Small Town Murder - #86 - The Problem Here Is... in Stanford, Montana
Episode Date: September 20, 2018This week, in Stanford, Montana, a family falls apart around the treatment of an elderly stepfather, until murder seems like the only solution. The crime was just plain vicious, and the perpe...trators were some of the last people you'd expect to do such a thing... until you find out a little more about them. Not to mention the criminal justice system failing so completely, in this case, that you sort of root for a murderer. It's a wild ride!! Along the way, we find out that people used to throw valuable gems in the garbage, how someone can explain being awoken by a smoke alarm with no battery, and just how bad a lawyer has to be before you prefer the murderer!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman New episodes every Thursday!!Please subscribe, rate, and review!Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!Head to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder!For merchandise: crimeinsports.threadless.comCheck out James and Jimmie's other show: Crime in Sports Follow us on social media!Facebook: facebook.com/smalltownpodInstagram: instagram.com/smalltownmurderTwitter: twitter.com/MurderSmall Contact the show: crimeinsports@gmail.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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.
happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week in Stanford, Montana,
family troubles and a trailer park fire causes some unlikely people to be put on trial.
Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello and welcome back to Small Town Murder.
Yay!
Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.
My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host.
I am Jimmy Westman.
Thank you, folks, so much for joining us this week.
My goodness, are we excited?
Oh, boy.
Oh, we're always excited.
And we're so excited we use old-timey phrases such as,
My goodness! Yes. That's how excited we are, because so excited we use old-timey phrases such as, my goodness.
Yes.
That's how excited we are.
Because we don't want to curse in the first 30 seconds.
Why do that?
Why ruin this?
Yeah, we're going to save it for later.
You know what I mean?
So let's get into this.
We have a doozy.
Why turn people off right away?
We have a doozy of a weird one this week.
And we've been finding some crazy ones lately.
And this is right along with it.
We're going to the middle of nowhere.
This is like true some small town shit here.
Some small town stuff goes on, and this is going to be a fun one.
Not fun for some people involved in it, but I think we'll get there.
Don't worry about it.
Thank you, everybody, this week for your reviews on Apple Podcasts or iTunes.
Aren't those huge?
They're so big.
They really are.
They really are.
Thank you guys so much, because they drive us up the charts and that really does make
a huge difference business wise.
And when they see the amount of iTunes reviews that you have, they go, hey, those listeners
are engaged.
Right.
They'll they'll do shit that they're told.
Therefore, or asked or asked, but mainly told, honestly told.
And thank you for doing it.
You tell us to produce a goddamn show every week and we do it.
So you goddamn give us a review and you do it.
So thank you.
We appreciate that very much.
If you haven't, get on there.
Five stars.
Doesn't matter what you say.
It's not for our ego.
Really doesn't matter.
Tell us what you had for dinner last night and we'll maybe take it under consideration
for tonight's meals for us.
It's possible.
You never know.
Especially if it was Blue Apron.
It could have.
Oh, that Blue Apron is so good.
Oh, it's delicious.
You do.
You cook it up well, Jimmy. It could have. Oh, that Blue Apron is so good. Oh, it's delicious. You do. You cook it up well, Jimmy.
And thank you guys for all that.
And thank you most of all to our special, special people, our long list of producers this week.
Thank you guys so much for everything you guys do.
And if you want to become one of these special people that are close and near and dear to our hearts,
and hopefully to yours, too, because they keep the show going.
It's definitely an option.
You can do that by going over to patreon.com slash crime in sports, which is the name of our other show that you should be listening to.
If you're not, you're missing out.
And I don't know what you're doing.
You're blowing it.
You're blowing it.
Or you can go over to PayPal and use our email address, which is crime and sports at gmail.com.
And you can make a one time donation or you can save yourself the trouble of going to different sites and just go straight to shut up and give me murder.com where you can follow us on social media there's links to those
donation sites where you can do all of that and most of all though there is links to tickets yes
lots and lots of tickets to this uh falls tour so please get on there it's gonna be bananas it's
gonna be crazy uh houston october 5th you are first up houston people buy those
tickets it's that that house of blues right house of blues in houston so it's a beautiful it's a
it's a huge place so please please buy these tickets so you could hear it in our voices
we really need you to buy these tickets dallas let's go dallas the next night so help us
come drink bullet with me help us dominate texas basically i'm gonna wear cowboy boots yeah
help me find me do it help me find weed in texas i'm not gonna wear cowboy boots but uh i'm gonna
wear some badass tony llamas that's what i'm gonna wear i think i'm gonna go we can wear like a
world-class wrestling t-shirt maybe an ivory snap shirt that's what you should really do yeah that's
good i'm gonna dress like dave chapelle and his fucking you gotta have the texas flag somewhere
on you that's on your person i will tattoo it on my asshole oh well that's nice and you can show everyone
that that'll be a terrific night that's gonna be that's gonna be great for everybody everyone's
gonna be very excited about that and uh never mind all that we gotta get to the disclaimer here
it's very important uh this is a comedy podcast we must tell you that up front because some people
go into it
and they're just like oh it's like dateline no it's not and uh well it's honestly factually and
all that i think we're just as goddamn good or better than those shows damn it we try just as
we really try to make it as as intricate and everything like that as as as well done as a
show like that but then we put comedy into it also.
So all the facts are real.
Everything's real.
And then on top of that,
we make jokes because we're comedians
and that's what we do and we can't help it.
It's the same thing this show as me watching Dateline
when I pause it and go,
what the fuck?
Now this fucking,
are you serious?
Yeah, that's what it is.
That's what we're doing here.
So if that sounds good to you,
then you're going to like this.
You're in the right place.
I'm telling you guys that. We try our best not to make fun of or poke
jokes at the victims or the victims' families.
We're assholes. We're not scumbags.
That's true. And that's the fact of the matter.
That's how we do this. So if that sounds
good to you, welcome aboard.
If you think true crime and comedy should never
ever go together, then get the fuck
off the ship. This is a bad date.
And we should get the check fucking now.
And end this shit.
You look nothing like your photo.
Let's just say that and keep on moving.
Your snap emoji is bullshit.
And everybody out there, from your cars, from your cubicles, once again, if you're not in a conservative office that would frown upon this sort of thing, if you are, go into the bathroom stall and quietly make sure there's no one else in the bathroom
because this will sound really weird.
Grab a wad of toilet paper and jam it in your fucking mouth.
This will sound weird coming from a bathroom stall otherwise.
So give it to us now.
Shut up and give me murder.
Let's do this, everybody.
Let's go on a trip.
Jimmy, you ready?
I would love to.
Let's do this.
We are going far today.
Far.
We went from Tennessee last week, and we were in a small little town in Tennessee, the middle
of nowhere.
We're going once again to the goddamn middle of absolute nowhere.
This is the middle of nowhere, all the way to Montana.
Oh.
Our second time in Montana.
Last time we were Ovando, Montana.
That's right.
Wow, that was a long time ago.
That was one of the first
i think 15 episodes and a couple that got murdered in their house i think so yeah by the drifter the
garage the older couple yeah that was a town of 70 people right and this town not much bigger
it's these montana towns there's the big cities are not are like that's this big city so pretty
much it's nice for me because i can choose from murders from pretty much anywhere in the state because there's not a lot of big cities.
But this is Stanford, Montana, Stanford, not not Stanford, Connecticut, not Stanford College.
This is probably more people at Stanford College in this town.
There's more people in two classes in Stanford College than in this town and two lecture rooms.
There's more people.
Are you kidding me?
Probably some lecture rooms with lecture halls with more people. their football team's got more people than this town just about
if you include staff and the trainers and the guys who get the water and put the tape on people and
shit and all that marching band if you include hot dog sellers there's definitely like vendors and
shit so it's in central central montana okay this is dead center of a rectangle. Yeah. So there is nothing going on.
That's a good point.
You look all around you.
Yeah.
Oh, it's just a big, there's a little bit in the southwest of some whatever disputed
area with Idaho over there.
Sure.
But mostly it's a goddamn rectangle, a giant one, and this is just dead center of it.
Okay.
Bullseye.
Yeah.
It's an hour to Great Falls, about two hours and 45 minutes to Billings, two and a half
hours to Helena, which is the capital before you ask there.
I knew that.
And at least 15 hours to anywhere decent.
At least.
Fucking, I'm sorry.
At least.
The county it's in, this is the oddest named county.
It's Judith Basin County.
Judith Basin.
Judith Basin.
And it's about a basin.
Like an old lady claimed a
basin for herself like this is judith's basin you cocksuckers get the fuck a bunch of lousy
washing the clothes this is my this is my basin and they made a county out of it but this is
it's such barely a county like you that has no website and you click on things and it takes you
to like other counties they don't even have a jail in this place we have one person that works there and they don't have time for a website they don't
have a jail in this county nothing not they don't have a county jail so when they how do you enforce
your fucking rule you do when they have prisoners they take them to another county which i don't
understand how this you if you're gonna have a county one of your responsibilities is you have
to build a fucking jail and even in like old west towns
from you know you watch well like deadwood that you've never seen the first goddamn episode starts
with bullock in in a town leaving heading for deadwood like finishing up his sheriff business
with a guy in the fucking jail this is a it's barely a town it's just like eight wood structures
and one of them's a goddamn jail they figured it it out. This county, they're like, nah, we're good.
We don't need it.
There's a post office.
That's good enough.
That's all it takes to make it a town, I suppose, because you just got to get mail.
You need a zip code.
That's it.
And the zip code here is 59479, as a matter of fact.
That didn't take any brick and mortar.
No, it didn't.
Nothing at all.
You got that?
And bars and handcuffs.
Just a sign, post office, and a a guy standing there or an angry dude or
angry middle-aged lady or somebody without with that's unfulfilled uh area code 406 uh 0.44
square miles all land not a drop of water yeah in the middle of a dry rectangle i'm just trying
to think i'm sure it's got lakes up there i don't see i've never seen water in montana it's not a big water state there's a lot of i mean fishing and shit like that up there but it's got lakes up there, but I don't see, I've never seen water in Montana. It's not a big water state.
There's a lot of, I mean, fishing and shit like that up there, but it's not known for it.
It's not like, ooh, the Great Lakes of Michigan and all that.
There's none of that there.
Minnesota, it's 10,000 lakes.
Yeah, 10,000 lakes or tons of rivers down south or shit like that.
Town motto is, quote, hello, is anybody out there?
No? Okay. uh town motto is uh quote hello is anybody out there no okay that's the town motto which is
the most heard statement ever in this town when they step out onto the street so they just said
fuck it that's the town motto the motto is a conversation with your echo with your echo
no okay the conversation you only have when you're definitely alone uh this actually there's no
website for the town.
They don't have a motto.
Their motto is just we're in hiding.
How many fucking people are here?
We'll find out in a second.
Judith Basin.
I'm on the edge of my seat.
I cannot wait to find out.
Judith Basin County here.
This is all it says on their website, too, in the front.
It says, Judith Basin County,
quote, located in central Montana
between Great Falls and Billings, not even
what they do, just we're between these two places
you may have heard of, is home
to many wonderful communities and wide
open spaces. In other words,
Judith Basin
County has a
rich ranching heritage and strong
pioneering spirit. Then it says
courthouse telephone number
and lists that. That's their website. That's telephone number and list that that's their website
that's what we got and that's pretty much it
and if you click on one
thing on there it takes you to another website
that's russellcountry.com
what is that?
their slogan about this whole place
is quote come stay with us for a while
not forever
just for a while then get the fuck out
get the fuck out of that shithole for a minute come to our shithole trying to keep the population down fuck out get the fuck out of that shithole for
a minute turn to our shithole trying to keep the population down and get the fuck out of our
shithole yes then it also says on it quote charlie russell painted more than one famous canvas we
live in them who is he well charlie russell you might ask because i thought you may ask so much
who the fuck and i had no fucking idea of that either. He's got a famous painting, though, James.
Well, he does.
He has lots of them.
Charles Marion Russell.
It's C.M. Russell is what he goes by.
He's an artist of the Old West.
Yeah, because you don't want anybody to know your middle name is Marion.
No, even John Wayne changed that shit.
He was like, I can't be a tough guy with that shit.
I don't have a John Wayne impression at all.
That's close enough.
That's close enough.
Just put a deep voice on, I guess, and that's good enough.
Say partner or what was his?
Pilgrim. Pilgrim, if I remember from
Family Guy. That's the only way I know that
because Peter constantly doing those
is the only improv move. My grandfather loved
him. Absolutely loved him.
All old white men love John Wayne.
The only thing I'll never bond with
my grandfather over is John fucking Wayne.
I can't. I can't tolerate those movies.
They're fucking terrible.
So dumb.
I saw Clint Eastwood Westerns first.
So once you see those, you're like, okay, you can't watch those piles of shit.
Once you've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, you can't watch anything John Wayne's ever done.
You're like, why is everyone so clean?
And he would have just raped her.
I don't understand it.
He wouldn't have said no for an answer.
This is the old West.
There's very little.
Not that you want anyone to be raped, but that's the reality of the situation.
If you watch Deadwood.
John Wayne is far too likable.
He's too nice of a man.
He's a hard ass, but no venereal diseases.
Nothing.
He's riding around.
He's a bit too big for that horse.
Barely sweating.
Barely sunshine.
Well, this guy, Russell, he is way too big for the horse, too.
It's crazy.
He's like 6'4", 250, and he's up there on a fucking horse.
They couldn't find a horse that matched him?
They probably had to switch it out like every shot.
They had like eight horses standing by.
Paint the white triangle on its face.
This one's all brown, so fucking paint it.
I don't care.
Just paint it.
Just fucking make them all the same color.
I don't care.
It's the 60s.
There's no PETA. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Use the spray paint. The aerosol works better. I don't care. Just fucking make them all the same color. I don't care. It's the 60s. There's no PETA.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Use the spray paint.
The aerosol works better.
Get it in there.
It gets deep in the skin.
That's what you're looking for.
So this Russell had more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes in the
western United States and in Alberta, Canada.
Fucking seven.
Also bronze sculptures.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
He's like a seven-year-old in the 50s uh well he grew up with 1864 to 1926 he lived so i mean he lived
in the old west so it wasn't like nostalgic pictures he was living the shit i guess he
lived past seven yeah he really did for back then that's pretend that's a good run in the west
uh he's also an author and all this shit uh he had a mural titled lewis and clark meeting the
flathead indians it's in the state capitol building in helena montana yeah it's an a 1918
painting called uh pigeons sold for 5.6 million dollars in 2005 at auction yeah this cat's like a
fucking important old american artist nine million dollars 5. six five point six that's a shitload
of money for a fucking painting for a painting of old i don't even know what the painting i didn't
look that up but uh what it was it's it's a pigeon it's not even pigeons it's piegans p-i-e-g-a-n-s
i don't know what the fuck that is it's probably a small bird oh jesus it's gotta be right i can't
i can't we history let's do we can't we can't go down the
rabbit hole the lewis and clark adventure is so sweet that sounds great romanticized thing yeah
but it's all bullshit it's all so they they try to tell us a tough time they try to tell us that
this cute nice indian girl this little squaw indian took two gentlemen to from Missouri to Seattle.
Yeah.
Willingly.
Go fuck yourself.
Well, yeah, that's the thing.
She was secondly, she was, quote, married to a French trapper who was, quote, with her,
married her.
I feel like he was.
She was probably like gifted.
Worse than she was.
She was his.
He won her in a fucking gambling debt.
Probably.
Probably. Probably.
Well, it's weird.
Lewis and Clark, too, when they went across and not to get into Lewis and Clark, we need
to do this.
But Lewis and Clark, when they go across and they'd like go to these, they'd go to these
each tribe because they'd have they'd have to.
That was their.
That's how you survive.
They were going across the country like warriors, basically.
And they were like going from hood to hood being like, all right, what's in here?
Oh, shit.
They're dressed up like clowns and on roller skates.
Fuck me.
She happens to speak everything.
But yeah.
Well, then the big coincidence of her actually getting hooked up with her fucking with her
brother.
That was the craziest thing.
But when they go to these places, these natives were so like the ones that were friendly and
took them in happily were so just they were just just like, they would give them all here,
take our women.
Right.
Just here's like four women for you.
Oh,
so much better.
And then they have that.
That's great.
Lewis and Clark had 60 men that fucking went.
Oh yeah.
All those guys.
Yeah.
That was disgusting.
A disgusting STD trail across this fucking nation.
One of them brought his slave.
Oh,
that guy was the king of the fucking world.
They were like,
what is this? Holy shit. The Indians loved him. They they had no idea they had no idea that he was really black
like they loved him was licking his rubbing his cheek they did it was literally like mel brooks
he was like hi they're talking to us and it's fucking this is terrific that's what it was man
and then because the indians thought he was part bear they made him fuck all of their women every night oh yeah this poor guy was like
can we leave please i fucked his way from from missouri to seattle yeah and then he had to fuck
his way back yeah well maybe yeah didn't he go he might have gone on the i think he went on the boat
i would have i think he went on the boat yeah rather than yeah he was like listen i've had
enough everything is black except his dick, and that is just bright red.
Bright red and throbbing.
Raw, raw, fucking.
Now that we've given a Lewis and Clark lesson, as we've both seen Ken Burns, Lewis and Clark.
That's the real story, goddammit.
So this town began with sheep, which is much less interesting than native orgies.
But still.
A different kind of orgy.
Yeah, Stanford became a stage shop and had cowboys, and that's when C.M. Russell came into the area back then.
In 1880, two guys named Calvin and Edward Bauer came there with a thousand head of sheep and acquired 100,000 acres of land, which was 50 cents probably because all they have is land up there.
That's plenty of that.
They named their old home Stanfordville. cents probably because all they all they have is land up there that's plenty of that uh they
named their old home uh stanfordville uh they named it after their old home which was stanfordville
that's how it started which is in duchess county new york which is where i'm from really it was
southern duchess county uh not stanfordville but i'm from southern duchess county uh stanford today
now is the county seat by the way really yeah it's a tiny tiny place as we'll
get to uh this was basically a station on the stage route is what it was where people would
you know pick up some sheep and move along and shit like that not a lot was going on uh there
was really wasn't it was the land was 50 cents and i was thinking like how they i don't think
they carried money no i think that he just paid in sheep semen
this is all i've got sir yeah even that shaved a couple of them there's a handfuls of wool
make us make a sweater is this enough can i get my change i gotta make a sweater for you shit
so in 1895 yogo i guess they are y Yogo, I'm going to call them.
Yogo sapphires were discovered at Yogo Gulch, which is in this area.
At the time, it was in Fergus County, but now it's in Judith Basin County.
These sapphires were really hard to find, basically.
They weren't as plentiful as gold, but they were very, very valuable.
But they were hard to find
and sporadic little bits of them, but it would draw people there because-
Sapphires are blue.
Yeah, they're the bright blue ones.
And the mining turned out to be very valuable because if you did hit something, it would
be more valuable than a big gold strike for you if you actually hit an area.
There was also a little bit of silver and copper and iron in the area, so people were
mining that shit. So they were mining the hell out of everything here uh oh the uh pie
gan is a black feet people by the way i found that out and so it's native america yeah it's
a native americans here the yogo gulch is uh is that's that's where they those people lived uh
gold was first discovered there in 1866 but uh there was not a lot of gold there and the natives were
pissed because up there
the Blackfeet and all those motherfuckers
will fight you off.
Yeah, the Blackfoot tribe?
The Teton Sioux
and all that. They will fuck you up.
They were fighting people. They were
warriors. They were not taking your shit.
You come through their land and they're like, you better have a goddamn
reason why. This is a bad neighborhood
warriors.
That's what ended up happening they would end up getting driven off and there wasn't enough gold there to make it worth it basically okay because
deadwood there was a lot that's where you know there's some tough ass tribes there too and that's
north of there no that's over to the east and south is deadwood in south dakota oh okay yeah
i was thinking wyoming no but deadwood there was just like that also but there was so much gold
they were like we'll fucking fight them.
Fuck it.
I mean, they sent Custer out there at first.
And they were like, we're going to fight these.
We don't care.
There's gold, goddamn.
There's a lot of gold.
So, yeah, these people would come.
And they found in 1878, a thousand miners came for the gold.
And they were going through these streams.
And they ended up finding blue pebbles, they called it at the time, with little bits of gold and a bunch of these blue pebbles.
And so there was people mining gold there for about three years, and then people left, and there was only a few people.
And then somebody here –
Were they taking the blue pebbles, or were they throwing that shit back in the water?
Yeah, they didn't even give a shit what it was.
They really didn't even know what it was here.
even give a shit what it was that's they really didn't even know what it was here uh so uh there was a guy there named jake hoover that was going around uh probably he was one of the main
prospectors here uh in 1894 finally the blue pebbles were recognized as sapphires yeah which
is you know hey idiots these are valuable they've been how many poor broke people threw them back in
a stream because they thought they were nothing and they took their pyrite onto the next town.
Yeah.
I got, well, yeah.
No, it's real.
Don't buy it, but it's real.
I guess the legend has it that a local school teacher recognized them as sapphires.
I love that.
Because they were the only one who had read a book in the entire fucking town.
But I guess they said the school teacher wasn't in the town, but he was a friend of a local
miner who mailed her a small box of them because he thought they were nice, basically.
Right.
Thought they were neat.
And she was like, yeah, they're very neat.
They're fucking sapphires.
I mean, these are worth more than everything you own.
Yeah.
And another and another story says a miner had a jeweler look at him, which seems more
likely.
He was like, what are these fucking things, by the way?
Is this worth anything, sir?
Yeah, I would say.
Fucking lots. Yeah, I would say. Fucking lots.
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
So they were sent to Tiffany's in New York City for appraisal.
Somebody sent a cigar box full of them there.
And they said that they were, quote, the finest precious gemstones ever found in the United States at the time.
And Tiffany's sent.
How about that for a fucking antiques road show not bad no shit and uh they
sent him a check for 3750 which is uh in 2000 it's about 110 grand now it's a pretty decent
amount so he was like holy shit this is fantastic uh and then they said later on that they were
sapphires of unusual quality so these were supposedly very very good uh for some reason
i find this fucking so interesting, this stupid sapphire shit.
I love it.
It's so weird.
It's amazing because, I mean, everybody thinks that gold is the thing that, I mean, it's worth a lot, obviously.
Yeah.
But that's the thing that everybody's driven for when the gemstones are worth so much more.
It's so interesting, right?
The amount of gold it takes to make a ring versus that little diamond on top of that diamond is worth 40 times the ring.
You know what I mean?
Absolutely.
And this is some old Westie shit right here.
This is kind of neat.
There was a guy hit the mother load here, basically, and ended up selling this mine to a British company and sold the mine for $100,000 back then,
which is about $2.9 million now.
That's a big deal.
That's a big goddamn deal.
And then it was the English mine, which fucked them up for World War II
because in World War II they need stones for industrial reasons,
and all the mines were for the war effort in World War II,
but these were owned by a British company,
so they couldn't fucking touch them.
Nothing they could do.
And the U.S. didn't get control of them until like 1956.
When they were already raped.
When it didn't matter.
Well, it didn't matter.
We'd been through both the Korean and the World War II.
So it was like, well, we don't need them now anyway.
It was all washed up pretty much at that point anyway.
Well, they'll come in handy for that Vietnam coming right around the corner.
Yeah.
I don't think we used them as much then.
Probably not.
It was really no material war effort on the home front there that much then.
Maybe that's why we lost.
I don't think it was taken as seriously as World War II.
There was no Hitler.
No.
You need a Hitler.
Not that you want a Hitler, but if you're going to fight a war, it's like wrestling.
You have to have a good bad guy.
Universal hateable guy.
Back in the day, Hulk Hogan needed Rowdy Roddy Piper to hate.
You couldn't just have a big likable guy.
That's great.
Who's he going to beat up?
You've got to have somebody you want him to kick their ass, and that's what it is.
D-Man needs Skeletor.
That's what I'm saying.
So the Judith Basin County Museum was opened in 1967.
This museum, this is how they advertise it.
The museum has many old-time articles,
old pictures, and some history books.
It also contains a collection of 2,082 sets
of salt and pepper shakers,
a collection of 50,000 buttons,
an Indian artifacts display, and many more items.
Now, how shitty are the many more items?
They listed the exact number of salt and pepper shaker pairs.
So what are the other items?
We have paperclips.
This is our paperclip consortium.
Care to look around?
What the fuck are they talking about?
A giant rubber band ball.
So stupid.
Population of this town.
Although, I'd like to see, like, how did they get those?
Because I'm a salt and pepper connoisseur.
I don't know if you know that.
I love stealing those from restaurants.
I figure that comes with the meal.
And I'd like to see, how many was it?
258?
2,082 sets of salt.
I don't know what they're special.
I don't know if they're from another place.
Yeah, you can't open your own museum.
Moving on here.
Population here, 381 people in this town.
That's it.
That's the whole total. 381. Down this town that's it that's the whole total 381 down 28 since 1990
jesus they are dying off and this is an old old population median age 53.3 which is almost 20
years older than the normal average way more females almost 56 female because proof they live
longer and that we always die earlier uh way more people of 65 and over and under the average on most young demographics.
It's just an old, old town.
Fewer married people because they're dying.
A couple more single people.
Good luck out there, everybody.
Single with no children is actually very low because these people, I'm sure, had kids at some point.
Married with no children is 58%, which is the elderly population, I would assume, there.
So it's an interesting, it's not a party place, let's put it that way.
It's about how they got their salt and pepper shakers.
It's just everybody dies in the estate sales cells.
That's it.
And then what's left over goes in that fucking museum.
They die off and run away and leave behind their salt and pepper shakers.
And they're like, did they leave their salt and pepper, they left left put it in the museum the johnsons moved out did you get their
shakers okay i hope you put them in the museum uh what race of this town shockingly 98.57 percent
white as white as ivory soap is fucking white so uh 0.0 percent black 0.0 percent asian not a single black not a single black dude
or lady or anything they're fucking fascinating no asians uh 0.72 percent native american and that
is pretty much the that's it 0.0 percent hispanic what the which is this town is white with like
five native american people there that's it and run probably these, there's so many like artifacts.
This town has just turned into artifact stands that you stop for on the highway.
Do you want some turquoise shit?
Moccasins and blankets.
Yeah, some turquoise bullshit like out here when you're driving through the desert.
Religion here.
61.4% of the people here are religious, which is high.
This town is just young guns.
That's what it
is pretty well yeah except way less entertaining this is uh this town is just way do you hear
things to do it's just boring as shit uh 49 catholic in this town so i don't know that's
interesting it's an odd uh no hispanic people but all white catholics in montana i don't know i
guess that's whatever uh 4.3 percent presbyterian is the closest one to that.
No kidding.
0.0% Mormon.
They haven't made it up here yet.
I think there's probably someone with a rifle at the edge of town.
That also seems on purpose.
Get your freaky religions on out of here.
One of those things.
0.0% Jewish.
0.0% Muslim.
They're like, we don't think so.
No, thank you.
27% Democrat. 70% Republican. percent muslim they're like we don't think so no thank you uh 27 percent democrat 70 percent
republican up here yeah it's a you know old old people in montana uh 3.1 unemployment rate because
the old people don't count no so you're gonna get that uh and otherwise there's some jobs here
median household income is only about five thousand dollars less than the average you were
gonna say no five thousand dollars five thousand dollars everybody lives everybody lives in the $5,000 less than the average. Oh, I thought you were going to say $5,000. It's $5,000.
Everybody lives in the streets, Jimmy.
That's how it works.
It's $49,028 is the household income.
They're living on 1,800 economy.
It's rough, man.
Yeah, this is all Old West.
They're separate from us completely.
A lot of people make in the $60,000 to $75,000 range, but not a lot over $150,000.
So there's some jobs there.
They're mostly a lot of agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting.
It's 11%.
It's normally 1%.
Trapper jobs.
Yeah.
So those outdoor jobs tend to pay a lot.
20% construction, which is like five times the norm, four times the norm.
So those jobs tend to pay a little bit also.
That sort of thing.
Cost of living here overall is an 88.
100 is regular average par.
Housing, though, is low at 54.
Median home cost here, $141,200.
Seems affordable.
So very affordable.
A lot of houses in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.
And I found a couple of them.
Oh, boy.
And I'm going to tell them to you if I've convinced you,
then it's time to move to Stanford.
Here it is, the Stanford, Montana Real Estate Report.
Found the average two-bedroom rental of any kind
is about $840 a month,
which is $400 less than the average, so that's not too shabby.
I found a two-bedroom, two-bath.
It's kind of like a condo that's not attached.
It's weird.
1,232 square feet, $80,500.
Seems like a good place for, I don't know, old people to live is what it looks like.
Bring your cats.
Bring your cats.
I found a three-bedroom, two-bath, and your pictures of your grandkids will go really
well on that wall.
Three-bedroom, two-bath, 2,720-square-foot house.
It's a little rough.
$179,900.
And then I found on 3.22 acres of not muchness.
You're talking.
If you want a chunk of America, here it is.
Four-bedroom, three-b bath, 4,800 square feet.
Holy shit.
It's a very big, giant farm-type house.
James, hold on.
It's big.
Four bedrooms, two bath?
Three bath.
Three bath.
4,800 square feet.
Fuck, that's huge.
That's a big house.
Yeah, it's got a big common area.
Each room is enormous.
It's a big goddamn house.
Yeah.
$265,000.
Wow. So that's not bad on a lot of land and goddamn house. $265,000. Wow.
So that's not bad on a lot of land.
Pretty good.
I'm retiring in Montana.
I just found out.
There's nothing to do here.
I don't give a shit.
Here's what you can do if you're excited about this.
I can just snap pictures of my fucking house.
The Halloween Festival, Jimmy, is where it is.
And this is how they describe it.
Quote, not so scary, but definitely in the spirit.
October means scarecrows in stanford the annual event includes a one and three mile fun run to benefit breast
cancer awareness a craft show and a chili cook-off scarecrows made by locals are on display downtown
through halloween made by who the fuck else is gonna make them right they're made by locals oh
good they don't.
They're not bringing in those those pesky Chinese scarecrows we're always hearing about.
That's good.
Importing a fucking scarecrow.
Oh, I fun run.
First of all, no, it's not. No, it's not.
Secondly, not scary, but definitely in the spirit.
In other words, bring the kids.
They won't be scared shitless.
It's in the spirit.
Spooky scarecrows and Halloween and we it's going to be fun fun it's not scary but it's not so adult just crap that sounds like shit it's just
boring is what it is crime rate in this town uh property crime is uh slightly higher than average
actually which i don't know if it's people coming through the for the big halloween festival and
they're just so excited by the scarecrows they they start knocking the place over. Or, I don't know what it is, but violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, assault, the Mount
Rushmore of crime, slightly lower than average, actually, for that.
So, not too bad.
It's a great town.
I found a, well, I don't know.
I found a, it sounds boring and filled with old people.
It sounds like you could really.
It sounds like the town from Footloose, minus the children.
This sounds like something you could really get into
because you're not going to see your fucking neighbor.
No, that's what I do like.
This is very removable.
They could wave and they're so far away
you could pretend you don't see it.
Now, I found a resident review here.
I couldn't see your hand waving.
Didn't see it, pal.
You're so far away.
This resident review,
he calls the review oxyboron,
which I don't understand, or maybe that's his username.
This is odd.
This is not a review.
It's very strange.
This is from the Sperling's Best Places website, which is just statistical compilations.
That's all it is.
Stats of towns, okay?
So he went to his website of stats and gave a review of a town.
Well, listen to what he did here.
If you hear me out.
He says, quote, I have lived in Stanford, Montana all my life.
To be honest, it distorts your worldview.
Just found your website, so I will look it over.
He's acting like there's one person running a website going, thanks, this is Bob.
I will look it over to see what you have to say about my town, then get back to you.
You're probably about half right.
Hey, did you hear about the helicopter landing on Main Street this week?
What the fuck is that?
There's nothing to disagree.
I'll look and make sure.
There's statistics, and it says 82 agree and 82 disagree, people that have looked on this.
And he gives no star amount at all, so he doesn't know.
He gets back.
Disagree with what? It's a site that compiles fucking stats there's nothing to disagree with everybody gets a
say is that what he thinks no you can't disagree with stats i'll look it over and get back to you
no that's what it is are you gonna go count sir yeah you can't you can't say brett farve has more
super bowls than tom brady because you believe that. There's statistics that say who has what.
Does he think this is like a media?
I don't know what he thinks.
Does he think it's NBC and he's like, I'm going to correct your article.
It's like he thinks it's somebody's blog.
Like, I hear what you said and I'll get back to you.
Like, he went on somebody's Facebook page or some shit.
But there's a murder in this town.
Yes, because he grew up there and it makes no sense.
But there's a murder in this town.
Yes, because he grew up there and it makes no sense.
Hey, everybody.
Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about a wonderful sponsor, Lisa Mattresses.
Lisa.com.
L-E-E-S-A.com.
Let me ask you a question.
And I can ask this right to you, Jimmy.
Are you feeling distracted lately?
You're always distracted.
Yeah.
You're forgetting things.
You're making mistakes.
Yeah.
You made mistakes here.
You've said, I don't know what I'm doing multiple times.
You know what your problem is?
I think you need a quality night's sleep, Jimmy.
That's your problem.
You need to get you a Lisa mattress.
I have one.
And now you're feeling better, aren't you?
Now you're all sharp. Have you heard Jimmy say, I don't know what I'm doing in a while?
It's been a minute.
The reason is Lisa mattresses.
They're that good.
They're fantastic.
It's the right mattress is the difference between resting and just laying down.
That's the fact of the matter.
The Lisa mattress is the product of more than 30 years of experience in mattress engineering and hundreds of hours of testing.
in mattress engineering and hundreds of hours of testing.
It's comprised of three foam layers that provide cooling pressure, relief, body contouring, and support.
And you can just ask the over 300,000 happy, happy Lisa sleepers that will agree with that fact that Lisa mattresses give them the rest they need.
And Jimmy and myself can assure you that the Lisa mattresses are fantastic.
Not only do we sleep on them, our kids sleep on them.
They're really, really good.
Order your Leesa mattress online at leesa.com.
That's L-E-E-S-A dot com slash small.
And use promo code small to try your mattress risk-free for 100 nights.
It ships directly to your door in a convenient box with free shipping and free returns.
You cannot go wrong.
Find the right mattress for you at lisa.com slash small and get the rest you need.
Get up to $160 off Lisa mattresses or $235 off the luxury Sapira mattress and free shipping on the Lisa mattress at Lisa.com slash small
and enter the promo code small at checkout.
That's L-E-E-S-A dot com slash small promo code small.
L-E-E-S-A dot com slash small promo code small.
Sleep like us.
And now back to the show.
us and now back to the show there is a murder here which is good because otherwise we just gave a lot of information for nothing thank you for visiting small town podcast that's all it is
we just tell you about statistics of small towns and the gems profound there within and moving on
so this shit starts way back in the day okay uh way
back there's a lady named fay theis okay now her name wasn't fay theis back in the day uh her name
her name uh was fay enright back in the day okay uh so fay uh has children uh in the 30s, this woman has children in the 30s. She has children named Margaret, Donna and Roy.
OK, they all have different last names, which is what the women I think is a married thing.
The one woman because Donna wasn't.
So there's Margaret Distat and then Donna June Enright and a guy named Roy Link.
These are women that are children that she had back in the 30s.
Donna was born in 1934
she grows up goes to college uh gets a bs with a major in english and social studies and was a
school teacher for a while it just seems like a midwestern or whatever the fuck i don't know
what you'd call montana not really what the hell is montana it's the fucking northwest upper plains
i don't know fucking i don't know brie from montana tell
us sir you're the only person i know that's actually from montana so her maiden name is
enright is that what you're saying i believe so yeah i believe the maiden name is enright but i'm
not sure because it doesn't matter to this story she just well yeah she's later on but she made
these people here and well the problem is that they're from previous marriages
and then she gets remarried in 1961 okay and she has like all of these adult children also okay
from that so that's that's kind of all in their 30s they're all well yeah well they're in their
20s and you know around there so they're all pretty much adults so there's no like nine-year-old
got like this this is leonard theis is He doesn't have to, like, drive anybody to third grade or anything like that.
There's no, like, karate lessons he's got to take fucking kids to.
You know, they're living their lives.
We'll say that shit.
They have no, they don't have any children together themselves because they're old, I would assume.
Back then, you didn't start having kids at 50.
In the 60s, yeah.
Yeah, that would, you'd die.
That's all there is to it.
You'd just die.
You enjoy yourself.
Yeah.
That's what you do.
But people used to retire at 50 fucking five.
Did they?
Fuck yeah.
People used to retire out here.
You're allowed to now.
No, no, no, no, no.
Now, it's out of your mind if you retire at 50.
I don't mean with Social Security, but people used to move.
How many times, because you drive around.
You drove around for the electric company. How you times have you seen 55 plus communities like
that was a big thing out here i'm moving to arizona still is yeah i'm moving to arizona
cashing out my 401k right over i'm moving to arizona a 55 plus community like that used to
be a thing like now 55 is you're not moving to a community like that. And that sounded old then, too.
Yeah.
Now, it's like people are CEOs and they're getting new jobs at 60.
Somebody dies at 55 and you're like, he was so young.
Oh, that's a shame.
That's right.
Yeah.
Back then, you'd be like, that's a prime heart attack time.
I don't know how he lived that long.
Jesus, he should have smoked more.
That would have helped him.
Back then, that was a plus. 55 and up communities are super into like tennis and golf like you're super active
they're active that's what they do they want to come and be active with other people but not allow
anyone else in how many like there's used to be all those court cases about somebody who have like
their grandson come live there with them for a summer and the whole fucking neighborhood
like he plays basketball in the street he dribbles that damn basketball he's too young for this community it's
so fucking funny it's not fair rubbing his youth in our face that's what it is that's what he was
on a skateboard i would break my hip in three seconds on one of those goddamn things little
bastard he looks like he was having so much fun that son of that's i swear he had a boner at one
point and that just i will not tolerate that because i haven't had a boner since 1957 i've
been writing letters about his boner to the hoa i saw what could have been a boner as he rode by
on his skateboard i'm not sure that his virility is making me feel sad about myself very very sad jesus christ those communities there's one directly across the
street from where i live right now oh really it's fucking great for how quiet it is oh yeah they
don't fuck around that shit's over at nine o'clock it's shut down my and my dad's girlfriend lives
there and oh my god we go visit them and they can't wait for everybody to leave.
Oh, God, yeah.
You park on the street, and right when you get out of your car.
People are looking out the blinds.
Yeah, you see the fucking blinds.
Who's that?
When they leave.
It's ridiculous.
Every half hour.
Is it gone yet?
No.
Like your car is going to sink into the street and cause damage.
It's going to crack the road.
They're so strange when they move into that.
I don't understand.
I don't know how many of our listeners live in retirement communities.
It changes everything.
Probably not many of them, I would imagine.
But if you do, what the fuck is happening in there?
Tell us.
Tell us.
Is it sex?
Is it all sex?
Well, Sun City had the record
for the most indecent exposure.
Yeah, and STD things.
But is that what it is?
Are you going there to fuck each other?
I feel like you're fucking each other in there a lot.
It's a great idea.
Is it like freaky shit? there's a park bench bounce up and down yeah
that's it by moving into this community are you signing up is it like walking into some sex club
and having to sign a release saying if someone sticks it in you you're cool with it like some
shit like that or something i don't know if that exists but like is that what it is like you're
signing up like you're gonna be at the the Sunday orgy if you buy that house.
That's all there is to it.
I don't know.
That comes with a golf cart.
I don't know what to tell you.
It comes with a golf cart and a chicken mat.
It's three knocks and then two knocks.
That's the code.
That's the chicken mass knock. That's the chicken mass knock.
That means you're allowed to come in like Frank and always sunny.
That's the chicken mass knock.
That means you're allowed to come in like Frank and always sunny.
I like how he lifts up his beak and always sunny.
So it's easier to nosh.
My favorite thing ever.
Sorry.
I love that show so much. I love Frank.
It's easier to nosh.
It's easier to nosh.
Like, what are you taking your mask off?
It's easier to nosh.
Beak's getting in my way.
So.
Oh, my God.
So these people, as they get older here uh uh fay and leonard i mean fay in 1988 comes around so i mean even fucking uh donna is 54 years old at this point
and uh you know fay and leonard are very elderly they're in their 80s at this point. Now, in 1988, Faye and Leonard purchase a trailer, I guess, to...
That's an inexpensive way to live out your years, I guess.
A trailer in Great Falls, Montana, which is not how I want to die.
I don't want to die in a trailer in Great Falls, Montana.
Please, Jimmy, don't let me die in a trailer in Great Falls, Montana.
I'm serious.
My great-great-great-uncle died of alcohol, like cirrhosis and shit, in a single-wide
outskirts of L.A.
Oh, no.
And that's fucking terrifying.
Not Riverside, right?
No, no.
No.
I don't know.
Probably.
If it's outside L.A., that's all there is.
That's just Riverside at that point.
That sounds horrible to me.
Just dying in a trailer anywhere. Yeah, it does. Riverside's worse, I think, horrible to me. Just die in a trailer anywhere.
Yeah, it does.
Riverside's worse, I think, actually, now that I think about it.
Then Montana?
Yeah, at least Montana, if you looked outside, it was pretty.
Riverside's not pretty at all.
And nobody will find you for a while, so you'll disappear quickly.
That's good.
You can just dissipate back into the earth in Montana.
No one will care.
in Montana. No one will care.
Faye and Leonard eventually began to suffer from
Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
Both of them. So now there's two
old people. Neither of them can take care of the
other one because they're both losing their shit
in the middle of nowhere in a trailer.
Which is kind of weird. That sucks.
That's a terrible end.
Fuck, that's so bad. That scares the shit out of me.
I don't want to lose the worst i
don't want to lose my mind that's bad that's the worst yeah that is the worst i would rather know
that i have cancer and i'm dying of it oh at least that's physical to be like i'm fine and having
everybody be like yeah grandpa you're great like fuck make sure he doesn't walk outside alone
that's that's what what did i that would be so scary to not know what was happening like i don't
even know how to deal with that.
Sounds terrible.
My grandmother that died recently lost it for a couple years, and she just got meaner.
She'd just yell at people when they came in to visit her and shit.
She just got super mean.
It's the not knowing who you're...
My friend Jess, her dad legitimately asked her who she is.
Yeah, that's what she would do, too.
She wouldn't know who people were.
It was scary.
Now, my other grandmother, who is 90 this week, we're having a birthday party for, Italian grandma, skin of the seal grandma.
90 years old, and her mind is 100% perfect.
Like, 100%, but her body's a fucking, she's in complete pain.
That's what I want.
But it's bad for her because she's like, I hate that I'm not losing it.
She says, because I know everything that hurt me all the time.
She says, I can't, I don't forget everything.
She goes, every day I go, oh, this hurts.
It hurt a little bit yesterday.
Now it hurt worse.
It would be better if I didn't know how much it hurt yesterday.
So she's like wishing for dementia because she's in so much pain
she stays up i feel dude she stays up like all fucking night because she's afraid of dying
i swear to god she said i don't sleep i said why why didn't you sleep tonight i said yeah we took
her out to dinner and she said why didn't you sleep last night grandma she goes i don't want
to die i said okay but that doesn't answer why you didn't sleep last night and she's like well
you sit there and you go i could could die if I close my eyes.
I'm like, wow, is this how it's going to be forever?
Is this where it's good?
Yeah.
She's fucking morbid, man.
I mean, I get it, but I can't say I wouldn't be the same way.
But Jesus Christ.
I'm like that now.
Yeah.
And I go to sleep sometimes.
I'm like, this may be the last one.
That's true.
And I'm trying to pump her up, too.
I actually told her, I'm like, look look why don't you look at it this way why don't you look at it
every day that you wake up like ha ha got it beat it ah motherfuckers yeah and just she's like no
she can't look at it like that i'm like all right i don't know i tried that's not the way it is
fuck do you want from me so i tried she's gonna be 90 we'll see what happens sometimes i lay down
and then i'm like is, I start thinking about what position
I want them to put me in in a box.
And then I'm like, no, maybe I want them to burn me.
I'm like, no, what if I'm still alive and they burn me?
Like doctors make mistakes.
I hope they check first.
It takes a, but they don't just immediately go, he's dead.
Bring him to the fire.
There's steps before that.
They have to check you out.
Yeah.
There's not an incinerator in the, in the hearse that takes you away.
Load them up in the
morgue vehicle and just burn the whole thing come out a little ash spout on the side and a cup and
they give it to your your loved ones and that's it there he goes sorry no examination no nothing
we don't know if that's him or the tranny from the hearse that we just put in doesn't who cares
fuck it same thing it's all ashes now
all the same now that's i start laying in bed and i'm like is this a position i want to be in do i
want to look like i'm like asleep because when i'm asleep i'm on my side yeah i've never slept
on my back in my fucking life no it'd be weird i want to be on my back with my hands crossed that's
that's bizarre i always think if i lay down on my back with my hands crossed i'm just asking for it
i always think that well i'm asking for death like this i feel like it's gonna be like well he's already like that just let's strike
him dead now yeah so i try to stay in a non-death position at all times i try to stay in like a
running pose as i sleep that's my idea like a i look like i'm working on something so the
they're like he's clearly busy i try to look like the nba logo is what i'm doing so i'm active that way i've got shit to do right in good shape and like the jordan logo yeah i'm going nobody
ever dies like that never see anybody die in a jordan post die running i mean running it happens
but it's oh yeah all the time that's usually people that didn't shouldn't have been running
anyway oh 50 year old healthy guys dropped out all the time running it's like hey asshole if you would have sat down and had a fucking beer
and some snacks you probably wouldn't have died you know chilled out on all that work on your
heart hey save it save it hero man calm down that's i that's one thing that i i do agree with
is uh with very dumb people is that you too much exercise that'll that'll kill you listen everything
and very dumb people think that and i go that's not actually that it's just i understand it's
just what your body genetically is programmed for it doesn't some people can run till they're
100 and some people if you ran across the fucking house when you're 36 you'd have a heart attack and
die so you just never know it's a crapshoot so uh anyway or you can end up with alzheimer's
and dementia like fay and leonard here uh they end up uh this is about in 1993 or so they lose
the ability to take care of themselves and make decisions for themselves so their daughter uh
their daughter margaret and their son well not their daughter uh Faye's son and daughter, Margaret and Roy Link.
They take power of attorney on Faye's behalf and Enright and Link on Leonard's behalf.
So that would be Donna.
Donna.
And so Roy has power of attorney with both of them.
And one sister has the mother and one sister has the stepfather.
Got it.
Is how this is all working. Now, Faye and
Leonard are put into a Great
Falls, Montana nursing home
in November of 1993,
which that sucks
too. You don't want to go out like that. Nobody
wants to. You'd much rather have like the
you want the heart attack.
That's your own place? Yeah.
You want that sort of thing. I don't care if it's in my
sleep or not. I just want to do it in my own fucking place.
Yeah, I don't want it.
Well, then.
I'll do it some orderly with a fucking name tag.
Also, then your place is ruined at that point.
You've soiled it forever.
Buy it now.
There's been a body here.
Sorry.
Yeah.
You're just making a real estate agent's job much harder, which is fucking great.
You're going to ruin some child's life when they find out the dead body was in their bedroom you're gonna earn your three percent you smiley asshole you better bake those fucking
cookies extra extra soft and chewy today baby because uh sorry so uh fay and leonard are in
the nursing home this is november 1993 right around the time so they get power of attorney
they shove them in a home uh this is rough but i mean the other option is moving them into their homes and chasing them around all and that's tough that's
i mean that's just alzheimer's is one of those things where it's not just like oh that's fucked
up to stick them in a nursing home it's a matter of safety of you can't watch someone 24 hours a
day that you have to watch 24 hours a day because they could wander the fuck off and it's not even
just that it's the actual just normal ass care like did you eat today yeah yeah no i had my grandmother's sister in florida her husband had alzheimer's
and he had it really bad and for fucking years and he used to just she'd turn around he'd wander
off and you know he'd be gone for a day and a half just wandering around the cops would bring
him home and shit because he's just like hey how's it going he didn't forgot he left he was like hey
what's for dinner is that you've been gone a day and a half really have i what are you talking about uh no fucking clue
it's so sad it's so sad man so uh anyway the only thing sadder than that in my opinion is the the
amber alerts that we have on the freeway and everybody kind of pays attention to it gets a
little bit of the information but then you see silver alert fucking disregard it all yeah yeah
nobody reads that shit i don't read it because
i'm always like maybe the guy wanted to fuck everyone to leave him alone for five fucking
minutes you ever think of that these people are adults maybe they're if they have a car and they're
driving and they're lucid enough to do that maybe they didn't lose it maybe they just said hey let's
get the fuck out of here for at what age are you not allowed to go on an unannounced vacation to
where they will announce it in billboards on the highway to tell everyone to look for you?
And then announce all your personal information.
He has diabetes and needs his medication.
Leave me the fuck alone.
Stop telling everybody.
I have my insulin.
Shut up.
My doctor's not even allowed to tell people that.
Why are you?
I'm fine.
My son's a dick.
What is he doing?
Why are they doing this to me?
And those people probably, yeah.
And I wonder why I left.
Yeah, Jesus Christ, that's what I mean.
You fucking people are all over our shit.
I raised you.
That's enough.
Now go.
If I leave for two days, I don't need you calling the cops on me and making a, God,
it was on the news.
You realize that?
They talked about me on the news.
I saw it from the TGI fridays we were drinking in you
understand that i'm fine so uh anyway uh shortly after they're putting the nursing home leonard
leaves the nursing home and returns to the trailer i don't know what happened there if he uh
that's odd that you would go we figure once you have alzheimer's and you're putting a nursing
home it's only going to go downhill you're not going to be like oh yeah he'll be home in two weeks that's you know
fuck this place yeah it's very strange so uh uh enright here donna becomes uh his his guardian
here so he she watches over him faye remains in the nursing home she's out there she can't be
you know in a regular home but i guess donna can oversee him he doesn't want to be in a regular home, but I guess Donna can oversee him.
He doesn't want to be in a nursing home, and I guess he's good enough to be home.
So in February 1995, this is when shit starts getting weird with transfers and shit.
Roy Link, he exercises his power of attorney to transfer his mother's interest in the trailer.
The trailer's like, what is it, a company now?
We have stock?
I own 23% of this trailer, damn it.
It's worth $3,000.
Yeah, it's a trailer.
Decisions have to be made in the whole of the trailer, I believe.
I don't think you can break them down into fucking stockholder decisions here.
That's ridiculous.
They transfer this half the interest i guess to john koslowitz
is this guy's name a little man i don't know that's what i mean it's this is a weird setup
she also donna transfers at this point leonard's interest in the home to uh koslowitz so i guess
they're selling this guy the trailer in their two separate parts because they each control interest.
Yeah, half of it.
So but Roy has both.
So I don't know why Roy couldn't do it all by himself.
But for some reason, Donna's involved in this.
Also, this home at this point, a week after this.
Now, one week after Kozlovitz became the owner of the home, the trailer was burned to the ground and the insurance paid the proceeds.
Oh.
So they, one week after, they transfer power of attorney and then the home's burned to the ground.
That's strange, right?
You'd think you'd be upset.
Yeah, you'd think you'd be a little upset.
I just bought the place.
You'd think these guys would be like, hey, lucky us.
Wow, we knew about that faulty wiring just ahead of time.
Wow, we knew about that faulty wiring just ahead of time.
So the Great Falls Fire Department conducts an investigation.
You know how that's got to be a crack squad.
I'm sure the fire department's fine.
It's two people.
But it's, yeah, it's like, what's their investigative unit like?
How many guys is that?
What do you think?
What do you think?
I don't know.
Let's go home.
All right.
More all right and shoulder shrugging.
I'm sure there's great people in the Great Falls Fire Department, but they weren't put on this case they were like fuck those people so uh they did not
determine the cause of the fire and found no evidence of foul play just dumb luck we found
evidence of dumb luck chief that's found evidence just dumb luck a man invested in something oh and
a week later it's gone it's gone yeah this would be like a mobster buys a bar, and then it burns down.
You'd be like, hmm, I don't know about that.
That seems shaky.
So the adjuster for the insurance company of the trailer saw nothing unusual about the circumstances of the fire
and interviewed the fire department's investigator, who saw no need to conduct an independent investigation on the cause of the fire.
So the insurance adjuster and the and the fire department investigator both said independently that we don't think there's any foul play.
They get together and go, you think anything?
Nope.
All right.
And they shrug their shoulders and walked away.
So not very who knows here, but it doesn't seem like a real competent investigation with these people.
But it doesn't seem like a real competent investigation with these people.
A few months later, Donna and the Kozlovitz and Leonard, the old man, the old Alzheimer's man, and Tom Martin, who is Donna's son.
This is getting complicated here.
Formed a company called Sundown Inc. Incorporation.
Sundown Inc.
A corporation for the purpose of purchasing and operating a bar and restaurant in Stanford.
A man with Alzheimer's is buying a bar.
A 90-year-old man with Alzheimer's.
Jimmy, his lifelong desire has been to run a bar in Stanford.
And finally, at 90, he finally has the partners willing to get in this with him and really get deep.
I feel like he's going to be a good on the floor manager.
You get John Taffer in there and things are going to work out just fine.
At least as far as he can recall from 10 minutes ago when they told him that was his life's dream.
That'd be so fucking fun.
This guy shot that.
Now we're making fun of this old man. But just this man in the bar going, I own a bar standing there.
And then five minutes later, I own a bar.
Just shake, nod in his head.
This is a nice bar. Whose bar is this? It's yours. I own a bar every five minutes later yeah i own a bar just shake nod in his head this is a nice bar whose bar is this it's yours i own a bar every five minutes fucking so these assholes making
this poor guy i assume this is for his credit or his somehow of course his financial input i doubt
it's because they really need leonard as part of the team leonard's the only guy with food cost
knowledge we need him in the kitchen he's
the only guy who could do our kitchen ordering i'm sorry the only one that knows to draw up a
bar menu oh that's it he is the only guy who knows how to run those those uh purchase sheets that's
it so uh so donna and leonard and koslovitz here all moved together okay uh her son or I'm sorry, him. Her son was in the group that they sundown in ink.
But it's just Donna and Leonard, the old man and Kozlovitz, the luckiest trailer buyer ever.
Truly. They all moved from Great Falls to Stanford, where they purchased three trailer lots in Stanford, Montana, which is where we end up.
lots in stanford montana which is where we end up uh koslovitz owned the two trailers that they kept on the lots and he lived in one while donna and leonard lived in the other trailer so if if
this guy koslovitz was like just a dude that they you know a local guy and they wanted to sell a
trailer and they sold it to him and then it burned down and be like oh fuck it his problem whatever
but the fact that they all like now they they move together to a compound, to some weird
trailer, weird.
And they got a three lot.
Three lots with two trailers on it.
He gets two lots.
Listen to me now.
It's oversized.
See, that's how it works now.
Instead of having, because I could have bought two lots and put a trailer on each and been
average like these fucking peasants around here.
I see you over there, you fucking piece of shit.
Now I see you. Keep your kids out my fucking yard i told you that they're tearing up my dirt i know i ain't got
no motherfucking grass what is that that's my lot that's my lot not my lawn my lot keep off the lot
it's just dirt that's that's my land keep your dog from shitting on it you've been in a trailer
park and seen those like triangle things that go in front of the driveways
to keep people from parking in them?
Yes, yes.
God forbid.
He's just got a lot lined with them.
All of them in his lot.
Just all around it.
All the way around.
Keep this all mine, see?
I got three.
That's extra.
He's very proud of his three lots.
He seems like a dick already just from the
just from that yeah jesus so yeah i don't do trailers i guess so yeah and he'd get a lead
well it's nice he lets donna and well like they did i'm sure this is all a scam they're in on
together he really needs the old man around well yeah i feel like it's his credit whatever
eventually uh fine hit quote financial difficulties lead this little, because I really, I thought
this was a startup that could make it.
I mean, I looked at this and I'm like, yeah, I mean, there's Amazon and there's shit like
that.
It's the startups that ended up being big deals.
But Sundown Inn Inc., I'm surprised I don't, like, people are going to have t-shirts and
that's going to be nationwide.
Is that going to be the name of the bar?
I believe they-
That's a shit bar name.
I believe that corporation currently owns the entire Hard Rock Cafe chain. That's how that works. They ended up
taking it over the horny toad. So no, the financial difficulties led them to abandon their operation
of the Sundown Inn. Yes, they called it the Sundown Inn. There's still a Sundown Sundown
Hotel or some sort of Sundown. They might have might be reopened Sundown Inn. There's a there's still a Sundown hotel or some sort of Sundown.
It might be reopened Sundown Inn.
There's a Sundown something there now in the town already.
But this is April of 1996.
They shut it down.
No more cash.
I'm sure they drained Leonard's credit and life savings, pissed it away.
And then we're like, I don't know.
Now what?
Now what?
Back to the trailers. We do have three lots.
We can burn those. Life is
good. Want to
burn more trailers? Nah. Sundown
has kind of a negative connotation too.
Sundown to me means
it's the sundown
towns down south that we heard about.
When I hear sundown in, that makes me feel like
black people should probably avoid that.
But 0.0% black people.
Good point.
So maybe that's why there's 0.0% black people, because the inn is the sundown inn and they're frightened of it for good fucking reason.
This place is weird.
So this place is fucking weird.
It's like a movie town where you find out everybody's dead or some shit.
It's like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie, one of the later ones, where you're out everybody's dead or some shit it's like a bad m night shamalan
movie one of the later ones where you're like what happened now that's what it reminds me of
in the mouth of madness some weird shit like that yeah it's so fucking weird man uh it's very
strange so uh donna and leonard continue to live in stanford but they go back and forth a lot to
donna's home in Great Falls for some reason.
So she's dragging this poor 90-year-old man with Alzheimer's back and forth from this
trailer in Stanford to another trailer in Great Falls.
He doesn't know the difference.
He doesn't give a shit.
Yeah, it's all tin at that point.
So in July 1996, Donna applies for and gets and receives on behalf of Leonard a lump sum distribution of Leonard's remaining pension benefits worths.
So rather than him living out his days and keeping getting his pension from his work, she negotiated a lump sum ending to his to his uh pension which what the fuck that's that seems
shady right that doesn't seem right there i'm just gonna take care of him with all this now
now we'll just take it all up front we'll take it all up front yeah i'm gonna you know what he's got
investments he wants to make so i'm gonna be just counting on him dying soon yeah she's counting on
him dying and she's she's draining him while he's alive. She's using this old man, it seems like anyway, to drain him financially.
And I don't know what, it doesn't say at this point that she works nine to five,
and then she's trying to operate the sundown in at night,
and she's putting all her paycheck into it too.
I'd like to know how they manage that money.
You know what I mean?
How they decide how much further he's
gonna go you know because they they've got to also understand that yeah absolutely he could live to
be 98 years old then what happens yeah but but he could die tomorrow yeah and and you paid out all
this money yeah so it's yeah it's super weird it's very weird that's why they negotiate just
like a buyout it's like a buyout of like an injured nba player and like he's probably only
gonna live four more years we need your roster spot is what they said to him uh down at
the old down at his pension listen leonard uh the union hall you're clogging up the roster spot we
really need fresh blood in there to clog it to actually pay something in rather than you
we didn't think you'd live this long is what we're saying you've inhaled asbestos for 45
fucking years we thought that would kill you that was our plan uh i think that was old-timey company's plans like
we'll poison these people that way we won't have to pay these stupid pensions we've negotiated that's
that's still i'll be dead by 65 fireman's pensions are so big yeah yeah absolutely it's like they're
probably gonna die they're gonna inhale some bad shit and be sick probably so let's do that so
maybe we won't make fun of the Great Falls Fire Department so much.
While they're inhaling horrible fucking whatever the hell, I don't even know.
Whatever the fire up there.
Whatever awful toxins that give them horrible fucking diseases.
Jesus Christ.
Terrible.
So these guys, they abandon the whole thing.
They abandon this enterprise.
Isn't it an enterprise really?
The sundown in?
What do you want to call that, Jimmy? I feel like it's a yard sale with a better sign.
It's a lemonade stand. There you go. It sells booze. So they get him. They get his $38,000.
Now, between July and October of 1996, six different insurance policies were purchased to insure Leonard's life.
They're really worried about this guy.
And what fucking insurance companies are insuring 90-year-old men with Alzheimer's, by the way?
I thought that they checked to see if you got other ones.
Well, you could have a bunch of policies.
You can buy policies all you want.
Yeah, they're all separate transactions with the different companies.
Yeah, that's a good point.
It's all different.
But who the fuck will insure a 90-year-old male?
That's a bad investment.
Right.
What is that?
Give us, I don't know, 50 grand a month as your premium?
Because he's going to die soon, and we're going to have to fucking pay out, obviously.
If he dies of Alzheimer's, you get a lot of money?
Well, then.
Is that a pre-existing condition?
Yeah, I think 90 and Alzheimer's would both be considered pre-existing something.
Seems like the most expensive insurance policy ever.
I would think.
It fucking well better be.
He's literally on his deathbed.
Right.
Yeah, being dragged from trailer to trailer.
So Donna and the Kozlovitz guy paid some of the premiums, some of them.
Donna had actually prepared the applications herself and forged Leonard's signature on them, which is not terrific.
That's what they figured out.
Definitely not legal to forge a dying old man's signature on life insurance forms.
I would say that's highly illegal.
So the policies named her son, Martin, there, Donna, and Roy Link, her brother, as beneficiaries.
So that's who they are here.
Kozlatov is involved in this?
He's not involved.
He's not a beneficiary.
Kozlovitz is not a beneficiary. Now, September of 1996, Donna and Leonard moved back to Great Falls, away from Stanford.
And they would make Donna and Roy made frequent trips back to Stanford where they would remove things from the Stanford trailer and bring them to Great Falls.
I don't know how many times you could go back and forth with shit. It it's a trailer it's like eight carloads tops true but they kept doing it
they're all older too i guess so that makes sense they're all sick in their 60s so it's not like
they're gonna you get the armoire if you pick it up crack it to the side we'll get it out this door
i mean you could save a whole bunch of trips by just buying a hitch and fucking strap that house
on you right in a u-haul i don't know how many u-haul dealerships are in stanford i didn't look that up the house is fucking mobile james that's the
other thing well i think these might be in the ground hopefully i don't know maybe maybe there's
still axles under there you know what yank that fucker along this is montana pull this bitch along
and let's go let's go god damn it stop fucking around what are we doing here and then what are
you gonna leave we have you have three lots. I don't know.
Well, it's paradise back there.
Sell them.
It's paradise.
So they do that and they transfer everything back to their residence in Great Falls.
Now, October 16th, 1996, Donna and Leonard, they drive to Stanford from Great Falls to
do laundry at the Stanford trailer because they had no laundry facilities at their place in Great Falls.
Do you remember me saying how far away Great Falls is from Stanford?
It's an hour.
It's a fucking hour away.
An hour five or some shit.
They're doing that for laundry?
Now, Great Falls, not a huge city, but it's not 100 people.
There's laundromats in fucking Great Falls.
I guarantee you.
Laundromatsats suck but you could
be done with your laundry by the time you get to
the fucking trailer over here and they're
gonna have like shitty washers in the trailer I can have
like big industrial washing machines in a trailer
at minimum you've got three loads of laundry
done by the time you make that yeah by the time
you get there just the drive right yeah
you the laundromat you can line them all up
all at the same goddamn time that's another thing
that's the advantage of the laundromat otherwise You can line them all up, do them all at the same goddamn time. That's another thing. That's the advantage of the laundromat, otherwise.
That's brilliant.
I never thought about that.
So these people, though, no laundromat.
So weird.
And then they had lunch at a cafe and went to a bar.
And then Donna and Leonard were met by Roy Link and his wife.
They had come to Stanford to pick up one of Leonard's chairs from the trailer and bring it fucking somewhere.
They're just, I feel like they're just picking
apart this guy's life and going
through and putting post-it notes on his stuff for
this is mine and that's yours.
No, I'm red. The red tags are mine
Donna, you fucking bitch. I've told you that
before. You got the green ones
you son of a bitch. And they start fighting.
Jesus Christ. What a fucking
mess.
They start fighting.
Jesus Christ.
A fucking mess.
Hey, everybody.
Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about Zola.
Z-O-L-A dot com.
That is right. Zola, the wedding company that will do anything for love, is reinventing the wedding planning and registry experience to make the happiest moment in a couple's lives even happier.
From engagement to wedding to decorating your first home,
Zola will be there, combining compassionate customer service
with modern tools and technology, all in the service of love, Jimmy.
That sounds easy.
What could be better?
Join the 500,000 couples who've already used Zola.
It's good stuff. I'm telling you, Zola
takes the stress out of wedding planning with free wedding websites, save the dates and
invitations, a wedding registry, and free and easy to use wedding planning tools, free guest
addressing, free matching envelopes and friendly prices, free wedding websites that match all of
Zola's save the dates and invitations. It is amazing.
Match your save the dates and invitations to a free wedding website, Jimmy.
This is amazing.
Everything all in one.
It's incredible.
Over 100 beautiful wedding website designs to choose from, and they're all free.
It's super easy to personalize with your favorite design.
If you register at Zola, your Zola registry automatically integrates into your Zola wedding website so guests can get all the details they need and buy you a wedding gift in one convenient and beautiful place.
It's terrific, Jimmy.
It's fantastic.
Couples get 20% off remaining gifts on their registry for six months post-wedding.
Outstanding.
You cannot beat this.
We will tell you that right now.
All you need to do is sign up at Zola.com slash small town.
That's Z-O-L-A dot com slash small town to get 30% off your save the dates and invitations order.
That's amazing.
30% off your save the dates.
That's incredible.
Zola.com slash small town.
Z-O-L-A dot com slash small town and get 30% off your invitations and save the date order.
Go plan your day.
And now back to the show.
If you like this show, you should check out Penn's Sunday School with magician and entertainer Penn Gillette.
Each week, Penn talks to celebrities, magicians, and other entertainers about whatever he wants.
Past guests include Phil Rosenthal, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, and writer-director Kevin Smith.
So check out Penn Sunday School weekly on Podcast One or wherever you get your favorite
podcasts.
So they picked up the chair.
It's just, what are they doing?
This is just a white trash procession of one piece of furniture at a time out of a goddamn trailer.
It's not even a lazy boy.
It's one of the chairs from the table.
It's just a chair.
I'll take this one.
I'm Roy and I want one chair.
It's a set, Roy.
There's four of them.
I only want one.
It's the one I used to sit in.
And it's comfortable.
You do what you will with the others.
What you will.
I've had many a mac and cheese in this chair.
And I can see the stains right there from that.
That's my mac and cheese drop spot right there.
That is Thanksgiving 92.
That's right.
I know.
I'll never forget it.
Gravy stain is beautiful.
So Roy Link and his wife were at the bar here uh that
they like i said they met at a bar and all that they were at a bar for a short while before they
went to get the chair but donna and leonard remained at the bar until about 8 30 p.m she's
just tracking this fucking guy around come to the bar leonard Okay. We're going to take your pension, Leonard. Okay. We're opening a fucking inn, Leonard.
Okay.
He's just, sure.
Sounds good.
What was that now?
I own an inn?
I own an inn.
All right.
That's yours, Leonard.
All right.
This is terrible.
This is not good.
I don't like where this is going, this whole thing.
This is why I don't want to be like that.
I don't want to have all this.
This could happen ability to be taken advantage of oh it grows exponentially just because you're not all
there and even if you are all there just if you're old and you don't know new tricks they fucking
they bilk old people all the time just on all these little scams that they figure out where
old people are like oh my god my daughter's being held captive in Bangladesh?
Well, I better give you my account number.
Like, huh?
The fuck are you talking about?
Your daughter's a housewife in Racine.
What are you talking about?
She's not held captive in Bangladesh.
It's just, that's what they don't know any better.
And they're like, oh, they told me it was Bangladesh
and that's a scary place.
You guys are not my family anymore.
You can go your own way because I got an email from my prince relative.
Listen.
I am royalty now.
I don't know if you know this, but the prince of Zamunda has asked me.
He said his royal penis was clean.
Now, that upset me a little bit, but he wasn't heavy breathing or nothing.
So I said he might be talking something I don't know about.
But he said, all I
have to do is pay the taxes, and
I'm going to be a millionaire. It's perfect.
You guys go your own way.
Now, I need to cash out Leonard's
pension before I do that
because I'm going to need to pay the taxes.
About $38,000.
After that, I'm a millionaire.
And Zamunda money.
Unbelievable.
Zamunda is a made-up place in coming to America, by the way,
if you're under the age of 30.
James does not believe that place exists.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
And John Amos is the ruler,
which the father from good times should rule most things, I believe.
Now, John Amos owned McDowell's.
Right, right.
His father was, what's his name
god damn it the voice of fucking fucking yeah james earl jones god damn it yes james earl jones
and john amos together could really run anything i believe at minimum of mcdowell's they could
fucking dominate a mcdowell's well one dominated a mcdowell's imagine two oh my god
that place would be the most successful mcdowell's ever so uh over the course of the evening at the
bar uh there's gambling at this bar also and uh this isn't good uh donna loses about twelve hundred
dollars uh gambling over the course of the of the evening so they take off to get the chair roy
lincoln the wife he sticks she sticks behind with with Leonard, and he watches her lose his money, presumably,
until 8.30 p.m. when she decides $1,200 is enough for the night to lose.
So Donna and Leonard return to the trailer in Stanford,
and Donna does laundry, and Leonard watched TV.
So I guess there's a TV and at least one chair left.
Roy didn't take all the chairs.
So at this point, Leonard was developing a cold, is what Donna said.
So in addition to turning up the furnace in the trailer and covering a number of the vents to channel the heat, this is like we do in Arizona.
If you have an empty room, you shut the AC vent off so it pushes out harder.
Shut that door.
Shut that fucking door.
Shut it.
Shut the vent. Shut the fucking door. Don't do it. We need more in the living room. so it pushes out harder. Shut that door. Shut that fucking door. Shut it. Shut the vent.
Shut the fucking door.
Don't do it.
We need more in the living room.
Direct the air this way.
That's what Arizona life is like in the summertime.
You know, it's 130.
We're trying to make the air like fucking 50 degrees cooler than it's supposed to be outside.
That's really difficult to do.
It's like a Montana winter.
You're trying to get the air to be 50 degrees warmer 50 60 degrees
warmer than it is it's not easy so it's the same goddamn thing so they're covering up vents and
channeling the heat toward leonard's part of the trailer and uh donna gave leonard some cold
medicine uh earlier in the day uh roy had said that he gave leonard tylenol with codeine uh which
is you know strong that'll some syrup that's yeah that's uh there's some shit in there and then it's gave Leonard Tylenol with codeine, which is strong.
There's some syrup.
Yeah, there's some shit in there.
It's narcotics that will knock you out, especially if you're old, probably.
I think that'll put you down.
Mix that with a Sprite and you've got a Ludacris.
That's what I'm saying.
Maybe that's what my grandma needs, some syrup.
What do you think?
Fucking hook her up. Grandma, I have something for you.
No, no, I didn't make you like a nice tomato salad
or something that you enjoy.
This is codeine.
I think you need to sleep some.
This is called lean, Grandma.
Yeah.
Didn't want to confuse her.
Let's go with the,
if I make it sound like medicine,
she'll just take it.
We're going to say a doctor says
this is good for old people.
She'll go, am I really?
Okay.
Dr. Dre, that's who.
Okay.
I take care. Oh, yeah. that's it dr dre said it that's all there is to it you know him dr dre
grandma is very important uh his research has been noted in multiple journals and uh the source is
one of them yes you know that uh it's a very noted journal. It's a wonderful dissertation called The Chronic.
It's very good.
The Chronic.
Chronic, like your pain.
So this works very well.
If I could get my grandma smoking weed, that would be the greatest thing in the world.
Oh my God, I would love it.
That would be amazing.
My grandmother's stone would be the greatest thing in the world.
Quick sidebar.
She was married to a guy later on after my grandfather died and all that stuff.
She was married to a guy when she was in her 70s.
The barber was her husband?
No, no, no.
That's the other one.
Oh, boy.
That's the other one.
Yeah.
This one here.
She was married to this guy.
Everybody called him chief.
He was in the army for like 40 years.
He was a chief petty officer.
So everybody called him chief, this guy.
And he talked like this.
And he was like, oh, hey, how are you doing? He was like chief petty officer. So everybody called him chief, this guy. And he talked like this. And he was like, oh, hey, how are you doing?
He was like 85 years old.
But he would get up and do 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups at like 85 years old and walk like five miles.
He was one of these guys.
And he started to lose it a little bit.
But hilariously, where he'd just be like, oh, hey, I don't know what's going on there.
All right, guy.
Oh, boy.
And it was just fucking hilarious.
And one day, my aunt and her boyfriend and i uh made weed brownies and we also
made regular brownies to cover that we made weed brownies so we put out regular brownies and
apparently there was some there was a mix-up and an 85 year old man ate a weed brownie and went to
sleep uh for a long time and we were very scared we we may have murdered him uh it was frightening
but he ate
a weed brownie and then said oh boy i'm i don't know i'm i feel awfully funny that's what he said
and we were just like just as i feel awfully funny i don't know uh oh boy i feel i feel something
i feel something in my head and we're just like oh no oh no no no no he ate from the wrong tray
it was like a terrible adam sandler movie and it fucking was real and this poor man's just i gotta lay down he just slept on the couch for like four hours
and we're like oh no can you imagine not knowing what weed feels like and then accidentally being
high never in his life had weed and these were like pretty strong brownies too like they weren't
for amateurs and he ate a whole fucking brownie he took it down he was asleep in an hour and we
kept checking and make sure he was breathing and shit.
Make sure.
Who's going to go check and see if Chief's breathing?
Okay.
The first time you smoke weed, you expect to feel something.
And then when you do feel it, you're like, this is much different than I ever would have
imagined.
But you're at least braced for something.
But you get it, right.
It's like being punched in the face.
You expect it to hurt.
Right.
But you enjoy a brownie expecting nothing else.
He's had a million
brownies but never had weed so this is a very unexpected cause and effect this is different oh
boy i feel funny grandmother's name is lloyd oh lloyd i feel funny and boy i don't know
it was just so fucked up i felt so bad but then not really he just took a nap and he was fine
after that yeah but uh it was pretty fucking scary and amusing. A four-hour nap.
Yeah, he went down for a while.
My grandmother does not know about this, obviously.
So luckily she doesn't listen to the show or know how to find a podcast or even own a cell phone.
So good for us.
The first time I got insanely stoned, I took a nap.
And then I woke up still high and I was like, this is just how I'm going to be the rest of my life.
This is just how I feel now.
Awesome.
Nobody tell my mom.
This is cool.
All right.
This is what it's going to be.
I can deal with this.
I'm going to have to up my food budget, though.
This is going to be rough.
Fuck.
So Donna says that Leonard went to bed in his room of the trailer at about 1130 p.m.
And she didn't fall asleep till about 230 a.m.
I don't know if she's just sad about her gambling loss.
She was folding laundry.
She's folding.
That's the other thing, too.
How many loads?
How long did it take?
She got a lot of laundry.
I would say so.
This woman does laundry fucking constantly.
She's got a lot.
I don't know.
It's just the two of them.
I don't know who else's laundry she's doing. I don't know. But I don't know. It's just the two of them. I don't know who else's laundry she's doing.
I don't know. And right here,
Donna, she says that she woke
up shortly after she fell asleep
though to the sound of a smoke alarm.
She said that that was
what woke her up and she opened the bedroom door
and said that it was just a wall
of smoke when she opened the bedroom door.
So she shut the door
right now. Opened it. Holy shit. Wall of smoke. Shut opened the bedroom door okay so she uh shut the door right now right now opened
it holy shit wall of smoke shut the door then jumped out of her bedroom window to escape the
trailer wow uh yeah she's uh spry enough to get out the bedroom window at least in her 60s uh which
fire will make you do that yeah it's it's if there's fire on one part of you you'll do just
about anything to get away from the fire hence the the saying, lit a fire under their eyes.
Yeah, lit a fire under their eyes.
They got moving quick.
That's how it works.
Yeah.
So she jumps out of the bedroom window.
She then tried to reenter the trailer, she says, through the back door, but was unable
to do so because of just flames.
She opened the door and it was just overcome with flames.
Didn't know what else to do.
So now remember, she's on a two-trailer, three-lot parcel here, baby.
So she runs next door to Kozlovitz's trailer.
Kozlovitz's trailer.
Yeah.
Just two lots over.
Come on, now.
It's two lots.
He's like, I keep my space now.
Come on, now.
I'm a king.
God damn it.
So king of the trailer park here.
For some reason, I picture them dead center of the court, too.
Like, he's just holding everybody who goes around him.
He's got the one with the American flag on it.
Yeah, he's got the one with the flagpole.
He's like, don't touch my flag, neither.
It's not yours.
It belongs to all of us, John.
I need a whole lot for Old Glory.
That's it.
That's about two for the trailers and one for Old Glory.
So she runs next door and calls 911 at 3-1 at 340 a.m. is when the call came into 9-1-1. She then goes back, she says, with Kozlovitz and tries to enter the burning trailer through the front door. But this is I don't know what she expected, but retreated because it was, quote, too dark usually fire lights things up plus what is it's nighttime right it's is it
on fire right there well then you're good then did you expect it to be bright did the fire turn
the lights on now i don't know what you expected did you not bring a flashlight in the middle of
the here's the other thing you she so a fire's going and it's raging so much she has to jump
out the window out the window she goes and makes a phone call and then comes back yeah calls that one fire fire in no time oh a trailer goes up like crazy it's
all it's all made of toxic plastic chemicals ever the carpet the wall everything's chemicals in that
fucking thing it's made of nothing there's tin holding in gets a tin box of chemicals that's it
goes up like that that's all it is though that's everything is
plastic the wood's not real the insulation's just fucking and i'm sure they got cheap furniture in
there that's gonna go up and it's fuck man it's probably he's probably got shit from the 70s he's
still wearing because he's an old man polyester he's gonna go up in flames like crazy buying him
new clothes no nothing's fire retardant in there there's no law there's no law there's no law that says things have to
resist fire you know how it goes so uh they i guess it was too dark so they retreated
they just stood there well i guess he's gonna burn over there oh fuck leonard's in the house
in the house this is what i mean oh my god jumps out the window leonard can't jump out the window he's fucking old so holy shit overcome by smoke she goes in can't do it oh back up too dark i
guess leonard's gonna die i'm afraid of the i'm afraid of the dark so leonard's gonna burn up in
there that poor man so this poor fucking uh leonard's still in the bedroom uh when a fireman
get there which i can't be fast i wouldn't imagine firemen get there uh which it can't be fast, I wouldn't imagine. Fireman get there.
Donna says, oh, by the way, Leonard's still in the trailer in the fucking bedroom.
So the fire officials eventually, once they get the fire under control, they go in and they find Leonard's body.
He's dead.
He's partially covered by a blanket on the living room couch where they think had they think he'd been asleep it looked like it was like an old man sleeping they've been overcome by smoke uh which i guess didn't seem
like he suffered much anyway i think it might have happened in his sleep or or he might have
been stuck there on the couch and who knows it could have been terrible you know woken up saw
the flames was like perfect perfect i ain't going anywhere or uh we'll find out actually or he could have
maybe not been able to move for some reason and been stuck in a position to where he would just
have to inhale smoke till he died you never know oh that's right he was sipping lean yeah so that's
he's got problems here so they find him there now she said that he's in the back bedroom also that's
another discrepancy uh so when she entered the front door, he would have been right there and dark or not.
So, yeah, grab him.
Grab him.
Exactly.
So eventually an autopsy reveals that Leonard died of carbon monoxide poisoning from smoke inhalation.
Well, at least he wasn't burned to death.
Thank fuck.
Also revealed the presence of what they called therapeutic doses of sedative drugs, Benadryl and codeine.
So they doubled them up on sedatives.
If you give an old man Benadryl and codeine, much like a weed brownie, he will go to sleep.
That's why I told that story.
That's a nap and a pill.
That's a nap and a pill.
It's exactly the same thing.
So if you took that and you're an old man and whatever, you might not wake up from the
smoke or the alarm and you might an old man and whatever you might not wake up from the smoke or the alarm and
you might inhale smoke till you die how fast does carbon monoxide poisoning set in that it's pretty
fast actually a trailer goes up like a matchstick oh yeah yeah and you're already dead anyway yeah
it doesn't take it doesn't take long for the carbon monoxide from what i understand because
when people accidentally do it in their garages or on purpose in their garages. That doesn't take too, too, too, too long.
If you're in a place with a lot of it, I mean, it takes a while for it to fill up.
But if you're in a place with more of that than the oxygen, you're fucked.
You're going down, basically, as we see from what happens all the time.
And now people do that with their garages now with cars.
I saw this thing where they were like,
you know, this car and it's the automatic start thing
and it's quiet too.
And it was my car that I had that the article was on,
like my brand of car.
And I'm like, okay, this is strange.
There's like remote start on it?
No, the title of the article was though,
people dying in their homes from carbon monoxide
from a certain vehicle.
So I'm like, is this car like, what the fuck is going on?
But it turns out it's quiet and you don't have to put the key in the ignition.
You just hold the key so people leave the car running and then their house is attached to their garage and their house fills with carbon monoxide and they die because they didn't pay attention and turn their fucking car off.
That's not the car's fault.
They would say this thing like, your car is going to kill you no it's not you are stupid take your fucking turn it off dummy
that's the equivalent of saying that a specific brand an ultima kills babies yeah because people
forget them in the back seat they forget them in the back seat their seats are so comfortable that
the babies don't cry and then you forget them so beware ultimas anything you you do carelessly is going to be bad for you.
It's dangerous.
Anything is dangerous.
So that girl that was text messaging with her boyfriend just a couple years ago, and she encouraged him to kill himself.
So he did it with a water pump in the backseat of his truck.
I imagine that was pretty fucking quick, too, then.
Because that was just carbon monoxide that killed him.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Same thing.
That's fascinating.
It is.
It's fucked up.
I don't know how long it takes.
It is.
I had an uncle that died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Yes, but they don't think it was suicide.
Got it.
He was in the mafia.
Gotcha.
So maybe somebody started his car for him.
That's what I mean.
He was in some trouble, too.
And so they were like, that looks like a staged suicide there.
I have a couple people in my family killed by the mafia.
It's very interesting.
Yeah, we'll get into it one of these days.
But not now.
Because it has nothing to do with Montana.
Maybe when we do New York, we'll see.
Anyway, so a few days later, a guy named Agent Joe Uribe from the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Montana Department of Justice.
Left fielder somewhere. Yeah. And he's a retired shortstop for the Jose Uribe played for years.
Joe Uribe. He's like, I go by Joe now. I don't want anybody knowing who I am.
Keep it low key. You know what I mean? I don't want anybody to know I played for the Astros.
So this guy from the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Montana Department of Justice.
God damn it.
He's coming in.
He was contacted by Judith Basin County Sheriff to investigate Leonard's death.
I picture a man, the Judith Basin County Sheriff, a man literally with hay hanging from his mouth
while his feet are up on his desk when he makes
this call and he goes yeah i'm calling from judith basin yeah this is sheriff tucker
got a body we got a dead man i don't know who did it but y'all might want to look at it i don't know
we ain't got the manpower so we ain't even got a jail down here let me tell you something i don't
know unless unless i catch you speeding i don't really know what to do with you so if you want to come on
down here and check this out we have manpower we need men power we only got one man well and he's
busy uh getting getting tax dollars from these speeding tickets it's basically me and i learned
to be a sheriff through the mail so i don't think think it's going to. You've seen John Wayne.
That's how I became sheriff.
Because I used to watch a lot of John Wayne.
I know a little something about it.
Let's just say that.
So these people, Uribe and the rest of the professional criminal investigators, not of the Judith Basin County Sheriff's Department.
It doesn't even have a fucking jail.
You can't have any authority as a sheriff if who doesn't even have a fucking jail. You can't have any authority as a sheriff
if you don't even have a fucking jail to oversee.
What are you going to do?
Yeah.
What are you going to do?
I'll take you a county over
and put you in their jail and then leave.
Okay.
All right.
That's fine.
Not like you can put him in jail
and be like, that's right, man.
We got you.
Have a good one.
Please don't let him go
because I know you're in charge of him now, but don't let him go because i know you're in charge of him now but
don't let him go because we caught him doing never mind realize y'all have no jurisdiction over this
man jesus christ man so uh they go they search the trailer the professional investigators they
seize an empty bottle of sedative drugs is what they called it a battery operated smoke alarm
that they found in the hallway uh but they
couldn't find a battery for the alarm so this is an alarm with no fucking battery in it but she was
awoken by a smoke alarm from the hallway oh what the fuck so where'd that battery go that's a bad
story did it fucking burn out of the smoke a lot the rest of the smoke alarm was left intact but
the duracell was melted clean clean. I don't think that happened.
It evaporated.
So right away, they're seeing, this is just looking at the fire.
They're like, okay, that's shady, that's shady.
She said he was in the bed.
He's on the couch.
There's no smoke alarm, no battery.
Not to mention, they haven't even looked at the financial things yet.
She's taking his money.
There's all these life insurance policies.
None of that shit. So Uribe interviews Donna Enright on November 6th, 1996.
It might as well be 1896.
It doesn't matter.
He says that she told him, among other things, that she was unaware of any life insurance policies for Leonard.
She's like, I don't know anything about Leonard.
Leonard has life insurance?
Wow.
Lucky me.
Wow.
Dumb luck. I sell a trailer to a guy it burns down he's lucky i'm the beneficiary of how many policies
wow what a responsible man that's just six life and that's really responsible he must have really
forgot that he had one yeah maybe that's it he bought one one day and was like you know what i
really need life insurance let me call this fella the guy you called you want okay i guess yeah sure so for a week he's just buying life insurance he does have alzheimer's
yeah so uh uh your ebay also says that during the interview donna made a number of other statements
that were inconsistent with her earlier statements regarding the fire uh the next day he searches her home uh the one in great falls
where he finds the six life insurance policies uh at her house at her house that she didn't know
existed a number of bills on these policies issued to her yeah uh also to koslovitz to link to martin
and to leonard because she did them all different beneficiaries and all that and several items of property, which Donna told the insurer had been destroyed by the
fire.
She's a real dipshit.
So she is not thinking this shit.
Did she not think they would even look at her house?
She's like, I'll just keep it all in my house.
They'll never look there.
I can explain all this.
It's all the way in Great Falls.
They don't even know that exists.
It's in another town.
They don't even know.
So she had not only all the life insurance policies that she
said weren't there but property she stood so now she's even even insurance fraud she's even
it wasn't good enough if we're saying this it wasn't good enough to allegedly kill this man
or whatever for this and that for life insurance but she's also got to try to scam a couple of
fucking extra bucks from the insurance company saying i lost my mommy's ring or some shit like
you know i had a mink coat it was beautiful twelve thousand dollars i kept it in the trailer all the
time i had a smoke alarm battery oh 97 cents very very valuable where it's a decel one of them so
those are real valuable uh actually be a nine volt yeah even more even better so uh so this so right Even more. Even better. So right away, they're very much obviously suspicious of her.
Six experts investigate this fire because you've got to...
Fire, by the way, if you don't know, fire is the most difficult criminal investigation there is.
Fire is the most difficult thing to prove.
And arson is the most fire.
If you can prove fire, that burned down.
See that all charred up? Fire. But to prove that... Fire is the most fire. If you can prove fire, burn down. See that all charred up fire.
But to prove that it's not fire is excessively easy to prove.
I'm really happy I caught myself on that because that is the stupidest thing I've ever said in my life.
Gunshot wound.
Probably the only thing easier to prove.
Even that could have been a hole made by something else
but a fire is pretty distinctive when something has been burned it's it's provable it's the most
provable thing wow so uh but proving that somebody intentionally set a fire there you go is exactly
not even proving that a fire was intentionally set that That might be, that's, that's not easy to prove,
but that's even easier to prove.
But to then be proved that not only was it intentionally set,
but that person set that fire.
And for this reason is like next level,
fucking difficult to prove.
So they got six professionals.
They have six professionals.
It's a big deal.
They talk in the David Simon homicide book.
They talk about that a lot.
Like best case scenario to find a body is in a house
uh a controlled environment that nobody's fucked with indoors where you can gather you know trace
evidence and do all that and control the crime scene uh worst thing you could get fire that's
the fucking absolute trailer in the woods in the trailer in the woods even worse because then
there's less witnesses so that's another problem they have. So terrible to do. So they really need to do this.
All of these guys, all of these people, these experts say that the fire started in a third
bedroom that was a storage room. All of them said that. They also testified that the cause of the
fire was a collection of newspapers that was stored in the corner of the room. They said that
no accelerants were used to start the fire and that there was no evidence of any
deliberate act to start the fire but they wouldn't their evidence of it would be burned up yeah the
other thing would be well would they just burst into fucking newspapers it's not like oil they
don't just burst into flames they're combustible yeah you don't just like we better get them
newspapers out of there they're gonna burst into flames if you collect too many newspapers they
catch on fire it's the weirdest fucking thing ever so uh yeah they they couldn't uh and also you have to twist them to get them to
fuck yeah you gotta twist them check twist them simulate kindling have you ever tried to light
a fucking stack of newspapers that doesn't light at all no it's like a log try to light a log on
fire it doesn't work you need a big flame to catch a blog on fire or a stack of newspapers.
You wouldn't just, yeah.
More than likely, a spark would be difficult to catch a, and even then, where'd the spark
come from?
Right.
What's happening here?
What do you got to fucking, your smoke alarm that's bad is up there anyway.
Yeah.
And it doesn't even have electricity to it.
No, it's a battery.
You got nothing with flame and starter
if you didn't have a loose spark shooting out of something you got a fountain of we got a fixture
just shoot sparks all the time once in a while we're just sitting a spark shoot out so we just
try not to keep any stacks of newspapers near it that's all like i don't think that's a thing that
happens ever it's cool because it reminds us of a scary movie yeah it pops off it's like then we
think oh yeah ha, Halloween festivals downtown.
Scarecrows made by locals.
Did you make that scarecrow, Leonard?
No, I forgot.
Damn it, Leonard.
I told you not to forget.
Meanwhile, he made 12 scarecrows.
He's trying to get them to make more.
Poor Leonard.
Jesus Christ.
This poor son of a bitch.
That's what she probably should have done.
Just put him to work just telling him every day to make one thing.
Yeah.
Something valuable that you can sell.
And she could have made a fortune on Etsy with these scarecrows.
Yeah, with these scarecrows.
Just keep making Leonard do it.
He doesn't know where he is, but he makes the best damn scarecrows in the county.
I'll tell you that right now.
I'll tell you what.
So now the experts, based on their inability to attribute the fire to any accidental cause, because they'd be like, well, how did this fire start by accident?
There was, like I said, no spark fixture or anything like that.
Several experts said that the cause of the fire was incendiary as opposed to natural or undetermined.
So it had to be somebody set it, basically.
It had to be a set fire.
They couldn't find a natural.
Basically, it had to be a set fire.
Not they couldn't find a natural or.
Yeah, like we said, this isn't like, you know, some sort of just combustible out of nowhere.
Just fucking whatever. So November 13th, 1996, Donna is charged in the district court with felony arson and deliberate homicide.
It was later amended to include another charge of deliberate homicide
pursuant to a felony murder rule, obviously.
And later on, a little bit,
Link, the brother, Roy Link, and Kozlovitz
are both charged a few months later
based on their alleged roles in this fire, too.
So now they're charging everybody with this shit.
On November 22, 1996 uh she's arrested
and she's incarcerated in the fergus county jail because they don't fucking have one in the county
she's should be in jail they literally have to take the people next door they're ridiculous
fucking place but before they filed the charges against link and Enright, because they waited a while, before they filed the charges against Link, Donna Enright sent him a letter.
In the letter, she referred, never send letters from prison to people you've done crimes with.
They always come back to haunt you.
How many of these letters have we read on the show?
They're amazing and they're everywhere.
They're everywhere.
Everywhere.
They're amazing and they're everywhere.
They're everywhere.
Everywhere.
So she refers in this letter to a, quote, team made up of Link and a few other people and expressed concern that Link may be charged as a conspirator if he implicated her or himself.
So she's trying to like, she's like, listen, if you implicate me, they're going to put you in it, too.
So I would be quiet. And if you implicate yourself, it's going to put you in it, too. So I would be quiet.
And if you implicate yourself, it's going to hurt me.
So I would just say that you didn't do shit.
And if I write a letter and say all of this, then we all get implicated.
So it's fine.
But I didn't think that far ahead.
Obviously, if you saw my murder plan, I didn't even go.
She could have just had a battery in the smoke detector and then make sure there's a battery in there.
And then everything else she says is plausible.
She could have just said, I heard a crackling in my sleep.
Yeah, I heard something.
I don't know what I don't know what it was.
Smell smoke.
I 100 very specific about hearing a fire alarm.
So smoke alarm dummy.
So very interesting here.
Now, Link Roy Link, once he's arrested files a pre-trial motion to exclude
the letter arguing that it was inadmissible which seems excessively admissible at that point
an attempted correspondence between two co-conspirators about a crime i think is as
as that you send from a jail you in jail handed a letter a handwritten letter to a state employee
who wears a badge and whose job is to read that
shit by the way to make sure that you're not doing anything and 100 allowed to look it over
all they want no code that's i mean these people are stupid when you read about like drug gangs
and shit they send each other shit in codes they had this one clever ass scheme where if you wanted
to send a letter to a guy in jail like a fellow inmate
what you would do is and i'm hopefully if we have inmate listeners giving them ideas i'm sure they
know about this already they know and they know easily i'm sure it's caught now right but back
then this was like in the 90s it's just drug gang in new york would do this what they would do is
they would on the return address they would write the name of the person they wanted to send the
letter to that would be the return address and then they write the name of the person they wanted to send the letter to.
That would be the return address.
And then they would have a fucked up address that was non-sendable to the sender.
So they would return it to the guy they wanted to send it to.
So that's how they would mail it to it.
And they wouldn't even look over those.
They wouldn't look at them.
They'd just send them back.
It's just returned.
It wasn't leaving the prison anyway.
Brilliant.
So it was fucking brilliant.
So they would run a drug organization right through the prison people who were who were giving them their mail i've seen piss writing have you seen
that dude the prison is so fucked up it's the most fucking amazing it's so they write they
write in piss on paper and so it's to the naked eye looking at it doesn't it doesn't look like
anything but then you hold a lighter behind it and the real words show up turns into one of those
fucking things you had when you were a kid.
And it's because of piss.
It's because of piss.
Maybe that's what was in those pens when we were kids because it was yellow.
I bet it was piss.
God damn fucking parents were so shitty in the 80s they gave us piss pens.
Thanks a lot, piss pens.
So, April 14th, 1997, the state files its notice of intent to introduce evidence of other crimes, wrongdoings, or acts by Donna.
So, they're saying, we're going to say some other shit she did in the past, and you have to make evidence that on seven seven previous occasions donna has been involved in home or automobile fires for the purpose of making fraudulent
insurance claims so yeah it wasn't just the 95 fire she's had cars burn up that she said she's
had fucking other houses burn up that she's been involved in somehow she's around a lot of fire
and a lot of fire that gets insurance claims so this is her thing that she does apparently
hey everybody just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you about our great sponsor
madison reed madison reed madison dash reed r--E-D dot com. You have to go there, guys.
Well, I should say ladies here.
This is for you guys.
This is the best hair color you can get out there.
The best at-home hair color.
That's what I'm told.
Yeah, this is better than going to a salon, because you're going to get it cheaper, and
you're going to get it.
It's going to be less expensive.
You're going to have more control over it.
And with a great product like Madison Reed, it is actually just as high quality.
Jimmy, I look at your head right now, and I see it's screaming for some Madison Reed.
Now, obviously, we are two men.
I have short brown hair.
I have no need for any kind of color.
Jimmy has zero, hardly any hair at all.
So really no need for a color there.
We could just paint his head with a Sharpie.
But if he did need color, he would use Madison Reed.
Madison Dash Reed.
Madison Dash Reed dot com.
Because it's for decades, women have had really no options for this.
They can have kind of a lousy hair coloring at home or they can have this super expensive,
you know, complicated process that takes three hours at the salon and that whole thing.
But now you can have this amazing color.
It's salon quality for less than $25.
That's amazing.
From what I understand, they are reinventing hair color, at-home hair color, and it's working.
It's working, and it's a lot of the, what it is is women are, you guys are busy.
That's all there is to it.
You're busy.
A lot of times you don't have time to go somewhere for three hours or you don't want to pay that
kind of money.
You're busy so join all the women who are doing this life-changing awesome thing and coloring their
hair with madison reed find your perfect shade at madison-reed.com madison reed would like to
honor small town murder listeners with 10 off plus free shipping on their first color kit.
All you have to do is use the promo code small.
That's promo code small.
Madison dash read.com.
Madison dash read.
R E E D.com.
Promo code small and get 10% off and free shipping.
And now back to the show.
Hey everybody.
Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about TrueCar.
TrueCar.com.
Here are some useful car tips you might not be aware of.
A coffee filter and a little bit of olive oil can clean your interior.
That's handy.
Removing excess weight from your car will improve your gas mileage.
What?
And you can place your key fob in your chin to increase its range.
I did know that.
Weird. That's weird stuff.. I did know that. Weird.
That's weird stuff.
I actually have heard that, too.
Well, here's another tip you might not know about.
Trucar also helps people get good used cars.
That's true.
They really do.
I'm telling you that right now from personal experience because we bought a used car through Trucar.
And it was a great experience.
Found the car we wanted.
Got it at a great price.
It was at the dealership when I went there, ready to go.
There it is.
It was the best, easiest way I've ever bought a car in my life.
True Car isn't just for buying new cars.
With their certified dealer network and nationwide inventory of nearly 1 million used cars,
you'll enjoy real pricing on actual inventory and a simpler buying experience,
whether you buy new or used.
And with True Car, users can see what others paid, so they know if they're getting a good
deal before buying.
They're also more likely to enjoy a faster buying experience by connecting with TrueCar
certified dealers.
When you're ready to buy a new or used car, check out TrueCar and enjoy a more confident
car buying experience.
Some features are not available in all states.
Yeah, that's true
at truecar.com and now back to the show
uh she files a motion to exclude uh all the evidence of previous fires and insurance claims
which yeah who the fuck wouldn't hey don't tell them all that shit that the thing i just did
that i've done seven times exactly like that don't tell them about that stuff please bring that up yeah after
a hearing though the district court granted uh granted uh one a couple little circumstances
weren't admissible but most of them were basically denied most of her motion uh it also said that
all the previous fires and respective insurance claims were too remote in time or dissimilar factually to be admitted, with the exception of the 1995 Great Falls trailer fire with the sale to the Kozlovitz guy.
That one we can talk about.
They said that one could be admitted because it's such similar circuits, even a fucking trailer.
And the guy that's kind of charged with it.
Exactly.
He's involved, too.
But they're all being tried separately.
That's the thing here. That'll change later on. But they end up in early 1997.
They end up Roy Link and John Kozlovitz also are finally they plead not guilty to murder and arson charges.
As we were talking about before, they entered their their pleas there. Now, they only hold they don't hold Roy.
Roy is free from now for a long time.
Roy is out of jail or she's being held in jail.
Not their county jail, obviously, because they don't fucking have one.
But the other one.
So the trial starts June 16th, 1997.
It lasts five days during the trial starts June 16th, 1997. It lasts five days. During the trial, the court permits, they permit state witnesses to testify about the
95 fire like we talked about.
They allege at trial that due to gambling and business losses, Donna was in need of
money and that in order to obtain funds, she fraudulently insured Leonard's life, sedated
him, and intentionally burned the trailer with him in it to collect the life insurance proceeds from his death on these six policies
that she's forged her his name on so it's it's a pretty solid circumstantial case obviously it's a
fire so unless somebody saw her lighting the fire there's no way to prove that she lit the fire
but if you add in all this other shit it's pretty clear who lit the fucking fire so So now they tried to prove that it was intentionally started, obviously, and that her actions in regard were part of a common scheme.
So they sought to introduce evidence of the previous fires like we talked about, but only that one worked out.
Now, in these attempts to introduce evidence surrounding the fires, they refer to the fires as other crimes, wrongs or acts of evidence.
And they asserted that it was admissible.
The whole deal.
Anyway, they had this trial.
We gave you all the evidence.
It's a fucking mountain of evidence.
All the investigators fucking they all testify.
And it's a it's pretty obvious.
It's a lot of circumstantial.
But all there, the motive is all there.
And the fact that she denied knowing anything about it's mostly from her. That the thing if she would have just shut the fuck up they would have very little to
go on except that a coincidence of a fire and maybe that's it but the fact that she was like
smoke alarm and i didn't know about policies and he's in the back bedroom all of her inconsistencies
fucker uh now the verdict here uh they they end up uh finding her guilty of arson and deliberate homicide
and uh she is ordered to serve it's a 95 year sentence with 20 suspended so a 75 year prison
sentence for like a lady who is in her 60s in her mid-60s which is basically a death sentence
for this lady spry as fuck she's climbing out trailer windows and moving chairs and doing laundry
and fucking giving codeine and gambling until the wee hours of 8.30 at night.
That's late in Montana.
That's Montana midnight right there, 8.30.
So, Jesus Christ.
So, but they sentence her to prison.
Roy Link is also convicted, sentenced to 25 years,
but he is free on bond until his appeals are over.
What?
They let him get out on bond like he's some sort of white-collar fucking criminal.
While he appeals?
That's so not normal for murder.
He has some health problems, too, and he's in his 60s and shit.
I don't give a shit.
They're not expecting him to run away and live on the beach in South America or anything like that.
But still, he should be in the next county's jail.
I feel like we're waiting whatever the fuck happens to him.
You got convicted of murder, Mr. Fucking what the hell, dude?
So it's so weird.
So they appeal in 1998.
This is where it gets really fucking tricky.
They appeal.
That's decided December 23rd, 1998, right before Christmas break here.
Her issues in the appeal are the 1995 fire.
She says that that shouldn't have been admitted at all in the whole thing.
They talk about that there's evidence.
They talk about that they're basically trying to say that you can't introduce this evidence
because it'll prejudice the jury.
And they're trying to say exactly that we'll prejudice the jury, and they're trying to say, exactly,
they should prejudice the jury the way we want it to.
They had Scott Enloe, who was the claims adjuster for the insurance
of the trailer of the 1995 trailer, the Great Falls one,
discuss the fire with the investigator.
He said that there was no evidence of foul play,
so they're trying to use that to their favor.
You can't say that was a crime, but they're going, well, it's awfully coincidental.
It is something that happened.
Something that happened.
Now, granted, she wasn't convicted of it or even charged of it even.
I mean, that was the thing.
But still, you'd want to go, this also happened, and it's a big coincidence, and they didn't get to introduce all the others.
Maybe that would have been over the edge if her car caught on fire while she was driving or something
they said no additional evidence was offered at the trial to suggest that donna was connected to
the cause of the 1995 fire uh this is her talking or her attorneys therefore there was insufficient
foundation to offer evidence of the prior fire as a crime a wrongful act of enright and they said
there's no basis for analyzing the simple occurrence of a prior fire pursuant to the rule related to evidence of prior acts.
Now, sorry, prior fire makes prior fire.
Now, they also say that the state would have.
They're saying that the court says this.
Now, the state would have the jury infer that something criminal was done in 1995 based on the facts in this case and then use that inference to bootstrap guilt of
these crimes charge which is a gray legal fucking quicksand yeah but um it's i don't know i i get it
yeah it's but it's yeah it's it's it's gray it's it is It is quicksand. You just went in the quicksand.
You started talking and you were like, shit, I need a branch and start to pull yourself out.
Quicksand's the only way to describe it.
It makes sense.
And even the court says in the next sentence, quote, such circular reasoning, which is exactly what it is, has little probative value and creates a high risk that a jury would convict based on unsupported assumptions.
They said, in other words, there's no evidence of an admissible common scheme.
Evidence of the 1995 fire was therefore not relevant to the issue of whether Donna committed the acts with which she was charged and should not and should have been excluded.
They're saying they shouldn't. As the district court stated with this, blah, blah, blah.
The district court abused its discretion when allowing evidence of the 1995 fire, they're saying.
Issue two is, was there sufficient evidence to support a jury's verdict, which they always go for the sufficient evidence thing.
And they always come back with, that's not our job.
Did they fuck up legally?
Not our job.
I don't know.
Yeah, we don't know.
That's the jury's job to decide.
It's not our job to re fucking retry this thing.
It's our job to find out if you were tried fairly is what they always end up with.
So that's what they come up with with that.
They're saying that that shit doesn't really matter.
They do talk about they said that they conclude in this case after excluding the evidence of the 95 fire, there was still sufficient evidence to support submission of the state's charges to the jury donna purchased six policies which insured leonard's life during the three months
prior to his death and then denied their existence uh donna and her family and friends moved furniture
out of the trailer prior to the fire they moved furniture they liked out because it's going to
be burned uh and then claimed its loss to the fire to the insurance companies that was all the shit they took out so one chair
yeah one chair was on there uh leonard's body one chair and all of my gravy and uh all and
mac and cheese stains it was a what can you pay for for what what really is sentiment worth that's
what i'm i'm gonna say the chairs were 25 000 now it was a common 1975 avocado green
kitchen chair but you can't buy memories is what i'm saying so you can buy mac and cheese and you
can buy chairs but you can't buy memories so jesus christ avocado green is so hard to chase down that
and harvest gold you're not gonna find them you ain again. You ain't going to find it again. It's gone now.
You better pray I don't get Alzheimer's and forget about that chair.
Shit. Well, good.
I ain't related to him by blood. He's my stepdaddy.
So Leonard's body revealed the presence
of multiple sedative drugs. A battery
could not be found for the smoke alarm located nearest
Donna's bedroom and the only other
smoke alarm in the trailer was located inside
a closed kitchen cabinet at the complete
opposite end of the trailer. I don't know why you'd put it in a closed useless place to put a
it seems like it was on the ceiling first and then they put cabinets in and then they were like well
just fuck it just leave it there just don't move the fucking thing just built cabinets around it
built yeah they just stuck cabinets around a hole in the roof of the cabinet and stapled that's what i think they did i honestly think so why you wouldn't put it in there on purpose
or she was like that last one was a real pain in the ass to put up we'll just put this one in here
yeah no shit just set it on the ledge in there also and this is the worst part of it all there
were no signs of clean laundry where enright claimed to have left in the living room she
wasn't even fucking doing laundry what not even doing laundry god damn it and the you fucking liar
how dare you lie about that and the fire officials testify
why is that why should she use that to lie about no no because they had to have a reason to go to
the trailer to do even though that's a terrible reason because you I don't know. Because they had to have a reason to go to the trailer to do laundry.
Even though that's a terrible reason because you live in a city an hour away that has laundromats, you stupid fuck.
So it makes no sense.
And she didn't even do it.
Not to mention, if you didn't lose $1,200 gambling, you could have bought a washer and dryer for that fucking much money.
Put it in your house and not have to drive an hour, you dumb bastard.
Stackables, $800.
Fuck, man.
The whole set of them.
Yeah.
What the fuck?
Then you have $400 left to buy more laundry.
Jesus Christ, man.
Yeah, really.
You can buy plenty.
And also, fire officials testified that despite Donna's supposedly multiple encounters with
and in the burning trailer, they did not smell any smoke on her whatsoever.
So I feel like if you were in a burning trailer and you tried to go in a burning
trailer and multiple different entrances and walked in and couldn't, you would probably have
some form of toxic trailer fires. You know what a trailer fire smells like? I do like a tire fire
because that's what it is. And there's probably tires in there, too, that are burning. So.
So with the job that I do, sometimes trailers in this town catch on fire.
And I went to those after long after long after it's done.
I get home and I I still smell like bacon.
It's like it's salting the earth.
It's never going to stop.
It's in you.
Yeah.
It's like eating garlic.
She wasn't even didn't sniff a drop on her.
She's fine.
So that's that's a really.
Wow.
Yeah.
Finally, also, that there was an expert opinion that the fire was intentionally started because
they couldn't find any other reason for it.
Now, they said, while we recognize that Donna's version of the event suggests, at least in
part, a benign explanation for this evidence, the role of fact-finding belongs to the jury.
So they said circumstantial evidence is up to them.
They said, therefore, Donna is not entitled
to have the charges against her dismissed.
However, based on our conclusion
that the evidence of the 1995 fire
was erroneously admitted,
and further conclusion that the evidence
was prejudicial to the defendant,
we vacate the judgment of the district court
and remand to the district court for a new trial.
Oh, boy.
Vacated her shit.
Try again.
Try, try again.
This also, the same court,
also reverses Link, her brother's arson
and deliberate homicide conviction.
His 25, and remands his case for a new trial.
So he remains out on bail.
So new trial time.
Okay.
They have a new trial. this time donna and roy
are tried together uh-oh uh they dropped i can't find out what happened to the john koslovitz guy
but i think they just let him out of it i think they just dropped him or maybe got him an insurance
something but i don't think they he was in the murder charges anymore lucky duck lucky motherfucker
uh because these two were named as beneficiaries. They are tried together in this case.
They were amended the charges to arson by accountability and deliberate homicide under the felony murder rule.
District court also granted the state's motion to consolidate their trials because that was the state wanted to consolidate.
Yeah, because I bet they didn't think they had a good enough case against him.
Get them together and get them both together.
That's what it is.
Also, too, in this county that saves money.
Yeah.
They are very concerned with the cost of trials in this town, too.
With fiscal responsibilities.
It is.
They're like, we don't have the fucking money for all these.
And we've had this a couple times where they were like, we have to have it somewhere else
because this county doesn't have money and people have to donate money to have a trial.
It's fucking ridiculous.
Jesus.
We're going to do a brownie bake-off this weekend for raising money for these.
I'm going to do a scarecrow making.
You ready?
So, shit.
So, following this, they had a consolidated trial.
The jury, same evidence, obviously.
I'm not going to go over that shit again.
The jury finds Donna guilty of arson and deliberate homicide,
and Roy Link guilty of arson by accountability
and guilty of deliberate homicide under the felony murder rule.
So guilty, guilty again.
Court sentences Donna, you ma'am,
to concurrent terms of 20 years on the arson charge
and 75 years on deliberate homicide.
She got more.
She ends up getting more on that yeah no shit that's rough man you get more like fuck god damn it holy shit that's
amazing uh roy link was sentenced to five years on the arson by accountability charge and 20 years
on the felony murder charge uh They both appeal again, obviously,
and he actually ends up still free on bond because somehow, I don't know,
but she remains not free on bond.
They appeal this, obviously.
They talk about do their cases meet the statute.
The main thing is the consolidation.
They're trying to say that their cases
shouldn't have been put together.
They should have been tried separately and the state fucking pushed that through whatever
and they should get off for that so they end up saying that uh that enright and lynx cases do
meet statutory requirements for consolidation because all charges arise from a fire in a
trailer house uh blah blah blah blah both defendants are alleged to have participated
in criminal acts resulting in the fire and death it's not required that they be charged with identical offenses they're trying to
say hey we she was charged with this and but he's charged as like an addition to her it's basically
yeah so it even makes more sense that they would fucking be uh together uh now uh donna claims that
link would attempt to present derogatory character evidence against her, evidence that would not be admissible against her in a separate trial, only if they were together.
However, in their original trials, this court notes, neither defendant attempted to blame the other.
Instead, they both contended that the fires were either set by others or they were an accident.
So they're like, hey, we don't know shit.
So they're saying, why would they turn on each other when they're together when they didn't turn on each other when they were separate when
they could have much more easily it's a shit argument yeah because when you're being tried
separately then you play the other guy as a boogeyman and they each play yeah exactly this
guy roy and she can go i'm just a nice old lady and my brother's greedy i don't know anything yeah
what do i know but they didn't even do that in separate trials so they're definitely not going
to do it when they're fucking when they're in a three- trials. So they're definitely not going to do it when they're when they're in a three legged race together.
You're not going to trip their middle leg on purpose.
So they said the district court here finds no evidence that the party's defenses would be different in the consolidated trials.
And Donna presented no evidence that her and Link were hostile to one another.
other. He also,
Link contends that the consolidation of the trial leaves him unable to call Enright's
attorney to explain the background
of a letter that implicated Link in a
plant set letter we talked about. He said, I needed
to talk to her, and since we're together, we couldn't do
that. Link was unable to offer
any evidence to the district court that Donna's attorney
would be called to testify, and that
Donna would waive attorney-client privilege
to allow him to testify,
or that he would indeed
offer any exculpatory evidence if he took the stand bottom line uh neither donna nor link has
made any specific or compelling showing that they would be prejudiced by consolidation of their
trials much less that the prejudice would be so great as to prevent a fair trial uh so they say you guys can get fucked again uh yeah you're you're gone uh so january of 2001
one roy link finally goes to jail it's been five years almost since this fucking fire four and a
half years and uh they don't count any of that time right no that's not time served he was out
on the i mean she's got time served yeah he fucking double she's got so much time it doesn't
matter but he's he doesn't have time sir they essentially gave him 100 years and split
it evenly between the two that's it yeah well not evenly but yeah i mean no no no i mean yeah
they gave it they dull it out into who the into responsible terms like what we feel you were
three quarters responsible so you'll do 75 years and you do 25 uh Yeah, he had been he had been free on bond and was hospitalized at Fort Harrison Veterans Center near Helena with heart problems until this day in January when he's arrested on a warrant issued by the judge.
They went in the hospital and told him, by the way, you're going to fucking prison when you're done here.
So heal up, pal.
Some of that heart healthy tomato sauce and get your ass in the joint every
time the guys of the cops are talking to his doctors he's like no fuck shit no i'm bad i'm
bad i'm doing bad uh he's released by his doctors medically and he's taken to prison uh right away
now 2002 the shit gets really fucking batty uh she says she's innocent and deserves post-conviction
relief in a new trial she's
pulling like an adnan syed like i had nothing to fucking do with it not just legal shit i'm just
innocent she is a dummy i need fucking post-conviction relief so uh april of 2002 she
petitions for post-conviction relief uh which is the first step in an appeal to the supreme court
a judge in judith basin review i'm surprised they have a courthouse but we know they do because the
phone number is the prominent thing on their website they review and writes petition and on
march 31st 2002 he files an order allowing the case to move forward the district court or i'm
going to tell you about these lawyers and you're going to go why are you telling me about our
lawyers because there's reason for it trust me it gets fucking crazy this is some small this is why
this is why like death penalty cases are frightening because there's lawyers
like this out here.
So they're moving forward with with post-conviction.
Yeah, they're saying she well, she can apply for it.
It's just saying that, yes, you can apply for habeas relief.
So I think that's what it is.
So anyway, district court issues an order appointing an IRA Eakin to represent Donna
in December of 2002.
The court deems Enright's habeas petition to be a petition for post-conviction relief
and justifies appointing a counsel on the grounds that Enright's ineffective assistance claim
was difficult to understand, and the court said she needed somebody to help her write briefs, basically.
So they do assign her an attorney now uh eventually though the court allows this attorney ekin to withdraw as counsel on may 1st 2003 after uh learning that he has a leave of absence planned
with the office for months for for a while so he's not going to be there they appoint a roberta drew
this is the one we've got to watch here.
Roberta Drew to represent Enright,
and the presiding judge also
recuses himself for some
reason, some reason with her,
and then another judge takes over. The Honorable
Lauren Tucker assumes jurisdiction.
Now, this Roberta
Drew, who's repping her,
Donna says she learned that Drew
had been appointed to represent her in early May,
and then Drew showed up at the prison and spoke with her for about 12 minutes.
Donna says, quote, she said she would do the best she could, that she was experienced,
and that she had won many cases, which sounds like you're a public defender.
What are you selling?
Exactly.
I'm here for free.
The state gave me to you.
That's it.
I've won many cases. That's my pitch. I've lost more. Lost more. I'm here for free. The state gave me to you. That's the that's it. I've won many cases. That's my pitch. I've lost more.
I'm a public defender. Anybody tell you that shit?
So Donna says from May, she didn't hear from Drew again until July 28th.
And by that time, Donna said she had concerns about whether Drew was doing any work on her case and had written letters to Judge Tucker and others asking for help.
work on her case and had written letters to judge tucker and others asking for help meanwhile uh she had asked for and received from judge tucker more time roberta drew did uh received more time
to work on the case by extending deadlines but december of that year the judge said he was
concerned about drew's quote lack of action at this point donna says quote she's a rock around
my neck uh she said that uh she said drew had come to the prison twice in the last 10 months to speak with her about her case.
And each meeting lasted less than an hour.
Drew hasn't responded to her letters or phone calls, Donna said, and that her appeal has been delayed months or years as a result, which is sucks when you're an old lady.
old lady uh now according to the there's also uh records here that they obtained from the montana supreme court that says drew was paid 60 an hour for 38.3 hours of work on enright's case from
april to july she was paid 2 390 and 19 cents which included 92 in travel expenses now this
is important trust me in febru, this drew February of 2003.
This drew submits records in Donna's case that include because they're asking where is where.
Why aren't you doing work?
So she submits to the court an obituary from October 17, 2003.
That's her mother's.
That's your Drew's mother.
She said, my mother died.
Here's the obituary.
She also filed six pages of her husband's medical records showing he had complications from knee surgery. The documents also included a, quote, statement of services that show she logged more than 36 hours in the case about her work case, saying she'd been distracted by her husband's life-threatening illness
and by her mother's death.
Okay, so those are tough circumstances.
If you're sitting in jail awaiting appeals, you don't really give a fuck.
But if you're a lawyer and you give a fuck about it,
you kind of just say, recuse yourself.
Everybody else recuse themselves.
Everyone else is like, I can't be doing this shit.
So, well well this is
the problem now uh now the judge says quote if illness and death have occurred as described
ms drew is entitled to sympathy however seven and a half months and four continuances have passed
with nothing at all tangible produced for this court to review regarding her efforts on behalf
of her client ms drew's excuses have been advanced only at the last minute ms drew has exhausted her
credibility with this court yeah you don't want a judge saying that to you any of that shit
tucker then orders drew to drew herself to appear in court by video conference at her own expense
in early february the judge ordered drew to quote provide corroboration from credible sources of the
assertions of the family hardships she had allegedly encountered on february 5th he doesn't
even believe mom's dead no he might believe that but the rest of it he's like i don't give a fuck
about your husband you need to bring a bunch of people in to testify in seven months you worked
38 hours you did nothing and they don't even think you work 38 hours so uh because she only met with
her client for less than two hours and that yeah so February 5th, Drew appeared before Tucker
and submitted the obituary
and the medical records
and all that kind of shit.
Now, on March 8th,
the judge, Tucker,
said that Drew failed to meet
her latest deadline
to respond to a telephone message
left for her on February 19th.
At one point here,
Drew was the chief deputy public defender
in Yellowstone County
for about four years before she was fired from the job in December 2002, before she took over this case on allegations that she lied to a judge and disobeyed her boss.
She was reinstated to the job in September and was awarded back pay after a county grievance commission determined she had been wrongfully terminated.
But she's not great.
She rejoined the public defender as chief deputy on January 1st.
So now she's even back in charge again.
About the same time she was fired,
she fired a complaint with Montana Human Rights Bureau
saying she was discriminated against when she was passed over for promotion.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
A hearing into that complaint began in February.
Drew was seeking from the county $75,000 from the county for her emotional harm and $42,000 in back pay and lost benefits.
Not a lot of money.
Yeah, not too much, but it's whatever.
So she then, Drew, files a federal lawsuit against the county saying her civil rights were violated.
Civil rights were violated.
This was all pending.
But in another matter, Drew filed a complaint against the district court stating that stating that the Gazette, the newspaper, caused her emotional distress by publishing information obtained in public records.
She said this this lady is fucking whatever.
She's so happy.
Yeah, we in our opinion, she's a whack.
So certainly let's say let's drop a lot of allegedly's on this one based on what i've heard uh she in my opinion she seems like it seems like
a douchebag from what i gathered in my own opinion now the complaint names the newspaper a reporter
the newspaper's attorney they're all served as defendants uh but it was not officially files
filed because there was questions that
arose in the status in a case related to the newspaper basically they're saying that she
might have been filing this for something other reason and it got held up in court whether she
was allowed to file it or not so she drew the attorney moves to withdraw his counsel for for
uh donna in 2004 in april april 5th she advised the court that she could find no
non-frivolous issues to support donna's petition she's just saying i want out she is at a dead end
i have nothing i can't help her at all and i'm she hasn't even fucking tried is what donna's saying
uh it's been a year yeah the district court appoints a guy named r alan beck to replace drew in the proceedings
beck then files a motion to withdraw his counsel for donna on october 22nd he tells the district
court that donna had requested that he not represent her and that donna had alleged various
ethical violations against beck and the office of the disciplinary council had found the alleged
ethical violations to be without merit so he's, I'm not representing her because she's filed a bunch of shit on me and I don't
want to fucking defend her, basically.
So now, April of 2004, later on in the month, Drew is convicted of contempt of court after
a state judge said that Drew failed to show that she had done work as a court-appointed
attorney for Donna June Enright.
Enright, obviously, during her appeals.
The district judge, Lauren Tucker,
also said Drew repeatedly ignored court orders.
He said that Enright, quote,
Enright received, quote,
nothing of value from Ms. Drew,
and the public defender, quote,
should not profit from her slothfulness and deception.
You, ma'am, may fuck off.
He sentences her to 30 days in jail
and forces her to repay $24
that the state paid her to work on the case.
That's amazing.
She spent seven...
24 bucks.
24 bucks.
She spent seven days in jail
and returned the money.
In the end here,
he ordered Drew to report
to the Judith Basin County authorities
and go serve her time
in the Fergus County Jail, obviously, because they don't fucking have one.
Based on that conviction, we're right.
She's a dickhead.
She's a dickhead.
December 2004, the Supreme Court orders Drew's law license suspended for six months, retroactive to July.
So it's suspended for a month basically the court also ordered drew to undergo alcohol treatment counseling and placed her on probation for 18 months beginning with reinstatement of
her license on january 13th the probation requires that she work with another lawyer
who must take quarterly reports to the office of disciplinary counsel about her progress
she has to have a fucking chaperone lawyer she used to be the boss now she needs somebody to
literally file a report saying that she's not fucking up, that
she's not getting drunk and forgetting to file papers.
That is to fall from grace right there.
She's a fucking dickhead.
January 26th.
She is, though.
Fuck, I'm sorry.
I mean, I know it's not nice, but she is a dickhead.
So January 26th, or in my opinion, she's a dickhead.
In my opinion.
Allegedly.
Yeah, allegedly.
She's got a penis from her neck.
From her forehead.
January 26th, 2005, Roberta Drew, who is the former, obviously, blah, blah, blah, was publicly
censured by the Montana Supreme Court for failing to adequately represent Donna Enright.
So she's now censured by the court. This is
after her license was reinstated. 13
days later, they censure her. They say,
we don't want you anymore.
2006, back to Donna,
her next appeal is thrown out.
She's running out of options
and fucking lawyers.
It's not like there's a lot of public defenders
in the middle of nowhere in Montana.
You get what you get.
So no one wants to represent her.
I hate this lawyer more
because she's making me feel bad for a woman
who did the worst fucking thing ever.
And I'm sitting there too.
While I'm doing this research,
I'm going, do I feel bad for her
because she's an older lady?
I have like a soft spot.
I grew up with both my grandmothers
very close i have a real soft spot for old ladies like i don't want to be fucking with old ladies
or anything like that you leave old ladies the fuck alone they've been through enough you know
the kind of shit they went through back in the day their husbands used to beat the shit out of
them and that was considered fine they've been through a lot and if they were still alive they'd
still be doing it and they'd accept it because it used to be the time. Yeah. Leave these fucking old ladies alone.
So that pisses me off.
I thought about that.
And then I'm like, no, it's the matter of nobody.
Everybody deserves whatever piece of shit you are, whoever you burn up in a trailer fire, you deserve the fair legal system.
We have to have that.
We can't have public defenders who are this terrible who don't give a shit. Because how many times this Donna Enright was on top of this shit,
because she's an old lady sitting there, there's nothing better to do.
It's either that or write letters to her food company.
She's writing a letter to Nabisco about something,
like fucking Mord on Family Guy about crackers.
Just writing complaint letters.
Other than that, she keeps track.
She could get on the laundry team. Yeah. No, she didn't do any. Remember? She's bad at laundry. They'd find out she's a fraud. crackers like they're just writing complaint letters other than that she keeps track laundry
team yeah no she didn't do any remember she's bad at laundry they'd find out she's a fraud
but like i don't know i just look at this whole thing it drives me nuts you need to be represented
decently even if you don't deserve it like it's just the way it is and otherwise our system is
garbage the thing we put in place is to get everybody a fair shake how many public defenders
fib on all this shit and all the work they're put in and and it's detrimental to their client's case
and that's why that's why we are both not happy with the death penalty but we want people to die
we want them to die but not in a not in a shady way i want it to be all on the up and up i don't
want to fucking represented by somebody like drew and this is what happened so you can't you can't unless every case is perfect you can't make it so and this is the problem every
case obviously isn't fucking perfect so she's waiting for all these appeals and running out
of time and then august 28th 2015 donna dies oh no she died at age 81 at the saint vincent health
care in billings uh she said. They said that she died.
She just had some old people problems for a long time, but she died of natural causes at 81, pronounced dead at 9.14 p.m.
And that is Donna's case.
Not in a trailer fire.
Not in a trailer fire.
She died comfortably in a hospital, which is more than we can say for poor Leonard, who died horribly.
And, well, actually, he was drugged and had smoke inhalation. So it's not the worst way to go. the hospital which is more than we can say for poor leonard who died uh horribly and uh well
actually he was drugged and had smoke inhalation so it's not the worst way to go you know what if
you're gonna kill me drug me up and then burn my shit down and that's perfect i'll take it just i
don't know any better on fire probably no blanket was still intact on the guy yeah they still found
him in there i'm sure well it was in a trailer so it's probably dirty to begin with i was gonna say
and no laundry was done so you know it was fucking dirty you just know for a
fact it was dirty that's that case is just i don't know what it is about it it's dirty it's dirty
well like she obviously i'm pretty sure she you know i'm 100 sure she did this obviously based
on all the evidence it seems like she did it but i just hate fucking putting old ladies in prison i feel
like we could come up with something better they're old ladies they're not out there like
they're not gonna go fucking rob banks and shit put them in some kind of brownie baking program
you know what i'm saying slave labor yeah well they make prisoners do other shit they put them
on road crews and shit get them in some not
in prison though just get them in some like work camp thing i don't know like a day day labor like
work release program sort of something where you keep them in kitchens all the time and make them
bake things or whatever they're fucking good at i don't know what old ladies do make them knit
there's a there's a a an a take care of feral cats i don't fucking know something they'd be good
at that shit make them do like like a a murder victim quilt yeah there you go have to be in there
for a long time make a quilt except like drawings from children who aren't their grandkids who have
dead grandparents and go that's wonderful dear i'll put that on the refrigerator make them do
that i'll staple that to my concrete wall that's it yeah make them watch people's kids
on the weekends while they go to the movies or go out and get drunk and then have sex and
you sit with them make them watch a movie and then use them as like yeah you know like grandparents
right like a revolving door for like grandparents day yeah that's what i mean out to school yeah
auxiliary grandparents i feel like grandparents are a really big thing in kids' lives.
And kids who have dead grandparents, I feel terrible for them because I learn most.
My parents taught me shit, nothing.
I learned everything from my grandparents who were like old and always giving advice and shit like that from other countries.
That's what I mean.
We need that.
So this lady has something to offer.
Let's make her do things rather than just making old ladies rot.
Old men, go fuck yourself.
Keep your saggy balls in your jail cell.
I don't give a fuck.
But old ladies are important.
Damn it.
The elderly men are rarely murderers unless they did something when they were young men
and became an old man in prison.
But the old men in prison are usually kid touchers or fucking big money thieves.
And either way, fuck you both. Either way, way yeah don't care about you fuck you yeah you're normally not
going out getting in bar fights or you know shit like that it's nothing that you can be like well
i could see that happening it's always like oh how much kiddie porn did he have jesus had it on vhs
that's must have had it for years that's disgusting it's that the labels in his handwriting i'm sorry
that's disgusting so that is stanford montana
wow you don't you want to move there jimmy i still want to go still want to go i'm afraid
that that maybe i'll do something in in the wrong place at the wrong time and need a public defender
you're out of luck in that place and uh well luckily you'll be in the next county over anyway
so i'm at her in that jail that's donna Enright and poor Leonard and Roy Link and all this shit.
And they never charged her son in the thing.
I guess they didn't think he was involved in it at all.
But in the end, he was a beneficiary to the thing and he wasn't charged.
So did he get the money?
That's what I want to know.
Well, I think they just deny the claim.
Or does he get the money if he's not involved in the whole thing and they don't charge him, hey, he was murdered.
You get fucking life insurance payout if someone's murdered.
Not if you murder him, but if someone else did and you're not charged in the plot.
So out of all this, this guy might have gotten rid of this old guy, gotten rid of his fucking pain in the ass mom who doesn't,
lies about doing laundry and loses gambling debts.
And his fucking uncle who maybe molested him when he was a child we don't know for sure anything and he goes and sits pretty
with a bunch of money he's probably sitting on a fucking beach right now what do you want to bet
it was like 25 grand it probably all of it together all of it combined this policy is for
1200 and this policy is for 2600 this one's my gambling money this is my gambling money don't
get that bad every time she loses she goes and gets a new policy for that amount the next fucking day.
What a disaster.
Wow.
If you like that story, I know how you can tell us and how it would be insanely appreciated.
Go to iTunes or Apple Podcasts, whatever it is, and give us five stars.
Tell us anything.
We don't give a shit.
Doesn't matter.
Not for our egos.
It's just for business.
And if you want to be an even bigger superstar, many to do that you can go to patreon.com slash crime in sports or
paypal using our email address crime and sports at gmail.com and you can make a one-time donation
over there or better yet save yourself some trouble just head over to shut up and give me
murder.com and you can get all you find the links to all that
stuff you'll find links to social media like at murder small on twitter small town pod on facebook
and at small town murder on instagram and uh most of all though you will find links to live shows
get out there get out there buy these tickets we are telling you if you haven't been to a show yeah
if you're not like a big social media person or whatever go on social media find one of our groups just go on small town murder group on facebook
everybody you're i'm sure you have a facebook account even if it's buried you haven't used it
for three years go into one of our groups and look at what people say about live shows we're telling
you right now we do not you we are very humble we don't fucking We don't fuck around. We don't tell everybody how great we are.
Generally hate ourselves.
We hate ourselves and have no confidence.
But our live shows will fucking rock your world.
I'm telling you that right now.
We will not leave.
You will.
You will be hurting when you leave there.
Well, we're going to make you laugh.
It's going to be fucking awesome.
It's like this show.
But the energy is up.
The visuals.
I can't tell you what they add
so much to the process it's amazing there's so many more jokes it's just it's a wild people
were leaving the live shows just saying i died wow that's so much more than i expected out of
the live show that's incredible i couldn't believe there was a heroin overdose that's that was why i
was not that's a plant i don't know we did not do that but they all say that i've been to other live podcasts and they're nothing like
your guy's show like nothing like how the fuck is do you guys they're good trust us go see these
shows james and i have been on stage before so come yeah come see us again we know what the
fuck we're doing and we know how to do this show on a stage so get your asses out there and we will
make it worth your money. We promise.
And we'll meet everybody and hang out and do all that stuff.
So please do that.
And I'd be thankful to you, honestly.
I'd be so thankful, but not nearly as thankful as I am to our amazing list of producers.
Jimmy, tell me the people that I'm thankful for.
Hit me with it.
This week's executive producers are Laurie Mersich.
Mersich.
Right off the bat. Milsich. Right off the bat.
Milsich.
Out of the gate strong.
How could I do that?
You're thorough, Brad Jimmy.
I can't tell if I wrote an R or an L.
I'm pretty sure that's an L, so I'm saying Laurie Milsich.
Chrissy Ann Castaldi, of course.
Thank you, Chrissy, as always.
Amanda McPhail up in Seattle.
She's wonderful.
Thank you.
Kyle Gross and Danria.
Danria is his friend.
I think she's friends with me on Snapchat. Bullshit. Thank you. Thank you. Kyle Gross and Danria. Danria is his friend. I don't I don't I think I think she's friends with me on Snapchat.
Bullshit.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Kevin Alker.
Harold.
No.
Aaron Hammond.
What?
Aaron Hammond.
Joseph Minner.
Meg Smith in Detroit.
And Melissa Coyle.
Thank you guys.
Thank you so much for being such fantastic.
Yeah.
Honestly, you.
Jesus.
You guys don't even know.
You make the world. The life's blood. That's real it's it's crazy thank you so much really ashley vo uh jesse
hartman kate myers donated both ways all those they're all great justin miller matthew dietrich
uh jess herrera shannon feltus again she came oh yeah uh jessica manor uh michael michael shanahan Jessica Manor, Michael Shanahan. I don't know. Maybe. Could it be?
Could it be the eyes too close together ex-Franco Redskin head coach?
Maybe.
That would be amazing.
Sarah Reichert, Michael Carfunkel.
Yes.
Arianna Folsom, Justin Miller.
I think I said that earlier.
No, I didn't.
That's a different Miller.
That was Joseph Minner. That's what that was.
Jamie Partial,
Lauren Demerath,
Nathan Nolte, Paul Ruest,
the guy that makes the memes and shit.
He's fantastic. Travis Granberg,
Kate Ives, Bryant Toole,
Nina
Jorenstad.
Yes, Nina Jorenstad.
Moto Fab. I don't know what that that is google them and see if you can
give them business uh william mcgote mcguffin yes william mcguffin uh stacy ruth ruff stacy rough
stacy rushworth that's what it is sarah rush uh melissa allen and uh hiccup that's right oh they're
in la that's the gal that came to the show and her dog's name is Hiccup. That's what it is. I wrote that.
I don't know if she put that in there, but I know
I wrote that, and I can't read.
Maria, no, Mariva.
Mariva Bone.
Mariva Bone. That's what it is.
Amy
Walgie.
Walgie? Walge.
Amy Walge. Jillian Tuba. Mason
Sipes. Jake LaBeer. Andrew Paulson, Kiko Omar White Jr.
Nice.
That's a healthy name.
That's a good one.
It's got a lot of names.
Save it for later.
Ethan Lowry, Hannah Marmoro, Liz Nice Slice Smith.
What?
Cakes?
I don't know what she's bragging about.
Best pies in town?
I don't know. Maybe. What's happening? She'll she's what she's bragging best pies in town i don't know maybe what's happening she'll cut you she she is she's bragging though yeah liz nice slice
uh wendy drink water hola uh sir sir nia hola
sir nina cernica cernica cernica yeah you nailed it. Good work. It's an Italian name. That's why. What's the first name? CZ.
Ola.
Ola.
Ola.
And CZ.
Is that Italian?
CZ.
CZ is not.
Okay.
But there's other versions of that name.
Whatever it is.
It sounds similar.
Never mind.
Walt Murray, the PI, I believe.
CZ is like Polish and Czech.
Right.
Or Czech or something.
Eastern European.
I always go Czech because that's a CZ.
Yeah.
Eastern European somewhere.
Ethan Lowry, Ole Gray, Steve Schnell in Philly.
Yeah, a scientist, a female scientist.
He's awesome.
Jeff Dahlke, Denae Ryu.
She could be Ryu.
That sounds like a right winger for Montreal.
Denae Ryu, Kira Mitchell, Chris Kirby, Serena Dotter, Josh Cooperman, Cody Spence, Angela Jackson, Brittany Bell, Grantham Williams, or Grantham.
It's probably Grantham, huh?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Grantham.
It could be Grantham.
Grantham.
That sounds good.
Grantham sounds like a cool black college.
Yeah, it does.
It's like a really good black college, like where Dr. Huxtable went.
I could see that. He went to Grantham. Yeah. It's a good school. cool black college yeah it's like a really good black college like where dr huxtable went i could
see that he went to grantham yeah it's a good school or it's or it's like hard nose fucking
football school either one we go to grantham yeah yeah you can fucking bring your team down
i don't think you rambling state beats him up every year little buckaroo i forget who that is
uh i don't either uh k overbay uh Stephanie Slaza. Paula Salamana.
No.
Salamanca.
That's what it is.
Yeah.
Paula Salamanca.
That's Italian.
That's Italian as fuck.
Yeah, I like it.
Zoe Suntimer.
Martin Coronado had some questions for us.
I think I answered them pretty well.
We'll see.
He'll write back, I'm sure.
If not, we'll figure it out.
Krista Bernhard or Bernard.
It's probably bernard
yeah i don't know anthony and kelly uh scala scala root scala anthony and kelly scala root
are getting married i think that's what they said well or anniversary or they're celebrating
something well either way congratulations or they're getting a divorce whatever whatever
if as long as you guys are happy we're excited that's what matters to me thank you guys so much for everything you do for us we truly cannot do this without you thank you
thank you thank you guys you make the show happen and you make it stay a thing and uh we can't help
we can't thank you enough for all the help you give us you literally keep the lights on like
that we can't tell you the electricity is flowing because of you guys thank you so much
for everything that you do for us and what if they wanted to tell you all the things you do for them
jimmy how could they tell you that you find me at whisman sucks whis man sucks on twitter instagram
and snapchat and uh the the the stories that you guys send to me i i do my best to get those over
to james yeah yeah i do hear a lot of this stuff.
So thank you.
Keep those coming.
Do I have to join fucking Instagram?
I have an Instagram, but I never use it. Do I have to fucking do it now?
It's pretty necessary.
I fired it.
I had it for years.
Instagram is much better than every other social media.
I had it for years, and I'm just like, I'm not fucking.
I don't have time for this shit.
And I never get on Facebook.
I apologize.
I get on Facebook like once a month and take all the friend requests and do all that and i apologize if you guys are tough it's honestly i we're busy
with all this shit and i'm trying my best and then kind of working on twitter too great so i might do
instagram i'm not sure i have an instagram thing it's at jimmy p is funny i believe it's i think
it's the same one as my twitter uh if it is i guess follow me on there and i'll figure it out
i'll start posting some shit i guess I'll ask Sarah how to do it
it's so much easier I just hate fucking
social media it's fun because like on
Facebook like the fucking feed just keeps
going and going and going and Twitter
is even more bananas
Instagram it's like
you can't just keep posting pictures
you know what I mean so it slows people
down a little bit and your feed
your feed kind of filters slowly and it's much easier and pictures. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Constantly. So it slows people down a little bit. Yeah, that's true. You've got to have something to post.
Yeah.
Your feed kind of filters slowly, and it's much easier.
Yeah, that's good.
And the algorithm, though, if you like the same people too many times, like Dan Cummins
fucking every time I get in there, it's right up fucking front.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, Dan.
I like you, but enough.
I'm going to stop hurting your shit, you motherfucker.
Yeah, enough already.
Enough.
No more hearts for you.
Instagram's great, is my point.
So thank you guys so much for sending all that stuff to me, and keep those coming. I more hearts for you. Instagram's great is my point. So thank you guys so much
for sending all that stuff to me
and keep those coming.
I like hearing from you.
What about you?
Where can they tell you?
I am at Jimmy P is funny.
So find me there on Twitter
and I suppose Instagram.
I don't know.
I guess I'll post some shit
and also wherever else you can find me,
copy and paste my last name.
Save yourself some trouble
and some,
is that an I or an E
or how many L's is that? Just fucking copy and paste. Don't be an some trouble and some is that an i or an e or how many l's is that just fucking copy and paste don't be an asshole about it but uh that said
everybody we had a great time as usual and uh you know we will be back always next week and the week
after and then we're coming to your goddamn town you can't fucking get rid of us you can't and
until next week everybody it's been our pleasure. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today.
Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
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.