think Idaho's pretty, yeah. Well, we'll not get into that. Let's just get into this here. Let's get into a little bit of the history of the town. There really is not much history to this town, honestly. The town really is traced to, well, let's let Jimmy guess. What do you think?

Why did people come to this town? I'm guessing there are Indians there. No. Well, there was, but that's not why they came to this town. Oh, why they came there? Yeah, why did they there? Indians didn't settle the general region? Well, yeah, they were always there, but I mean, why did

Americans go there? Potatoes. Well, European Americans, let's say. Did they find potatoes there? They did not. I don't think they... We've discovered potatoes. It's like gold. There's a potato rush. It's brown gold. That's what it is. Yeah, Yukon gold, potatoes. That's what it is. Yeah, Yukon gold, potatoes.

That's what it is. It was a big potato rush. Everybody came, miners out there. Is there gold or something? Farming for potatoes. No, the railroad came through. Oh, okay. It's most of these towns.

It's the railroad. Either you find a natural resource. Yeah, potatoes. And if you do, then they put a railroad in, and that's it. So that's it. It became a stop on the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1890. So that's why people showed up. Coming from Seattle and stuff?

You could ship things through there. You could ship things out of there. Potatoes you could put on a train and send them out. In 1891, they built the Railway Depot, which is the oldest structure in the community that's still there, actually. And they were going to tear it down in the 1900s. Yeah. in the community that's still there actually. And they were going to tear it down in the 19, in the 1900s. Yeah. They were going to tear it down and they had a big,

like a coalition of people and residents. Yeah. They basically had a, they formed a militia for a good reason, for a good cause to stop the, the, the destruction, the demolition of this railway, railway Depot.

And it worked. It's hillbilly breaking too. It's hillbilly breaking too. It's exactly It's hillbilly break-in, too. That's exactly what it is. We've got to save the community center so we have somewhere to break down. God, save that. I mean, shit. Save that railway depot.

We need to save the railway depot so we have somewhere to store our weapons. That's what I meant. Oh, shit. That'd be tougher for the ATF to get in there. My house, you could just walk right up to it. That thing, we could at least put some barricades. Something. Something. I know they don't talk like that in Idaho, by the way. But we're giving that the accent.

Close enough. Let's go to the people of this place right away. The population here, 298. Holy shit. So booming. A booming population of 298. My goodness. Yeah, that's like a small apartment complex in a major city.

Is that our smallest one yet? No, we had one under 100, didn't we? No, we had 70. We had Ovando, Montana. We had 70 people there. This is 298. This is like four times that. This is a sprawling metropolis in comparison.

This is booming here. Yeah, forget it. This is where you go for jobs. This is where the jobs are. Subway's coming in a minute. Yeah, where you go to find someone to marry. Come down from the hills to find someone to marry. This actually, we're at a low for this town.

It's just bleeding people, basically, away. It had a high of over 500 people in 1910, and it's just whittled away since then. Just down and down. 519 in 1910? 500 people in 1910. In 1910. Yeah, in the year 1910, that's their peak of population. In 100 years, they've lost half of it.

They've lost a little less than half. They lost 40% of their people here. In 2000, they had 369 people. Oh, goodness. And so it's bled away from there. You can see they've lost that many people, 70 people in 15, 17 years. So it makes sense. They're going away. And as we'll find out age-wise, because the. So it makes sense. They're just, they're going away.

And as we'll find out age-wise, because the median age here is 52.1. So you can see why the population's going down, because they're just dying off. There are no young people here. More males than females here, which there's a lot of blue-collar jobs, and that tends to be the case in places where people will go specifically for work. So I think that's there. But the age thing, though, it is a lot of old people. I mean a shitload.

Lots of pickleball being played. Oh, God. I don't even know what pickleball is. But it's cold. Is it an indoor sport? No, it's an outdoor sport. Yeah, that's a good point. This is all bingo, baby.

It's basically tennis with giant hand. It's like. You give to children, like a children's game. Basically. Yeah. With a giant ball. You don't have the motor skills to hit a ball with a racket. So here, we're going to give you a huge ball and a huge racket.

It's mixing ping pong and actual tennis together. I've seen that before. All right. I get it here. That's pickleball. Yeah. These people, they're really old. They have three times the 65-year-old to 85-year-old population than normal.

So, I mean, there's going to be broken hips everywhere if these guys are trying to play pickleball. Bridge and Canasta only. Yeah, four times the normal population of 85-year-old plus people. Good grief. So, it is elderly right there. And they are living late. They're living late up there. They are.

They're living late and they're staying there. And it feels like they've stayed there. There was a group of people that were born there and lived there and stayed there. They are. They're living late and they're staying there and it feels like they've stayed there. There was a group of people that were born there and lived there and stayed there and they're dying off and no one else is coming. I can't play bridge one more day. I can't and no one else is coming. No more canasta. I can't do it for Christ's sake.

Every age group under the age of 45 is way below normal. So it's like, yeah, it's clearly just a lot of old people. More married people than usual, but not by too much. A lot of times with these small towns, the numbers are kind of skewed because there's not that many people. If they keep going this way, it's just going to fucking die. It's going to die.

Yeah, it's going to be a ghost town one of these days. That's just the way it is. This is a dying town. This is a town that the air is being let out slowly. It's a balloon with a pinhole for 100 years. And it's just leaking people all over the place. It is. For 100 years, it's just leaking people all over the place.

It is. More now married people, more widowed people, as you'd expect with all the elderly there. More divorced people than normal, which is an odd thing for some of these small towns. I guess a lot of times people get divorced and then go there for work because they're divorced. Honestly, it's actually what ends up happening in our story. So this makes sense why people come here. Racially, breakdown. I'm pretty sure you're going to guess what this is mostly. It's pretty white up there.

It's very Mormon. It's militia country. Not as Mormon as the area, actually. Really? This town is not as Mormon. They're keeping them out on purpose. The surrounding town. Well, that's why I think it's, we'll get into a couple stats that make me go.

We'd rather let this city die than fucking. A couple stats make me go, this is a little white supremacist-y. Just a drop. Just a drop. Just a drop. I don't know, but just statistically it feels like it. 92.89% white. So that's pretty white. That's within margin of error pretty much of just being all white.

You know what I mean? 1.2% Native American. Yeah. So, I mean, that's not even that high. Yeah, that's not even that high. That's literally a couple. That is, yeah. That's crazy.

0% black, 0% Asian. I mean, that's what you're going to get here. 2.28% Hispanics. I mean, it is fucking white. It's as white as it gets. Oddly, though, not very religious. 30% religious here, which is way down from our normal 50% in the rest of everywhere. 9% are Mormon, 9% LDS.

0% Jewish. Yeah. everywhere. 9% are Mormon, 9% LDS, 0% Jewish. Yeah. Zero. That makes sense. Makes sense here, especially if it's a little on the skinhead-y side. You might be like, maybe we don't move there. Unemployment rate is low there. It's not even four.

It's under 4%. Yeah, they're all on Social Security. I guess so, yeah. They're all elderly. They're probably scrambling to fill jobs here. I guess so. Yeah, they're all elderly. Yeah, they're probably scrambling to fill jobs here. The median household income here is $42,500, which isn't – it's low, but it's not terribly low. Like we've had some of these towns where it's $24,000.

Our average is $53,000. So that's in the ballpark. But only 1.1% of the people make over $150,000, which is way below the average. This is blue column. It's very blue cost. Social Security and people doing hard jobs that are tough on your back. It's the salt of the earth people. It is.

That's exactly what it is. Most people make under $75,000. But there's a good amount of people that make like $50,000 to $75,000. So they do some sort of – Did you happen to get the stats on how many combat boots and red suspenders and white T-shirts are sold there? I did not. I did not. I was actually waiting for an email back from the Army-Navy surplus store in the area. combat boots and red suspenders and white t-shirts. I did not. I did not. I'm waiting.

I was actually waiting for an email back from the Army Navy surplus store in the area. But the guy there, he said he only has one arm and one eye. So it's very difficult for him to do emails. He only does them one day a week. I couldn't get it in time. I'm very sorry. That left hand gets awfully tired. It's difficult, really difficult. Jobs here, way more of the blue collar than normal, way less than everything, management, business, finance, all that's way down, way less than normal. Even sales and office and all that's down three times the amount of production, transportation, material moving. Wow. So it's blue collar.

You're breaking your ass if you live there. Cost of living in this place is a 93. We do 100 overall as par. It's not bad. This is about that. The housing there is a 76. So the housing is not that expensive as you would hope for in the middle of nowhere. You would hope at least maybe it's cheap housing.

It's not like it's on an ocean or a big, beautiful lake. It's on the Potlatch River, I can't imagine. It's so beautiful up there. It's really so amazing. But there's plenty of land available is what I'm getting at. Like, it seems like. Anyway, I don't know if that's true or not. Median home cost there is $141,000. That's pretty reasonable for

a home. Seems a bit steep, though. Kind of for this area, yeah. But like I said, people make a lot between $50,000 and $75,000. It's not a ton of shacks. Like, when you look at what the housing values are, they're average in their low-end housing, like under $20,000 and $20,000 to $40,000. They're average in that.

They're really high in the $100,000 to $150,000 range. They're three times the average of what they usually have, and they have nothing over $500,000. My friend in Blackfoot bought a house for fucking like $65,000, and it's a nice little place. I bet. Fantastic. And if you want to move there and go visit your friend and have a nice place to visit, you can do that because we have the Kendrick, Idaho Real Estate Report. All right.

And we can tantalize you with some real estate. A two-bedroom apartment there goes for about $660, which is $400 less than the national average. Yeah. I found a three-bedroom, two-bath, 2,300-square-foot house for $199,900. That seems decent. It seemed like a nice house. It wasn't bad.

I found a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house that was 1,700 square feet for $169,900. This place looked frightening a little bit. A little shaky. It looked shitty. It looked like there's definitely meth cooking somewhere on the property. Absolutely. And also, if you just want to pitch a tent and enjoy the beautiful countryside that Idaho has to offer, I found a 101-acre lot. Holy shit.

For $109,000. That's great. $1,000 an acre, pretty much. That's amazing. You can't beat that. No. Things to do in this town. Besides join a militia, you can go to the, and I'm not making this up, the Hillbilly Bar and Grill.

Which, you know, you're kind of making it for us, guys. Embrace it, guys. Embrace it, guys. Embrace it. The Hardware Brewing Company, this place, they have live music acts like every week. They have. They make their own beer, obviously. It seems like it. I don't know if they started making hammers and they were like, let's just throw some

beer on, too, and let's let a guy go up and play jazz guitar. Fuck it, because that's what it mainly is. Percolate the hops. Let's do it. It's so weird. Also, think about the railroad. That's the other thing you can do there. Those are the only things to do.

Or you can just sit and wait for Yellowstone to erupt and kill everybody. That's a thing. That's a thing. That's going to happen eventually, so maybe that'll happen. Crime. What we're interested in here, the crime rates. Property crime is slightly higher than the national average. Idaho has really low crime rates, by the way, I found out.

Because property crime, like I said, slightly higher than the national average, but double the Idaho average. Is that right? Double. And violent crime, exactly the same. Murder, rape, robbery, assault, that sort of thing, exactly the same. Slightly higher, but double the Idaho average. So it's crimey there for Idaho.

So I don't know what's going on. They're escaping into Washington quick and getting out of there. I'm not quite sure. The old people feel like they've earned the right. I guess. I don't know what's going on. They're escaping into Washington quick and getting out of there. I'm not quite sure. People feel like they've earned the right. I guess. I don't know what it is. They're like, well, we've lived here for 100 years. And, you know, maybe that's what it maybe it's bands of old people. That's what it is. They're like, they'll never suspect us. There's like three percent Mexicans. That's who we'll put in jail for it. It's going to be great. I just looked at that car. I own it. We'll give it 10 seconds for somebody else to claim it. Nope. I own it. Nope, it's all mine.

Nope, taking it. So let's look at our murder, shall we? I can't wait. Let's dig into this story. Let's talk about a couple of people meeting in a – this is a storybook romance. It's a storybook romance. You hear Disney – it's one of those things where you just know there's at least a movie in production by Disney or Pixar with this love story at heart, because I think the kids would take to this.

A guy named Dale Shackelford and Donna Fontaine. Hillbilly Aladdin. The Hillbilly. They're Hillbilly Aladdin. There he is, Dale Shackelford, Hillbilly Aladdin. If you saw the guy, too, you'd be like, wow, he's an interesting looking fellow. Let's put it that way. Anyway, so Dale and he meets Donna Fontaine.

Of course he does. So, you know, maybe a nice blind date. Maybe they're set up by friends. Maybe they bump into each other. Maybe they were at the grocery store and he didn't know how to pick out a cantaloupe and she helped him. Or, or. Or they were both buying Scotch-Brite and grabbed the same piece. That would be better than how they met.

Oh, Christ. Or he can be an inmate in prison serving a sentence for forcible sodomy. What? While Fontaine teaches junior college classes for inmates in said prison in Missouri. Oh, my God. How storybook is that? You know, girl meets sodomite, you know, boy meets girl, girl meets sodomite. What the fuck are we

Ah It's the tale As old as time man This cocktail Right away is bad You started out With arsenic And then you were like

Where's the gin Like it doesn't matter Where the gin is You put arsenic In it already Holy shit So these two Obviously here

These are match made Match made in heaven Or hell Either one Either one This is crazy already let's find out yeah right away you're thinking like natural born killer type scenario but it doesn't quite work out like hillbilly bonnie and clyde let's check it out and find out hillbillies enough yeah really but these guys a sodomy sentence in prison while she's teaching junior college

classes for me this is the most depressing. She must have just been depressed and been like, I don't know, there's this ugly guy in prison who's in there for sodomy. I guess I can go out with him. There's no one on the outside. The charge of sodomy isn't enough. They had to tack forcible on that. He made you do it. I mean, the word sodomy kind of implies it was forcible.

You know what I mean? It's got that implication, even though it doesn't. Right. Like, you know, legally or whatever, English-wise, it doesn't. But it feels, it's got that connotation to it. And when you throw forcible on it and you're just like, they really meant it this time. Sodomy's got some stank on it. Right.

You know, it's a word that's got a little stank on it. Literally, that's terrible. Literally and figuratively. So these two get along so well that when he gets out of prison, this is in 1995. What was she teaching? I don't know which classes. She was teaching a junior college class. That's all I know.

So he was furthering his education. I don't even know if he was in the class. I just know that they met in prison. Maybe he was in the health class trying to figure out where it actually goes. Possibly, but I doubt it. This guy doesn't seem like he has too much desire to further his education, just in general.

We look at his life as it goes from here. He gets out of prison and Dale and Donna get married. Dale and Donna. It's like a Cougar Mellencamp song we talked about. It's amazing. They marry in Missouri in December 95. I mean, there must have been doves flying around that they didn't missouri in december 95 i mean there must have been doves flying around that they didn't even bring in just they knew to come yeah they knew

to be there this is this attracted doves it's such a wonderful relationship um so but this this relationship shockingly doesn't last forever no you would you would think god damn it if you can't stay with if you can't make it work with someone with a convicted forcible sodomite who you met in prison, who is it going to work with, Jimmy? Who has any hope is what I'm getting at at that point. We all have no hope. Guys, give up. Just give up now because this didn't work. You're in a happy marriage?

It's not going to be happy for long, obviously, if these two gems can't figure it out. They can't make it, guys. No one can. They're clearly betrothed. It's not going to be happy for long, obviously, if these two gems can't figure it out. They can't make it, guys. No one can. They're clearly betrothed. It's awful. So they get married December 95, but the relationship ends by the summer of 97. The relationship is over, and they actually finalize a divorce in November of 97. This is a two-year marriage from prison, obviously, here.

Not going to work out donna accuses accuses dale of raping her in july 97 what ended the relationship or when he she was ending the relationship he decided that this was a way to i don't know yeah assert himself in some way shape or form based on his history this isn't far off uh charges were actually filed against him in early 98 for rape. So he is facing 30 years in Missouri for rape. Of his wife. Of his wife. Of now ex-wife. He is pissed.

This guy doesn't seem like he'd be very reasonable. He doesn't seem like he'd be like, you know, that was wrong, and I deserve to be punished for it. I don't feel like that's the words that are coming out of his mouth. Just a hunch from me. Instead, he swore revenge on donna to anyone who would listen and i mean anyone really who would listen anybody he's broadcasting it he could go in to get ten dollars worth of gas yeah maybe like can i get ten on pump three and a pack of juicy fruit and i am gonna kill that bitch let me tell you something i didn't rape her and i'm gonna go to jail for 30 fucking years she's dead donna donna fontaine do

you know her like it's literally that. We'll get into the craziness of this whole thing. Jumps into his car and grabs a CB. Breaker, breaker, one, nine. I'm going to kill Donna Fontaine. That's what it is. Anybody got a 20 on Donna Fontaine? I'm telling you, that's exactly what it is.

I'm putting the hammer down. Got a smokey in my rear view. A random 20 on her. So she tries to move on. a review. A random 20 on her. So she tries to move on. In the spring of 1999, she develops a relationship, a new relationship. Good for her. She's 44 years old at the time, too. She's starting over again. And I assume she's probably had a couple of startovers based on her willingness to date a convicted forcible sodomite from prison. I feel like she's had a couple of relationships that might not have worked out.

She finds a new relationship with a guy, by all accounts, seems like a nice guy who, you know, he hasn't done any time for sodomy, which is a plus right away. Fred Palahniuk. If that name sounds familiar, that is because he is Chuck Palahniuk's father. Chuck Palahniuk wrote Fight Club. He's the author who wrote Fight Club and several other books, but Fight Club is his most famous book. But yeah, he's that guy. This is his father, Fred. He? He's the author of Fight Club and several other books, but Fight Club is his most famous book. Amazing.

But yeah, he's that guy. This is his father, Fred. He's got Fight Club money? He does not. Fred does not have Fight Club money at this point. And Fight Club was becoming very popular, but this is 1999. If you remember, that's about when the movie came out. So it's okay, but he's not writing book after book that are bestsellers at that point. Fred actually is a retired railroad brakeman.

Oh. So, yeah, no book money for this guy. He's a United States Navy veteran and a retired railroad brakeman. Fucking hardworking man. Hardworking guy. Yeah, he raises a son and becomes an author and all that. Good for him. A brilliant one.

A brilliant author, yeah, if you're into that. What a movie. What a book. The book is so much better than the movie. The movie the book is real the movie's so whiny i love when people say that it's so fucking whiny though the movie there's no fucking way i'm gonna read that whole goddamn book but it's it's so the book is just a story about a pain in the ass who complains about everything and then i actually i'm not even gonna get into it but it's annoying and the endings are different okay really. The book is much better.

The ending in the book actually makes sense. All right. The ending in the movie, you're like, what happened there? Maybe I'll read it. The ending in the book makes sense. I'll tell you after the show. I don't want to ruin it for everybody. If you watch the movie, you've got to re-fucking watch it to try to understand everything.

Because they had to shoehorn a shit ending that didn't go in there that wasn't in the book. Because they were like, no, let's not make it like that. I don't understand what they were thinking. Anyway. All right. So enough about Fight Club. You convinced me to fucking read the book now, too. Read the book, Jimmy.

I have the audio book of it. I might do that. I'll do that. That I can do. I am an audio book bandit on the internet, boy. I get them all. I can definitely do that. So anyway, there.

We're such nerds. We're such assholes. So May 28th, 1999, Fred and Donna, the new couple here, Fred is 59 years old, Donna's 44. They go, they're in Idaho. They go to Idaho. That's where she moves after she gets done with Dale. She moves to Idaho. She's building a cabin outside of Kendrick in a wooded area, rural area outside of Kendrick.

She's making a new life for herself, basically. Fred has a place there. That's where he lives. She's a very understanding woman too that like she's just ready to take a chance on anybody and find love. This guy is 15 years older than her. 15 years older? That's a crazy age gap. What do they have in

common? You know what I mean? Not a lot. Who knows? Maybe not. Can't be a lot. But probably a little bit more in common with him than a guy that's a force of his own. That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying. That's my point is that she's willing to take chances with guys that she probably doesn't have a lot in common with. She's the type where she'd be like, you know what?

I don't care. I'll go for – normally I have a type, but I don't care. This one, fine. He seems nice. You're male. You like women. Let's talk. She's open to talk to people and see if she likes – that's good for her.

That's how you meet people. I like her. To talk to people and see if she likes it. That's good for her. Yeah. That's how you meet people. I like her. So May 28th, 1999, they visit, Fred and Donna, visit Donna's brother, Gary Fontaine, at Gary's home.

This home, Gary and Donna's daughter own together. This is the home here, and this is their building, and she's building a part onto it and the whole deal. So on the next morning, May 29th, Donna, Fred, and Gary, Gary, her brother, they all go to the Locust Blossom Festival in Kendrick. Yeah. This is whenever anyone's planning on going to a festival in one of these small towns, it's always bad news.

Yeah. This is, remember the Canadian one, too? That's what they were preparing for, to go to the demolition derby. The Locust Blossom? Locust Blossom Festival in Kendrick. That sounds terrible. I can't imagine they have many festivals or much to be festive about to throw a party over.

It likely should just be called the festival. festival or some sort of potato right you know whatever some day the tot the tater tot festival i'll take at this point locus in the bible signify the end of days though you know that's not good yeah no it's that's that's a good point at this festival they meet john mary Mary, and Sonia Abitz. They are neighbors. They're the closest neighbors to this house that they're building. So they've gotten to know these people while they're building the house, and they talk to them, and they live close. It's a small little rural town.

Nobody else lives out here. You talk to your neighbors. You're forced to be friends. You're forced to be friends. They're all at the festival together. After they left the festival, Gary, the brother, goes to the Abetz house to hang out, which is right next door. But he leaves

around dark, and as he's returning home, he sees that Donna's pickup is in the driveway of the house they're building, and he smells smoke. And so he's like, what's going on here? So he calls the Abetz's house and says, hey, I think the garage is on fire. We need to call the fire department. I think they're building a two-story garage.

Yeah. Like, I think that's on fire. So Mary, Sonia, and the Abitz's, and Ted Meske, who's Mary's brother, and Dale Shackelford, where'd he come from all of a sudden? What the fuck? They arrive at the fire. Yeah. They're all there.

And there's various people trying to extinguish it. They're acting like they're trying to put it out, and they're trying to put it out and they're trying to put it out and no one can get it out. So 740 p.m. The Latak County Sheriff Patrol, a guy named a deputy named Richard Skiles, he gets called to investigate the fire. He comes out. He gets there. He observes everybody standing around the garage. It's completely engulfed in flames. They've given up putting it out at this point. It's taken over. You're not going to put it out with a garden hose. Anyway, that's not going to work. They get some information from Ted, the Ted guy we talked about, Mary's brother, Abbot's brother, and Dale Shackelford. They get, based on some information they get, the deputy

contacts dispatch and has a detective sent out because, quote, there was a possibility that there could be a suicide victim in the fire. So they're like, OK, they're sending it out. They're investigating. This is all very muddy at this point here. Fire department gets there.

The garage was completely destroyed by the time the fire department got there. I mean, it was just absolutely destroyed. Several hours later, they put the fire out. They get all the embers out. They get it all out to where it's safe to walk through the thing and no one's going to get burned or whatever, and the smoke is out, that sort of thing here. So they get in there. As they go through everything and pick through the fire, they find two bodies in the rubble here in the fire rubble. That's not a suicide.

Two badly burned bodies, too. Very bad. So bad that it was very hard to identify them. Later on, they did find out that it's Donna and Fred in the garage, obviously, here. Now, a state fire investigator checked it out. It was his opinion that the fire was arson. A Dr. Robert Seahack conducted the autopsies on the remains. They're severely burned.

Also, though, interestingly enough, they pull shotgun pellets out of Donna's right chest region and a.32 caliber bullet out of the back of her neck. Oh, my God. So, hmm, I wonder how that, fire doesn't cause that usually. And Fred also had a.32 caliber wound in his chest. Okay. So, clearly something else is at play here. Something's amiss.

Something's amiss. Everything smells like gas. Yes. The doctor, the forensic guy, he says that, you know that the bullet wounds were the fatal thing, not the fire. They were dead when they were in the fire. So they're dead. They're shot to death, burned to death. What the hell happened?

How did this come about? How did Shackelford get in the mix? Is it him? Let's find out. Let's go back to 1998. Okay. Okay. This is in 1999.

98, they've already broken up. Yep. Dale and Donna have broken up. Dale begins working as a long-haul trucker. Because when you're under a heavy rape charge, you really need to do some long-haul trucking. This tells you that anyone can get hired as a long-haul trucker. He's got sodomy convictions and literally an ongoing rape trial. And they're like, yeah, come on board.

Come on board. Can you stay awake for like 12 straight hours? All right, good. Get in there. Do you mean the one job? You want the one job that facilitates like the most rape possible? Sure. Climb in.

Yeah, climb on in. Let's go. Saddle up, partner. Rest stops from here to the ocean, buddy. Do it up. Just people that are raped like nobody's business. You mean the one where it's easiest to blow into town, rape somebody, and blow the fuck out of town?

Yeah, that's the one. Climb in. Climb on in. So that scares you right there. Can you pass a piss test? Let's go. No problem. I guess he can. That's the one thing he's got going for him. He can pass a drug test. He Climb on in. So that scares you right there. Can you pass a piss test? Let's go. No problem. I guess he can.

That's the one thing he's got going for him. He can pass a drug test. He's not on weed, so it's okay. Well, he is a sodomite and a rapist, but he's not smoking pot like that last guy we had in here with a clean record. So let's get him out of here. So he begins a long-haul trucking and eventually in a few months starts his own long-haul trucking business, Shackleford Enterprises, because

it's an enterprise with this guy, obviously. I have a feeling he's a Star Trek fan or some shit like that, and that's where he got it from. Something just tells me that, that it's something douchey. Who the fuck names their trucking business Enterprises? I'll bet he doesn't even know what that means. Probably not. No. He probably just

saw it on a rental car and was like, yeah, Enterprise. I like that. That sounds great. I could do that. That's a big word. Yes. He meets a woman. He meets Martha Millar.

I don't know how this guy's meeting women, first of all. I know people who are normal and can't meet women. This guy's a mess and he's a trucker and everything else. He's got women coming out. I've fallen from the ceiling at him. He begins a relationship with this Martha Millar. They meet while, guess what she does? She's a long-haul trucker, too.

So, you know, Marge over here, Large Marge from Pee Wee Herman, I figured, pulling up. They met at a Love's in Kentucky or some shit. Oh, you know they did. You know they did. They were both waiting in line for the subway. That's what it was. They were like, I'm going to get me a turkey. I'm going to get that.

Waiting in line. We get some gas station roast beef. Let's do this. They both reached for the last big cookie, I think, and then it was just magic. The big cookie. We'll share. We'll share. White chocolate macadamia nut.

That's what they always have there. Did you get Funyuns? That's disgusting. That's going to taste terrible when I kiss you. That's all I eat, too. It's going to happen. He tells her, Dale tells Martha just constantly how much he wants to kill Donna. Oh, God, does he want to kill Donna.

Jesus, all he wants to do is kill Donna. It's like, what do you want to do now? You want to go to the movies? He's like, maybe we could kill Donna. It's literally like that. Everything is like, well, we could just kill Donna and then get it over with. Tells her, Dan tells Martha, or Dale tells Martha, that he would be hers forever if she helped. Yeah.

So this is a poor, desperate woman who's probably had some horrible abuse and something to make her be okay, open to this shit. He told her, if you help, I'll be yours forever. I'll be yours forever. All yours. Oh, boy. What a prize, right? Yeah. She speaks to her friend, and she's taking this to other people.

OK. She talks to a friend. They work out an idea. And then she comes to Shackleford with an idea. She comes to Dale like, all right, check this out. Listen, I talked to Margaret and she said. This is what they got. OK.

The idea was she said it was to cut her brake lines, dismantle. She said her fuel line and put it near a spark plug so it would burst into flames. What the fuck? That's her idea. And she talked to Dale about it. And they talked about how this would be done. And he said, well, I have to be far, far away.

So I have an alibi. Like this whole thing. It's crazy. Listen, everybody in every county knows that I want to do this. Yeah. I've been telling everybody. Like I told my parole officer, I cannot wait to kill this lady. They let me out for some reason, but here I am.

I called the girl I sodomized and told her. Yeah, she was on board. She was on board. She had an idea, actually. It's really weird. So, late 98, this is going on. Nothing had happened from that. Dale again asked Martha, like, hey, what about that killing Donna thing that we talked about?

Are you still up for that? He's negotiating this like a threesome. This is crazy. Yeah, that, what about that killing Donna thing we talked about? You still up for that? He's negotiating this like a threesome. This is crazy. He keeps bringing it back up. He's chipping away at it like he's going to, hey, you know that girl? Yeah, yeah. He's a little out of time. What a dick. This time, this idea, he says, look,

you're going to get caught here, but I'm going to get you a lawyer and I'll get you off. Here's how this is going to work. Bad idea right away. He told her that she should take a gun and put it in her fanny pack and go down to the courthouse when she's down there because by this point, Donna had become a lawyer. Donna got her law degree by this point and become a lawyer. A hard worker.

Yeah, she's a hard worker, this lady. I'm into her. She's good shit, Donna. She's so sweet. Good for you, Donna Fontaine. She gives a shit. Yeah, with lots of shotgun pell, this lady. I'm into her. She's good shit, Donna. She's so sweet. Good for you, Donna Fontaine. She gives a shit. Yeah, with lots of shotgun pellets in her mouth to really burn. But at this point in the story, she's trying so hard.

The plan was for Martha to just go at the courthouse, walk right up to her, and shoot her. She's supposed to empty the gun into her and then just stand there, quote, like a crazy person. Oh, boy. That's the thing. He told her that the cops and police are going to tackle her, but she'll get off on an insanity defense that he'll pay for, you know, the lawyer for. Of course. So it's amazing. He told her to, quote, shoot her like a dog also, which I don't know who's shooting their dogs.

They've been doing that together too? Probably. That's probably how this all started. If I told you to do anything like a dog, the only thing I would know is fuck. That's the only thing I know. Eat. Shit in the yard. Maybe piss on a wall.

Pump something. I don't know. I don't know how to kill like a dog or shoot her like a dog. Shoot her like a dog. I would not know how to shoot a dog. Well, it's an old Southern term. They say beat them like a dog. I guess.

Why are you beating your dog? I don't know how to do that. Yeah, don't beat your dog. That's not cool. like a dog. I guess. Why are you beating your dog? I don't know how to do that. Yeah, don't beat your dog.

That's not cool. So on October 5th, 1998, it's a Monday, they put this plan into action. Oh, boy. She had her friend Helen, Martha had her friend Helen drop her off by the courthouse. Yeah. And she said she walked up past Donna's office because she had an office here. She said she came from across the street and Donna came walking out of her office. She was wearing her fanny pack.

She had her gun in it. And Donna went into the courthouse and came back out, walked past her again, and she didn't do anything. She said she had her fanny pack open. She had her hand on the gun. She was ready to do it. And she said she just couldn't do it. Good. Because she's not an asshole.

She just is desperate, obviously. She just wants a husband. Yeah, she's not a piece of garbage who's going to shoot a woman that she doesn't even know in the street for no reason. You would think, okay, let's call this whole thing off. Not quite. Not quite. April 1999, Dale makes a bomb to try to

blow Donna up. This is accelerated. This is a big difference. This is like Wile E. Coyote. He's just ordering shit from Acme, like, let's do this. Let's drop a giant boulder on her head. We'll strap it up. We'll get her on. We'll put something down.

And we'll beep, beep. And then it'll fall on her. It'll be great. Let's order a Wurlitzer and get a crane. And we'll just wait for her to walk under it. We'll just wait. And then we'll drop it on her. Big piano right on her head.

Unreal. So now there's a bomb involved. He made a bomb. And he asked a woman named Bernadette Lassiter to take the bomb to Caldonia, Missouri. This was a laundromat that Donna frequented to go in and blow Donna up. Yeah. This also breaks down a little interesting here. It doesn't quite work.

Now he's trying to figure out how to get other people involved. He starts asking Martha, do you know anybody? Do you know anybody like on the East Coast? She's from Connecticut. So he's like, maybe you know people in Connecticut who would come out to Missouri. He's so dumb. He's just like, you're from Connecticut. You're probably mob connected. I'm sure there's, you know, murderers.

So he said that, you know, she said that she would think about it. She said all her phone numbers were at her office and she doesn't know. This is before you had a cell phone with all your numbers on it. So finally, after all this, he gives up on this whole thing because she goes to Idaho in 99. So in May 99, Dale tells Martha, quote, I'm going to Idaho and do what you couldn't do or what I couldn't get anybody to do. She's like, I'm going here. So I just picture him.

He put his bindle on with a stick in his thing and goes, go in Idaho. He's like a 12-year-old. I'm angry. He's like, the-year-old. I'm angry. He's like, the kids that stand by me going to see a dead body. That's what it feels like. Taking his ball and going home. Taking his ball and going home. You can't kill her.

I'll kill her myself. Then fine. Jesus. So Bernadette Lassiter, the bomb woman here, she actually turns out has been having an affair with Dale on Martha just since December 98. You can't get someone to try to blow somebody up if you're not having sex with them. I'm sorry. That's just bananas, though.

You've got to be doing gross shit to them for them to want to do that for you. I'm sorry. It's just the way it is. There's got to be sex involved with that. So this happens. They're together and they start kind of having an affair for about a month and a half before he starts telling her, hey, I really want to have Donna killed. Let you know let's have donna killed anything about that

uh so it's it's just he said that he wanted to have her killed because as long as she was alive she would continually try to control his life he would never be able to have a happy marriage or be happy and if she was dead he can have happiness the happiness that he wants she's living her own life you're free to be happy you can just ignore her. She is in Idaho. You're in Missouri. It's half the country away. You are nowhere near each other. It's ridiculous.

He told her at this point- Is he friends with her on Facebook or something? That's what I mean. Yeah, unfriend her. Look at that picture. Say goodbye, man. They went to Red Lobster? No.

It's our place. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. a red lobster? No. It's our place. Ridiculous. So Bernadette at this point too, he said to her that in order to prove her love to him,

she would have to find someone to kill Donna. So now he's just using this as like a thing here. This is crazy. It's insane. Why doesn't he just go find her and shoot her and stand around like a crazy person? Because he's a fucking crazy person. That doesn't he just go find her and shoot her and stand around like a crazy person? Because he's a fucking crazy person.

Because he's a crazy person. That's what he should do. Clearly. Instead, he goes out there and he starts talking to Mary Abetz and all these people. The Abetz is next door. They're all here, all of these people from next door. And they all talked about, they all had like a brainstorming session of, so how do we kill this Donna? I don't know.

Like they all sat around trying to figure it out. How do you find this many like-minded people that are willing to discuss murder with you? That's my next question. He went to her neighbors and discussed how to kill their neighbor. Yeah. They don't know him. This is what I'm saying. How is this going on?

I don't know what this guy can, He's got to be a smooth talker. He should be selling cars. He should be a millionaire. He should be selling something, because he's a smooth son of a bitch. Holy shit. He should be selling timeshares. He's that full of shit. He's selling murder to people he doesn't know.

No, and they're like, yeah, she could be dead. I could see doing that, yeah. But he's like, he makes things up about her. But I mean, still, if you tell me about my neighbors, and you could make anything up, and then be like, want to kill them? I'd be like, no. Fucking kill them? I don't even know you. First of all, it's not something

I would plan with a stranger. They're all trying to think of what they can do. Let me ask you, when was the last time they borrowed something from you? Is that the shit he's doing? How much have they borrowed from you? This is how much money you could save if you could just murder them. I bet they're pretty noisy over there at night, aren't they? Play music real loud. This is how much sleep you

would save if you just murdered them. Just murder them. What the fuck? Maybe he convinced them that they could have their property. I don't know what they could possibly do. This is crazy. But he just said to everybody, does anyone have any ideas of how to kill Donna? So he had an idea.

He said there's a big rock on the way to where Donna's cabin was, and he would hide behind the rock with a shotgun, or he would make one of the other women drive his car away so she didn't know he was there. The whole deal, they'd have one of these women run her off the road by where he was, and then he would shoot her when she got out of her car in a ditch, and they would leave her in a ditch. That was the plan. He said he would do it with a shotgun. Now, in April 1999, the bomb situation, she actually tried to set it off at the laundromat. Bernadette did?

Bernadette Lassiter actually did. They went to the laundromat. She was supposed to drop the explosive off and detonate it. She said she drove down the driveway into the laundromat and pulled up by her truck, unzipped the backpack, took out the bomb, connected the detonator, which was a 9-volt battery. Yeah. Which is, yeah, this sounds like a real. It's a big one. I don't know much about bombs, honestly.

I could make a bomb if you paid me to, but I don't know if nine-volt batteries are really running the whole thing. So they probably can. I don't know shit. I mean, all it needs is a spark. Yeah, who the hell knows. It just needs to charge. So he said she got out of the car, went into the laundromat, sat the explosive on a table

next to the washing machine. Yeah. And then found out she saw that it was Donna with her daughter. Oh, Jesus. She had her daughter Shanna there. So she left the laundromat. She got back in her car, pulled out, and started backing up and went down the driveway and then stopped and pulled the wiring out that she just connected.

And she pushed a button and nothing happened. So she was dicking with it. Like, let's see if I can make this blow off. Like, I don't know what she, but she changed her mind about the daughter. And it didn't work anyway. Yeah. She tried again to do this

and the bomb didn't go off. She tried to detonate it to see if it would work. So then she called them on a walkie talkie. They had walkie talkies set up. This is crazy. This is a crazy thing. They had walkie talkies. Do you know how organized you have to be

to buy like five walkie-talkies for everybody and get all on the same channel? This is nuts. Donna didn't recognize any of this. She's like Mr. Magoo walking around. She's just leading her life. While things are happening. She doesn't even know Dale is in Idaho.

This is crazy. She has no idea he's even there. That's how crazy this is. So it didn't work. He said just don't worry about it. He'd come get the bomb since it didn't work on the walkie talkie, he tells her, whatever. Also, there's another, there's a friend of Bernadette, a guy named Bobby Emily, who says that Dale asked him to kill Donna too. He said, and I told him that I had to do something to make money. And he

says, if you want to make some real money, you can get rid of my wife for me. Which is amazing. She's not your wife, bro. It's over. Yeah. He told her that. He also asked Helen Hayes, who was an employee of his at Shackleford Enterprises, who he was, of course, having an affair with, if she would also kill Donna.

He gets everybody to fuck him, and he tries to involve them in the murder of his ex-wife. This is bananas. He has recruited like six different people to try to kill his wife. He's got a group, like a think tank going on. He's really working this thing. And nobody's said anything to the fucking cops. He's got a big storyboard on the wall. This is nuts, man.

So this guy here, Helen Hayes, the employee, he offered her $5,000 to get rid of. So $5,000 from what we've shown, that'll get you someone dead, it seems like. If you get someone desperate enough, that seems to be the going rate for just a regular schlub person. You know what I mean? Average going rate, it sounds like. It sounds like it. So he asked if, do you know anyone who could do it?

It's ridiculous. They couldn't find anybody. Obviously, this is crazy. Now, a few days before the deaths, a neighbor of the Abitz's and of Donna and also a guy who knows Dale, a guy named P.J. Baker, had a conversation with Dale because Dale was driving at night with no headlights on his car. And he said, you know, why are you driving with no headlights on your car, moron? And he said he doesn't want anyone to know he's here. Only Sonia Abitz knows he's here who at this point he is now engaged to so he is he is spreading it far and wide this guy god he's had

four girlfriends in the past six months and he's a monster really he is a hideous man he looks terrible he looks he's an awful looking person i mean no sorry but he really is he's not a guy where you go oh i bet all the ladies are all over him and would kill for him. If he can sell murder, I can't imagine how well he sells dick. Oh, it's got to be incredible. It's got to be an amazing pitch. He's probably got a whole thing, I'm thinking. He's got to have a sales pitch because there's no way he can go in cold and just get murder and women out of everywhere with this guy's face. Hey, guys, I just want to tell you real quick, web support is brought to you by webandwriter.com.

If you're looking to build a website, go over to webandwriter.com. They build websites that look great on all screens, graphics, logos, engaging content. Go over to webandwriter.com or go over to facebook.com slash web and writer. They'll build you an unbelievable website at a very fair rate. They'll build you a very great website. Go see them. webandwriter.com slash web and writer. They'll build you an unbelievable website at a very fair rate. They'll build you a very great website. Go see them. Web and writer.com. He also talked to this guy about the PJ guy about an alibi. He said that that's, you know, he needed an alibi. So he wanted to use an alibi to say that PJ and this Katie woman had lunch with him. So the whole thing is getting – now they're talking about alibis and all this. And he also said – he asked him if he had any idea how to get rid of two bodies.

Like, how would you do it? Let me ask you a question. If you had a couple bodies you needed to get rid of, how would you do it? That's what they said. So this is – he's just not real careful. No. Let's just do it that's that's what they said so this is uh he's just not real careful no let's just put it that way he doesn't give a shit who knows no he's telling everybody he put an ad he would put an ad on craigslist this guy today looking for anyone know how to kill donna yeah just fucking nuts this guy has recommendations now he'd be doing

that shit anybody know how to get rid of two bodies recommendations yes so after all of this i need recommendation so after all of this uh i need recommendation so after all of this he'd be yahoo answers so after all of this the yes the authorities are gathering information there's talking to these are the only people around so they're talking to them and people start guess what they start to talk a little bit a little bit of evidence here they also find out that uh that she donna was the only witness against him on that rape charge so that's not that's gonna fall through if she's dead which is what the whole thing was uh that's what they why they think he killed her which seems fair to me also seems like he probably had a little bit of a you know an obsessive jealous thing going on possibly just just based

on his actions and we looked at his id and ID and his home address is 800 miles away. Yeah. What the fuck is he doing here? It's ridiculous. So the theory of the crime here is that Dale hid in Idaho without telling anybody except for Sonia and this PJ guy. Except for everybody in town. Everybody that he tried to make plans with. Everybody but Donna knows he's there.

Waited, ambushed Fred and Donna when they came back to the cabin. They think he shot Donna in the back of the head with a.32, which caused Fred to turn around, obviously, because there's a loud gunshot. And then he shot Fred in the chest when he turned around and then went off and polished Donna off with a shotgun, just for good measure, because he's pissed at her. So he's going to, let's tear it up with the shot he took just to make it worse. Got to make sure she doesn't live. Got to make sure she doesn't live.

It's my life. She's ruining it. So she's ruining it completely in Idaho, not paying attention to me at all or nothing. It's not even like he was paying her alimony. She's paying me such little attention. She didn't even notice I was in town. That's what I mean. A town of 278 people.

Didn't give a shit. Didn't care. Didn't want anything to do with it. The defense here, his, because they're going to arrest him real soon here for this, obviously. Surprising. His side says that it must have been a murder-suicide. Must have been. Must have been. It was

probably Fred Kildon and then killed himself and then, you know, set the whole thing on fire. I saw the smoke from Missouri, so I drove right over. I drove right over. I said, I got to help out. I don't know how the firemen are up there. I don't know if they need any help, I, you know, set the whole thing on fire. I saw the smoke from Missouri, so I drove right over. I drove right over. I said, I got to help out. I don't know how the firemen are up there. I don't know if they need any help, but, you know, I have experience trucking, so I'm a trucker and a sodomite, so I can get this done.

He is charged with, Dale is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one each of first-degree arson, conspiring to commit murder and arson, also preparing false evidence. He faces the death penalty if convicted. Wow. Yeah. Also charged in the case is his fiancée, currently Sonia Bitts. Her mother, Mary Bitts. Yeah.

And their father was originally charged, too, John. The whole family got involved in this. This is what I mean. He gets into this family. She's a 31-year-old woman, the Sonia. Wow. Gets engaged to her and then recruits her family to plan murders for him. Like this guy has some game. They did drop the charges against the father, John.

All they had were perjury charges against him for some false statements, but they took that off. They argue, Shackelford's lawyers argue, that at the time of the murder, he was miles away in Lewiston. He was checking on a truck there. He had a long-haul truck he was checking on. And they again said, look, this is a murder-suicide, obviously. Of course. Or it's an accidental shooting involving a teenage brother of Sonia's that might have happened. They're, like, just throwing shit everywhere around.

That's the craziest theory. Like, who shoots somebody twice and then shoots themselves in the chest, first of all. And let's say that the tables are turned and she's the one that shot him. She shot herself in the back of the head. And that didn't work. So she grabbed the shotgun and shot herself in the rib cage. Or that's why they're introducing also maybe it was a 16-year-old. It's possible.

That it was an accident and all this. Complete accident. Complete. This is the equivalent of taking handfuls of spaghetti and just throwing it at the wall and seeing how many strands stick. And you're like, eh, let's see what sticks up there. Fucking ridiculous, man. Prosecution obviously argues that he was hiding his presence in Idaho from her in plain sight and ambushed her and killed her with the shotgun of the 32 caliber.

That's the most plausible answer so far. Seems plausible to me. Now, they do jury selection. This is in November of 2000. They do jury selection. It's a closed door deal. And then they decide to sequester the jury, too. This is going to be a sequestered jury.

This is like kind of they even do a little OJ thing here. The jury gets to travel to the actual murder site. They take the whole murder, where the bodies are and the guns were found, because the guns were still there too. They get to see where the truck was and where the spent shotgun shells were and that sort of thing. It's closed to the public and press, obviously, to let them go through here. The only people present for this were the jury, the judge, the prosecution, defense attorneys, and Dale Shackelford. So he got to go back and relive this, which you know he kind of probably got a kick out of because he's a scumbag.

He's one of those people. Also, too, they had sheriffs, deputies in plain clothes to maintain a perimeter, the whole deal. They really made it like so. It was a closed thing. They didn't want any press creeping around the outer edges, taking pictures of all that. So at trial, there's a whole lot of people to testify against him. Um, not only all the people that we mentioned, by the way, everybody I just mentioned all testify against him and tell exactly what they did. We just heard like that's everybody was like, yeah, no, no,

I know everything. Yeah. I'll just tell you everything you need to know. Here's a theory that he wanted to do. Here's another one. Here's another one. Here's another one. Here's another guy, another woman here, Suzanne Ninnichuk, who knew Dale, had a couple conversations with him in the summer of 97. And she said that Dale was saying that Donna was an ugly person, that he was going to destroy her. He was going to destroy her financially, going to destroy her professionally, that he was going to destroy her relationships with every friend and every family member. And then he said that if she had any, that she said that she abandoned him on a mountain and something about, it's real, he gets real convoluted from there. It's very weird.

He said that he loved her very much, but he couldn't live with her and that she was a controlling, manipulating person and that he was going to kill her. Talk about the pot calling the fucking kettle crazy. Yeah. What the shit is this? Yeah, this is insane. He, at this point, says that he could make it look like an accident. He's telling her.

He said that he could, you know, find her with the truck and just kill her with the truck and make it look like an accident. Like, that's random. You happen to run someone over by accident with your truck. Holy shit, it's your ex-wife that's bringing you up on rape charges. The luck on you, buddy. Wow, amazing. His plans are terrible. He's, like I said, spaghetti at the wall. Also, Donna's son testifies that he heard Shackleford say on two different occasions in 1997 that if he caught Donna ever with another man, he would kill them both. Wow. So this is

the type of dude we're dealing with. Martha Millar obviously gets into the whole thing that we talked about. She said that basically six or seven times out of ten conversations revolved around killing Donna. So, like, you couldn't even, like, just talk about how was your day. Do you want to go here? He'd be like, I don't know. Yeah, we go to Applebee's. And you know what, though? I'm awake.

Can we stop and try to kill Donna quick? Can we kill her maybe? What do you think? She's crazy. You got any ideas? Tell you what. We'll do it after we get the riblets. We get the riblets we'll have a couple of margaritas and then we'll figure out how to kill donna and we'll just do it all right you can get your appetizers but after that jesus christ almighty uh you want a hot molten chocolate cake get it but afterwards jesus so they all do this all accomplices testify

everybody's up there uh katherine katherine baker who's the katie that we described pj's wife the pj baker who we talked about who was his uh his uh that was his alibi yeah he said you know what he asked them what they had for lunch that day because he was going to use it as an alibi yeah and then stayed and then said to them quote don't worry you won't be hurt by any of this, which that's not suspicious or anything. I'm not going to set your shit on fire, too. He also, a woman named Dorothy Cox, testified that Sonia Abitz told her, quote, we're going to burn her house down. She wished that Donna would just leave and that her house would burn down and she'd go back to Missouri. That's what Sonia was stating.

So she's got, he finds people as crazy or as desperate or as just kind of open, as damaged to be manipulated. One of the two. Either they're evil or damaged and manipulated easily. I know a lot of people. I don't know one that would be comfortable talking about planning a murder with me. No! Not one. No! And this guy's just found

like 12. That's the thing. Their whole defense, they try to get they get an expert witness that testifies that you can't prove that there was arson in the garage, that you can't even prove that. But there's 10 people testifying that all this guy does is make murder plots, including the one that he committed. This exact one they were talking about two days beforehand. It really feels like he did the same research you did on this town. They were talking about two days beforehand. It really feels like he did the same research you did on this town.

And he was like, these people are all willing to do three times the terrible crimes of Idaho. Yeah, let's do it. I'm going to go find those people because all these people will talk about it with me and they'll conspire. Lucky. Lucky that they moved there. I mean, what are the odds? She moved to the most vicious town in America. That's what I'm saying. Vicious.

That's the most vicious town in America. That's what I'm saying. It's vicious. So he said that the experts said no determination could be made in a fire because there's no physical evidence left after a four-hour-long blaze. Blah, blah, blah. He says, quote, when you give me four hours of burn time in any structure, it destroys any physical evidence. But all the people saying he set the fire really kind of counteracts that and it really doesn't matter. The prosecution total has 250 listed potential witnesses. And they're all people he tried to murder.

They're all people he tried to recruit to murder this woman in the same way that she died. And more than 16,000 pages of material. Jesus. So, holy shit. Open shot, man. Shackelford's lawyers were overwhelmed. They're like, Jesus, how many people do you tell, man? They were like, I don't know, murder, suicide?

What the fuck do I know? Literally, that's all they had. Maybe it was a 16-year-old. Who fucking knows? Maybe it was that Brian kid from next door. I don't know. He'll get off. I honestly think maybe Sony was like, say it was my brother.

He'll get off. He's only 16. That's the sickness these people have here. It's fucking nuts. While he's in court, the jury doesn't know that he's even in jail. They don't know if he's released on bail in jail.

They're not told. The lawyers file a thing so he can wear normal clothes. That's nice. He comes in and wears normal clothes, so they have no idea. They don't even know he's in the building in jail while they're deliberating. The lawyers kind of conceal that they don't tell the jury. It's one of those things.

If a guy's not in jail, he looks better than if he is in jail, basically. He looks a little less guilty. Yeah, you look more guilty if you're actually sitting in jail, whether that makes sense or not. If you show up into the courtroom in shackles and stripes, you look a little more like a prisoner. It looks a little shady, is all I'm saying. So they're sequestered. It took them two days of deliberation actually to do this to the jury. It's a long time.

Two days of deliberation for this jury. They ruled that he fabricated false evidence, set fire to the building where the bodies were found, and that he conspired with his fiancee, Sonia, and her mother, Mary, to commit these murders. Both women live next door. They're both in jail awaiting their trial now as co-conspirators in the murders and arson. So they find him guilty on all charges. Two counts of first-degree murder, first-degree arson, preparing false evidence, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit arson, all of that. They are seeking the death penalty. The prosecutor, William Thompson, said his office will definitely seek the death penalty

on this one, but it's a minimum of life in prison for this guy. They were individually polled for everything, so he got to hear the word guilty 72 times from these jurors, so that'll really cement at home that you're guilty, asshole. Shackelford's attorneys are disappointed. They said, quote, time, distance, and volume of information made it complicated. They each had to say guilty on every charge. On every charge because they had to go through and poll. Twelve fucking people.

Yeah. Brutal. Just sit there and just sit through that. Yeah. That's an uncomfortable day in court. Yeah. As they had a leg brace on him that locks up if he tries to run as the evidence is being written or read. I guess they don't trust him.

That's fascinating. Yeah. That's a great invention. It is a great invention. They do that. They have different chairs that they can put them in. It's really weird, too. They'll have lawyers argue and do briefs back and forth about what kind of chair their client's going to sit in.

It's really that. I guess it's all showmanship at this point. Did he just sit silently as they did the – He sat silently. He didn't say a goddamn word. At least at the 12th juror as he gets to like number four, why didn't they just go, what's the fucking matter? Can we just go? All right.

Fine. I'm guilty. We get it. Eat shit. But no, he sat there. They said he didn't flinch, didn't make a face. He just sat there trying to look stoic. A lot of these guys do that.

They want to look stoic. They can't like admit that you got them. You know what I mean? So the the judge will decide the sentence next June. The prosecutor said she's very pleased with the verdict. She said, quote, I was very confident in the evidence. She's been working on the case for a long time. She said, this is by far the most complex and compelling trial I've ever been involved in. But there's really no congratulations to be had because two people are dead. Which makes sense. I could see that.

The women, the Abitz women, are being held in separate cells. Obviously, you don't want to let these two get together and plot something else, for Christ's sake. They're already dangerous together. Jesus. January 2001, January 10, 2001, after he is found guilty, Mary Abetz pleads guilty to her charges. She faces up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. She had to admit to lying to the grand jury about everything and spill it. January 27, 2001, Martha Millar, remember her, the old fiance, entered her guilty plea in her trial after this whole thing.

She's ordered to prison for 12 to 18 months on a charge of being an accessory to preparing false evidence. She gets credit for five months she's already spent in jail. She could be out in six months. She's eligible for parole in just six months, basically, in jail. So that's not a lot for not telling, trying to really plot this. She also got immunity from other charges, federal charges for lying to Jury's. And she falsified a federal form when she purchased a gun, which is another charge. She got immunity from that.

All that sort of thing. They just want immunity on a gun charge. She got immunity on that to testify against the murder. So she got 12 to 8 because let's face it, I don't think Millar is killing anyone unless this guy's forced, you know, really, really pushing it. I feel like she can be swayed, obviously. Yeah. You know, she's definitely, if nothing else, super gullible. Yeah. So she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, obviously, about this whole thing. She said in court, quote, I'm very sorry about what happened to Donna and Fred. They died a horrible death that I don't wish on anyone. I know their families and loved ones will grieve for a long time.

Well, no shit. You killed this lady and the guy. Come on. During this now, they're waiting to hear about the sentencing, which takes a couple months and the judge is thinking about it. Finally, two months later or a few months later, the sentencing comes down. He is sentenced to death twice. Wow twice by the judge in this case. So that's not great. So he's sentenced to death. That's it for him. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court rejects his request to hear this

case a little more. But in 2014, he has another appeal and the court finds that juries in Idaho must sentence to death, not judges. Oh, wow. So now they have a resentencing for Shackelford where they take the death penalty off the table for him. He's sentenced to two consecutive fixed life sentences without the possibility of parole. He petitions for post-conviction relief based on the resentencing proceedings and all this sort of thing. And he's appealing everything he can. He's trying to individually pick apart statements from 10 different witnesses going, well, she said in the one statement that I was here and we know from something I was here. So that's they shouldn't have allowed any of that to come into court.

And he's literally trying to get like full witness statements thrown out from for a mistake they made that was, you know, obviously not on purpose and didn't have any – It didn't matter. We went to Kentucky Fried Chicken and then we went there and he's like, we actually went to McDonald's and I have the receipt. And they're like, well, you got to throw out all of her testimony then. That's what it was. She clearly is lying to everybody. That's what they were trying to get away with, which that didn't work.

Yeah, that didn't work at all. The appeals are consolidated in a case and dismissed by the Idaho Supreme Court on his next appeal. So because he's trying to get that sentence lowered because of all this shit. June 2016, the Idaho Supreme Court denies a request for a reduced sentence on him. Again, he was trying to get his sentence reduced based on everything that happened here. He was trying to get his sentence reduced based on everything that happened here. November of 2016, a high court denies his appeal again for his sentence. He claimed that this time he was claiming that the district judge, John Stegner, erred during his resentencing and everything.

He tried to take he tried to do the witness statement thing that he did for the for the trial. And he was like, well, also, they also use that in that, in the resentencing. So then we throw that out, too, and I can just go home, right? It's cool. Yeah, I got a trucking route to hit. I got Shackleford Enterprises. It's really booming right now. So they do not listen to him.

They reject everything. His sentence stands two consecutive life terms upheld by Idaho's high court. Like we said, the U.S. Supreme Court already said they weren't going to hear it. So that's him. He's there forever. Eat shit, Dale Shackelford. Hillbilly Aladdin stays in prison forever. Hillbilly Aladdin does not get to ride his magic carpet anywhere. Isn't that Dale-adden?

Dale-adden. Hillbilly Dale-adden not riding his magic carpet anywhere. He's like the genie confined to a lamp now. He is. Deal with that. Poor Fred is buried in Benton County, Washington. and I had a hard time finding Donna's grave. It feels like they wanted to keep it private. Probably.

He's in Benton County, Washington, poor guy, and yeah, in the Sun Road Fight Club. And that's that. There you go. That is Kendrick, Idaho, and that is a crazy-ass case of one lunatic long-haul trucking asshole. Man, imagine, imagine. That's a long haul for sure. Imagine how many rest stop prostitutes that guy's got laying in the weeds somewhere. You know what I mean?

Like that scares me. I'm assuming that a couple of them he proposed to. And then killed them. He tried to recruit a couple. You want to kill Donna? No? All right, well, fuck it. I'll kill you then.

Some prostitutes have been told many times. Unreal. Well, if you like that story or you like our telling of it because it's a crazy story, please get on iTunes. Give us five stars like we said. It doesn't matter what you say. It helps us immensely on the business end. If you want to do more than that, if that story warms your heart to the point where you need to reach into your wallet, you can do that by going on patreon.com slash crime in sports and checking it out there and you can get some cool rewards

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Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media would have to come to the conclusion that I killed my wife. Hi, my name is Zach Stewart-Pontier. I'm one of the filmmakers behind The Jinx, and I'm excited to bring you the official Jinx podcast. We'll be revisiting all six episodes of part one and watching along with part two as it airs on Max,

starting April 21st. Bye-bye. The official Jinx podcast. Listen on Max or wherever you get your podcasts.