Small Town Murder - #337 - Much Stranger Things - Cynthiana, Indiana

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

This week, in Cynthiana, Indiana, a rather routine investigation of a minor crime leads detectives to try to track down a woman, who turns out to be missing. When her boyfriend is tracked down, he blames her husband. But the boyfriend's dark, violent past make him a suspect. What police find out begins to shock even the seasoned detectives, as they begin to recover body parts from multiple counties. But the real kicker comes when the killer decides to clear his conscience, and confess to over a dozen more murders, over a 20 year period!!Along the way, we find out that whole towns shouldn't be yard sales, that dismemberment is usually not a person's first idea, and that once you start killing, it's apparently hard to stop!!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 Plus. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week in Cynthiana, Indiana, a terrible evil grows and spreads as one man takes it upon himself to kill as many people as possible and succeeds far too often. Welcome to Small Town Murder.

Yay! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another insane, and this one, wow, is it crazy, edition of Small Town Murder. Wow, this is a lot. It's a whole lot. I hope you got your murder shoes on today because it's coming and it's coming strong.

Thanks for joining us. Absolutely. First and foremost, you definitely want to head over to shutupandgivememurder.com. Oh, what're on November the 28th. Tickets go on sale for the 2023 live show tour coming to you. We cannot wait. If you haven't been to a live show, so much fun. Although you get to see the visuals of what we're talking about.

Tons of pictures, lots of jokes. And it's not it's not like a lecture. This is a it is a comedy show. You will be hurting at the end of it from laughing. It's a comedy show, and it's a lot of fun. And let's go through the dates very, very quickly here. February the 10th, we're in Cleveland. February the 11th, in St. Louis.

March 23rd and 24th, we're in Seattle. March 25th, we're in Portland. May 5th, in Detroit. May 6th, in Pittsburgh. We are July 15th, we're in Portland. May 5th in Detroit. May 6th in Pittsburgh. We are July 15th in San Diego. July 28th in Salt Lake City. Mormons, coming to you. That's right. For once, we're coming knocking on your door, everybody. July 29th in Denver. August 11th, Minneapolis. August 12th, Chicago. That theater is unbelievable, the Auditorium Theater. We are going to just stink it up with dick jokes and murder. Let's get in there and sell that bad boy out. September the 8th in Atlanta, September the 9th in Charlotte, October the 6th in Philadelphia, October the 7th in Washington, D.C., and dates still coming, and hopefully they'll be up by the 28th. Boston, New York, Phoenix, and Milwaukee, of course.

We're going to be going there, too. So there you go, everybody. We are excited for that. Sorry if we're not coming to your city. We have a limited number. We only do like 20-ish dates, so we record a lot. So it's impossible to do more for us. So there you go.

Lots of work. Can't wait to come there and see everybody. Shut up and give me murder.com. November the 28th. Get your tickets then and after that as well. Patreon.com slash crime and sports is where you get all of your bonus episodes. And do we have some bonus for you this week? We do.

Anybody $5 or above, you get access to the whole back catalog of bonus stuff. It's like 150 episodes. You can binge that. And, of course, you will get two new episodes every other week. One crime and sports. One small town murder. You get access to it all. You can binge that. And of course, you will get two new episodes every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. You get access to it all. You bet. This week is no different. Crime and sports, we have, first of all, the accusations of Ben Roethlisberger, or

of Ben Roethlisberger, we should say. Yeah, all the... He's got a few... There's a few women out there who say he did some bad stuff to them and we're going to talk about that and see what we can get to the bottom of it. And then for small town murder, it's prisoner dating game time. Hell yeah. Oh, baby, you know how that works.

We line up, I'm going to line up for Jimmy, four ladies and four men who are currently incarcerated. And based on nothing but their self-descriptions, Jimmy is going to pick one of each. And he's going to not know what they did or who they are until after he picks them and then he'll find out if he is with the horrible murderer or not it's going to be so much fun the prisoner dating game that is patreon.com

slash crime and sports and you get a shout out at the end of the show of course the disclaimer we need to do that's right that's what we're doing now the disclaimer my goodness we're. That's right. That's what we're doing. Now the disclaimer. My goodness, we're comedians. This is a comedy show. That doesn't mean the story isn't 100% real.

Nothing's made up for comic effect or anything like that. We wish the stories weren't real, but they are. And so we're going to talk about them. Jokes are going to happen. That's what it does. But what we do is what we go out of our way to do is we never make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why, James? Because we're assholes.

But? We're not scumbags. So that's how that works. If that sounds good to you, we're going to have a blast and hear some wild stuff. If you think that they never should go together, true crime and comedy, maybe this isn't for you. Maybe you shouldn't have picked a true crime comedy show. But give it a shot because our research is badass and we really do try to make it.

It's Dateline with Dick Jokes. That's the way we like to say it. It's not that bad. There you go. It's not that bad. If that sounds good to you, sit back. I don't care where you are. Shout it out your car window. Scream it from the elliptical and scare the shit out of everybody in the gym. Yell

and make your cat run in the corner. Who cares? It's time to say, shut up and give me murder. All right. Let's do this, Jimmy. What do you say? Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah, we shall.

We are going to Cynthia, Indiana. No. You mix Cynthia and Anna and then tack it on to Indiana. It's in southwestern Indiana where Indiana curls in a little panhandle. P.S. A few weeks ago I asked, is there any other towns that rhyme with their state? All of them. And you found it.

There it is. Cynthia, Indiana. It's the one. So yeah, southwestern Indiana, right in the middle of Panhandle, right in the middle of there's Ohio and Kentucky and all sorts of states mixed in there. You can get to very quickly. It's about an hour 45 to Louisville if you go east and then about two hours and 15 minutes to St. Louis if you go west.

So if you need to go to a town with Louis in the name, you're right in the middle of two of them. You're very close. And about four hours and 40 minutes to Hammond, Indiana, which was our last Indiana episode. That was the crazy one where they had to try like nine times to kill their dad with like all sorts of different plots. That was the craziest shit ever. This is in Posey

County, area code 812. It's a tiny little town, about .4 square miles. Little town. That's crazy. Yeah. The motto even agrees. The motto is not shocking.

It says, quote, we're surprised to know we exist, too. I mean, there, they're honest, at least. So, history of this town. It was named for, what do you think it was named for? I'll give you a guess. Some gal's daughter. No. It was maybe originally, but not this town it was named for what do you think it was named for give you a guess some some gal's daughter no um it was maybe originally but not this town this town was named for cynthiana kentucky which is a state that's right there so it's not like why would you do that someone came from you

know via austria or something and they were like my town is Cynthiana. Cynthiana, Scotland. Right. Nope. Yeah, like Aberdeen, South Dakota. But no, this is just Kentucky, where 44 settlers came from Cynthiana, Kentucky in 1815 and said, we'll just name this town Cynthiana, too. Why did you just stay? I really like that town. It really went to shit, and I'm going to start it again. Start it again from scratch. To shit, and I'm going to start it again.

Start it again from scratch. So people decided to keep coming over the next few years, and 1817 is when the town was laid out and all that kind of shit. It was first settled by mainly people from the south. This was people coming up from the south who were not thriving in the south, started to come up there in the early 1800s. They'd float up on the Ohio River and develop this place here. Now, one part of history that I think is the craziest, I got to tell you, there's a lot of history in this town. But the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival happened.

OK. Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival in 1972. This was cashing in on that late 60s early 70s big music festival woodstock fucking altamont monterey all that shit this is trying to do that sort of thing so this happened in griffin indiana which is just it's 10 minutes away it's right down the road same area so they promoters initially estimated this is fire festival fucking part one. Promoters estimated a crowd of 15,000 was coming for a Labor Day concert. It's in Indiana, but it's centralized in the country. You know what I mean?

You can come from a lot of different places. So as it approached, they started noticing that I think a lot more people are going to come than that. We shouldn't have done all those syndicated radio ads. People are coming from Milwaukee. They're coming from everywhere. Yeah, we shouldn't have sent those pamphlets out. That was a problem. So Bull Island is where this is.

Bull Island is accessible only by two roads. So going into the festival, traffic was backed up for over 20 miles. Holy shit. 20 miles of traffic. Think about that. It's really weird, too. Plus, it's technically this area that the concert was in is technically part of Illinois, but it's also the only way to get there is through Indiana. So it's no man's land in terms of services, law enforcement, fire, things like that.

Oh, boy. Because it's everybody, well, it's theirs, and they go, well, it well it's theirs and nobody watches it so it's a goddamn mess here um the only police in the festival grounds were three county deputy sheriffs three seems outnumbered the crowd was between 200 and 300 000 so what all right there are 100 000 people Now, y'all can keep Billy Joe. God damn it, you can't keep 100,000 people together? Jesus Christ, you got a goddamn baton. What's the fucking problem? Jesus.

You need pepper spray? People can't keep three kids from running amok. Right. 100,000 drunk people. Sometimes I think I need bear spray for my two children. No shit. So the scheduled lineup included. I'm going to go through it quick because it's a beast of a lineup.

Black Sabbath, Joe Cocker, the Allman Brothers, Cheech and Chong, Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac, Amboy Dukes, Bob Seger, Ravi Shankar, who's also at Woodstock there and all that, Albert King, The Doors, Mike Quatro, Gentle Giant, Black Oak, Arkansas, The Eagles, The Chambers Brothers, Slade, Nazareth. Fucking that's a lot of people were supposed to be there. Fucking everybody. was Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids, Black Oak, Arkansas, Ramatam, Mike Quatro, Bang, Cheech and Chong, Foghat, Albert King, Brownsville Station, Santana, Canned Heat, Flash, Robbie Shankor, Lee Michaels, Rory Gallagher, Amboy Dukes, Farm, CK Thunder, The Eagles, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Ted Nugent. No. No Ja Rule. No Ja Rule. He didn didn't show up who else did they book like what other uh what band was it that they booked cold play or something they're not coming oh yeah you're right so either way no uh black sabbath no joe cocker no bob seger you know there's some a lot of people missing there they got the b stage but the A stage didn't show up.

Yeah, and over the three days of this festival, it basically turned into a chaotic shit show, like Woodstock 99 mixed with Altamont. Like, if you mix those two things together, it's a disaster. That's what I mean. Food, no food, no water. Torrential rains, much sound familiar a truck that was bringing food into the festival was hijacked looted and burned outside the festival so they didn't get that when some vendors tried to overcharge for food and drinks the crowd turned over the rvs and robbed

the vendors they just decided they just got together and overtook the people on spice. Sunday night, these people were starving and all this shit. They killed a local farmer's cow that they found to eat it. Yeah. Uh, but they didn't have any means of butchering it because they're just standing there.

So they have this cow. They had drug tons of drugs, no food, no water, but shit loads of drugs. They had an of drugs, no food, no water, but shitloads of drugs. They had an open-air market, just literally a guy with a table just selling drugs to people. There's three county deputies.

What are they going to do? So they'd openly display their shit. All the bands were canceling, and three concert goers drowned in the Wabash River as well. What? Yeah, this is crazy. in the wabash river as well what yeah this is crazy as the festival ended the people who were left destroyed everything and burned down the stage so that's how it ended uh tickets tickets were 20 and 25 dollars each which is a lot of money in 1972 yeah and they figured 55 000 people were there and so they weren't they figured and so they figured that high a price, they limited it to that.

They did it on purpose, and instead 200,000 people. Tons of lawsuits happened after that. The IRS and the state of Indiana were involved, and the court found the promoters to be in contempt of court and find them some money. It's amazing. It's amazing. Soda Pop Festival is awesome. I'd never heard of that before.

Where is that Netflix doc? That's what I mean. I want this one. That's a story we all haven't heard 10 times, too. There's never been a festival where a food truck got fucking hijacked. Hijacked, looted, and burned. I want to hear Ozzy going, I decided I wasn't going to fucking shit hole. This is fuck that.

I want to hear him tell us why he didn't go. Reviews of this town here. These are a couple from the town like Poseyville. These are all right by here. Real close. It's a bunch of very small towns here. Five stars. Small, quiet, clean.

The schools are five stars. Local restaurants, bars, churches, and events are old-timey but fun. The people are mostly all helpful and friendly. The streets are kept up, and recently the sidewalks were updated downtown. Hey! Hey! The air is fresh, water clean, and wildlife abound near the small town of poseyville yeah wow um here's uh five stars it's a quiet town overall and is crime free we'll be the judges of that yeah

thank you uh the school is only five minutes away from town this is a great place for kids to live everything is within walking distance it's a really great town. There is also a great amount of agriculture. So there you go. Now, this is different. Here's one star, and the headline of it is run! So that's something. We moved here 20 years ago, and we're still outsiders. If your parents and grandparents weren't born here, you will always be an outsider.

My best advice, look elsewhere. So, wow. All right, then. So if you're from there, different experience than if you go there. Right. Gotcha. People in this town, 532 people in Cynthiana. What?

Not a big place at all. Very small. And that's all the towns are like that around there. Little tiny speckles of people. It's down 14% since 2022. People are fleeing. They listened to that review. When was that review written?

2019. So see, they listened. That's what it was. Female. There's way more males than females. Like 53% male, which is completely out of whack. It's usually a few more females. Median age is about 46 also a

lot of elderly a lot of people well 46 is an elderly but a lot elder elderly jesus yes because there's people in the nfl that are that age i think so well there's a lot of people that are 50 to 75 in this area that's a big demographic here um the population the more married people the normal less single with no children very family farm life kind of a you know good old down homey type town um race of this town 96.7 percent white jesus 0.0 percent black 0.0 percent asian 2.1 percent hispanic what a weird town that's just yeah it's a white town in the middle of nowhere yeah um 50 religious so right at the average most of the people here the most the most prominent religion catholic actually is that right yes didn't expect that catholics are the baptists of the Midwest, I suppose. Now, I don't know.

The Baptists of Cynthiana. Yeah. 0.0% Jewish. In Posey County, last election, 28.8% voted Democratic, 69.6% Republican, 1.7% independent. So there's that. The unemployment rate is low here. A lot of all manufacturing jobs. 33% of the jobs here are manufacturing jobs. The average is 10%. 33% is kind of not great because if one factory closes, the whole town goes under. It's one of those. It's like a footloose town now.

And Kevin Bacon is going to go dance in the abandoned factory because he's got nothing else to do. It doesn't work out for anybody. That's the thing. And you end up having murder, you know, murders and everything else. The median household income here, though, forty eight thousand two hundred fifty dollars. So it's not bad, actually. There's a few a lot of people making nothing and a few people making like 75 grand a year, and it averages out to this. So if we've convinced you that you want the history of the Soda Pop Festival and you want to find a hidden gem in the middle of nowhere, we have for you the Cynthiana, Indiana Real Estate Report. Your average two-bedroom rental here goes for about $770, so pretty cheap. And I don't know if there's any available within a town of 500 people.

I found, this is in Poseyville, a.31-acre lot. So you can pitch a tent, build a house. It's backed up to some trees that on the other side of the trees are, there's like some woods and then a cul-de-sac on the other side there. $17,888. For almost half an acre. It's not bad. A little over a quarter, I guess.

It's flat and grass. It doesn't look like you'd have to really do a lot to it. It's not like it's a forest in there. So not bad. Found a one-bedroom, one-bath. This is a little tiny place. Well, this is three trailers and that's how they're all that size. One bedroom, one bath, 700 square feet.

This is on 12 acres. Okay. There's 12 acres. There's like a corrugated steel barn, like a workshop barn thing. Clean too. You have that. And then there's also, it's all closed, though, with doors and stuff. And then you have three trailers

spread out through the property that you rent, and they currently have tenants in them, so. Oh, shit. You're buying, I suppose, human beings as well. You're buying a job. You're buying a job. Yeah, it's, oh, yeah, yeah, you're a landlord. $165,000, though.

12 acres? 12 acres and three trailers and a barn. Not bad at all not bad then i found here you lay back kick back a little bit four bedroom three bath 3900 square feet okay it is a humongous log cabin it's a giant hunting cabin it looks like a like a hunting lodge like where like four like four uh like businessman douchebags would like, you know, go for a man's weekend for dentists. Go there.

Yeah. Fucking December. Exactly. That's what it would be here. Huge looks like it's all wood. I mean, it is wood, fucking wood, wood, wood, everything. The fridge is made of wood. It's all wood.

The sink is wood. I love it. It's just wood. It's crazy. Eight hundred fifty thousand dollars. Eight hundred is wood. I love those. It's just wood. I love those so much. It's crazy. $850,000 for that. $850. Please take it. Did I mention it burned to the ground?

This is cinders you're buying. No, $850,000 for that. That's not so bad. How many acres is that all? Not bad. I think it's like two acres. It's not a shitload of land. It's decent, yeah.

Yeah, you're buying all that wood is what you're buying. It's a lot of wood. Listen, lumber prices went up. A lot of pressure treated lumber. We don't know what to tell you. So things to do in this town. Yeah. Oh, boy.

There's some stuff. It's all pretty boring, though. Let me tell you. This is fun. First of all, the 25th annual townwide yard sale. Oh, my God. The whole town. Every year we do this. Is going to be a yard sale. Oh, my God. The whole town. Every year we do this.

Is going to be a yard sale. You know how that one house looks trashy once in a while? The whole town now. We're going to make the whole town look like that. Just bring your underwear and put it out on your front lawn. No, bring it down to the town square now. That's even better. Every year since 1997, we throw our old jackets on the lawn and ask for five bucks.

Your kids' broken, shitty toys that they don't want anymore. Bring them down. Look at this. Slide your chair over here. Look at the, look, this is the advertisement for it. It looks like a party. Why the balloons? It's like a confetti.

Someone went nuts with the weird clip art. I like, there's a hot dog and above it, it says hot dog. Like you didn't know what that was. It's a fucking hot dog with mustard and ketchup on it. They got a chip soda dog like you didn't know what that was it's a fucking hot dog with mustard they got a chip soda in case you didn't know we have soda here wow rain or shine god damn it we're not taking that come get our shit it's gonna be come haggle for our used shit in the rain and then then it's the annual dumpster dive afterwards for all the shit we throw away. It says last year over 50 homes participated.

Jesus. Wow. That's everybody. That's mostly everybody, yeah. There's only 500 people in the town, so, I mean, shit. You figure what, they have eight kids apiece? That's ten, you know. Probably three, four people per house, right?

I'm going to say at least here then there's the licking valley honeybee society hosting a big event it's a big honeybee event what what is that it's at the courthouse square and features several booths with honey available and also a honey tasting contest which i don't know what that means. Licking Valley? That sounds like a euphemism for eating vagina. Licking Valley, yeah. That's just a taint tickle. That's what that is. It's a licking valley.

We've been doing it all day. I was over at a girl's house. I was licking valley. Licking some valley. This is, I don't even know what to say about honey tasting contest. Yeah. So is that to see how well you taste or to see if the honey tastes good that would be a honey producing i don't know um a b ut contest oh fuck you yeah

and educational speakers at 11 a.m the miss queen bee pageant will get underway so you gotta have that obviously um session at 1 30 session two of the miss queen bee pageant begins round two 101 and 102 it's like the ncaa tourney you get your bracket ahead of time and you really dig into it here um they said all the honey will be tested to make sure it's safe ahead of time. So just in case you're scared of that. The Cedar Valley Bluegrass will be there presenting music in front of the courthouse, obviously. And Trudy Sospe Rose will provide acoustic music there as well. Okay, thanks, Trudy. And yeah, the local honey, all honey will be tested.

There's no winnings associated with the contest, only bragging rights. You get nothing. Oh, God. You just show up. This is a big waste of time. The group meets the second Tuesday of each month and gets about 15 to 20 every time for the meeting. So it's not real popular. Crime rate in this town, we're interested in.

Property crime about 25% under the national average. So property crime's pretty low. Remember, they said crime non-existent. Right, doesn't exist at all. I don't know. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime, right about national average. Oh. Just slightly lower, like a couple percent lower.

So that's not very safe. Same amount as everywhere else, you guys. Just like everywhere else with 500 people. Just slightly lower, like a couple percent lower. So that's not very safe. Just like everywhere else with 500 people, which means that's a lot of angst among 500 people if it's a shit. So murder here. Let's talk about a murder, shall we? Let's do this. Some of this, by the way, have to give some credit to a book called Blood Trail by Stephen Walker and Rick Reed. And Stephen Walker is the author.

Rick Reed is the detective that worked on this case here. And to do this, we've got to start in the year 2000. Okay. We're going to get back in the time machine, but not too far. Pre-911? Pre-911. What a world. Pre-911, but also cell phones, but no cameras on them. Right. You know, not no cameras on them. Right.

You know, not really texting. Very strange time. Yeah, this is very much an in-between time this time. So the year 2000, Rick Reed, who's one of the authors of the book, he's a detective. Okay. He's handling white-collar crime now. Yeah. He had been a homicide detective and a violent crime unit detective before that.

And he's switched now. You know, he's kind of – Enough of that. Now it's more of a desk job. You're just hanging. There's only so many of those you can look at. You get tired of it. So, you know, he's doing this.

He's been working – he worked 13 years in the violent crime unit. Jesus. And now he's moved on to the white-collar unit. He's got a desk job. He said he's gaining a little bit of weight. He's getting a little chunky here. And he's like, for Christ's sake. I feel you, Rick.

This sucks, man. Well, there's a call he gets from the old National Bank in town here. And the old National Bank tells him, I think this is in Evansville, tells him that there is a woman whose accounts, there's some hanky-panky going on at the bank. named Joseph W. Brown. He's a white male. He's at this point, what is he, 36 years old at this point, 35-ish, white male. He's been cashing and depositing checks into his old national bank account from a fifth, third bank account, a different bank. And the checks were non-sufficient funds. So between July 7,th 2000 and august 3rd 2000 numerous checks in the account of jw brown masonary had run this account to

two thousand six hundred fifty nine dollars into a negative balance negative two grand negative two grand so he puts one in and then puts one on top of that and neither of them clear and it's all a big mess. Keep them dancing. He ends up with some cash. So the detective gets the original checks here and, you know, took a took their talk. Looking for this Joseph Weldon Brown is the guy with the bank account. And he's so now he's a suspect in a fraud case against a financial institution. So they're trying to find out, is there any other checks he has floating around in the banking system?

Trust me, this gets to a lot of murder very quickly. So people are out there going, what the fuck are we talking about? Banks now? Give a shit about this guy's financial frauds. Small town bank fraud. Small town financial crimes, everybody. Tomorrow, we're going to hear about how a city comptroller was skimming off the top of the landscaping fund for the town courthouse. It's pretty cool.

80 cents at a time. That adds up. Check out on small town murder express. That's going to be a wild one. So they're looking for, you know, things I could find. Where's another check floating around in the system? Trying to get additional information. things I could find. Where's another check floating around in the system, trying to get additional information?

They said the the checks that he did, that Joseph Brown had been depositing into his old national bank account, were writing on a fifth third account that also belonged to him. So the next step was to contact Fifth Bird or Fifth Bird, Fifth Third, and figure it out. So they contact them. They said they're aware of this Joe Brown's bank account at their place because almost immediately after it was opened, it had gone into a negative balance and had to be closed. That was fast. Yeah. So she said – this is the bank manager at Fifth Third. She said that her research showed that Joseph Brown opened a Fifth Third bank account with money obtained from a woman named Ginger Gassaway. Okay.

G-A-S-A-W-A-Y. And so the bank manager said that Ginger was Joe's girlfriend, from what they understood, and that she used a large sum of money from her 401k retirement account to open the J.W. Brown masonry account for Joe a few months earlier. Got it. Oh. So there had only been one deposit into the J.W. Brown masonry account before it became overdrawn. But Joe Brown was still depositing and cashing other checks from this account at other financial institutions. So what the fuck? See the scheme here? It's just kind of spinning plates and moving around until you hope they all don't cross.

Yeah. And they are all going to. You're going to have to flee eventually. So. So, yeah, they the fucking detective here. He's like, oh, Jesus Christ, this is going to be annoying. This is a boring case for them. He's like, this totally sucks, man. So they're looking into – he's check-kiting at this point.

And what he would do is none of the accounts have any money in them except for a small initial deposit, which is usually $20, $10. By the time the banks find out that the checks aren't going to be honored, the ones that are deposited from other places, he's already got the money and he's moving on. That's how check hiding works. Yeah. So people kind of cover themselves and make up a whole thing. 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 f***er lied.

Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal. Or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free

by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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,

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There's nothing there. So before this whole thing, this Detective Reed, he says that, holy shit, he finds out as he looks into it that this Brown guy here, Joe Brown, has fraudulent accounts at Integra Bank, Diamond Valley Credit Union, and Warwick Federal Credit Union, as well as the report that the first two already, the old national and the first third. So this is a – he's got a lot of bank fraud going on with all these different banks. It's too much yeah at one point uh joe had accounts open at every banking institution in the evansville indiana area does he even work well and he had stolen more than forty thousand dollars with this fraud

holy so he built himself up 40 grand doing this uh forgery of checks is also in here because he's been forging checks from ginger gas away's personal bank accounts as well so he tries he wants to open another account okay now it's all it's all circulated in the banks if this guy tries to open account you know an account call the cops there so one day he comes into a bank and as soon as it opened, like doors open, he's there and walking in a minute and a half later. So the bank teller said that they didn't she didn't even remember the alert because it was a few days before that and didn't remember it until after this guy left the bank. But he was she was suspicious for another reason. This teller said that she didn't – she was trying to – she wasn't trying to cash the checks that were on the fraud list or whatever. He tried to pass an old national bank check that was written on an account owned by Ginger Gassaway.

So that's not the one that was alerted. So it was made to him for $360 and it had Ginger's signature. So it was made to him for $360 and it had Ginger's signature. So he came in early, a few minutes after they opened, but she also said it was a little bit weird. He just seemed a little bit weird. He didn't seem out of place or nervous, but she thought that maybe something was up. So she takes the check and he hands her his Indiana driver's license, says Joseph Weldon Brown. And she looks to check up in the system.

Everything seemed fine, but he was standing super stiff and acting a little bit weird. So she said she was going to check with her manager real quick. She had to ask him. So she goes over, she talks to her manager and she just told her manager, I don't know, something doesn't feel right there. As this is happening, Brown walks up to them, grabs the check and his license out of her hand, just snatches it and says that he'll just take this to my own bank. Never mind. He just walks out. So that's not normal.

That's weird. So the police are like, well, let's look into this guy a little bit here. So they look into him. They showed that he's been in prison. So they're like, that's weird. So the police are like, well, let's look into this guy a little bit here. So they look into him. They showed that he's been in prison. So they're like, that's interesting. He's got felony charges against him in the past. He has a misdemeanor warrant outstanding for his arrest at this time involving Ginger Gassaway. And it's related to domestic battery charges.

Of course. They're like, OK. So now they're like, we have to get a hold of this ginger gas away he might be just stealing her money she needs to be aware of this that he's somehow has access to her checkbook and he could go to some town and cash whatever he wants so you know they were like all right let's figure this out so they leave the police station and they drive to her address and to try to you know to find her they already found out where she yeah well they found out where she works it's at a tj max oh which if you're from another country a tj

max is like a i guess a discount store but they sell like they sell like name brand shit that that was timed out in the stores and that they didn't want anymore and it's sent to a this is it's a central clearing house for shit basically for things people don't necessarily want but who knows that might be your fashion sense you don't know if you sift through if you spend two hours sifting through tj maxx you will find some deals that's the thing i've bought plenty of shit from places like there ross all that shit but you have to really be willing to hunt it's like oh boy it's all day it's panning for gold is what it is or clamming or however you want to say it so they're clamming for a for a decent tommy hill figure shirt in 2000 oh my god you're like that look at that would you look at that whoa a pair of boss jeans right there awesome found them that's a perry ellis jacket wow

originally 440 now 1899 awesome one sleeve's a little shorter than the other but that's okay 1499 i'll take it beat it yeah i'll take it so they ginger is a date a day shift forklift driver at the TJ Maxx. Well, they must have a big stock room back there to have a forklift. Holy shit. Wow. It is coat season for sure. Bring over another pallet of shirts. Nobody ever wanted to bring them over.

Yeah. Tiny and then oversized polo shirts and weird colors that nobody wants. Yeah. Bring those in. We got, we we're gonna need those jeans with shit all over the pockets that only mexican guys in arizona wear do you have those ginger we need a palette of them we have palettes of paco jeans don't worry tons of them tons of them i had a friend in high school that wore those. Interstates and tacos? Yeah. That's funny.

So she worked there, and they said that Ginger didn't show up to work on Wednesday, on Thursday, and then today is Friday, and she's not here today either. We got all this Carl Canai. It won't move. We have pallets stacked up back there. They're beating the doors down going, God damn it. I want last year's Nautica supply. Where is it?

Let me in. I want the Timberland boots with no laces. Come on. I need some size 16 baseball cleats. Let me in. That's what they always have. There's always one giant pair of baseball cleats.

All the large sizes, the rack's full. All the normal sizes and tiny sizes, nothing. 13, there's like two shoes, and they're not even a pair. You're like, fuck, never mind. A left and a left. God damn it.

Not even the same shoe. No, two lefts of different shoes. I got a Reebok and a Puma. This isn't going to work. So that's TJ Maxx. If you go shopping, TJ Maxx, everybody. Something for everybody. We did not say it's a pair.

We have something for you. We have stuff. Come on in. Plenty of stuff. We have a shoe for you. Looking for a shoe? Can't find them. Yeah.

But then again, the women's department looks totally different. So I think their experience. Well, the store is 88% women's department. Yes. They hate men. So I think their experience, well, the store is 88% women's department. And then the same amount of clothes is crammed into the corner 12% of a store. And it's all in a pile that you have to pick through as a man. Women, it's all on racks. They have counters with like shitty jewelry and perfume laid out.

Men, there's like a bin like at Walmart with $5 DVDs and it's just cologne in there. Yeah, it looks like it looks like a lost and found yeah they've decided that women shop here more so yeah this is what's happening why is there a an adidas jacket next to a fucking camera that's the other thing what is that a is that a shaver next to it too One of those ball trimmers they got right up by the counter for some reason? A box of underwear that have been opened. This is weird. And it's March, and they have big tins of Christmas cookies.

This is a very strange place. All right, we really got on TJ Maxx a lot, but that's all right. Max a lot, but that's all right. So TJ Max's human resource manager says that Ginger has worked there for more than 14 years and never no calls, no shows. This isn't Ginger at all. Three days in a row. What is happening? Three straight days, she said. But there was something Ginger's been planning to move from her present apartment at the Embassy East Apartments to a new one on the east side of Evansville. So, you know, that maybe there's something to do with the move. Maybe she forgot to call because she's inundated with boxes. I don't know what's going on here.

So she believed the place she was was the Village Green Apartments and gave the detective the old address and the new address that she's moving to. So there's that. They get to her current apartment, not the one she's moving into. The detectives do. It's a second floor apartment. They can see it from the parking lot, the door right there. They park the run marked vehicle kind of around the corner because they're like, you know,

we don't know if Joe Brown is there and he's been kiting checks all over and he sees two plainclothes detectives walking toward him. He's probably going to jet. He might run or worse. Or worse. Yeah, who knows? The white collar thing, they said people don't – that's why he said, I feel like I'm getting fat. They don't run.

They don't do anything. You call them and you're like, hey, we're going to come arrest you now. And they're like, I'm in my office. That's kind of the most of it. Yeah, it's kind of how it goes. So they don't really deal with a lot of chases yeah they're your response to everything okay yeah they say they forget their guns a lot that's you know like that's how often when they go out the cop yeah not the guy that's doing it no the cops they forget their guns a lot because it's all paperwork that it's financial crime so they're not even thinking about know, this accountant isn't going to pop a cap in our ass when we come to talk to him about his tax returns.

It's just not going to happen. Yeah, I don't recall Tom. Tom, what's his last name? And catch me if you can. Yeah, Tom Hanks. That's the most famous one. That's the guy. That's the most famous one.

Oh, man. I don't recall him drawing down on fucking Leonardo DiCaprio. So, yeah, that makes sense. It was more like, hey, man, got you. And he's like, yep, guess you do. You did. Damn it. Kind of the way it was.

Not a lot of gunplay in that movie. Right. Not a lot of shots fired. So they get there and they're like, but he might be savvy enough to recognize it and take off. Or maybe just not answer the door. And then they got to stand off or they got to sit there and wait're like, but he might be savvy enough to recognize it and take off or maybe just not answer the door. And then they got to stand off or they got to sit there and wait for him to come out. And they didn't want to chase him really, but whatever. So they go up to the door and on Ginger's balcony, she's still got white plastic lawn chairs set up with furniture.

She's got a little stool in the middle that has a little plant on it and shit like that. Yeah, a little spider plant they said is right there. She has a little yard gnome standing on the thing. So they said it looks very homey, her front little patio area. So they knock on the door, and they notice several notes are stuck to the door from family members saying, yeah, I'll be here to help you move on saturday um and all that kind of shit so they were like okay she's moving definitely um they said she's definitely moving they knock politely no answer knock again

nothing um they watched the curtains and the peephole for for movement you know nothing they try to like shit what the fuck i guess she's not here so they try the other the new apartments maybe she's over there cleaning the place or whatever so they head over there and they said maybe she'll be moving in maybe Joe will be holding a box when we get there it's an easy way he's not going to throw all of her kitchen plates down and run

you know they're fragile he says so they get over there and they're facing the apartment. They can see it's completely vacant already. The curtains on the sliding glass door are wide open. Wide open. Nothing in there.

Nobody, not a stitch of anything. They knock on the door. Obviously nobody's there. So they go back and they're like, what the fuck here? So what are we going to do here? We got to find this guy. We got to find her. And I feel like this Joe Brown guy is the key to the whole thing.

So they find an address that was connected to a police report about her, about Gassaway, and Joe Brown that they filed against each other on November 29, 1998. That incident, a neighbor called police to report a domestic violence in progress. So an officer arrived and saw a 1993 red Mustang attempting to leave the parking lot. A second officer stopped the vehicle and spoke to the occupant, Joseph Weldon Brown. And the story Brown told and then the story that Ginger told after that was that they said that both subjects lived at the address. The female was leaving the mail so that they could so she could return to her husband. She called police because Joe Brown was attempting to leave in her vehicle. Both agreed to part ways without destroying any property. So he says he showed up.

Nobody's been beaten on or anything. They're just a loud argument and some property disagreements, basically. And that's it. And everybody's leaving. Split them up. So they also made another report saying that the female's husband, Gassaway's husband, Hobart Gassaway, or Hobart Gassaway, Hob Hobart had a restraining order against Joe Brown also. So they read another police report.

This one is for theft filed by Ginger Gassaway on April 21st, 1999. She said that her and Joe were still living at the same address together. In this report, she said that she had let Joe take her Mustang to go to work and that after he left, she discovered some checks missing from her checkbook. So she spoke to some fraud unit guys in the Evansville Police Department a couple weeks later, and she asked the detective not to file the theft charges against Joe Brown and said that arrangements had been made to get the money back and it's no big deal. So no charges were filed. Okay. arrangements had been made to get the money back and it's no big deal so no charges were filed okay so then they found some other restraining orders uh about some uh some calls where joe had apparently there'd been actual violence one we'll talk about where he apparently beat the shit out

of her in the laundry room of the apartments and she's married yeah she's married yeah we'll talk about all that too so it's at this point they're like this is we need to know more about joe brown still so they're talking to the apartment manager and the apartment manager said there'd been numerous complaints from neighbors saying that the couple fought constantly not just verbally she remembered that police had been called several times both by her staff and by Ginger. She recounted one incident shortly after they moved in. In that incident, Ginger Gassaway had tried to leave one night after a particularly loud, what was called a furniture smashing type of fight.

Holy shit. Wow. She made it to her car with Brown chasing her. And Brown grabbed her and tried to drag her back to the apartment physically. At that point, someone drove into the parking lot and slowed down to see what was going on because this is a spectacle. And at that point, they figure that Brown got spooked by the whole thing and just let Ginger go and ran away. And then Ginger left for a while. And the police showed up. And that's how that went. So they said, did Brown go to jail for that? And she said, no. She said the detective said that Brown was gone for a few days. And they left it alone.

And then a week later, he was living with Ginger again. Brown was back with Ginger. Okay. Yeah. She said that Brown hasn't lived there for a little while. She hopes to never see him again. She said, quote, he scared me to death. But she said Ginger was a very pleasant woman that would do anything for her neighbors. So they sound like a real interesting couple. These two. Oh, it's fascinating. It then it's reported that a neighbor reports that while walking her dog, she found spots of blood in front of the house, on the stairs of the apartment there. So they're like, okay, they're going to check that out. They go back to her old apartment. They try to get in to do a welfare check.

So they call the manager. The manager's pissed off because it's Labor Day weekend. She's like, I got shit to do. She was getting ready to leave for vacation. And they were like, well, we don't really give a fuck because you have to come back here. Unless you want to fix a door that we're going to kick in. You probably should come back here and fucking open it because, you know, we're going to do that. They said that it was really weird that the manager had such a callous attitude toward a possibly missing woman.

Can we do this on Tuesday? Yeah, one who's lived there in the complex. Like, yeah, I'm sure if she's dead, she'll be dead Tuesday still, right? Like, what are we talking about here? I got a Labor Day to get to. I got a labor day to get to. But then the detectives found out that's kind of how this apartment complex runs, because this manager had sent a letter to Ginger Gassaway after Joe Brown had beat her unmercifully in the laundry room. Not saying we're very sorry or anything like that.

It was a demand that Ginger either clean or pay to have her blood cleaned up from the laundry room area. What? And warned that if this happens again, they could evict her. or pay to have her blood cleaned up from the laundry room area. And warned that if this happens again, they could evict her. And stop making so much noise with your cries. This is like the Chinese government shooting your kid and sending you a bill for the bullet. That's what this is. That's crazy. Can you imagine that fucking insanity?

You mind cleaning up your fucking blood? It's icky. Hey, it's icky. Can you clean it? It's a biohazard. Have you heard of those? That is fucking wild. We don't know if you have AIDS.

Can you clean that? Oh, shit. Jesus Christ. This apartment complex sucks, man. It does. The cops said, allegedly, the cops said when they showed up that the manager was in a rage. Like, where's your warrant? How dare you delay my vacation?

There's a missing woman. Labor Day's real important to me. Hey, this is the last fucking holiday of the summer. Do you understand? It gets cold here. We're going. We're camping. The lake is going to be frozen. I got to go. Frozen solid. So the cop said, well, it'll take several hours to get a warrant and we can do that.

But while we do that, you're going to be obligated to hang real tight nearby here and wait for it. So your night's going to be a lot longer if you want to see a warrant. So finally, she said, all right, fine, I'll just take you there and you can open the door and go look around. As long as it's just a welfare check, we don't want anybody rotten in there. Then we'll have to send her family a bill for the cleaning. It's a lot.

Cleaning it, right? Yeah. Fuck off the carpet. So one of the notes on the front door was from Ginger's daughter, Lisa, saying that she would meet her there on Saturday morning to help her move. Just inside the door, tons of boxes neatly packed and stacked. You know, the whole deal. Like someone who runs a forklift would do.

Right. They're going to stack boxes neatly. That's what she does. That's what she does. That was the living room. They go down the hallway. Police. Anybody here?

All that kind of shit. And nobody in the bedroom. One cop tells the other cop look under the bed look behind the bed look in the closets do all you know let's be thorough here and uh they said everything was in perfect place packed up nothing you know the only thing out of place was the coffee maker was turned on so they turned that off and they left so the place didn't burn down that's that they left the apartment what are you going to do so um then as they're walking out they run into a neighbor a neighbor comes up to them tells himself tells them i'm his name is steve sparks and he says that he hadn't seen ginger for a few days that wasn't like her um he runs the neighborhood watch group for the area,

and Ginger's very active in the program. They talk all the time. Very weird for her to be gone. He said, like, if she would leave for three days, she would definitely tell us because that's what we do. So then we keep an eye on each other's apartments. We water each other's plants, take our mail in for, you know, it's a whole thing they have going on here.

He said she's driving a green Ford Taurus, but he hadn't seen that in a few days either. He said that Brown, um, from what he knows, Brown, Joe Brown saw ginger with her ex husband Hobart over the previous weekend. And he said that Brown was jealous and angry about that. And he didn't think that Brown had talked to ginger that day because he hadn't seen her since so then he hears that he said then i heard another neighbor said that there was blood droplets there so now the police are really interested in this um he says that he lives in the same building as ginger he said ginger never said he was she was afraid of joe brown

he told detectives that before ginger went missing, he spoke to Brown. He said, I was coming up one day, getting out of the car, coming up the steps, and Joe was sitting downstairs on the end apartment in the lawn chairs out front. He said he had a conversation with him. He said that Brown asked this neighbor if he knew that Ginger was on vacation with her ex-husband. The neighbor said that he wasn't aware of that and asked how he knew if it was true. And Brown pointed to the car in the parking lot and said that's his car i just saw them leave and uh spark said that he uh he didn't want to have that conversation but joe kept talking and he said i'm tired of this i'm going to quit i'm going to quit trying i'm just going to move

to north carolina so spark said is that where your family's from you're from they're like hey let's you know find a soft spot in this crazy fuck yeah let's let's find let's find a crack in this insane sidewalk let's do this and uh he said that uh brown just said no there's just a lot of work there so he said that sparks thought he was going to north carolina and he hadn't heard from anybody since. Does Joe Brown live in this place or is he just? He was. This is the apartment he had with Ginger. But now he's going to stop trying and move to North Carolina.

Maybe. We don't know. So now the cops are like, fuck all of this. Abandon ship. We got to find out who this fucking Joe Brown is because he seems to be the linchpin to everything. The checks, the ginger, all of it. So Joseph Weldon Brown, born in 1954. He is raised in Cynthiana, and that's where he's raised here.

His parents are Carlene and Jerry Brown. He's been here a minute. He's been here a long fucking time in Cynthiana. He's in Evansville now, but this is where he's from. His family's pretty poor. That's because his parents, especially his dad, are real fuck-ups, we'll say here. His dad's a contractor, and he also has a lot of problems that we'll find out. They struggled to get by.

His mom, Carlene, is a stay-at-home mother. So sounds like a decent family, right? He's got brothers and sisters. Unless his dad's more calm than Tractor. Well, that's the thing. His dad's not real calm. His dad is a huge problem. They used to live in California.

That's where they moved out to California. A lot of people were moving to California in the 50s and 60s because you could get a spot right on the ocean cheap as fuck. It was dirt cheap out there. There was work. It was growing, especially for a contractor. Jesus Christ, that's when they were knocking down the orange groves and building things. And it was a place where you could get a lot of money for doing common things. Yeah.

You show up as a contractor in California in the mid-50s, you could have built Orange County. You know what I mean? It was all nothing. And that was the time when they were turning it all into houses. So great time to be there. Problem, though, is he says his oldest sister was raped in California. Oh, no.

So there's no police records that the police can find to verify this. But Joe would say later on, quote, I guess that my mother was afraid my dad would kill the guy. So we moved back to Indiana around 1959 because of that. He said, my parents decided to sweep that incident under the rug. That was the easiest way to deal with it. And that's the easiest way to deal with anything. It is. And in the 50s, that was kind of how sexual assaults of any kind were dealt with.

Unless it was like the father would go kill the guy or nobody would do anything. That was one or the other. That was it. So they have a bunch of kids around. There's Joe, Carlene. There's mom. There's dad. There's Joe.

There are two other brothers and two other daughters as well. So there's five kids, mom and dad. Everybody in the family is an excessive drinker. They're all alcoholics. These people, every one of the family, it seems like anyway, Carlene also later on,

we'll get into prescription medication a lot too. That's his mom. Yeah. Both prescribed for depression and then ones that she just takes on her own. Joe's mother, a friend described Joe's mother as someone who was, quote, way out there. He said she would be always super jacked up on caffeine and drank at least a 12 pack of RC Cola a day. Just chugging RC Cola.

So. Loving the royal crown. Yeah. She just finds it delicious or is like this an addiction? She likes the caffeine i mean there's people who drink coffee all day long and there's people who drink soda she's just pounding these 12 a 12 pack of soda shit load i used to drink that and perhaps really a 12 pack maybe not a day but every couple of days for sure wow that's a lot that's a lot of soda in a day

yeah god damn wow i was crushing pepsi wow that's i guess so god damn so uh according to a schoolmate of joe's oldest sister sue they say there were a lot of problems in the family um sue at one point decided she was going to kill herself because of it oh no couldn't take the family this woman says sue and i were in the 10th grade together in 1965. She wasn't as much of a loner as her brothers were, but she didn't have many true friends. I remember that she invited me to stay overnight at her house one time. They seemed like a fairly normal family, but I knew that Sue was a troubled girl. One morning at school, Sue told me that she had taken a lot of pills.

I don't know if she stole them from her mother or not. didn't know what to do so i told the school nurse i heard that they had to induce sue to vomit or maybe pumped her stomach i'm not sure that's the worst uh she never told me of why she did it or gave any specifics but i knew that she had problems at home i don't know if she really intended to kill herself or it was just an attempt to get attention i do know that she had a lot of responsibility because her mother wasn't quite right her mother was just on the roof jacked up on rc doing a fucking shot to dancing and shit fucking doing rockette kicks up there she's jacked just on the peak of the house four for ten dollars and i'd drink all all ten of those dollars worth of pepsi and boy she rc is cheaper than that right it's just kind of the midwest equivalent it's not really a discount soda it's just it's just the midwest they like it yeah it's

kind of chicago you get a lot of rc yeah it's probably similar price too so it wasn't crazy to to drink that much of it 12 a day is a lot of soda that's just a lot of soda it is holy shit if they're 12 ounces that's 140 that's a gross of soda a day well i mean when i was working in the sun a lot i would drink 432s but of why why not of pepsi or gatorade you get i like soda. You get water from the ice. Yeah. Wow. You get water.

You get dirty Circle K soda machine water. That's good for you. That's how I would get my water. I would do that in the sun. Dude, I'm going to die young. I'm sure of that. That's terrible. From this.

From that. That addiction lasted maybe 15 years. Wow. 15 years of my life doing that. Wow. And smoking shit loads of cigarettes. Jesus. Just amped.

Cigarettes and Pepsi. It was my jam. So much Pepsi. The cigarettes are one of the, that's just a lot of Pepsi. You feel like, were you bloated all the time? Did you feel like your stomach was like, I felt super dry though. Like my skin felt bad. And I didn't correlate any of it until my doctor told me that I was unhealthy.

Yeah. You're like, wow, could it be the 144 ounces of soda I'm having a day? Is that a thing? Is that bad? Would it boggle your mind to find out that this is what I'm doing every day? Wow. Holy shit. So this woman, Sue's friend, went on to say she never really told me why she did it or gave any specifics, but I knew she had problems at home.

I don't know of the intent. I did that already. But she said, I do know she had a lot of responsibility because her mother was not quite right. Their house looked like it was in pretty good order and that was probably because of Sue. When we were in high school I found out that Sue had a crush on my boyfriend. Our friendship kind of fell apart after that.

Normal teenage shit there. That's unfortunate. She went over to the house though and you know as a kid when you went over to someone's house to sleep over and shit wasn't right you could sense that shit in two minutes like what's going on in this house? There's a weird thing. as a kid when you went over to someone's house to sleep over and shit wasn't right you judge you could sense that shit in two minutes like what's going on in this house there's a weird thing parents hate each other that older brother's up to something i don't like that there's always that

house you know i feel like that's what's going on your dad's lingering at your doorway a little too long this is bizarre yeah no shit uh the problem though is that joe brown um uh the brother here obviously the one we're talking about with ginger and everything he is just like his father being an angry kind of a guy but he's the guy he's the kid that his father takes everything out on his father jerry yeah um a family friend here said quote jerry was a carpenter and if he'd hit his thumb with a hammer he'd tell that thumb that if it was gonna hurt him he'd show him what pain really felt like then he'd smash the hell out of it again quote damn you thumb for hurting me he'd say oh yeah okay there's cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Then there's smashing your thumb off to spite your thumb, which is the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my life. You son of a bitch. How dare you have pain receptors? I'll show you what it's like. I don't get it. What the fuck is that about? That's bizarre. That's a crazy man. If you go to that person's house, you understand what's going on quickly, probably.

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 Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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. So Jerry Brown, though, is, he gets a man with, he gets a reputation. Nobody wants to mess with Jerry Brown. He's a crazy he'll bash his own thumb for hurting him like what will he do to you that's who is he now joe's father jerry brown is joe's dad that's joe's dad that's ginger out of his thumb out of his own

because it hurts because he hurt because he smashed it because he did it right yeah not mad at the hammer so um joe uh one of the family friends said about Joe, the son that we're originally talking about, he's just nuts and he came from a nutty family. A custodian at the local school there for over 20 years said that everybody knew everything about the Browns and knew they were nuts. This person even said Joe Brown's grandparents, Jerry's parents, were also nuts. He said they were high strung, spirited, quick tempered individuals. And he said that Jerry, Joe's father, was pretty much a maniac at times. He said, quote, One day a guy walked into a bar and saw Jerry. He said to him, Hey, Brown, have you stolen any watermelons lately?

And quick as a flash, Jerry knocked him down on the ground. That's just the kind of guy he was. He didn't take any grief from anybody. He called him a thief, so that seems fair if he's not a thief. Yeah. I don't know. Hey, you're a thief. What the fuck?

That's something. So Jerry used to hang out with the custodian a bit when they were younger and said that they'd go roller skating together back in the day. This is in the early 40s, for Christ's sake. And Jerry, that's how he met Carlene, Joe's mom. He bought her a diamond ring and never paid for it. Bought it on time and never made any payments. They had a real nice wedding reception also. It was beautiful flowers, a three-tiered cake, really nice.

They cut it. They had good catered food, everything like that. Didn't pay a dime for it. Didn't pay any of the bills. Just didn't pay for it. Just got things on credit and never went back. Never did that at all. This custodian guy says i remember

seeing jerry's firstborn son mike walking down the street with his hands full of empty bottles he was crippled and seemed to be having a hard time carrying his load yeah i hollered over to him those look heavy young man and he called, shut your goddamn mouth. I love that guy. I love this kid so much. Just limping down the street, shut your goddamn mouth. Who the fuck asked you anyway? If you're not going to help, then shut the fuck up. Oh, man, that's beautiful.

Shut your goddamn mouth. Is that the last thing you expected the child to say back? That's pretty awesome, yeah. Shut your goddamn mouth. He couldn't have been more than 12 years old, but I could tell he was a chip off the old block. That's a good kid. He's got stories. And they go, well, what about Joe Brown?

And he said, quote, Joey was just messed up. That's about all I can say about him. Just messed up. That's Joe Brown, a firefighter in the the Smith Township Volunteer Fire Department, which is Smith Township is the overriding town that the town of Cynthiana rests in. OK, so he said that Jerry had three of his houses burned down. Three. Jerry did. Small volunteer fire departments, that's all they were in the middle of nowhere.

They don't investigate fucking arson. They just put the fire out and push it into a pile and that's that. They don't go through and investigate anything. Back in the 50s, 60s. You can rebuild. Yeah. Well, it's out now. I got that part right. So they said people just would try to put them out.

There was never any thought that the fire could be a result of arson. Nobody even thought about that in a nice small town back in the day there. Said nobody would question whether Jerry set his own house on fire. Just nobody even thought about it. This guy says, I remember Jerry's last fire, which is a funny statement right there. His last fire. Remember your last fire, Jimmy? You never forget your last. You never forget your last.

You never forget your last. Your first or your last fire, really. All the fires in between are going to blend together, obviously. So he says, because I was watching the New Year's Day parade and I saw smoke in the distance, I was called to the scene and it turned out to be Jerry's house. Nobody was home at the time, but while we were putting out the fire, Jerry and Carlene came down the street. He was half carrying her and she was screaming and flailing around.

Nobody paid much attention to them, though. We were more concerned about putting out the fire. What? I don't even know. Half carrying a woman who's... We'll be with you in a minute. Who's, quote, screaming and flailing around. Right.

And they're like, I mean, fire. There literally is a fire. If you ran past that, people go, geez, where's the fire? It's right there. I got to put that out first and then deal with this. I guess you could assume she's flailing and freaking out because her house is on fire. Maybe there's that. Maybe she wanted to run to the house and get stuff and he was

telling her, no, no, you can't go in. She's like, but my photo album or my mother's wedding dress. Who knows? What the fuck? Could be anything. Whatever's important. Whatever's important to her. Maybe that's what they're thinking. And the fire department's thinking, unless she catches a blaze, we're not going to worry about that right now.

If she catches a blaze, we'll turn the hoses over there. But otherwise, no. So this is a it's obviously a mess. So one person here remembers a Glenda Houchins. She grew up in Cynthiana. And no matter every article, everything, when they mention Cynthiana, they say the tiny village of cynthiana the the rural town of cynthiana like it's always they have to tell you how fucking small this is so she remembered riding the school bus with joe and all of his siblings she said quote i knew that there

was something wrong with that family from the time i was a little girl they always stayed together on the bus and they never seemed to have any friends. They were quiet and it was like they had something they didn't want other people to know. They're like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family. Holy crap. A little disabled kid in the back room. It's such a goddamn mouth. Such a goddamn mouth. I love that kid so much. Another neighbor here said that she heard that she also knew the brown children to always keep to themselves but the whole turn the whole town the whole the whole turn a whole damn

the whole darn turn hold on turn the whole town heard town and heard mixed together rumors about how abused they all were the family and uh they just would all abuse each other. It was a mess. But nobody talked about that back in the day. And that's what everybody said. Nobody talked about it. It was just you all knew what was going on. And you assume it's happening too, probably. Before My Name is Luca, nobody talked about it.

It really took that to break through. Other than that, some after-school specials and something. They just didn't have it in the 60s. That's it. They didn't know anything. So they said that nobody talked about it, and everybody just looked the other way. Another local resident, Bonnie Hendricks is her name, she went to school with the Brown family. She described the boys as bullies and the girls as beautiful, especially the oldest girl, Sue.

Beautiful. Joe's great aunt and great uncle, Cecil and Margaret Brown, would sometimes pack the family up. They'd go to visit Joe's grandfather, and the rest of the people would come as well. It'd be like a big family reunion. So they said that the Aunt Margaret here said that Joe was the most mistreated child she ever saw. What does that mean? She said, well, she'll explain, unfortunately. Jerry would backhand him just for blinking, she said, and knock him out flat.

What is that about? I don't understand it. Not the other kids, just Joe. Just the little guy. Margaret and Cecil, the aunt and uncle, believe that they would have made matters worse if they tried to intervene because Jerry had such a violent temper. He probably hit them and then go back and hit the kid harder. They didn't know what to do. So they discussed the couple here discussed trying to adopt Joe because they felt so bad.

Maybe we can adopt him. Say, hey, you got a bunch of kids. We'll just take Joe off your hands or something. And they actually brought it up. But Jerry said, no, you're not taking my son. I need him to beat on. That's my punching bag. She said during one of the visits to the property, this is the aunt again,

Joe and his brothers chased each other around the property with loaded guns. What in the fuck not bb guns not you know actual pistols actual loaded firearms and so margaret and cecil at that point because she feared for their her own safety and the safety of their children who were running around didn't want the kids around it anymore they just stopped visiting said they're too too crazy they've gotten too much trash for yeah there's gunplay at the barbecue too much so joe's other sister jenny is her name she said that their father used to physically beat up on joe on a regular basis and what she said was continuously humiliate him. There's a story here of a particular Christmas.

Joe asked, what do you want for Christmas, little Joe? And he had the, this was his Red Ryder BB gun. The Christmas story movie, the kid, the whole season, all he asked for is one thing, and it's the Red Ryder BB gun. This kid only wants a guitar. It's all Joe wants is a guitar. That's it. Just a guitar to play.

Nothing else, right? This is the mid-60s. A lot of music. You know, the Beatles and all that. He just wants a guitar. He wants to play music. So on Christmas morning, Joe enters the living room and all the presents are there. And there's a guitar case on the floor next to where his dad's sitting.

No. And next to all the presents. He freaked out, screamed, ran over to the guitar case, dropped to his knees, popped the thing, opened it to see this glorious, glorious thing, how he's going to communicate with the world. He finally sees it, pops it open. You think, ha, ha, ha, light would come up. It was full of rocks.

What? It was full of rocks. His father, they said, could barely breathe from laughing so hard. What a shitty. While Joe cried his eyes out on Christmas morning next to the tree. They said his father had to leave the room because he laughed so hard. While Joe cried his eyes out on Christmas morning next to the tree. He said his father had to leave the room because he laughed so hard. He went out and specifically bought a guitar case.

That's the shitty part. He didn't just say, I got you a guitar. Ha ha. No, I didn't. He went to the fucking store where they sell guitars and said, I'll just take a case, please. Think about that. how fucked up that is landscape store and said i want a guitar case of rocks fill this with rocks one fill up please fuck man how much for a guitar case full of rocks you know why is that a measurement y'all usually use just a guitar case full i mean so he could have just given him a guitar case and

said when I have enough money you'll get your guitar something like that but to fuck with a child like that's torture now it would have been hilarious if he actually had the guitar right it was behind the tree and Joe's freaking out and then he goes just kidding and then puts the guitar on him and that would have been a hilarious childhood that's the kind of fun you like to have with your kids at that point because in the end they get what they want two seconds of being mad but this is just evil yeah or you could this is just evil that's just torment for the sake of torment because you don't even have to do that you just put the fucking guitar in the guitar case and make a kid happy for fuck's sake there you go just buy the guitar go through the fucking why do that you went to the guitar

store yeah you couldn't just find the cheapest guitar and buy it for the kid he doesn't know any better he would have been thrilled with anything you just gave a kid yeah wow you just gave a kid a uh the the reason to and b with those rocks, you gave him the means to just pummel you with stone. To break every window in the house. Oh, my God. I would be livid. So Joe doesn't do particularly well in school, which is not surprising based on his home life. He's being tortured at home.

Later on, we'll find out he's got about a 115 IQ, which is the high end of average. So it's pretty good, actually. He's got brains. He just doesn't do well in school. And he has a difficult time with the other kids. He's always fighting and all that kind of shit. By the time Joe's 12, he's in juvie facilities. He's in reform schools.

He's in and out of facilities at this point. And he never ends up graduating either. Oh, boy. joe brown later on would say in a letter quote now that i'm older i can look back upon my childhood and see it for what it really was my father beat me practically every day until i reached 14 years old as long as my father took his anger out on me at least it gave my mother the opportunity to protect the other four kids from getting physically abused yeah he's the lightning rod and he knows it and he sees himself as it and he's like okay he said quote you can basically say that my mother sacrificed me to

protect the other kids it worked and at times i was probably a rotten little kid but no kid deserves to be treated like i was right probably not so this isn't just woe is me from us from him this is everybody that knew him this is this is some sad shit so he um he did say that he was happy that he at least he could protect his brother and sisters that was cool you know that was all right but he didn't really after a while it just turned to resentment and then he hated them for not being treated like he's treated. Right. Which obviously is what happened.

I mean, how do you not resent them? It's so heartbreaking, man. The poor kid is ruined already. Yeah, he's already fucked them all up. So he says he barely remembers his grandparents, except that they died within six months of each other in the early 60s. months of each other in the early 60s. He said, from what I've been told, my father's mom beat him and his brothers. I learned from

an early age that if I'd done something wrong, I would get a beating from my father. That was my way of getting his attention. There's no doubt that the physical abuse I received from my father influenced the way that I grew up. From way back as I can remember, I was mistreating our dogs and cats, picking fights with all the kids in town,

and more. Unbelievable. 1962 is one of the fires. House burned down. I believe fire number three here. And Joe says that during this time, his father was building them a new house, and a family member

that was living in the area that they were staying with while this was all going on began molesting him. Molesting him. He said when he was eight years old, also a local boy who was 16, 17 would come over to his house and molest him. So I don't know if that was a friend of his older sisters or something. He said that he went to his mother and his mother knew it was happening but didn't do anything to stop it. He said instead she'd just take more pills and drink some more and disappear into the bathroom and that was that.

Number seven, forget about it. Nothing wrong. He said that was a time I really started mistreating animals and I was getting into fights every other day at school. I'd done really poor in school and i flunked the first grade i can remember basically not caring about anything that's good first grade you want to be in people and kids get held back in kindergarten or first grade but it's usually not for academic reasons it's usually for just like development social developments or things like that. First grade, you're just like drawing letters. It's not even that intense. But this is, he's like a nihilistic six-year-old, which is a very strange child.

So in 1967, so he's 13, he said he began sneaking out of the house. He'd stay out until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. He'd go and play pinball and hang out around town. Oh, he's a little pinball boy hang out around town oh he's a little pinball boy yeah he said he likes to gamble he said he would sneak back in after that he said it was during this time in my life that we had another name or neighbor who had a daughter named kara washington she was a couple years younger than i was me and kara would sneak off together all the time and just take our clothes off and stare at one another.

This is already the weirdest story I've ever heard in my fucking life. Guitar case is full of rocks. This is just bonkers. I'd like to be an adult and walk upon a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old naked just staring at each other. Look at them stare. And this is an Indian. This is

much stranger things is what this is. Way, way stranger things. It's fucking bizarre. This is fucking weird. So he said, one day in the early part of 1967, my sister Jenny caught us naked out in a cornfield. There you go. What the hell? We found them.

How did she find them in the cornfield? Like, just stumble across that? She ran home to tell mom that was one of the many times i did never want to go back home he's gonna get in trouble he said though he got dressed and he went back home expecting to get an ass kicking about us from his father for this now but he said that uh it was at this time that he that's when he told his parents about being molested instead he took a a... He was like, listen, listen. I'm going to play this card right now, I think.

And he said they... This is life uno. That's what it is, yeah. He's like when that other... We were talking the other day in the episode. He did a skip, skip, fucking draw four. Wild. Pow, I'm out.

So, holy shit. He said that his parents didn't do shit about it. He began to keep to himself, and that's when people started viewing him as an outsider. And he said, I guess my mother and father decided to bury all of this under the rug and go on. But for me, I was so confused. Throughout my entire life, everything I did something wrong, I got my ass beat. This automatically placed in my mind that what had been done to me wasn't bad or wrong so he would do things to he said that but his father also in addition to abusing him

also tried to live a childhood through him like he tried to make him do the things he wanted to do he said his father made him join little league and forced him to practice pitching for hours every day without even letting him stop to eat dinner like he from like the time he got home from school till nine o'clock at night he had to just pitch because you're going to be a pitcher buddy because i never made it look like if i ever did that it's fucking wild so sue the sister gets married in 1968 and um he said that he joe said he hated his sister. But after Sue left, the family really took a shit because she was the one who kept the house together.

At least, you know, made sure dinner was on the table and stuff. He said his mom began taking huge quantities of pills every day. And nobody knew what to expect from her anymore. She wasn't reliable. She'd be depressed and down one second. And then she'd be like hyper to the point of crazy, like bipolar style. The next second, she'd be manic. Her weight would fluctuate.

She'd weigh up to 200 pounds, and then she would barely weigh 100 pounds. Wow. Just based on what she was taking and doing. So you never knew what you were getting from mom at all. what she was taking and doing so you never knew what you were getting from mom at all so um he said that uh joe said that after sue got married he started talking to jenny more his sister that was two years older than him the snitch the snitch yeah telling on my fucking rat nudie rendezvous here he said she said uh one night i had a really bad nightmare and I got out of bed about one or two o'clock in the morning. I took a paring knife and sneaked into Jenny's bedroom.

Very quickly, by the way, we had young people nude in a cornfield and Bob Seger was supposed to play that concert. That's very odd that both those things were in the same show. I'm just saying. Yeah. It's just based on night moves. But anyway, I sneaked into Jenny's bedroom. I squatted alongside of her and just stared at her for a couple of hours. You have to be a disturbed individual to stare at someone for more than five minutes.

You're insane. Holding a knife. Holding a knife. to stare at someone for more than five minutes. You're insane. Holding a knife. Holding a knife. For some reason or another,

I dropped the knife on the floor and went back to my closet to hide until the next morning. Why? Just climbing your bed, man. Jenny told mom that she thought she saw me leaving her bedroom when I dropped the knife on the floor. We were sitting at the supper table

when my mother told my dad. All he ever said was if I ever touched Jenny, he would cut my dick off. I dropped the knife on the floor. We were sitting at the supper table when my mother told my dad. All he ever said was if I ever touched Jenny, he would cut my dick off. The reactions are not equal to the action. That's the weird part. It's like you did weird shit. Now listen to this weird shit I'm about to say. The proportionality of it is just completely out of whack. It really is.

It's such a strange. I can't gather reactions to this. So that's when he started sneaking out of the house at night and he would go to play pinball and he would gamble. He said, I started out playing pinball machines, but gradually I started playing pool and then cards for money with the other kids at the town's pool hall. He said, yup, gambling was my escape from my problems. 1970 here, February 16th, 1970, Joe and Carlene are the only ones home.

Carlene is taking a bath here, and Joe reports that he found her dead and naked in the tub. That's what he says. That's mom. So the police arrive at the scene. He told the police that his mother passed out and hit her head on the tub and then fell in the tub, fell in. He says later on, it was an accident. Right then, he said, look at it.

And they were like, okay. And he went, it was an accident. Like, he blurted it out. And they were like, okay. Like, yeah, that's what we were figuring. Why'd you say it like that, weirdo? Now we're not so sure. We know.

We got to go. Yeah. So the coroner, the ruling was asphyxia due to drowning brought on by, you know, getting hit in the head and also intoxication of pills. Accident, yeah. So intoxication of pills. Yeah. They said, though, the police for years believed that Joe might have been the one to do this, but they never had any support to back up from the weird shit of it was. Yeah, they have.

That's that's just a hunch. But otherwise, they have no other way. Local said, though, people that knew Carlene said she was a very modest woman who would have probably locked the door while she was in the bathroom. That's just the way she was. Anybody see woman who would have probably locked the door while she was in the bathroom because that's just the way she was don't want anybody to see her tits yeah so they said if that was true then joe wouldn't have been able to get in the room but the door wasn't locked when the police arrived there was no signs of forced entry on the bathroom door so yeah uh later on way later joe will say i can't even remember i can't even remember talking to my mom as i grew up like i said i was the one that she tossed to my father to abuse. I guess I had a lot of inner hate and anger towards my mom and dad.

No shit. Yeah, we know. So Jerry, the dad here, just decides to get married to another woman within three months. Well, yeah, because— Very common back then. He doesn't want to put up with this shit. He's got five kids in that full form. He doesn't know how to cook. He doesn't want to put up with this shit. He's got kids in that. He doesn't know how to cook.

He doesn't know how to do it. Back then it was like, well, I got to go get another wife and replace this. You know, it was like almost like a job like that one died. So, yeah, we got to get someone in the in the domestic role here. So he married a woman named Emo Jean. OK, he said, quote, I wrote this is Joe. I rebelled against my father remarrying, especially so soon. My stepmother had three kids of her own.

So our house was very full. That's seven kids in the house. Holy fuck. So it was wild. He said that he thrived on being able to get his father's attention and he would do things like steal his father's car to go on joy rides, knowing that his father would beat the shit out of him when he got home. But at least he'd have his attention. Wow. 1970, in December, Joe's arrested for stealing cigarettes from a pool hall.

Yeah. He was ordered to a state hospital in Evansville for psychological examinations, and then he was sent to the Indiana Boys School unit until March 1971. He had to have said some strange shit when he was arrested for stealing 15 cents worth of cigarettes. A misdemeanor, barely a misdemeanor probably. To be

psychologically evaluated for that, that's wild. It's fucking crazy. When he was released, he found out that his family had moved out of his house and moved into his stepmother's house. So his sister Jenny, though had moved out of his house and moved into his stepmother's house. So his sister Jenny, though, stayed at the old house. And Joe got into a big argument with his stepmom.

And the stepmom said either Joe goes or I go. So Jerry said get the fuck out, Joe. At 16. So he said here I am, 16 years old, with no job, no diploma, no money, no food. I didn't have the slightest idea how to make it until I was 18 years old. So he lived with Jenny for a little bit. Then he moved in with his aunt and his uncle, Roger and Sharon, in a trailer park. But he stole several of their checks and forged their signatures.

They pressed charges against him. And then he's in and out of these boys farms and everything like that. Finally. And during this time, he said, quote, during this time, I didn't get involved with any girls.

I didn't trust any women. I learned early in life that by visiting a prostitute, I didn't have to worry about getting emotionally involved. How early? Very early in the too early. I think. That's not the lesson you're supposed to learn from that either. That's why, like he said, I learned very early, and that's his lesson.

It's like, whoa, I thought he was going to say, when you treat people one way, really, you get it back twofold. When you visit a prostitute, you don't have to worry about it. That's the lesson he learned from childhood. And that's not even the prostitute lesson. What is happening? I don't know what his deal is, man. So he's 18 years old, and he joins the Army in November of 1972. Vietnam's still going on.

Winding down, but still going on. He said he went to Fort Ord in California for basic training, and then he went to Fort Hood in texas for advanced individual training where he learned how to drive a tank oh my god we're giving this guy a tank can you imagine this the kid that gets psychologically evaluated after stealing cigarettes yeah he he's gonna drive he's gonna drive this thing back to indiana and just knock his parents house down knock his dad's house drive it right up his dad's asshole. This is wild, man.

So he said, while I was in the service, my gambling habit went rampant. I gambled on anything and everything. After a long night of gambling in Fort Hood, Texas, I started to become homesick. It had been a couple years since I had talked to my father, and I caught a greyhound bus back to Cynthiana, Indiana. So he was afraid that he wouldn't be welcome by his dad and he couldn't find anywhere else to stay so he stole a car and lived in it for about two weeks he just stole a car i was like well it's a car it's a house it's everything

finally the police caught him and uh he's charged with auto theft but he was given an opportunity to have the charge dropped if he just went back to the army that's how desperate they were for people in the army we need bodies it just doesn't matter just come back he was so afraid that he was going to be sent to vietnam because he was going to be sent to vietnam that he chose to face the charges instead he goes i'd rather go to jail fucking vietnam so no i Nah, I stole the Rambler. Let's go. He is sentenced to, you sir may fuck off, one to ten years and sent to the Indiana Youth Center. Wow.

He's transferred to the Indiana Reformatory. And while he's there, his older brother, the shut your goddamn mouth fucking guy. The kid that's disabled. He passed away in 1974 from a brain tumor he was just oh my poor kid he just had a bad man the luck joe didn't find out about it till two months after it happened what because his father didn't want him to attend the funeral what is this what is with this dad he goes up to his brother's casket and he's real sad and he just he just wants to take one more look at him and he opens it up it's just full of rocks

it's just rocks that would have been amazing on the corner well your brother's behind there we just propped him up in the back so how fucked is that though is that so fucked i didn't want to see you didn't want to see you at all so on november 12th 1975 jerry father is uh his orange ford pickup truck is found sitting along country road 350 east about two miles north of stewartsville indiana and he is dead inside the cab on what is determined to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head he shot himself now went out and shot himself in the fucking head why now like you've already inflicted so much damage on these people fuck yeah rick reed the police detective will say quote the only thing the only

good thing that gerald brown ever did for his son was to put a bullet between his eyes. Jesus Christ. The darkest story of all time. It's fucking deep, man. This is pocket robin times. This is guitar case fucking rocks. This is different. So far, the hero already died.

That poor kid night moves just if that song was rewritten as as the blues sitting in the cornfield without any clues. We're just some young nudes. Guitar case blues. Got that? Rocks full of guitar case blues. We're just some young nudes. Gross. Gross.

I am into that man young nudes young nudes pretty gross so his dad's allowed to he's allowed to attend his dad's funeral anyway from jail he's released in 1976. He's on his own, and he is a gambling man. He's just gambling, gambling, gambling.

He stays with his younger brother, Roger, and his wife, Sharon, for a while. When he gets out, they helped him get a job at the construction company that was owned by Joe's other uncle, Bill, and all that sort of thing. June 1976, he meets a young redheaded chick named Donna K. Graham. Hell yeah. Yeah. They fell in love. He's 22.

They get married in a month, because rash decision making is right up his alley. They had marital problems immediately, because they don't know each other. And also, he's not sane he's got problems he continues to he gambles all their money and stuff of course that's the other problem oh my god so no matter how nice of a guy he was she comes home and the tv's gone that's an issue she begged where's the tv uh the pacers didn't cover the spirit shit well you know what let me tell you something about that cocksucker listen that shooting guard would not stop shooting from the outside i'm like listen pump it into the big man let's go and didn't happen it's stack your assist you son of a bitch

jesus she begged him to quit he wouldn't quit 14th, 1977, she gives birth to a daughter, and he still gambles. It's even worse now. Now he's got more pressure, and it's even worse. He'd go with a poker game all around the clock if he wasn't playing pool. He'd gamble on anything. He's just one of those guys here. Just one of those guys. He said that his only way out of debt here would be to rob somebody to get some quick cash he needed here.

Oh, my God. So he borrows a gun from someone. Yeah. And by the way, the cops will never bother tracking down where he borrowed this gun from. Good. This is sound police work as good as the fire department back then. So where it came from. He wanted to grab a grocery store because he's like, they got a bunch of cash, but he couldn't

get up the nerve to do it because there's a lot of people in there. That's the thing about those places. That's the problem. Tons of people. There's registers, loud things going off. It can be a lot to the senses. July 12th, 1977, there's a guy named Joe Bender and he says, quote, this is Joe Brown talking about Joe Bender. I went to Joe Bender's house. He this is Joe Brown talking about Joe Bender I went to Joe

Bender's house he was a friend of mine who had loaned me money before I was desperate at this point so I begged Bender to loan me some money I never went there with any attention to rob or harm him but when I pulled into his driveway I left the gun in my back pocket me and Joe Bender sat out on his carport

for about an hour and he told me that he couldn't loan me any more money. I asked if I could at least get enough cash to buy some gas for my car. He said that I should pull my car up to his gas pump and that he would fill up my tank. This guy has his own gas pump. That's when he saw the gun in my back pocket, and I guess he thought the gun was meant for him. He tried wrestling me to the ground to get the gun away from me, but he didn't succeed. Instead, I pulled the gun out and pointed it right at his face.

I told him that he fucked up. Anyway, we both went into his house and he told his wife, Dorothy. Anyway, that's a big anyway. He just anywayed quite a bit. I have a gun trained on my friend's face. Anyway, you just fucked up. Anyway, we're back inside with his wife because that's what he says. We both went in the house and he told his wife, Dorothy, to get me all the money they had stashed away in their house.

She picked up a Bible and removed $775 in cash. Hillbillies always put their money in the Bible. I was watching this documentary on these crazy Appalachian people that were like, you know, the house is falling apart and they're hand-digging coal out of the mountain behind their house. They just have like a tunnel under the ground where they get coal to warm their house out of. Shit like that. And the lady had her

kids' pictures in the Bible and she's like, well, nobody ever going to touch the Bible if they break in. So that's why you put all your valuables in there. There she was explaining the logic. And that was in Kentucky. So, close. Cynthia Ann is in Kentucky, James. I've learned that there's a there's one in kentucky so um she picked up a bible and removed 775 in cash afterwards i turned the gun over to bender to prove to him that i wasn't there to harm him or his wife as i started to leave i asked him to go with me he didn't want to but he

did why you have the gun now get the fuck out give me my money back number one thank you now get the fuck out of my house done and done what are we talking about i'm not here to hurt you here's your gun back so weird um after we left his house i had to slow way down to make a left-hand turn when i did bender bailed out of the car and ran across the road to his brother's house. He's got the gun. What are you running from? I panicked and floored my car. I was going to Lakeview truck stop to get gas, but before I got there, I ran out.

I should have filled my tank at Bender's house before I left. I hitched a ride to Lakeview, and as soon as I got there, a state trooper pulled in, got out of his car, and threw down on me. I took off running across Highway 41. How I got away, I'll never know, but I did. Wow, this is great police work. Is that what he means? Threw down, like he means he pointed a gun at him.

Yeah, throw down, boy. You know, like fucking tombstone. So he did, but he didn't shoot at him, apparently. The following day, I caught a taxi cab to Princeton, Indiana. I bought me a new set of clothes, spent a night with a prostitute, then caught a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas. Wow. That's quite the deal. By the time I got there, I only had $300 left.

I went to the first casino that I came to, the Stardust Hotel, and managed to blow all the money in a couple hours it's the stardust the stardust one of the worst ones ah it's the first one he found after that i started hitchhiking back to indiana to turn myself in jesus christ can you imagine well gonna hitchhike back to turn myself in to go to the police department they'll give you a ride back to indiana it's called extradition they're happy to give you they'll come pick you up it's great you don't have to hitchhike he went to vegas and gambled everything including what he had to get back home yeah oh yeah that's that's vegas yeah yeah the story of vegas so he said he made it to selena kansas and then got picked up by the highway patrol and was extradited to indiana it was like, that was much easier. He said, my attorney said that he could get me a 10-year sentence,

but I wouldn't plead guilty. After it was all said and done, I ended up with a life sentence. In Indiana. I got to spend a couple hours with my wife and daughter before I was transferred to the reception center. After that, I was sent to the Indiana Reformatory to finish my sentence. Now, obviously, we know he didn't serve life because he's – That's right. He got out.

Yeah. Now, what actually – that's his description of it. What actually happened here is Joe Bender, he says during the trial that it was revealed that Brown demanded $1,700 from Bender, and Bender could only come up with $520 in cash. So then Brown demanded Bender write a check for another $1,200. So he said that he demanded the money, threatened to shoot him and his wife on several occasions, Bender says. And then after that, they gave him all his money. Brown waved a gun at Bender and motioned for him to get in the car.

So he didn't voluntarily go with him, which that makes sense. When Brown slowed to take a corner about two and a half miles from the house, Bender said, yeah, he jumped out of the car and ran to his brother's house and called the police. He said he never accompanied Brown willingly, but he was afraid if he didn't do so that Brown would shoot his wife. Also, I didn't have the gun at any moment. None at all. None at all. So they find him competent to stand trial here and the verdict is on september of 21st 1977 found guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping you sir may fuck off he gets 10 years

for armed robbery and life for kidnapping wow 22 years old so gets another, he gets a psychological evaluation when he goes to jail. He's in the 115 IQ, like I said. They wrote in his evaluation, there is a suspiciousness, a tendency to be worrisome, confused, restless, withdrawn, and socially inept. They said he harbored a great deal of hostility, feelings of alienation, and inflated self-worth, which is such a weird combination. Big ego, low self-esteem is a weird combination. That's a weird thing. We've sat here for an hour and a half talking about this man, and I already can tell you, he's got – how do they not fix this? How do you fix this, though?

He's got so many – he hates women, hates society, hates his dad, hates parents, hates authority altogether. He hates women, he hates men, he hates everybody. Yeah, he hates everybody. This is an angry, angry man that can't conform to society. He won't. He will not. Will not. Can't isn't even a—he won't.

Refuses. Even if he could, he wouldn't. Yeah, as evidenced by his service in the military i mean granted if you go into the military then you're it's more or less a death sentence you're going somewhere terrible and you're probably gonna die that yeah that's what it's got to feel like that i would imagine right i mean if you're sitting there at 22 yeah has to so um he actually writes the judge after that pleading for a lesser sentence and uh he said if you give me a lesser sentence i'll drop all my appeals just you know give me 20 years and i'll drop my appeals

give me some hope here so he says quote my wife came to see me at the indiana reformatory in 1977 and again in 78 on the last visit she brought my one-year-old daughter up by the way that's he's got a kid that would be the last time i seen either one of them my wife put my daughter up for adoption donna didn't want or allow any of my relatives to adopt my daughter i was faced with the hardest thing i ever had to do in my life and that was to sign a form releasing of all of my parental rights i never thought i'd be released from prison so at least I could do that for my daughter was to give her a chance at having a family. I signed away my rights. And I think Donna did that to get back at me.

No, man. No. You've left her with no means to take care of a child. That's why she did it. Yeah. She didn't want you to have any opportunity to be back in that kid's life. Probably. If your family caused you.

Yeah. What are they going to do jesus christ i'd go around to the family and go who thinks joe's a dangerous maniac and whoever says that he's the most dangerous do you get the kid that's how that works it's not you didn't cause it so there's an appeal here in 1979 uh it fails and he says from then on i basically forgot about society. It was the only way I could deal with a life sentence. So he said that in 2004, though, later on, he said there was no. It's so weird. He said that he said that Joe Bender, it's his fault because there wasn't.

He said that Bender made sexual advances toward him all the time. And that's why he did what he did. That's why he robbed him for gambling money. He's saying his friend was attracted to him. Yeah. So he needed to be robbed for gambling money. He said, quote, he said that he could do lots of things for me. I always did think Bender was a queer.

Just mentioning his name leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Well, I mean, Bender in England does mean something like that, right? Yeah, that's Bender, and his name's Bender, yeah. So he said that he gives up on being a free man and starts adjusting to prison. He said that at least there's a roof over his head. He's eating every day. He worked in the kitchen, which is good. He's able to relate more to inmates than he was to free people

because they are all a lot of them are fucked up too a lot of them are the same childhood that's a red flag my friend yeah that's not good he also could play cards and gamble every day as well they're unlimited um he has his teeth are all fucked up he's never like brushed his teeth in his life he he said. He never even took care of them. No one ever told him that he needed to take care of his teeth. So he opts to have all of his teeth removed. Perfect.

In jail. He's not even 30. He's having all of his teeth yanked out. That's what he said at first. But then later on, he admits that I could have kept him, but he did so because he likes to gamble in prison and he needs money to gamble. He had all of his teeth removed so he could make more money in prison by giving better blowjobs. Oh, my God. But he got all of his teeth in for the express written purpose of I would like to give better blowjobs so I can raise my prices and gamble more.

But he made sure he made sure to go out of his way to say that all happened. But he, quote, does not condone homosexuality. So it's not homosexual. It's not gay. If you're doing it for gambling young dudes what the fuck is going on in the story people mad at their thumbs taken out i mean what's wow i mean that's a pro i guess you know i mean you're going for it that's like a method actor gaining 100 pounds, I suppose. You're really adjusting for the part.

But wow. I had my teeth taken out and my asshole Botox to get rid of the wrinkles. It's pretty hot, actually. I bleached it up, too. I wanted it smooth back there. It's smooth and pale now. It's like a Barbie doll's asshole. That's what it is.

Bleached and Botoxed. Barely see it. February 19th i don't condone none of that none of the queerity that's going on around here but i'll tell you what i give the finest blow job this side of the mississippi i give great head no homo what the fuck is going on over here? A fucking jerk. This guy is out there, bro. Tell you what, if I lose this hand, I'll suck your dick. How's that? That's what he should just do, gamble four blowjobs. They put up money, you put up your toothless face.

Why not? 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 f***er lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal. Or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes.

You should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, wow. February 1980.

He's in the kitchen working. A fellow inmate made sexual advances toward him. Gee, I wonder why. I hear you give the best blowjob to the whole Indiana correctional fucking complex. So Joe Brown, rather than oblige, takes a five pound steel commercial grade can opener, you know, the big ones that are on the restaurant, and uses it to beat this man over the head unmercifully. Oh, boy. He says this is Joe's version. Quote, The guy's name was Wolfman.

He hit on me sexually and I told him I wasn't interested. He tried to pursue it further, but I busted his head wide open. He left me alone after that. Once he remembered what his name was, he left me alone it's like the guy shawshank right five years were added to his sentence for that for battering a man's skull yeah and he said he didn't give a shit basically he said i had basically forgot all about society i had only received uh one visit during the years i was locked up and that was when jenny came to see me in 1990.

I think she came up more out of guilt than anything else. Sue hadn't had anything to do with me since 1975. And even my youngest brother, David, didn't have anything to do with me. Why? I don't know. Gee, I wonder why you're a great representation of the family. I passed time raising a cat at the Indiana state prison. Great.

We were allowed to have cats at this particular prison. I had Brownie, my calico cat, for 14 years. She was a female, helped me grow a lot. Brownie and Gamblin passed all them years behind the 40-foot walls. I also saw several woman therapists. This was a hobby he had of talking to women therapists in prison. I saw several women therapists, which helped me get over the trauma of being molested. Even back then, I didn't trust any women.

I just basically played with them for amusement, let them think they were helping me. But I finally did get out of prison later on. I had to parole to the Evansville Rescue Mission. I had no other place to go. And that's June 16th, 1995. He's released from prison. After almost 20 years? They give him $75 and a bus ticket to Evansville.

Yeah. That's what he's got. He's there for 18 years. But during his 18-year stay there from all of his work and stuff, he accrued in his inmate trust account a dollar and 15 cents so there you go that's something it's almost a you know it's a couple of phone calls back then you could get something done trying to make a dollar and 15 cents trying to make a dollar and 15 cents not It only takes 18 years. Also. Yeah, that's it. Oh, that's beautiful. So 1999 is when he meets Ginger Gassaway. He met Ginger at a Gambler's Anonymous meeting.

Oh, Ginger. This is the guy that is sitting on her steps? Yep. This is the guy. Holy shit. This is how he got to her Gambler's Anonymous meeting. She then asked him to go for coffee. You know, he he said they talked. He said that later he'll say Ginger wasn't the prettiest woman I've ever seen, but he hadn't been with a woman for quite some time because of prison. So he agreed to go to coffee with her. She's a few years older than him. Yeah. Take it easy on the poor gal. She's a gambler. All right.

She's, she's had a rough times. They went out for coffee after the gamblers anonymous meetings and that became a regular thing. They hit it off right away. Ginger told him that her husband was an alcoholic and that he was abusive to her physically and emotionally. And we don't know if that's true or not, but that's what Joe says here.

So they said though, that she did have a gamble all of her friends say she did have a gambling problem they know that's all true um she uh by 1999 ginger's 53 so she's 53 and he's 40 what is he 45 44 i wonder which one has more teeth guarantee itarantee it's her. If it's one. Win by one. So that's when the battery charge was filed against her and several other police reports were taken for domestic violence. She also filed for several orders of protection. Court records show that he had a record of abusing her, obviously. Joe was wanted for a probation violation and failing to complete a domestic violence intervention program stemming from an assault on her in September 1999 that he pled guilty to. This is how Ginger is.

She's very bubbly nice. Her car is filled with stuffed animals and her license plate holder is Casper, their friendly ghost. So you know that lady. you know what I mean? Darling. Yeah. Yeah. She's a nice lady. So anyway, this is when all this, the cops get involved looking for the, what we did covered at the beginning.

We're back to that. And now they're trying to find ginger desperately. And now we know who Joe Brown is that they're asking. Where's ginger? I would say not. Yeah. Um, absolutely. So she they're looking for her need to find her. Actually, obviously here they talk to the Steve Sparks guy.

They hear about the drop of blood and all that kind of shit. They hear that Joe Brown might be going to North Carolina, whatever. They're looking all around here. Carolina, whatever. They're looking all around here. Sparks also said to them, the neighbor, that Ginger had told him that she was still in love with her ex-husband, Hobart, and that the neighbor said eventually they'd probably get back together. So the same day that Joe Brown had talked to that neighbor, the neighbor's daughter and her boyfriend saw Brown near the National Bank about a block from the apartments. Jesus.

They said Brown saw them watch him as he parked his car and then started walking toward the apartments. He stopped beside their car and stuck his head inside. He told them, don't worry. I'm not going to do nothing stupid. I'm not going to hurt her. I learned my lesson. So they also said that Brown would often park his car out of sight when he and Ginger were not getting along. He would then stand somewhere near the apartment and watch her.

Oh, like a creep. Like a fucking creep. September 5th, 2000, Evansville police are told to watch out for Brown driving a red Ford Mustang that belongs to Ginger. And they find Brown sleeping in the car at a rest stop north of Cincinnati. Yeah, he's comfortable in a car. So they take him in on the misdemeanor warrant of failing to do the domestic violence intervention thing, and that's how they can get him in, and now they can talk to him at least here.

They sit him down, and the Ohio officers sit him down, and then he sat down. They bring in the Indiana officers that were looking for Ginger to begin with, Detective Reed and Lieutenant Hale down they bring in the indiana officers that were looking for ginger to begin with detective reed and lieutenant hale so they enter the room and joe brown they tell him joe brown has not said a word since he arrived here won't say shit he'll just sit there uh he doesn't hasn't asked for an attorney though either so you know whatever so he uh hasn't said he

doesn't want to talk so um basically he told everybody to go fuck themselves is what he said. Go fuck yourself. So the, he Reed said, I want to talk to him. And they said, how are you going to talk to him? He doesn't,

it said, he's go fuck yourself to everybody. Reed said, I'm going to negotiate with him. He's got something and I'm going to get it. He's got something I want and I'm going to get it from him here. So what do you got here? They bring in all four cops, the two Ohio and the two Indiana, and they sit them down.

Crowded room. So that's normally you want as intimate as possible. Yeah. Even the – like you want one-on-one ideally, but sometimes you have the second guy there just to not say a word and just take the notes. So the other guy can look like he's not taking notes and actually in a conversation. It's confrontational when you've got that many guys in there. Yeah, four on one is a gang up. Yeah, you feel like you're outnumbered, right.

Yeah, like they're going to jump on you and beat the shit out of you. So they said this was a different kind of case, though. So they go in, they sit down. Joe says, I already told you assholes, I ain't talking to no one. I already told you assholes. I already told you assholes. I already told you assholes. That's how we start. So Reed introduces them and says, listen, I'm with the Bunco Fraud Unit of the Evansville Police Department.

And they said that that kind of made Joe like, what the fuck? Okay. Like he didn't expect that. He thought he was going, you know, he thought that ginger missing was the reason why. And he then points to the Ohio officers. And he said, we're not with these guys, Joe, we're different. So the Ohio officers, um, then kind of, they put their chairs in the back of the room and they kind of sit like they're watching from across the room. Okay. So Reed says, let me tell you why I'm here. I'm with this unit. It's the

financial crime section unit. He said, I got a call from old national bank saying you're trying to catch a cash a check belonging to ginger gas away your girlfriend and so he explains that you know i'm i'm going over i tried to find her because you've been you've been kiting checks everywhere so i'm trying to find ginger i looked all over evansville and joe says all over evansville and the cop says yeah pretty much that we went and went to all the banks and all this. And he mentions National City Bank. Joe says, I didn't do any fucking checks at National City Bank. The cop says, well, maybe it wasn't National City.

Reed's just trying to get him talking. He doesn't care. Maybe he wasn't. You're right. If you tell him you're right and give him something, maybe he'll get confident and start yapping. So then Brown, they said he leaned back and he's he's grinning at this point and so now he's in the conversation at least so reed said you know the banks called about the checks and you know they talked about the masonry business and

it turns out they had both reed and brown at different times were stationed at the same fort in cal at Fort Ord. So finding that out, they were like, oh, cool. Excellent. So they got to talk about that for about a half hour. All they talked about was the army and the base and all that kind of shit. Bad base. It doesn't sound great from above.

They did it. So then finally, he said that he's got to talk to Ginger, but now he's got him talking. Now they have something in common. Maybe he can get him to talk. So he said, Joe, I need some help to find Ginger. You were probably the last one to see her. And Joe says, you're asking the wrong guy. You need to talk to Hobart, her husband. So they said,

okay, but we think that you were the last one to see him, see her. And Joe says, listen, guys, Hobart and Ginger were swingers. OK, young nudes. They were into wild sex with multiple partners at the same time. He said that the reason that he was invited to live with them because he was living with them and then he was banging ginger and then they got divorced joe hobert and ginger was because so they could all have sex together that's why he was living there sex arrangement yeah um hobert said later on that

that's preposterous and that never happened um he said he was still recovering from open heart surgery hobert was that was performed in the summer of 98, and he was not in good enough health to have wild swinging sex with people six months later. Regardless of how many teeth are in their head. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Regardless of how smooth their mouth is. He said that his inability, Hobart said that he couldn't keep up with Ginger's sexual desires being sick, and that's probably what led her to have a sexual relationship with Brown. He had his Hobart at his first heart attack in 93.

And he said since then, his relationship with Ginger has never been the same. He said there was a breakdown in communication between us. After 30 years together, we had a discussion about the possibility that one of us might be left behind at some point. And I think the thought of being alone scared her. And that's what caused problems in our relationship. We had a discussion about the possibility that one of us might be left behind at some point. And I think the thought of being alone scared her. And that's what caused problems in our relationship was that she looked for somebody else. So Hobart said he agreed to let Brown move in because they felt sorry for him because she because he was down on his luck. He said he was just trying to help out others who were less fortunate.

And he didn't understand the real circumstances were because, you he was banging my wife yeah a smooth mouth you know that goes he's gumming my wife's fucking badge down there just really i wonder if that's better for them too like a speed bag or you could just pop no teeth just up and down yeah i don't know so uh he was uh brown set talked about they got him talking about other things all the women he talked about it was all about abuse and drugs and alcoholism and all this type of shit they talk about his uh his time at at um and jail and fort ord and all that kind of shit but his time at the uh boys homes and everything like that. Ginger's seven years older than he was. She had two jobs, raised two kids, and was a normal person who was paid bills. Working her ass off. Working her ass off.

Fix the gambling. Yeah, forklifting those Carl Canais isn't easy. Those are huge. They're huge pants. They're just huge. Giant orange pants. They're very difficult to move. Giant orange pants.

They're very difficult to move. So they said, yeah, Joe Brown has got her to be distracted here. Ginger asked him to move in. But apparently, like I said, according to Hobart, he thought they were having him move in to be a nice people for karma. But it turns out he's banging my wife. yeah so he because he was at the rescue mission which isn't a great place obviously brown said though joe said he became uncomfortable being with ginger sexually while hobert was in the living room so it's a little weird he said he was going to move out and that's uh that's when ginger decided to get an apartment and she let joe move in with her and that all happened and tobert and ginger got divorced

brown said although ginger dated they dated for about three years they only lived together periodically her gambling habit was as bad as his if not worse and uh he said he could go to the casino and still leave with money in his pocket, but Ginger would gamble everything that she had and all of that. So he said that Ginger took Prozac as well in all of this. He said she was also abusing other drugs at the same time. He said that – and Brown said that he'd been taking three Prozacs a day for a long time. I don't know what made him decide that that was a good amount to take. But the detective thought that he was trying to set up a defense

because recently someone used Prozac as a defense. Prozac is like, yeah, that causes imbalance chemically, and then you go nuts. Yeah, so there you go. He said that they keep asking about Ginger and all he'll say is you need to talk to Hobart. He said, like I said, and the detective says, like I said, I already talked to Hobart. I told you, you know, you got to tell me something and he's just going nope i don't know they're going you think you think she's with hobert huh and brown's going i absolutely do i don't know where she is i ain't seen her he goes from all of that um he says who knows what

a guy like hobert would do i mean a guy who, a guy who'd do things like he'd done already. Don't know what that means. A guy who had heart surgery? Yeah, had heart surgery and had a wife. So they show him a picture of Ginger. Okay, they show him a picture

and they said at that point he got super weird, eyes shot away to the ceiling, he moved back in his chair, crossed his arms, his legs claimed to get, he just closed up. Yeah.

Essentially can't even look at her. Um, legs came together, took deep breath and held it in for a while. And they said, does this look like the photo? Does the, does she look like the,

this photo the last time you saw her? And, um, then Brown said, why are you asking me? And they're like, we're back to this again so like did you love ginger and he said yeah i guess i did i guess i did uh-huh which could either mean that we've broken up and it's over used to yeah or that she's dead now either one that could be

uh but that's that's they asked that because they want to hear what tense you use on them. Read the detective. So I just want to see her come home. If you beat her up again like last time, maybe you just think she's hurt real bad. Maybe she's lying somewhere and needs help. They got nothing out of him. Joe, you know, the ginger has been missing since Wednesday. The longer she goes without help, without some kind of help.

And Joe's doing nothing. She goes without help, without some kind of help, and Joe's doing nothing. Finally, Joe looks at the Ohio guys and says, I'm not talking to those bastards. Doesn't like the Ohio guys. They bum-rushed me into this place without any damn reason. So he's starting to yell and do all this type of shit. So Reed says, I told you I'm not with the Ohio guys. Jesus Christ, what the fuck? So then he kind of sends everybody out of the room the detective he's like why don't you guys go get coffee and

you know all this type of shit and I'll talk to him he said go get some coffee and his partner is like kind of playing bad cop and he's like he's full of shit he's just yanking you around fuck this guy let's just take him in jail and Reed's's going, just get some coffee, man. Come on, just get some coffee. Seriously. It's all right. I want to talk to him. I think he's a good guy.

You know? So the other three leave, it's Reed and Joe alone. And Joe is looking down and he just looks up at Reed, looks up in the eyes and he says, you'll never find her, Rick. What?

Um, yeah, they, they said that shut the room real quick you could hear a pin drop that was something reed said what did you just say joe and he said you'll never find her rick said what do you mean by that and joe said listen to me rick you don't want to be the one to find her do you understand you wouldn't be able to take it. Oh? Oh, no. He said, what are you saying, Joe? And Joe just kind of sat there for a minute.

But he wants him to be descriptive, so he has it on record. So he said that, you know, at this point, Joe took a big exaggerated deep breath and a big exhale. And he said, quote, I killed her. I guess you'd say I murdered her. Yeah. Either one, really. It doesn't. I guess you'd say I murdered her. Yeah. Either one, really. It doesn't go either way. Both of those synonymous.

I would like to use technical terminology. I murdered her, I believe, is the technical term. Have you a thesaurus? I will use other words. So he said, tell me about it. And then Joe says, I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. And they said, what do you say, Joe? What the fuck are you?

What did you do? Yeah. And Joe tilted his head, shook his head, and he stared at the floor and he said, I cut her up. They were like, oh, boy, that's not good. So they're like, Joe, what happened? And he said, again, I cut her up. They're like, Joe, what happened? And he said, again, I cut her up.

So he said he spent part of the night of Tuesday, Tuesday, August 29th with Ginger at her apartment. She called him and wanted to talk. He went there thinking they were going to reconcile. But instead, she told him that she had slept with Hobart. So that's how good she is. She was like she told on herself. He said that he was he said that's what did it that's what sent him over the edge he said i slept with my husband how dare you you rotten bitch you bitch i swear to god he said that he killed ginger in the early morning of august 30th

he he wouldn't say how he killed her he kept saying i'm not sure how i killed her he wouldn't be more precise um he said it later on i think i strangled her i'm not sure but that's all he'll say so they're like joe you got to tell her where she where where she is she could be carried away by fucking animals and shit well give me a fucking break here so um then joe says i'm only doing this because i want i want to give her to her family to be able to bury her you know what i mean rick i know yeah we get it to where the fuck what's going on here um so they said well good you can help us and you know what their family is going to be grateful that you did it this is you're going to be a hero here joe

you're going to be the guy they're going to go wow thank god he told us where she is because otherwise they wouldn't be able to bury and then he he sits there, Brown. He's like, yeah, I'm all right. Yeah, I'm a hero. I'm a fucking hero. So, yeah, he does that. He said his only demand is that he didn't want to sign anything and that he wouldn't be recorded. But I'll tell you everything. I'll show you where the body is.

I'll do everything. He said that he used a reciprocating saw to cut Ginger's body into pieces small enough to carry to the mustang through the apartment complex a sawzall a sawzall he said they he explained that they made love and then he was uh and then she was dead that's how he put it he said he didn't know how she died he just know he must have killed her somehow he said that he sat on the bed beside her and his mind just went blank he didn't know what to do he was unaware of how long he sat there and he said an idea finally came to him that ginger was too heavy to carry downstairs by himself so he got the idea to cut her into pieces and um the detectives called bullshit because they were

like you're strong enough you could have carried her out of the fucking apartment. You're a strong guy. You're a bricklayer for Christ's sake. You can carry a fucking woman downstairs. Masonry boy. Come on. Yeah. They said that they thought it was more likely that he decided that moving the body by carrying her over the shoulder presented too much a risk of being seen by someone with a fucking body draped over your shoulder.

Yeah. So they believe that he probably heard stories in prison about how to get rid of bodies, because that's what guys talk about in prison. But Brown said he swore he came up with the idea of chopping ginger into pieces on his own. He kept talking. He said he brought the kitchen table extension into the bedroom. So he brought the leaf, the Thanksgiving leaf he brought over there. He laid her lifeless body on top of it.

He said he made a trip to the local Home Depot, used one of her credit cards to purchase the saw. Then he returned and found that the saw wasn't good enough to cut through flesh and muscle, so he found a kitchen knife that would do the job. He then used the saw to cut through the bones. No good for the saw. It'll just spray flesh everywhere. He said even when this got shitty because he broke a blade while cutting through the femur bone in her leg, obviously. That's the thing about bones. He just drove back to Home Depot where he spoke to an employee who would later say that he was told and thought that Brown was cutting up a deer.

who would later say that he was told and thought that Brown was cutting up a deer. And he complained that the blade wouldn't cut through bone, and he was given one that would. There you go. Probably a steel blade rather than the wood blade. Something, right? He said, I threw the pieces in three different counties. And the cops were like, holy shit. And he said, I told you you wouldn't be able to find her.

He wasn't shitting, I'll tell you what. Then he said, I'll show you where I put him. I'll take you to the parts, but I want to do it right now. Okay. Now, there's a whole bunch of legal shit

of that he's in Ohio's custody, so then they have to extradite him back to there, and then they have to do a whole thing to get him out. A lot of legal mumbo jumbo that needs to go yeah they say fuck that shit there's a dead woman out there and we need to find her so they say fuck all the paperwork get in the car motherfucker let's go yeah let's all go so before they go they have a smoke okay before they leave they're gonna have a smoke because he hasn't had a smoke uh joe and they're going to get in the car and drive out there.

He's not going to have a smoke until they get to where they're going. So let's have a smoke. Rick said he, Reed said he quit smoking 15 years before that, but he smoked to have one with Joe to relate to him. That's what you do. That's what you do. So he put his, Brown is sitting there, he's got a Coke can that he's flicking his ashes in and Brown just said out of nowhere, they're just smoking.

And he said, oh, boy, it's a good thing you caught me when you did, Rick. It wasn't over. What? And Rick, the detective, goes, pardon? What are you talking about? What do you mean? And now the detective thinks maybe he's going to fight extradition. Maybe he's going to be, you know, he's insane.

Maybe he's, who knows what the fuck he's talking about. He said literally he could be talking about something real. He could be talking. He could be thinking he's talking to Elvis. We have no idea what he's doing. So then he said, what do you mean? And Rick said, or Joe said, if you hadn't caught me, there was going to be a bloodbath. Why? And they said that he said it very casually. And they said, And he said it very casually. And they said, well, what do you mean? Joe shook his head, and he's just smoking the cigarette. And he said, wow.

He said, quote, I was on a roll, you know what I mean? It wasn't over yet. And the detective just sat there letting him talk. And he said, I'll tell you the truth, Rick. I was going to go see my brother in Zanesville. I was going to kill him and his entire family. Kids, wife, everybody. Then I was going to go to Marietta, Georgia, to take care of that fucking no good bitch sister of mine. Sue.

You don't think you'd be caught by then? Come on, man. He's going off. He's saying he's just going off. And they said, doesn't your sister live in Terre Haute? And he said, that's my sister, Jenny. My oldest sister lives in Georgia. And they said, doesn't your sister live in Terre Haute? And he said, that's my sister Jenny. My oldest sister lives in Georgia. And he said he hated it.

He hates Sue. And he had nothing to lose now. So he said, fuck it. He said his brother lived in Zanesville. And he said that's where his brother lived. And he said, none of them ever came to see me. The only one that ever had anything to do with me was my sister Jenny. That one guilt visit almost saved her life.

So they said, were you on your way to your brother's house and he sat there and he goes what difference does it make now and the cop says nothing that i could think of joe i'm just interested to know if he planned on doing something yeah i'm super fascinated now keep talking keep talking this is crazy he takes a drag of a smoke and joe, I was going to cut that bitch's head off. She's the reason that my brother never had anything to do with me, but I wouldn't hurt the kids. You know, I wouldn't hurt no kids, Rick. I hate child molesters. Hell, I hate anyone that would hurt a kid. They have to do with a child murderer.

They're very different. He said, were you going to your brother's house to kill them, Joe? And he said, I wouldn't hurt the kids. Hell, Rick them, Joe? And he said, I wouldn't have hurt the kids. Hell, Rick, what did I have to lose? He's like, I wouldn't have killed the kids, but I definitely would have done that. So anyway, they're driving to find Ginger. And it's at this point that Detective Reed realizes that he forgot his gun back at the police station. He's just driving with a crazy person in the car with no weapon. With an admitted murderer.

It's at that point that brown said quote i'm not going to jail oh boy uh yeah and so he says joe you know you have to go back to jail until the trial and uh joe says i'm not going to trial neither what i what have i got to lose and they're just like okay this isn't good. This is clearly not good. So they talk about it, and he says, I was out of money. I was desperate. I didn't have a clue where to go or what to do. You know what I mean? And he said, why did you confess?

And he said, you didn't bum rush me. That's why, like those troopers did. You're very nice about things, so I was very nice to you. You talked to me. He said, if they would have been more polite, you know, like you was, then I would have talked to them. I was going to turn myself in anyway. You know what I mean?

After everything. And the guy goes, Reed says, after you killed your brother. And he says, quote, I just wanted to talk to him. He never came to see me when I was locked up. You know what I mean? I wanted to make him. I wanted to let him make his peace. So he was going to show up, see if his brother welcomed him with open arms and apologized for not seeing him and you know all that shit

and if he didn't he was going to kill and cut his wife's head off he has gone to the point where he is willing to kill anybody that he for anything he perceives as a slight anything ginger slept with her husband which is completely normal uh this is crazy that is a slight of moral slights against him he's a vechna now he's turned into vechna this is this is crazy that is a slight of the moral slights against him he's a vecna now he's turned into vecna this is this is much stranger shit here young nudes so she he then said quote she knew she was gonna die and they say who knew ginger and um yeah he says that uh she knew she knew that when she told me she'd slept with Hobart, she was going to die. You know what I mean?

He says you know what I mean after everything he says, by the way. They said, how did she die, Joe? I know you cut her up, but you said she was already dead when you did that, wasn't she? And he said, quote, I don't know. I don't really know, Rick. I guess I must have strangled her. And he said, I left her on the bed when i went riding around and bought the saw i told you that already jesus christ fucking making me repeat myself

they said do you clean the shit out cheers unless clean the shit out cheers boy he said do you remember actually killing her and he said i just killed her rick i can't tell you more than that jesus fucking christ oh my i'm trying to tell this guy i fucking killed her i cut her up into 20 pieces details details details shut up asking questions listen get the shit out of your ears so then he takes a different route rather than saying how did you kill her he said well then what did she die from joe what caused her to die who knows maybe semantics maybe it's semantics with this guy what is death at that point um yeah um he just said quote that i'm not really 100 sure of he said i spent the night with her on tuesday night she asked me to spend the night with her we went

to sleep because she had to get up early she was was working a lot of hours, 10 to 12 hours a day because, you know, she had a lot of bills to pay. You know, all the trouble I've caused her. He said that, so I had the alarm set for 3.30 and we got up. Well, I actually got up about 3 o'clock. I always get up a little bit earlier. You're a psychopath. That's the sign of a psychopath. 3 a.m.

You popped up at 3 a.m you're a psychopath oh my god i don't trust anyone who gets up 3 a.m 3 a.m no i don't trust anybody that gets up like that oh my god um so he said we went to spend some private we went we spent some private time together and afterwards she kind of went off saying i don't want you coming back around here no more don't come around so many so um so um and he said at that point he was mimicking ginger's voice like i want you coming around here now he's making doing impressions of her as a yeah i don't want you going around here yeah yeah wow he said and you know oh by the way that's he starts this and you know oh by the way he had a thought he said and hobert slept uh me and hober oh and by the way me and hobert slept together that's what she said to him you know what i mean yes we do joe and it just it just made me

snap i don't i just remember looking down at her and she was dead i just i stayed there for a couple hours and i kept looking out the window because i didn't know what to do so he knew that he had to get rid of the body he drove around and um all this type of shit so he announced it now that he told now that he's told read all this he said that uh it's going to be hard to find an unprejudiced jury if the news media heard all of this shit so he also announces that he wants to call a television station and do it the right way then. It's going to be hard to find you an impartial jury. So why don't I just ruin everybody within broadcast distance?

Let's do it. Well, he goes back. He gives a recorded statement. He actually does. He had spent about $50,000 of Ginger's money after her death on gambling. He did. He took all of her fucking money after that. He went, he'd gone to the casino boats in Tunica, Mississippi, and also the boat in New Albany.

Either way, they said, when did you kill her? I killed her Wednesday morning about 4 o'clock. What'd you do after? I got in the car, took off, drove around trying to figure out what to do. I knew I had to get rid of her. all that shit. So he cuts her up. He dumps her in multiple different places. He said, I just hacked her up. Jesus Christ. At one point, he says, uh, uh, quote, I sat in the apartment for three or four hours cause I never hurt nobody in my whole life. Oh, except for my friend that I threatened to shoot. And that guy that I hit with a fucking five pound can opener. But that he said it was like i was there

but yet i wasn't there i just i just hacked her up like a piece of meat just like i don't know and they said where'd the straw initial struggle occur and he goes there was no struggle he said that that was it there was no struggle and it just he just did it. He just strangled her. He'll later go on to talk about, you know, their relationship and she kicked him out and all this type of shit. And, you know, he starts to he's breaking down. He's he's crying. He's doing all this. And he said one of the police officers said in my 37 years as a police officer, this is our first for this type of vicious crime. This kind of puts a cap on it for me. Yeah. I'm going to retire now.

This is gross. So they ended up, they found all the parts, basically. The parts were right where he left. They're all around the place, everywhere in Ohio and fucking. No bags or anything, just threw them out.

I think he's got bags. I don't think he carried his head under her arm down the stairs. So he kept changing his story about how she died. They said that we've not done a total examination to determine cause of death, but we'll have to complete some dental and DNA work and all that kind of shit. So it's at that point where Joe says, you know, he's sitting there with him and he says, you know what? To read, he says, you know, I've been told you don't just wake up one day and chop someone up with a chainsaw. Okay.

So he then starts saying there's a reason for that. It's because I've killed way more women than that. Oh, my God. There's how many about another dozen who are they hitchhikers college kids prostitutes scattered them across people some are in landfills some are over here um he said some of the women are dead because they made him angry all this type of shit he said quote i don't hate women but everyone i got involved with did me wrong even my family so they want to get with

him they want to get with the behavioral science unit the mind hunter unit here the old uh john douglas and figure out what the fuck his story is so he said quote i doubt they can find all the bodies it's not that they can't it's how hard they are willing to work so he says he uh says he can't give them the names. He doesn't have names. He said, quote, I don't know their last names. I just know them by their first names or nicknames, people that he met. He does say, though, that he stole all the identifications of all of his victims and hid them in the front tire of a red Mustang convertible he stole from Gassaway

in late August 2000. In the tire. In the tire. But the tire uh but they the police looked and they found nothing and uh brown said i'm really really depressed because the detectives couldn't find the ids i had 13 i had uh i had of those 13 women he said that um yeah he talked about it he said he killed two two Evansville women in 1995. He tossed the body of a second victim who was, quote, real little but real pretty into a dumpster that was taken to the landfill. He also said that he discarded two more victims in similar manners. He but no bodies had turned up at that point. So they don't know if he's telling the truth. They don't know what the fuck he's doing here at this. What, what's his fucking story. So they said in 1973, did you,

had you done any murders before that? And he told the cops, I never, I never harmed no one. No, I was pretty much a loner. All I've done is gamble. That's all I've done.

They, so, you know, he talks about gambling. He talks about his childhood being molested, finding his mother dead, possibly killing her. He talks about a woman named wanda hedge who he met at a quality quick some little store in kentucky and um yeah so

anyway he said quote she was an uh older woman probably seven years older than me just like ginger was and i started seeing her she was an old country girl you know what i mean had a hard laugh her husband abused her all the time uh you know what I mean? Had a hard life. Her husband abused her all the time, you know what I mean? She was trying to finish raising her girls, and I guess in some ways she was like the mother to me that I never had. I treated her the best I ever treated anyone besides Ginger. Oh, you only beat the shit out of her occasionally?

Wow. He said I gave her flowers all the time. I sent bouquets to her workplace, took took her to big time restaurants, big time and stuff like that. You know what I mean? She liked to play bingo and I took her there every Wednesday night. How old was she? I took her there. You know what I mean? Why don't you keep being good to this person? never had a sexual relationship. He said, I guess we became boyfriend and girlfriend. I never had sex with her though. I treated her with respect. I did spend the night with her, but I never took advantage of her. Um, he said, I should have known right there that something was wrong. He said that it drove her. He said he spent the night with her. He never took advantage of her, but she drove me nuts, drove me fucking nuts, man. I should have known right then something was wrong because I kept thinking I'll stop that bitch. You know, Jesus, I couldn't wait to wait to get off work to go back home to find out where the fuck she was at and what she

was doing she was never doing nothing except helping her daughter clean the house inside and stuff you know what I mean but I always you know being nice but I always seen it in a different way I think she was going out with somebody else or whatever but that wasn't the case that's just the way I perceived it and every day it got worse I started missing work because I had to go see her first thing in the morning. She worked a shift at Quick Pick at like 4.30 in the morning until 2.30 in the afternoon. I started driving by her apartment three or four times a night. I'd get up at midnight and drive by to see if she was there. I guess I was stalking her. Yeah, you were. You guess. That's exactly what you were doing. Exactly what you were doing.

I guess I was being a piece of shit. No what you were doing. I guess I was being a piece of shit. No shit. He said, I guess at one point, we were supposed to go out on a date in the middle of the week, but I guess she forgot about it. She marked it on her calendar, but I guess she forgot because she was at her daughter's house helping out, you know? She had a little grandson helping with

him. She just plum forgot. It drove me mad that she wasn't home. I was expecting her to be there you know because she said she'd be there her daughter worked a quick pick too so i went by there to ask her where her mother was she told me to go back to the house and that her mother would be there this went on for a couple hours then i saw that she was home but she wouldn't answer the fucking door she was taking a shower because she was painting but i didn't know that i thought she was ignoring me so i beat the hell out of the

bedroom window then she came out of that shower and just had a bath towel on I said what the hell's wrong with you what's wrong with me showering in my own home after painting all day we were supposed to go out tonight and then uh she looked at the calendar and she said oh I'm sorry I forgot and it just drove me nuts nuts she said something was wrong with me and I said, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. And it just drove me nuts. She said something was wrong with me, and I said, I think it's better that me and you just quit. This is while he's leaning his head in a broken bedroom window. So when they interviewed Wanda, she remembered things a bit different. She said Joe Brown was weird and strange, and she never got any flowers from him. She worked at the Quality Quick convenience store, not the Quick Pick, there quick whatever the fuck it was um he came in regularly for coffee she said that he kept asking her out

on a date and she finally agreed she also said that they had gone out for dinner on several occasions she said that brown told her he was a foreman of a construction company and he would go on and on about how much money he had she said she doubted his story because she had seen where he was living at whitey's motel one day that brown took her gambling at casino as tar in evansville she said they were sitting outside and brown tried to kiss her i told him that i didn't want to do that and that i would never sleep with him and that made him really angry and he said oh yes you will so um yeah at one point before they they never did sleep together at one point before they parted company he was so desperate for money in his apartment he stole the refrigerator and some copper plumbing valves to sell and he left a note apologizing to his landlord for stealing the items

and said he would try to get him some money back in return. In return. Some money. So he talks about his first murder, and he said, The Sheraton Casino and Hotel. They got an old parking lot in the back. I met her at the Horseshoe Casino, and I killed her in the parking lot at the Sheraton and next door. I murdered her in my truck. Strangled her.

He said, How'd you meet her? She was a prostitute. It was right after Mary Lou kicked me out. I went on a killing spree. I went to Tunica to gamble and just the same old thing I used to do before when things didn't work out. I went and gambled. I just tried to think about beating the big wheel.

You understand what I'm saying? Understand what I'm saying? He went to now that made me feel like somebody and hell, that's where I learned how to pick up prostitutes at the casinos because it's easy there. It's easy anywhere. That's the thing. Literally, do you you have money i will go with you yeah that's what it is it's they have a business setup if you go in if you go to mcdonald's and order a hamburger they just give you one you don't go i wonder if they're gonna do it or not it's you know that's their business jesus christ he said

they come looking for you you don't have to look, she came looking and wanted to go back to my motel room. I wasn't renting a motel room, so I said, hell, I've got a truck right here, so why pay for a room? It was just a blowjob. It wasn't like she was going to have to clean up on anything afterwards. Oh, God. He said that she had grayish brown hair, was about 5'4", weighed about 145 pounds. He said, we got in an argument about how much she wanted. She said she wanted $100 for a blowjob.

I told her she was out of her fucking mind, you know what I mean? And I strangled her. So it was a commerce argument. It was overpricing. It was dark, and there wasn't nobody back there. She was the first, and I buried her. Where is she buried at? Right there in Tunica, about a mile and a half from the casino.

Be easy to find. She ain't but four feet down in the ground. There's only one way to come into the horseshoe and one way to go out. You go down and there's a gas station on the right. It's out in the fucking desert. You know what I mean? They bought up all that land and they built 11 casinos out there. There's no houses out there.

Nothing. Just a gas station on the right. You make a right, go down about a mile and a half, and she's buried on the side of the road. What's her name? Candy. There you go. So they're trying to find out. Later on, though, he'll also say that he buried her in a soybean field in Robinson, Mississippi.

But everything else is the same. Second murder, he said he found quickly after that, was a hitchhiker in a rest area a couple after hours after he left cincinnati he said he wasn't sure if he met her in ohio or west virginia but um he said that he doesn't know he said that the girl was not a prostitute he said he thought she might have been a college student on her way to pittsburgh he said she was on her way home she was pretty young like 20 maybe they said white girl and he said yeah, I don't go out with N-words. Oh my God.

But definitely blasted that out. Oh boy. They said, how'd you meet this girl? As if he couldn't get any more cuddly. She just walked up to me. I guess she saw my out-of-state license plate. She asked me where I was going. I told her Pennsylvania.

She said that's where she was going, to Pittsburgh. She got in, and I always kept clean cut, you know what I mean? Never had trouble picking people up. So he said, though, that they went to a motel at the Red Roof Inn. He said they had sex, and then he strangled her to death with a shoelace afterward. He likes to keep a woman's size 8 shoe shoelace with him. Really? That's what he uses, he says, to strangle people.

Strangle to tie them up. It's multi-purpose, really. He described her as 5'3 and 120 pounds, short reddish brown hair. He said, quote, like my mom used to have. Oh, boy. The same hair color. So, yeah. That's

very interesting. So, he said that he's talking about the Pittsburgh thing. Uh, he said he traveled through West Virginia, stayed a couple of nights after that. He just wanted to run away. Um, he said that he got $240 worth of food stamps and hold sold them for 120 in cash. That's the kind of stuff he was doing, driving around, trying to figure it out. His third, he said he was heading back to Louisville one day, two days after leaving Pennsylvania, and he picked up a hitchhiker on I-64. He described her as a pretty girl in her early 20s, said she had streaked blonde or brownish hair, and was about 5'5 and weighed about 130 pounds.

Every girl he describes is 5'5, about 130, 145 pounds. He's either not good at that or he's making them up. 130 pounds. Every girl he describes is five foot five, about 130, 145 pounds. Um, he's either not good at that or he's making them up. He said that she was also going to Pittsburgh. Everybody's going to Pittsburgh. He said they stopped at a rest, a rest area outside Wheeling, West Virginia and decided to spend the night.

Um, and he said that he beat her up pretty bad, but he's never mentioned having sex with her. Um, he said he killed her by strangling her with his bare hands instead of the shoelaces. He said he just threw her body in a dumpster and then headed back to Indiana, where he tried to make up with his girlfriend at the time. Holy shit. He said he found himself in Evansville and he procured the services of what he called a crack-addicted prostitute named Andrea Hendrick

Steinert. He called her slick. And he said she's the only prostitute with whom he could talk honestly. It was like Trixie. She was the Trixie here. He liked her because she listened to him with what he perceived to be genuine interest. He started to see her regularly, started to talk to her about his life. She talked to him about her addiction to cocaine and regularly, started to talk to her about his life. She talked to him about her addiction to cocaine and that she wanted to make her life better. And, yeah, he said that he liked her too much to try to kill her at that point. But he said he'd managed to keep out of trouble and all that kind of thing. But then he said that a prostitute flagged him down one day, but he only had $17.

He told her that he had more money at his new apartment, and she went with him. He described her as 25 to 30, shoulder-length hair, about 5'1", 115. He said she had a sunken face, almost like anorexic, and very little or almost no breasts. And he said that he couldn't remember why he killed her or whatever. He said, I had sex with her. Then I strangled her with a shoestring. Then I dumped her body in a garbage dumpster at the Lincoln projects.

So he said that he beat her till he was unconscious, strangled her, uh, did all of that. So he, uh, he got in trouble, like we said, with his uncle.

And then he was killing more people. Uh, he says altogether, they said, how do you know there's 13 of them? This is what they asked him. He said, because I know. They said, you never really have forgotten this or how? He said, quote, no, I never forgot. I know there's 13. And they said, is that counting ginger?

And he said, no, that's not counting ginger. He said, so there was four in Indiana? And Brown says, like, it's a hassle. said no that's not counting ginger he said so there was four in indiana and brown says like it's a hassle yeah four in indiana two in mississippi one in clarksville tennessee two in denver well there's one in denver one in mesquite new mexico there's two in st louis one in i think i was out on i might have been in ohio when i killed her i'm not and they said not in west virginia then he said yeah but i killed two i thought one was in west virginia and one was in maryland but uh maybe one was in ohio and the other one was in west virginia you know what i mean i don't know you kill all these people you

start to forget shit yeah so he does a full confession of everything he talks about he goes through it spring of 97 i picked up a prostitute down by the old national bank and he said i stayed there took her to the royal motel strangled her um he uh he said i had sex with her didn't rough her up or nothing like that but i killed her afterwards strangled her with a shoestring he said some of these murders especially the first six it's like i couldn't stop it's like when i killed ginger i just couldn't stop myself that's the way it was i wanted to stop I couldn't. It was like I was going through the motions and I felt remorse after most of them. Well, a couple of them. He said like Slick, the one he liked. He said it was like it was like there was a little bond between her and me and I couldn't let myself get close to prostitutes. But she was the only one that I talked to. And she talked to me a little bit.

You know what I mean? When she tried to steal to steal 20 from me it's just like it just like broke whatever trust i had i don't know why i trusted her i guess because i was in the same situation she was like she needed to talk to somebody when she stole my money i guess i just uh they said do you remember the room number and he said i'm not going to sit here and lie to you but i know what she looked like she's five foot four shoulder length brown hair black hair, black underneath, mid 20s, blah, blah, blah. He goes on. To just describe all of this shit, there is some corroboration staying at Whitey's Motel. They actually found records of him staying there in 1997, certain road trips that he that he had. At one point, his next-door neighbor, Christy Beaven,

said that Brown showed up at Whitey's Motel one day and was covered in blood head to toe. When she asked him about it, he said that he'd been on a trip to Tennessee and he cut his finger. She said if that was true, he must have bled a couple of pints. A lot.

So they don't know if it's true, if it's not. Number six, things started happening real fast then. I planned this one. She was from Savage Entertainment. I set this one up myself. You know what I mean? She came in in a taxi and asked for money up front. And he said it's a big fucking ripoff.

And then he killed her. So he talks about 13 people. He also talks about not being able to ejaculate for a long time. He used duct tape with a couple of them, and they thought they were playing like sexual games, and then he would strangle them. He'd use the shoestrings to tie their hands, and then he would use them to strangle her. Yeah, he talks. Wow. They go on and on and on and um he said that uh he said that um

you know looking back i can say that it was easy a couple times i should have been caught but i wasn't and so that's how it was he gets that he ends up going uh all the way through everything obviously um the people when they talked to some of the people he ran into also it's fucking wild because they were like yeah dude this guy was great out of control yeah this is this is crazy shit um but he he went on and just described every victim um some of them was he talked about one he took his seventh victim by victim's body and loaded her into the trunk of the Mustang that Ginger bought for him to use. He threw the body in a dumpster behind the building. This was a stripper, I believe he said, a dancer.

He said that he paid her for a blowjob, and they went outside, and then he killed her and threw her away. So either way, the only one they charge him with, the only one they charge him with the only one they have that is proof on is ginger because they have chunks of body everywhere so they charge him with ginger and he is found guilty of that obviously and he is sentenced to you sir may fuck off life in jail without parole yeah so life without for him on this one and you kind of have to give him on if he's claiming he killed 13 women you treat him like he killed 13 women and you don't let him out yeah and then i guess you continue to investigate or do you not you got you have to you have to try to put it together but they don't have they don't have victims and the problem is all the people he's describing short of a two of the college kids were were people that, the reason why Gary Ridgway

got away with it for so long. These are people that if they disappear, nobody looks for them because they've disappeared already. Because they're doing some things, right. They're on the street, which means they've disappeared from their family. So their family doesn't know if they haven't, don't see them in a month. They don't know if they're just on the street, if they moved across the country, if they're dead, they have no fucking idea.

So we don't know but i feel like i feel like he probably killed a couple but i don't think he did 13 put it that way i don't even know if he killed any more than his mom and ginger that's possible i do think he killed his mom too i definitely think he killed his mom um yeah based on the based on the she would a mom doesn't just leave the fucking bathroom door open. No, no, no, no. Moms don't do that. And I just don't think, I don't know if Ginger, I don't know if you start with what he did, though. Like, I don't know if you, the murder, the chop up, the disposing of in three different counties. Although if he thought about it his whole life, maybe.

Who knows? You know, maybe he thought about it, maybe he fantasized about this forever. He did say he didn't know what to do, and then he had to drive around to figure it out. life maybe who knows you know maybe he thought about maybe fantasized about this forever he did say he didn't know what to do and then he had to drive around and to figure it out like that tells you there that he doesn't fucking know i don't think i don't think he did it i don't think he i don't think he had any more than just his one and just wanted to be thought of as a as fucking dangerous what the way he kind of put it was like he all the other ones he killed were like quick in a motel. They were prostitutes.

He threw him and he just throw him in a dumpster, toss him over there, bury him in the ground. But in his story, this would be the first one that he decided to dismember. Yeah, because he was he was the first one he had an actual connection to that he couldn't couldn't do anything about. So that would make sense also. But who knows? We don't know. And it's going to be they're still investigating this shit with him i mean it's it's only been 20 years since this

whole thing went down so they are still looking into it still looking for missing persons reports from that time but it's not like it's not like dommer where they sat down with dommer and he said it's been like 17 people and they were like get the fuck out of here, okay, this day, this day, this is what the guy looked like. They're matching it to missing persons reports. Most of his, he's like, I don't even know where I was. I was driving on a highway somewhere. So they don't even know where to look for a missing person report at that point. Who knows?

Either way, there he is. He's in prison. Thank fuck he's never getting out. No teeth in there. No teeth. Man, he's making some dough right he's never getting out this no teeth in there so no teeth man he's making some dough right now oh boy he is a 70 68 year old man just fucking slobbing some knobs right there getting paid paid paid in full baby so there you go if you like that show or like the

way we tell it i should say that story you should definitely head over to whatever app you're listening on and figure out how to rate and review. Do that. Whether it's Apple Podcasts, Audible, you can do it. All of them, I think, pretty much. It helps drive us up charts. It really does help the show a lot. So please, please do that if you haven't done that yet. Also, you want to follow us on social media.

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Tickets for the live tour 2023. It's finally here and we have some cities. We'll run them down very quickly right now and you guys can get ready for those tickets because we're psyched. February 10th in Cleveland. February 11th, St. Louis. March 23rd and 24th, Seattle.

March 25th, Portland. May 5th, Detroit. May 6th, Pittsburgh. July 15th, San Diego. July 28th, Salt Lake City. July 29th, Denver. August 11th, Minneapolis. August 12th, Chicago. September 8th, Atlanta. September 9th, Charlotte. August 6th, Philadelphia. I'm sorry, October 6th, Philadelphia. October 7th, Washington, D.C. October 7th, Washington, D.C. Also coming, Phoenix, Milwaukee, New York, and Boston will be added to the list. They will be loaded. There you go. Definitely come see us.

Get your tickets on November the 28th. We are fucking excited to get back out for a new tour. The last two shows that we did in Austin and Oklahoma City, that's still 2020. So we're still finishing up. Still wrapping it. Reschedule. So thank you for doing that. Can't wait to see everybody out there. It's going still finishing up. Still wrapping it. Reschedule. So thank you for doing that. Can't wait to see everybody out there. It's going to be great.

Definitely. Head over to patreon.com slash crime and sports. That is where you get all of your bonus materials. Holy shit. We have a huge back catalog. It's like 150 bonus episodes. So deep. Anybody $5 or above, you can get access to all of that and more.

New ones coming out all the time. As a matter of fact, every other week you're going to get new ones. You bet. And this week, it's one crime in sports, one small-town murder. You're going to get access to all of it this week for crime in sports. We're going to talk about Ben Roethlisberger. Yes, we are. Not any of the football stuff, though.

No. Just the horrible rape accusations we'll talk about just the scummy shit cut it down to the bone there he'll talk about that um never convicted of anything other than motorcycle riding with no helmet but which was stupid but either way this on the other hand uh way different huge accusations then for our small town murder it's the prisoner dating game is back baby oh boy it's back let's go four bachelors four lucky bachelorettes gonna line them up jimmy's gonna pick one of each based on nothing but their own self-described ads and then afterwards once he picks them he's gonna find

out what they did which is the fun part who they are and what they did holy shit do we have a good time on the prisoner dating game patreon.com slash crime and sports and what they did. Holy shit, do we have a good time on the Prisoner Dating Game. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. And what you're going to get is a shout-out at the end of the show, too. When do those shout-outs happen? Right fucking now. Jimmy, hit me with the list of people who would never dismember us and spread us all over three different counties. Hit me with them now.

This week's executive producers are JB and Yeti Shetty in Canada, Shannon Short, happy birthday, Tracy, oh oh boy plenus i believe i hope that's what it is it's got play anus playness i think it's playness play anus i think that's worse it's like a play pad in the pool i I think it's plenus. That's the play anus area. And Sharon Lee Jones, thank you all so much. You're amazing. Thank you. Other producers this week are Fat Penguin and Wooden Stick, Adrian's asshole drunk brother Pauly, the maniac who hates the cans and jerked in the jerk.

Why did I switch up those words? The maniac who hates cans in the jerk, James. Rabbi Shmulevich and Shitta Perlman, Jonathan Phipps, Corporal Carl Kirshner, Peyton Meadows, Ezra Taha in the Netherlands, Willie Howe Hard, Janice Hill, Happy Hour in Breckenridge, Mary Kep Susley, J.W. May, Sharon Jones, fake boyfriend Jake, Drake Blevins, happy birthday, Drake. Happy birthday. DeLuca, no relation to Frank. Kunioke, I think.

Hannah Quinn's pop. All right. Continuing. Dinah? Dinah? Dinah Fink, I think. Wax-A-Million. Maram?

Maram? Maram, I think. Amanda Camino. David with no last name. Shelly M. Miss Claire Terry. Alex Poole. Brandon Spencer.

Joshua Fisher. Guam Missy. Chloe Jones. Shannon McKenzie. Emily Deal. Sam Crowell. Crowell, maybe. Matt Myers, Craig Garcia, Matt Snelling, Tasha Morgan, Catherine Kerr, Colleen Troiley, Christopher Britton, Rachel Swabay, I think. Oh, boy. Wibke, Wibke Middleton, Brianna Exum, ML123, Annalise Alvarez a lie, I think, Andrew with no last name,

Courtney with no last name, Clee13, Christina Kinney, Kaya maybe, Meloni? Melioni. Caitlin Peavy, Phil Knowles, FallStream44850, Nicole Cluton, Suzanne Labelle, Abby Raymond, Brett Wright, Mark Save,

Save maybe, Jenny Conover, Lori Madsen. Is that a person? Is that a real person? A famous person, Lori Madsen? Michael Madsen. That's it. No, that's not what I was saying.

Chandra Blackburn, Daryl Crowder, Casey Benson, Nathaniel Bolt, Abby with no last name, Ian Evans, Hannah with no last name, Murder Weapon, Daniel W., Ben Scothern, Kyle Downs, Sue Haynes, Dolphin93, Jerry Mann, Lucky Point Wirehair, Christine Craft, Jason Mullenix, Brittany Wise, Zach H., Shastastic, Heather Massey, Anna Proshinsky, Joanne Lanagran, Gretchen Conson, Stephanie Bowen, Mark Mullenix, Kelly Waddell, Nicole Osborne, Samantha Rudenbacher, Rocky Encorvaya, Chris and Christine Lull, Lacey McKelvey, James, nope, that's Mike, Jameson, Nicole Frank, Randy Cavanaugh, Jamie Egoff, Max Wilson, Trisha, Trisha Hall, Katie Garcia, Sarah Earwood, Jen Mortimer, Nyrin GQ, Aaron Midgett, ah, that feels filthy to say, Shay Maria, Jessica Harden, Nicholas Talbot, Layla Reynes, Reynes, oh boy, Ashley Everett, Jared Blaylock, Rick Roman, Kevin with no last name, Kiki Hawkins, Rebecca Kason, Ashley Kloon, Jeremy Poland, Frida Turison, Chris McHenry, Ross Brown, Alan Stewart, Christy Bonson, Angel Fleming. What the fuck is happening? Kimberly.

We're trying to get one past you christy bonson you son of a bitch that's what it is uh kimberly furbrooker uh furbrooker paul paulie support the second buddy comer gross uh aiden barnes uh olga hell my uh heidi with no last name penny larson esther with no last name, Penny Larson, Esther with no last name, Megan Williams, Ryan McWilliams, Taryn Filler, Filer, Monica Oliver, Melissa Belevance, Lindsay Hartnett, Katie Peterson, Steve Cartwright, Natasha DeGreedy, Sneha Holloway, Vladimir Felacio, suck me off, are you happy? Sneha Holloway, Vladimir Felatio, suck me off.

Are you happy? Oh, very nice. Megan with no last name. Tammy Steyer, Ava Stockton, Jeremy Danielson, Andrew Myers, Maddie Clay, Michelle with no last name, Emily Young, Teasy with no last name, Emily Graves, Ken Devereaux, Jordan Hajduk, Sharon Minton, Terrence Brandt, Amanda Rantham, Charlene Klangos, S.H. Christian, Pasca, Lori Simmons, Angel Tarela, Lauren W., Rachel Freeze, Carrie Davison, Jared Chance, Anthony Padaleta, Ryland L., Aiden Hartnett, Aubrey McDonald, Paige Ariana, Dennis with no last name, Josh Emerson, Brie Harry, Hair, Hooray, Dina F., Allison Allen, Camille Moore, Lori DeLuna, Zaryab, Rashid, Rebecca Davies, Eric with no last name, Angela Baker, Allison Salters, Jade McEnrod, Elizabeth Cook, Joni Pirneau, Bail Money, Caprice Abdul-Mudakabur,

Ellen Wheeler, Jeff Stallings, Matthew G., Krista Prada, Lana Moeller, Robert Turner, Stallings, Matthew G, Krista Prada, Lana Moeller, Robert Turner, Ross Hurst, Lauren with no last name, RubikGamer, Shala, Shannon, Courtney with no last name, Alice J, Alex Twight, Twitty, Leah Jarvis, Jane Adrucca,

Kenny Linton, Mr. Vini, Drew fucking Peters, KJ with no last name, Kimberly Skerritt, Daniel E, B Wags, Gerald Respect, peters kj with no last name kimberly scare scare it uh daniel e uh b wags gerald respect boston and all of our patrons you guys are fantastic thank you thank you everybody so much from the bottom of our hearts we really really do appreciate it thank you for all that you do for us uh thank you we hope you enjoy the episodes hope you enjoy the live shows and patreon and

everything else you're wonderful you are fucking wonderful you enjoy the episodes. Hope you enjoy the live shows and Patreon and everything else. You're wonderful. You are fucking wonderful. You want to follow us on social media. Shut up and give me murder.com is really the hub here. You can find the links to everything right there. All the live show stuff, everything like that. Keep coming back,

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