Small Town Murder - #378 - The Open Marriage Blues - Niantic, Connecticut

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

This week, in Niantic, Connecticut, a swinging couple leads a very normal life, to the outside world, but definitely gets freaky on the weekends. While the husband is away on a fishing trip, the wife is horribly murdered, leaving a dark, nasty crime scene. The case goes cold until some new evidence comes to light, leading police to use some shaky science to try to figure out how the husband could maybe have been in two places at once!Along the way, we find out that we don't want to eat scallops out of a river, that just seeing a movie, doesn't mean that you'll automatically reenact the plot, and that small air conditioners definitely can't make a room 40 degrees!!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!Let’s go on a trip… to Bud’s Goods! Bud’s Goods is a New England cannabis brand with three recreational dispensaries in Massachusetts. In celebration of 420, we are raffling off a $100 Bud’s Goods gift card: enter here. Yayyyyyy! Must be 21+ to enter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay!

Choo-choo! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station. Let's do this.

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It's amazing. 80s desperation. Let's remember. Oh, man. And speaking of desperation, we are for Small Town Murder. We're going to continue our serial killer childhood series. Pick that back up again. And we're going to talk about BTtk in his childhood pretty much in

his own words and it is so creepy and weird like everything else he says so definitely get in there that is patreon.com slash crime and sports and of course you definitely want to keep an eye out coming in the next month or so uh for the new show your stupid opinions where we take people's stupid opinions from all over the internet reviews of everything you can imagine and we make fun of them coming very soon so keep an eye out for that that said i think it's time everybody yeah to sit back yeah that's right where are you right now let's see where what are you doing you working you working at the grocery store you checking somebody out yeah what are they doing what are they putting across? Something disgusting? What is that? Yeah. What is that? What do they got?

Like a big thing of liver? Yeah. You take that liver. You look them dead in the eye. You smack them right in the face with the liver. And you shout, shut up and give me murder. All right. Let's do this, Jimmy.

Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yes. All right. Let's get it on. We are going all the way to Connecticut from Alaska, which was our last episode, which is it's a long way. Long way. This is Niantic, Connecticut is the name of it. N-I-A-N-T-I-C. Niantic. It is in south central eastern kind of Connecticut over that direction. It's south right on the Long Island Sound there in southern Connecticut. So on the water. So Connecticut yeah Connecticut Beach. Very accessible. Beautiful. Oh it's a nice area. It's pretty actually. It's actually the

village of Niantic is actually technically inside East Lyme which we did years ago. The East Lyme episode which that was like rural East Lyme like on the other side ago, the East Lime episode, which that was like rural East Lime, like on the other side. So where are the diseases from? Yeah, this is this is a different area here. So this town population three thousand two hundred and forty. So it's like a little it's a little village is what it is. It's kind of a pretty little place. Median household income here. Seventy two thousand nine hundred eighty six dollars dollars they're doing great so yeah doing better than

the national average and median home cost also more expensive though 387 900 for that which is well above which also you're right by the water so right basically if you want to live by water it costs money that's the way it works so quick history of this town um not much of a history but because we talked about east line before but it's on the long island sound like we said so the millstone nuclear power plant is visible on the bay's eastern horizon line so you can go for a nice romantic stroll on the beach and hold your sweetheart's hand really and gaze out upon it and say wow look at the the wonder of the nuclear power plant the millstone nuclear power plant is that a sunrise or just millstone glowing boy look

at that yeah uh i like how the sun sun is rising it looks nice and orange and pretty and then that's also orange over here for some reason having a meltdown you got a little green in the sunrise that's nice yeah that's what i like to see uh niantic was once famous for its niantic river scallops what i'm not eating anything that came out of the waters of connecticut first of all i'm not i'm not eating any any river food i'm not eating river scallops no i'll eat a salmon that goes in a river i'll eat a i'll eat a trout in a river maybe yeah they move scallops are just hanging out in the river i'm not doing that river scallops i didn't know that was a thing oh that sounds just that sounds like y'all want a river scallop and you'd be like no god is that like slang does that mean balls is that a slang

for some kind of balls like a mountain mountain oyster? Is that the same thing? A river scallop? Is that an East Coast goat ball? What are you trying to pull over on me, son of a bitch? River scallops. They're squirrels nuts. Yeah, something shit like that. Possum balls.

But the scallop population has been in decline for a number of years. I don't know, maybe from the nearby nuclear power plant possibly. Or someone's got a hell of an appetite. Oh, man, someone's real hungry for those river scallops. So here's some reviews of this town quickly. Okay. Here's five stars. They love it.

They love it. Niantic is a very small, quaint little town on the shoreline of Connecticut. It is a little more expensive to live there because it's directly on the water with multiple beach options and a gorgeous mile-long boardwalk along the beach where you can gaze upon the nuclear power plant you can't ever forget that part you just can't the power plant ruins everything it just ruins the view of every every time you're talking about the beach you gotta go oh well you can see the power plant out there yeah yeah, yeah. Here's five stars again. Niantic is an adorable, quaint little town in a nook of East Lyme. It's a nook. It's so quaint, it's in a nook, Jimmy.

Wow. That's quaint. How do you ruin Connecticut? You have Lyme that's disease, and then you have a nuclear power plant. Yep. There you go. come to the beach the worst part of connecticut man uh while the town is small the events diantic holds are larger than life oh we'll be the judge of that on things to do yeah we got you can judge how larger than

life these events are because they're not very large than life all right now here those are two five stars let's do the one star now uh here's a one star review this person very upset with this town completely pissed off one star niantic is a village not a town okay that's the first sentence listen right away fuck you okay since someone submitted our village as being the happiest in Connecticut a few years ago, our village is now ruined. Oh, goddamn. Instagram ruined another thing. Now it's not happy anymore. We are inundated with mind-boggling massive amounts of people and traffic in the spring and summer and fall that makes traveling down or near Main Street almost impossible.

Best to be avoided. The beaches are now overwhelmingly overcrowded. Prices have skyrocketed and the quality of life has plummeted. Oh, my God. Crime has noticeably increased while continuing vandalism and disrespect of our village. We even have registered sex offenders now that are drawn. Listen to the explanation of why all of a sudden there's registered sex offenders now that are drawn listen listen to the explanation of why they're all of a sudden there's registered sex offenders yeah okay we even have registered sex offenders

now that are drawn in by the herds of people with small children that flock there it's catnip, Jimmy. This is one that's so funny that Jimmy had to take his glasses off because they're fogging up and tears are flowing from his eyes. This is the same reaction I had minus the glasses at four o'clock in the morning last night reading this. I'm like, what? The herds of people with small children that flock there? I just picture a bunch of pesty guys around the around the edges just like hey kids how you doing constantly trying to wow who voted at the happiest place just somewhere on the internet not this person i'll tell you that holy shit i would not go into the water in the Niantic Bay. I wouldn't go in any of the water over here.

The neighboring nuclear power plant releases waste into the water and constantly tests the air around the beaches. A little radioactive discharge for the kitties. What? It's a very nice review there. I don't know how seriously to take that, though, because they're saying that, you know, this place is catnip for sex offenders because there's sex offenders out there with with a lollipop on a fishing pole. Oh, man. Fucking and clown makeup with a lot. But regular clothes, just clown face makeup with a lollipop on a fishing pole. The fishing pole, the fishing pole, by by the way is anchored in their zipper

that's where they put the base of it so things to do here besides fend off sex offenders with a stick besides that there is the this is the earth you know the greatest things that the person said here annual niantic outdoor art and craft show okay yeah um this is it's a there's a over 160 vendors painting sculptures carvings photographs pottery jewelry and other beautiful handmade items oh boy that's it oh and that's all they got that's the that's the festival oh and they have captain scott's lobster dock will be there as well selling food come look at the shit that we made and also have a lobster roll yeah and then there's the niantic bay oyster festival which i would absolutely get into that get into that let your stomach lead the way as

you enjoy local oyster vendors a variety of food vendors and beer from local breweries, plus live music and a kid's corner. Admission to the festival is free. It better be. There's going to be great bands there, you know, if the admission is free and you have to buy tickets for everything and the prices are weird. It's very strange. How big are those oysters?

I hope not as big as the ones in Seattle that we were eating. Jesus Christ. Those things are wow they were a mouthful knife and fork you do those were wild bites of peace holy shit and uh they also have the walsh waffle wagon will be there oh i think sounds sexual for some reason walsh waffle wagon sounds sexual too many w's yeah it sounds like there's going to be jizz involved and i don't like that that said let's talk about a murder after those world-class events that those person talked that person talked about let's do this jimmy let us talk about a man first okay let's talk about this man uh edward r sherman okay sherman here uh he is born in 1944. He's a very smart fellow.

Brainy. He is a member of Mensa, which is for high IQ people. I've heard of those people. Do that. Yep. So he's a member of that. Very smart guy.

He's got some problems, old Ed. Ed likes, Ed's a freak. I guess it wouldn't be a problem for him to be a little freaky on the sexual side, but he's got other issues that bleed into that.

That's not his issue. He's married briefly when he's like 17, 18 years old. He's in Chicago when he gets married, but the marriage is annulled after less than a month after Edward assaults the woman. Oh, Ed. Ed, he's like a teenager assaulting his bride fountain lady jesus that young i don't remember that in that song from the pulp fiction soundtrack it was a teenage wedding and ed punched her in the face i don't remember that part do you know usually the teenage weddings if they get annulled, it's just you recognize that this is stupid. Yeah, what did we do?

Oh, my God. We're married. Boy, did we make a mistake. You want me to have your last name? This is crazy. I got to do paperwork. This is nuts. Oh, fuck this, man.

I'm not doing it. Yeah. No, this is a quick annulment. He also, in the mid-'70s, he's going to get married again in 1968, late 1968. So, I mean, he's only 24 at that point. He's already had a marriage annulled due to domestic violence. He's also going to have a wife here named Ellen who he marries in 1968. She's three years younger than him.

Now, he also is apparently arrested in the mid-70s for choking a woman. Ed, what's the deal, buddy? I don't know. And the reason he's choking a woman who's not his wife, first of all, yeah, who are you choking? Not that you should choke your wife, obviously, but you're choking. Yeah, of course, if she's begging for it, that's a different story. But, you know, if she needs it to come, that's different. We're talking about an unwanted.

Just on the street? This is nuts. Well, I think it was one of his girlfriends because Ed and Ellen have a swinging kind of 70s marriage. They have a, oh, yeah, they do some wife swapping. They go to, like, sex clubs. Yeah, because, I mean, you you know out there it's a couple hours to new york you can come into new york there's some sex clubs you could do back in the day and you know 70s were disgusting it was one big waffle wagon back then you know what i mean

it was one giant waffle wagon the whole the whole decade just so batter as far as you can see you could wring it out of it you could actually like which i don't recommend so gross uh so yeah they would hook up with different people they would swap with couples they would do all whatever freaky 70s shit you can think of that people did when they were married in the 70s um they do have a daughter in 1973 oh they have a daughter um starting at about 75 or 76 though they start having a lot of problems ed and ellen now i don't know if that has to do with him being arrested for choking outside women i'm not sure because i don't know how i would explain that to the wife that's a tough one to explain to the wife you know what i mean why were you of the the addition of a baby certainly complicates things you put a

baby into the mix as well and maybe because ellen went it was going along with all the swinging stuff but who knows if once she had a baby she was like hey let's chill the fuck out for a while and he was like no i have to choke i have to choke some strange i just have to not sure really not um so they still do really well though in terms of like for all public appearances um she runs a graphics slash advertising business um she makes very good money he makes good money they you know they're they they do well materially uh definitely here um he also uh uh he you know he's doing well his uh he's a teacher at the local community college and then he has side businesses too so um they appeared to be everything looked great um they live near

the entrance to the point or the black point beach club and community which is a quiet exclusive section of town right on the shoreline so they're living a pretty idyllic life here you know sounds like minus the choking of for of strangers they're doing well uh they own ad graphics which is an advertising and design studio in east lime that's what the wife owns and he works there too sometimes and but ed is constantly even when they're not here's the thing. Ellen will do the wife swapping. She'll do sex parties. She'll do orgies. She'll do all the shit. She's a gamer, let's say.

She's definitely a gamer. Ed still fucks around, though, outside of this. That's not enough for him. How much is this appetite? Dude, to have that not be enough. What do you must think if you're Ellen? I let you i let you do all this crazy shit i you know i did this in front of you or when you know we've been doing all this weird stuff and whatever it's it's fine and now that's not even enough you have to fuck people i let you fuck people you have to do it behind my back too yeah that's crazy wow wow that is shitty um that's

a high sex drive too for christ's sake man it's extremely high that's i mean because they had a sex life and then on top of that they had one together with outsiders and then yeah he's got his own he's got his alone outside now for a while ellen didn't really seem to mind because she he would encourage her to have affairs as well yeah he'd be like yeah you find a guy too yeah go ahead i don't care. Feel guilty and shitty. Yeah. That way he can do what he wants to. She had affairs with about with at least three men that we know about where she had like, you know, she was seeing them for a while.

One of the men was their mutual friend. Yeah. Ed's fishing buddy, Len Fredrickson. Of course. Yeah, of course. So fuck Len. He's a nice guy. He baits a hook like nobody's business let me tell you something you really want to I recommend I've seen him seen him reel some big ones I recommend him is all I'm going to say I could bring in a

Marlin so yeah so she would do that on her own as well um his main squeeze on the side by the early 80s is a woman named Nancy Prescott. And they get so close that Ed knocks her up in about 1984. Stop it. Oh, yeah. She gets pregnant, which is, that's when. How are you? Oh. That's the stick in the spokes of the whole swinging lifestyle is when some outside, oh,

shit, now what do we do oh no this was all fun and games until oh no this is bad now we have other children involved god damn it not good so um she wanted nancy wanted ed to leave ellen and be with her so at the same time ellen is saying let's you know have let's redouble our relationship here and you know you can't be having yeah the him having knocking somebody up out of out of their marriage i think like woke her up to like hey hold on a minute here this is getting out of hand so by june 1985 here um he uh they're having a bit of a problem uh there she knows about the that uh you know nancy had a baby that's an issue obviously um she found ed in bed over at her house as well. He said he stopped seeing Nancy and then she went over and busted it and found them in bed

together. So that wasn't great. And at the same time Nancy is pregnant as well. Oh my god. Yeah. So this is all his third kid now. Yeah this is going to be his third kid. Not Nancy. Ellen's pregnant. I'm sorry.

Nancy already had the baby. Ellen his third kid. So now, or not Nancy. Ellen's pregnant. I'm sorry. Nancy already had the baby. Nancy already had the baby. Yeah. Ellen's pregnant now. So Ellen gets pregnant, too, in 1985. So now he's got the new baby. He's got like a 12-year-old. Existing child.

Yeah. He's got another one with his wife coming here. God. So now they had gotten in a huge fight, and she wanted to throw him out in June of 1985 when she caught him in bed with Nancy again. Right. And but then apparently after a while, he started telling his friends that she was just accept. Now she's she's accepted the affair, just that it's going to happen. Yeah. And, you know, there you go.

So it'll be fine. Yeah. This is after both women were were putting pressure to end the other relationships, obviously. Yeah. As one would divorce her and the other one saying you stop fucking her. Exactly. So Edward was juggling the two of them and all that. So she actually told during the June 85 fiasco when she was going to they were going to get a divorce. She had told Len Fredrickson, her old buddy there and his old buddy, that she had a good job. She had a graphic design business that she had a good job she had a graphic design business that she owned and ran um she'd get the house she'd get the kid and child

support so what the fuck why not i'll leave this fucking guy if he's not going to stop banging nancy for a member of menta he's pretty fucking dumb oh it's it gets dumber. Trust me. Yeah. So by August 1985, everything seems resolved. Okay. He is back home because he had moved out and shit. She packed up all his shit and told him to get out. But by July, he had come back to the house, was living there. And by all outside appearances, everything seems to be fine in the marriage. She's five months pregnant.

And he's living back at home, and everything's okay. That's by the 1st of August. She's five, five and a half months pregnant. So that's where we are. August 5th, 1985. It is Ed's 42nd birthday. Hey, happy birthday, Ed. Hey, Ed.

So Ed is about to go out on a fishing trip this day. He's decided the daughter is at an overnight camp. And so he's going to go on his fishing trip for his birthday with his buddies and all that kind of shit. So he says that from 430 to 630 p.m. that day, he and his wife, quote, cuddled on their bed and shared a chocolate chip milkshake. That was fucking involved. I was going to say, that's code. That's code for a specific sex act, I feel, right? Very specific sex act, chocolate chip.

We shared a chocolate chip milkshake, if you know what I mean. And the cop's like, I really don't. I don't know. A chocolate chip milkshake has a name and a job and a social security number. I have an idea of what that would be, and it's the grossest thing I could think of, and I don't want to describe it to you at all. I don't want to turn off the entire listenership, but that is, I can picture it. So everybody out there in the groups and such, guess what that might be.

You make up yours. Yeah, make up what a chocolate chip milkshake would be. I have my ideas. You have your ideas. Jimmy has his ideas. So he then leaves the house, he says, at 630 to run some errands before the trip. You got to pick some stuff up. It's like a four-day fishing trip.

You need ice and beer. Oh, you need more ice and more beer. More beer, maybe some extra line if you feel like actually fishing. One of the guys on the sailing trip is going to be Wayne LeBrun. He runs a hardware store in Niantic. And Ed came by the store between 930 and 10 a.m. that day earlier before the chocolate chip milkshake, quote unquote, on that day. On the way in, he chatted with Wayne's daughter, Heatherather who was helping out over high school vacation she's in there doing that um she said quote he looked a little nervous and his clothes weren't as neat

and perfect as they usually were it was unusual to see ed wearing a wrinkled shirt with sleeves rolled up but i mean it's the morning of that he's going on a sailing trip that night so like why would he be dressed up in the morning it's a sunday scummy now wait till he has salmon guts all over yeah sure it's a sunday at 10 a.m and he's planning on leaving that night for the fishing trip so why would he be all dressed up there'd be no reason for that church for christ's that's what i'm saying so he's like the church of fishing is where he's going church of jesus trout church of the long island sound actually he's going up to maine actually so oh yeah that's some good stuff up there so heather said she and ed frequently compared they would talk about movies all the time because i guess ed was a big movie buff and heather the teenager saw

like every movie so awesome they would talk about movies in the 80s in the 80s yeah because you're talking about videos and now there's rentals going on she said she recalled they were talking about the movie blackout that day and blackout had aired very recently just a few i think of about a week earlier on hbo it's uh we'll talk about the movie but it's a it first aired it was one of the first ones that hbo did where it was made by HBO Studios, and they released it on HBO for a weekend before the theatrical release. Beautiful. So they did that.

Yeah, so it was one of those. They were experimenting with that. This is in 85. It's a movie called Blackout. And in this movie, the thing is a guy kills his wife. I'll give you the plot. But he uses an air conditioner in a basement to confuse the time of death like the ice man you know freezing bodies and stuff like that so they talked about

that and uh she said that ed said did you see it and she said what he said the movie blackout and she said yeah did you and he said yeah and uh they said they both liked it they both said it was pretty good and that was it because it was a it was a big deal that this movie was coming out. So this is the description here. In the movie here, the bodies of a mother and her two young sons were found beaten with a baseball bat huddled together in the basement. And the basement was cold like a refrigerator because it was a basement with an air conditioner on. They had like a big air conditioner down there. because it was a basement with an air conditioner on.

They had like a big air conditioner down there. The detective in the movie told the reporters that the bodies had been there for about three days and an air conditioner had been turned on to slow decomposition and that was the whole point of the movie. Here's the cover of this movie, if you want to roll your chair over here. What the fuck is that? Yeah.

Yeah. That doesn't tell me what the movie's about. It's a leather gimp mask with the zipper three-quarter, two-thirds undone. He's got a very pointy knife, which has nothing to do with being beaten by a baseball bat. It's like black with the red with the black. It looks sexual. Yeah, American Horror Story. Yeah, it looks sexual and bloody at the blackout. It's very like, it looks sexual. Yeah, American horror story. Yeah, it looks sexual and bloody at the same time.

It really does. That does not sound like the description at all. No, that's what I mean. Not even close. And here's a couple of, it's got a 33% from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes here. Here's a couple of reviews of it from the time. With all of its twisting and squirming, Blackout manages to build up a steady stream of scary suspense.

The top flight cast, which also includes Michael Beck, gets maximum mileage out of the offbeat pursuit. And here's another one. Unremarkable. What the fuck that means? Unremarkable crime thriller is what the other guy said. There we go. Sounds pretty run-of-the-mill to me get mask sharp knife yeah i'm seeing what you're doing here i smell what you're cooking and i don't like it so um they said that uh they talked about before the trip ed called his friends and said he wanted to make their departure earlier that night

so can we leave earlier um his friend this is peterson now the guy who used to fuck his wife and all that len um he said quote he was getting anxious and i was getting anxious i'm all packed and ready to go and he said well let's get underway then like they were two of them were like well we're all packed it sucks when you're waiting to leave you know in may 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment.

While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit, but would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more. Every week, hosts Erin and Justin sit down to discuss a new case, covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those

close to the case to try to discover what happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. 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 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, Peterson picked Ed up at his home here, at Ed's home, about 7 o'clock. They went and got the rest of the places and set off for maine and peterson station wagon okay they said ed was quiet um he was listening to others joking and shit like that uh but they said that's how ed was he would listen all that kind of thing they get to the dock in maine about 2 a.m and uh and spent about six hours in a parking lot drinking coffee and waiting until morning until they could take the boat.

So they drove out there, even though they can't take the boat until 8. They drove out there in the middle of the night. And stayed up from 2 to 8. Just drank coffee in a parking lot. I kind of admire it. It's a very impressive feat, but that makes me so tired. Yes, very tired by the way it wasn't they were he was talking to len but len was uh len was uh not coming on the trip len isn't coming on the

trip roger peterson is coming on the trip so he's talking to len roger's the one going another peterson he's the guy that organized the trip and picked him up okay they also picked up henry mcduff and uh there now when they picked up henry mcduff and uh there now when they picked up henry mcduff on the way up there ed said do you mind if i come in and use your phone real quick okay to henry uh or yeah to mcduff and uh mcduff's wife kirsten was taught listen to this was talking to her mother-in-law on the kitchen phone so henry said hey can you can you cut the call off with my mom it gets better their daughter's name is kristin they they're kirsten and kristin stop it i swear to god it's too close

it's too close you can't do that no you really you really can't either you can name her kirsten after you if you really want to but you can't name her kristin if you're kirsten that's terrible never call your wife by her name ever again. You have to call her babe. Kay, Ma, anything. It's so hard to keep. Once you have like, once there's like a wife, if you throw a kid in the mix, maybe a couple of dogs, you do not know anybody's name anymore. No. I haven't gotten one of my dog's names right on the first try in at least a year.

At least. My kids couldn't be more opposite and i still call them each other's yes i call them the dog's names yeah so um uh anyway they're talking and so she does um kirsten the wife said the conversation with my mother-in-law was very important and i didn't want to get off the phone how important can a conversation with your mother-in-law on a sunday night really be what are you talking about seriously what are we doing is the is the nuke plant melting down you guys are trying to figure out a way to stop it what are we talking about the disease yeah what the fuck

she said i was very annoyed they're on their way out let him use the phone for five minutes who cares but whatever um but she hung up and passed the phone to Ed here. And she said he got on the phone. He was jabbering. And at the end of the call, she heard him say, see you soon. I love you. Take care. Okay.

Now, the youngest daughter, Kristen of the McDuff's, she also remembers Ed's call. And she said that she was mad, too, too quote because i asked my mother first if i could use the phone she was she was eight years old at the time uh she said and back then the first one who asked could use it unless you're unless you're eight and an adult needs it okay because nothing you have to talk about is important nothing who are you calling for what shut your mouth everything important that happens to you goes through me at this point in time like if it's a we gotta you making a doctor's appointment nope i do that what are you doing he's trading stocks then shut

the fuck up you want to talk to grandma she's already on the phone like i don't know what to tell you but you don't need to use the phone at eight for very much. You just don't. Mr. Ed, I'm sorry. I have to make a call about this frozen orange juice. Yeah. So Ed talks on the phone with his wife here, with Ellen, and he said he needed her to do something that he forgot to do, so that's why he had to call her on the way out. Oh, make sure to turn this off or turn that on or whatever the fuck it was so um now on uh the next day here um over the next couple days

he's out on the fishing trip and he tries to call his house tries to call many times whenever they can uh get to a phone he tries to call and he can't reach her but and he's trying to get her to he needs her to disconnect a boat battery and um he so he's got to get a hold of her to do this because he's like oh if you don't the trickle charger yeah yeah put it on a tender or whatever otherwise it's going to be dead next time you go to use it so um he couldn't reach her he couldn't reach her so the next day he calls barbara barbara lavallee who is a friend of ellen's and he says, hey, Barbara, I can't get a hold of Ellen for a couple days now. I need her to do this, and I don't know what's going on.

Would you mind going over there and just making sure everything's okay? You know, whatever. So she goes to the house and finds some suspicious shit. She goes to knock on the door and then goes to open it because they don't lock their door there. So you go to open it. Usually you knock and then you open it and you go ellen hi i'm here um she doesn't answer and the door's locked so that's weird um the air conditioner's running and the lights are on it's may it's normal for the air conditioner the lights are on in the house she said the garbage was out of place i don't know what that's about the dog wasn't put away the dog

was wandering the house so normally if the dog's only wandering if they're around otherwise they put them in a kennel or whatever so yeah that's the trash is out of place that's there you go um she became super worried and she called len frederickson she didn't want to go into the house because she couldn't get in and so she called len frickson and said, Len, would you come over here and, you know, check this out? So Len agrees that things are a little weird. He breaks into the house, finds a way to break in and bust into the house and is looking around and finally heads down to the bedroom. And he finds Ellen down there. She is there uh but she is

extremely dead and uh she's naked and dead oh jesus yes uh it's pretty rough too it's a rough scene um i have pictures i obviously i'm not going to post them on social media because that would be really gross but i can show them to you afterwards if you want but i don't want to do it during the show because you're going to get i don't know you're not going to like it's it's a lot um yeah it's a lot the neck pictures are rough oh i can't look at those she's been strangled and it's it's really rough looking so um yeah uh he he finds her the phone rings as he's talking to her he answers the phone for some reason may as well talks on the phone yeah talks on the phone for a minute might as well disturb the crime scene a bit

um and then after a few minutes he calls his wife and tells her to call the police dude you're on the phone you're on just 9-. You know, operator, fucking police, something. There's a million ways to do it if you don't know the number. Who called that he answered? It was just, was it? Just some random. Was it a market or something? Yeah, who knows, some random person.

Oh, I guess, is Ellen there? Sort of, you know, kind of. I got to make a phone call to my wife. Indisposed would be an understatement, let's just say. Yeah. So he said it was extremely cold when he found her in the room here um so he went outside and he waited for the police after that now when he leaves he leaves the door open to the bedroom it was closed he leaves it open and lets

the cool air out because the rest of the house is hot and they have like a you know a room unit yeah yeah one of those so uh this changes the temperature of the bedroom a lot because it was a hot humid day they said so um police arrive lens outside crying when they find him out there so the uh medical examiner doesn't get there till 65757 the next morning. This was 8.40 at night. Holy. That's a long time. 10 hours? 10 hours before they can get somebody to take a look at this person here,

other than a police officer. So during this also, there was no, by the detectives, no notation of the setting on the air conditioner by the investigators, nor was the temperature of the room documented or anything like that. So here's the medical examiner's notes. Okay. Uh, when they entered the room, Ellen Sherman lay nude and supine on her bed. Her left leg was straight. The right one was bent at the knee. There was a scrape on one side of her neck, ligature marks on the other, a small amount

of bodily fluid had drained from her mouth. Her tongue was protruding and dry. Ellen was 39 years old and pregnant. She wore a yellow bracelet inscribed, quote, to the world's best partner. Oh, my. And she'd been strangled twice. Really? Yes. That's the thing where they're like, that's interesting.

No injuries consistent with defense wounds, by the way. No broken nail. nothing under the fingers, no fighting back whatsoever, which is strange as well. So during the autopsy, they found bleeding in her neck muscles and cartilage fractured beneath the larynx. So, you know, under there. She'd probably been strangled once by hand and once with something like a piece of clothing, which they're calling a ligature. Obviously, they turn something into a ligature and the medical examiner will say, quote, properly, properly applied. Manual strangulation is more efficient. Manually, certain nerves in the neck can be pressed, causing almost instant cardiac arrest.

A ligature doesn't hit the nerves. Neither a manual nor ligature strangulation cuts off all the airflow. The person dies from being restricted of flow of blood to the brain, not airflow. So now when the detectives are looking at it, they said that the room wasn't frigid when they were in there. It was at normal summer temperature, and the paramedics also didn't keep the doors closed nobody did they just left the door open and everybody was traipsing in and out and leaving the outside doors open you know fucking up the crime scene in general basically is that generally what strangulation

does is cuts off blood flow to the brain yeah it's not oxygen no no no no because you'd have to crush them i mean your windpipe's in there i mean you really gotta like i think the common belief is that it's stopping you of breathing yeah yeah that's the thing it's a common belief but it's not it's the actual killing of the brain it's a sleeper hold but for you know for realsies so i think i just learned that i definitely did yeah yeah i mean you're not breathing well also if someone's choking right yeah that's not the thing but that's not what's you can get a little bit yeah right right yeah i think that's what everybody believes yeah yeah because it's you say someone you're choking someone right that's like cutting off air supply

but it's it's different so that's crazy So the detectives examining the scene here, the forensic laboratory, they analyzed physical evidence. All the latent fingerprints found in the house belonged to either the three members of the Sherman family who lived there and Len who was in the house anyway. So that's obvious. Trace materials removed from the clothing that was in Ellen's bedroom had no association could be made with anyone other than the Shermans. Laboratory tests on the underwear that they found on the bed next to her showed no traces of semen or blood for seriological or DNA analysis. An examination of the bed sheet did reveal the presence of numerous body fluid stains all over the sheet but no blood stains were noted change your fucking sheets dude some of these body fluid stains were deposited on top of each other so this is boy jizz on jizz on jizz this is a club sandwich of jizz over here

this is a semen club sandwich and i don't like it this is really taking you through the gamut of emotions today there's a lot happening today holy shit with multiple applications in several areas applications like it was put on with a brush like someone came in with it like someone came in with one of those fucking air sprayers yeah and somebody came in with a tube of it somebody caulked the edges with it oh that's disgusting um the majority the majority of the stains contain semen oh this ed has so much semen in him it's just he's got to get it out it's so much i can't imagine does he just love a limp dick blowjob he's gotta always be sucked and fucked always um the analysis

on it indicated that the semen was consistent with coming from ed so they're looking at that um the um thing that they're talking about the the one detective, Malchick, says that the air conditioner, he said, I thought it was unusual that a body would be left in a bedroom with the air conditioner turned up and the door closed. Yeah. It's like, that was weird. So they said maybe whoever did this turned the air conditioner up to slow the rate of decomposition. And by the way, Blackout aired four days before this. Oh, is that right yeah he noticed the machine was at uh was turned to not even the top but toward three quarters of the way up it was

at seven and a half or no eight was the coldest this was at seven and a half almost the tip top almost the tip top so that's an interesting thing now they're trying to figure out what she was strangled with the second time. The ligature. What was it? First, they think it's a bra. So they try to figure out if that fits in with the patterns and everything. But they decide it's not the bra.

So Dr. Henry Lee, who you might remember from the OJ trial and everything, famous for testifying and his testimony never meaning shit when he's testifying for the defense. Because he's fucked up so many times that they just bring it up all the times he's fucked up and it doesn't matter anymore. He fucks up a lot. He's the guy who tries to do the footprint shit at the OJ scene and like, yeah, he's the only guy in the world that sees a footprint. There's a lot there. So he had his own TV show for a little while. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's Colorado Springs. This is pretty cool what he does here, though. It's weird, but cool. He decided that he thought the ligature was a torn pair of Ellen's blue underwear. So he said someone ripped them from her waist and twisted them around her neck and strangled her with her own elastic of her own underwear. Oh, Jesus. her neck and strangled her with her own elastic of her own underwear oh jesus so he tested this theory by repeatedly laundering identical identical panties to match the worn wornness

of these panties just doing more laundry again just this one pair of panties i just picture him sitting in front of a dryer as it tumbles and watching one pair of panties or 30 pairs yeah a whole bunch of them one pair pair. It's one pair. You only did one? One pair to launder them to get it right. And a volunteer wore the laundered panties while another officer tore them away with one hand. What the fuck is this experiment? Imagine this sexual assault experiment in a lab setting.

This happened in a laboratory. Now, rip her panties off there we go all right now we got something now strangle her with him no choke her a little more just yeah no touch her touch her boob yeah there we go now we're talking wait i need to know exactly how this happened come here come, come here. Come here a minute. This is disturbing. So, yeah, this is fucking wild. The police release a statement at this time. There's no suspects. We don't know what we're doing here.

You know, who the fuck knows. Henry Lee's doing weird shit. Henry Lee's doing weird shit. Len is the major suspect at the time. Yeah. They figure, because he found the body. He left the door open, and his fingerprints were there. Licking and touching everything, yeah.

But he was with people around that the whole time, so that makes no sense. So police fly out to Ed. This is about 12 hours after the body's found. Police are going to fly toward Cape Cod, and Ed and his friends are waiting at a Coast Guard station. They've been notified that this is, you know, all that kind of shit. They said there's an open house at the Coast Guard offices and they're too crowded. So Malchuk took Ed to the Hyannis police station to talk. He gave him his rights, obviously.

And Ed or the detective said, I told him I believed he was involved in the murder of his wife. I didn't necessarily feel that way. I didn't feel one way or another. It was an interviewing technique. So he's possibly the family member of a of his wife and unborn child who've been murdered in his home. Well, he went on a fishing trip on his birthday. And your first thought was, I'll accuse him of it it even though i don't think he did it yet i'll accuse him of it which is wow i want to see how this works wow imagine if that's you and you didn't

kill your wife and they're like i think you did i'd be fucking i'd be choking him with his own underwear by that point fuck you motherfucker how's that i'll strangle you i'm gonna rip your underwear off yeah you motherfucker are you kidding me um so he said that um ed said well maybe i should have a lawyer which again is not the way to get a conversation out of a guy either other than to go fuck you so especially somebody smart someone dumb you could say that because they might want to argue somebody smart's gonna go maybe i should have a lawyer right and um but then he said that's all right fine he changed his mind and agreed to fly back to connecticut and take a polygraph really yes uh they questioned his sailing mates about

what they'd seen and all that kind of thing um you know they said ed was very emotional his friends when he heard about the murder there um You know, they said the one thing they said when Peterson had picked him up from his house, he was going to go in and say hi to Ellen. And I guess Ed said, oh, no, she's not dressed. So you can't come in. And Peterson said that was weird. Ellen usually wished us a good trip and a safe trip and, you know, would like wave at the door and they'd say hi and she'd see her every time. So he goes, I don't remember that, her not coming out. That was really weird.

So he says, because dinner's going to come up in a big way in terms of what's in her stomach, Ed says that he knew his wife didn't eat dinner before he left that evening. So they asked him if his wife went downstairs and took a shower. He said no. And so they asked him if his wife went downstairs and took a shower. He said no. Now, they say that she had linguine with clams, undigested linguine and red clam sauce in her stomach, which is a fine last meal, a very fine choice for a last meal. So, yeah, they're going to talk about that.

The they do the polygraph here. Ed submits to the lie detector. The malcheck, the detect polygraph here. Ed submits to the lie detector. The malcheck the detective's watching here. So Ed acknowledges in the lie detector that his marriage was chaotic. He admitted his longstanding affair with Nancy Prescott. He said that Ellen had known that he fathered Nancy's child, Rachel. I guess his child, too. He said he was also the father of an unborn boy, the boy who Ellen was carrying at the time. They found out it was a boy. He said that, yes, he had succumbed to Ellen's persistent pleas for another baby on the condition that she would allow him to continue seeing Nancy.

So I'll get you pregnant if I can still fuck my girlfriend. What? Which is a very strange deal to make with your wife. Maybe he is a genius. That's, yeah. I don't know how he figured that out. How do you even swing that? But who would even want that?

That's some shit right there. He told the polygraph operator his relationship with Nancy had soured, and he found himself kind of in a tug of war between the two of them, because they're both like, you you know kids so he told the polygraph operator that he moved out of the house after a quarrel with his wife in june and then he moved back again promising to give nancy up but despite that promise he definitely fucked nancy on july 31st which was you know a couple days before this happened um they asked him, did he kill his wife? And he said no.

The results come up inconclusive. Well, that's not good. Which happens all the time. And they asked him to take it again, and his lawyer said, no, you're not taking another fucking polygraph. You took it once. You had your fucking fun. That's it now.

So, yeah, he said he last saw his wife during the polygraph afternoon of August 2nd. Oh, that was a Friday, not a Sunday, August 2nd. Sunday is when she was found. I apologize. And he said he was preparing to leave. He was sitting on her bed in her underwear, on the bed in her underwear when he left. That's what he said. And so they said, could he have done it?

Well, they said that maybe he could have because this is crazy. The first the medical examiner says the best that the best that I recall was that the person who opened the door said that it was like opening the door to a refrigerator. So the medical examiner and Henry Lee later on decide that by it felt like a refrigerator in there, quote unquote, he must mean it was 40 degrees. Like because that's what a refrigerator is. OK. Yeah. OK. Yes.

We're going to between 7 a.m thursday and 7 a.m saturday so while ed was home before he left for the fishing trip if based on it being 40 degrees in the room right that's literally the test based on 40 degrees being the the set okay now they said if it was right it meant that ed had the opportunity to kill his wife before leaving but 40 degrees dude is that's fucking crazy um to get a room to 40 you can't get a room to 40 degrees unless it's 20 degrees outside you're not getting the room and you open the windows and turn the air conditioning on you're not getting a room to 40 fucking degrees or it's a hotel room in the center of the fucking building. Even then, if you have a window air conditioning unit and it's 80 degrees outside and humid,

it's never going to get below 65 in there. I promise you that because I live in fucking the Northeast and have air conditioning units like that. It doesn't get fucking colder than that. That's it. It's as cold as you can get it so they said um on august 5th the state police surrendered the custody of the sherman residence back to ed and he returned home so on august 9th the state police came back and searched it again um they seize a container of linguine and a container of red clam sauce from the refrigerator.

All right. Yeah, that's going to be interesting later, too, that they bring that up. So they said that the containers of linguine and clam sauce were seized a week after the death and four days after the police surrendered the custody back. So who knows when that linguine and clams were in there? Ed could have had linguineine made it fucking last night. I have no idea. So no idea at the funeral. Ed has to do the funeral here.

And, you know, so they go to Long Island, have a funeral out there. And she said that Ed was just a friend said Ed was just walking around and seemed indifferent. The mother, his mother-in-law said that Ed told her, if it will help you any, I didn't do it. Ed, what are you doing? That's fucking wild. Let's not talk about the cause. Let's just talk about how we're missing her.

Yeah. Barbara LaVallee, the woman who was at the house originally and called Len to find the body, Ellen's best friend, said Ed never spoke with her until mid to late August when he finally called her and said that, you know, and she said he didn't even express any grief. She said he had a lot of odd questions. Quote, first thing he wanted to know was, you know, what the police said to me.

He told me that he thought there had been somebody else in the house and he didn't know what the police would find. He asked me several things about what the police had quizzed me about. He asked me if the police had found any fingerprints. So he's going around asking for, that's not good when people are trying to gather intel. What info do you guys have on this? Yeah. Fredrickson and LaValle, the two people who found her, said that they became suspicious of Ed and said, I didn't want anything to do with Ed, is what the barber said there.

So Ellen also, they found, had a book she was writing. She died. She was writing a murder mystery. Oh, what? On a 1985 family computer. She was writing that. She was a big mystery buff. She was a member of a murder mystery club.

She liked murder shit. She would have been a fan of our show, I think, honestly. She would have loved us. She would have loved this show. So writing a novel was her big ambition. They don't make the manuscript public, but they say Ellen's plot includes another woman and a locked house. So there's all this type of shit. And so, yeah, it's fucking ridiculous.

So Nancy Prescott here, it's ridiculous. They try to connect this to something. Nancy Prescott, he said that she spoke with Ed about his wife's death many times. They resumed seeing each other after Ellen's death as well. What? Oh, yeah. Oh, within the next year, they'll buy a house together. Oh, my God.

He and Nancy to live with their daughter, Rachel. Yeah. Wow. a house together oh my god he and nancy um to live with their daughter rachel yeah wow and uh nancy's son from a previous marriage and ed and ellen's daughter jessica so oh my god one big happy family um so that's interesting uh 1987 years go by jimmy two years they just don't know what to do um they uh peterson the one peterson he stayed the one who dropped him who drove him the other one's frederickson oh frederickson peterson frederickson why do i that's the same to me it's the sun it's the sun yeah it's so fun it's the sun damn it doesn't matter one one was on the trip one found the body so right they this guy peterson not the guy who found the body stayed friends with ed Ed. They played racquetball on Saturday mornings.

And yeah, he said that they were eating breakfast and Ed was bringing up his wife's death like two years later, talking about it, asking questions. So as time passes, the detective Malchick retires from the state police, opens up a private investigator business and all that kind of shit. retires from the state police opens up a private investigator business and all that kind of shit um barbara lavallee the best friend moved to louisiana became a country western singer performing under the name barbie lane never heard of you you're doing great this is this is ridiculous this sounds like the end of animal house like where we're putting up the things of where people went a country western singer named barbie lane that's what her friend turned into what are you kidding me who the fuck does that um frederick didn't let this go though right this is one that he has to fucking solve frederickson moved to florida we'll find out and so did ellen's mother they moved to florida as well

so um ed lives with nancy prescott who the way, he gets in trouble for hitting her at some point in the mid 80s here or late 80s when they're living together. But they stay together. 1990, New London, New London County State Attorney's Office here. They asked Dr. Henry Lee to take in the scientists to take another peek at this bad boy and see what they could find find and maybe go over everything with a fine tooth comb henry could you rip another pair of panties off a chick and solve this because we're that was pretty hot number one number two no i'm into

weird shit sorry no i'm sorry bob i don't know so you're not into that that's what i'm into you got a problem you're fucking shaming my shit man so uh they said the food residues found in ellen's stomach were identified as intact linguine clam and tomato sauce she had linguine clam and tomato sauce for lunch on friday with three of her co-workers they found out five years later oh god yes oh and by the way when blackout aired on tv ed was out to dinner with with ellen no with ellen they have a receipt from dinner at that time but who knows if he taped it we don't know if he taped it so um let's see experiments were conducted to determine whether the digestion of rate of the linguine with clam sauce which was found to take approximately four hours to complete digestion this findings

inconsistent with the original determined time of death. So a review of the crime scene videotape was carried out also, and a view of the air conditioner was shown on the tape. The temperature setting on the air conditioner was at high, and ice residue could be seen covering the vent, which means it's about to freeze over and not work well. It's going to quit. So they said an estimate was made by conducting experiments with living volunteers who ate pasta with clam sauce

and regurgitated some of their stomach contents until all the pasta was gone from their stomach. What is happening? Henry Lee is having people rip panties off a woman and also vomit in cups. Having people eat a bunch of

linguine and then vomit at different intervals. This is bonkers henry lee wow together you holy shit this is weird using the average time to empty the stomach he was able to provide an independent estimate of the time between eating lunch and the time of death the estimate based on digestion was within the revised time so he could have killed her before he left is what they're saying uh there so they said well we fixed it it's all good all fits now so um now another thing that comes up this comes out and some of the players the friends hear about this oh they they said that now it's you know physically possible that ed could have done it in the time

period so now remember kristin the eight-year-old who was pissed off she couldn't use the phone that son of a bitch she comes forward in june of 1990 she was riding in her father's car and they were talking about the murder for some reason a five-year-old murder with your 13-year-old daughter that was eight when it happened and kristin said yeah i remember that a detective came and talked to us i don't remember his name uh blah blah blah she said um she said i said i did but he didn't seem oh they said do you have any information she said i said i did but he didn't seem too interested in talking to the kid wasn't listening to her even though she said she had information turns out she had been in the living room listening to her mother on the phone talk to her grandmother she was was spying on the extension because she wanted to use the phone.

So she was seeing if it was going to wrap up soon. So when she stayed on it, and so she overheard Ed using the phone. She was on the other extension. She said, because it was her turn next, so she was there. She figured she'd wait in line. So when her mom hung up, she went up to the parents' room and picked up the extension to hear when he this guy would finish. The thing is, she said that, quote, he was talking to a ringing phone.

He was like, yeah, honey. So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She wasn't there. The little girl said the little girl said it was ringing the whole time. She said he was talking to a ringing phone and I thought it was strange. So I just kept listening. He was saying, if you need anything anything go to the neighbors. He said I have to go. Everybody is leaving.

So she thinks she listened to about three quarters of the conversation. She said he said I love you too as if somebody had said I love you to him. She said I love you too. So they said the father said can I tell the police this and she said yeah tell the police. So August

31st 1990 is when they arrest Ed here. They arrest him at trial, obviously. This is years later, number one, and based on some pretty specious calculations. And your star witness is a 13-year-old who was eight at the time that may or may not have heard this. We don't know what she heard. An eight-year-old and somebody saying that it feels cold as a refrigerator. That's what you're basing this on.

Literally, that's what you're basing this on. And Henry Lee's weird experiment. Henry Lee's strange, sexual, weird puking. You know he gets off on puking, too. That's what he's into. It seems like it, yeah. Yeah, throw it up a little more. Oh, yeah. When there's little pieces of into. It seems like it, yeah. He's into, yeah, throw it up a little more. Oh, yeah.

When there's little pieces of linguine in it, it turns me on. Chocolate chip milkshakes. This has been a disgusting episode. So they said that they talk about the rigidity of rigor and how it can last longer or sooner and the fact that the room was very cold and all of that kind of shit. So the defense says that the state's theory of guilt is premised on physically impossible facts and conclusions regarding the time of death. They assert, first of all, the unrebutted and unchallenged testimony establishes that it was mechanically. They put up a mechanic, an air conditioner guy, bring in an HVAC guy,

and he determined that it was mechanically impossible for an air conditioner similar to the one in the bedroom to lower a room's temperature below about 70 degrees if the temperature was 80 degrees outside, which is the fact. He maintains that after two and a half days, the time claimed by the state between the time of death and the autopsy, also, they said that the fetus would be in a more advanced condition of maceration than it was.

Oh. The mother's body would start to, you know. Yeah. So they said, though, so that was two different things there. Ed testifies, talks about his marriage and all that kind of shit. Jury didn't like that.

I'm sure. He had to be honest about all that stuff because it's already in his interviews with the police. So they didn't like that at all. In the paper, they said that many thought that Sherman was intelligent but was well-rehearsed and arrogant on the stand. Not good at all. Cross-examination here, they kept him on the stand for like eight all uh cross-examination here they kept him on the stage on the stand for like eight days of cross-examination oh yeah torture oh yeah they went through for a whole day they went through the contents of his refrigerator

that's fucking wild for like hours rip his pubes out one by one in front of everybody talking horrible about a half gallon of low-fat milk a stick of butter pepto-bismol all this type of shit your expired ketchup you son of a bitch you fucking lazy bastard mustard does expire yes it does about a six pack of cores that was in there and all this type of shit. So during cross-examination, here's what happens, by the way, that they bring up. Right after this all happened, a couple days, two days later, he flew to St. Louis to see Nancy, to meet up with Nancy. You can't do that, man. So the prosecutor said, so tell us your wife is bleeding and goes to the hot and you go and goes to the hospital and you buy an airline ticket to go to Illinois or St. Louis that same day.

Do you have enough sympathy for your wife on Tuesday to say, well, maybe I better keep away from the woman whom I'm having an affair with for a while to try to, you know, make this look better. So he tries a literary reference. This is his big thing. Because he's a man. Yeah. He's referring to Paradise Lost by Milton there there and he mistakenly does it though he gives a wrong reference saying he was in purgatory because of the lengthy questioning and his attorney um actually referred to i said actually it's dante's defined comedy is what you're talking about and they fucking sure he

didn't like that um he tells the court wife accepted the affair things were going just swell everything was fine so uh they they kept him on the on the stand for so long uh other attorneys said that they've never seen a person on the stand for nine days getting fucking a cross exam yeah um they had their own experts. Like I said, they had the engineer about the air conditioning. They also had a guy who was – that they did not allow to testify to the court, who was a forensic guy who was talking about the baby and how if Ellen had actually died on Friday, regardless of the temperature of the room, the baby would be in a much greater state of maceration than it was. So then he was. So in the closing, the prosecutor says he knew he couldn't have Nancy Prescott and his wife, Ellen.

He couldn't carry on his lifestyle. Right. Yeah. Because they said Ellen said you can have your sailboat and your fucking, you know, and your girlfriend and that's all you're going to get. You can fuck off. So he is found guilty of murder guilty yes uh found guilty of murder uh during sentencing ed still won't admit he did it really oh no no he said quote she deserved a better life

than the one she shared with me for that i will be eternally sorry um then the murder dog nope then turns to the 19 year old at the time daughter, Jessica, and says how much she reminded him of her mother and all that, which is terrible. And he said, you've lost your mother, your brother, who was never born, and now your father. Won't admit to the murder. The judge says, he's got a little more to say. He says, this is a particularly brutal offense both the hands-on strangulation of the young pregnant woman and the use of a ligature um and says you sir yeah may fuck off 50 years in prison for you the maximum was 60 i don't know what you have to do to get

the maximum but i guess you gotta rape in two fuck They said the court considers the recidivism rate high here. So the 50 year sentence was the same given to a man who was found guilty of killing his wife and putting her through a wood chipper a couple of years ago. Oh, shit. Same thing. They do set a $350,000 appeal bond. So if he can get a fucking bond up, he can stay free through through appeal which is insane for a fucking murder case where you've been sentenced to 50 years marked his wife jesus um so some jurors believed testimony they said that some might have the jurors went back and forth they were confused

a lot of them on it but they ended up siding there and then during the appeal at appeals and it is denied uh on prosecutorial misconduct and all sorts of shit like that then he appeals again during this appeal january 1996 ed dies of a heart attack in prison so didn't really matter anyway dead ed's dead ed's dead baby's dead. So there you go. He's dead. That's that. What a fucking ride. That is Niantic in Connecticut, everybody. Holy shit.

There's not a theme park in the world that builds a roller coaster like that one. Jesus. Everybody out there, discuss amongst yourselves on social media and shit, because there is so much to talk about. Holy shit. If you love that story you love the show get on whatever app you're listening on and give us five stars it does help a lot helps drive us up the chart so thank you for doing that follow us on social media we are at small town

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shit and new bonus shit two new bonus shits every every other week one crime and sports one small town murder you have access to it all this week what you are going to get is personal ads for crime and sports people in the newspapers in the 80s people like ed swingers looking for extras looking for a third people like that how do they sell each other how do you date in the 80s we'll find out weirdly through the newspaper so check all that out and then for uh small town murder we're going to dip back into the Serial Killer Childhood series. And we're going to talk a lot about the BTK Killer Childhood. Or BTK, because killer is redundant there. BTK's childhood, a lot of it in his own words, which is so creepy.

Hearing about him wanting to snuggle with his mom and shit is extra creepy. So you definitely want to hear that. That's patreon.com slash crime in sports and of course you'll get that shout out at the end of the regular show where jimmy will absolutely fuck your name up unrecognizably but it'll be you'll enjoy it so that said keep coming back buy your tickets come see us and obviously come see us always and listen to crime and sports if you're not listening to Crime and Sports because it's fucking good, god damn it. So check it out.

We're in the midst of a trilogy. It's an insane crime trilogy. So check that out and keep coming back and seeing us each and every week. And until next week, everybody, it has been our pleasure. Bye. It has been our pleasure. Bye! Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media would have to come to the conclusion that I killed my wife. Hi, my name is Zach Stewart-Pontier. I'm one of the filmmakers behind The Jinx, and I'm excited to bring you The Official Jinx Podcast. We'll be revisiting all six episodes of Part 1 and watching along with Part 2 as it airs on Max,

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