Small Town Murder - A Strangely Murderous Grudge - Fayette, Maine

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

This week, in Fayette, Maine, a man comes home from a double shift, to find his wfe, brutally murdered, and his baby, crawling around in pools of blood. The problem is, they have no enemies, and robbery doesn't appear to be the motive. The husband is cleared as a suspect, leading to a long investigation, focused on the wrong man, even though the real killer was a suspect, from the start. But due to mistakes, he was allowed to terrorize even more innocent people!!   Along the way, we find out that "deer watching" is an actual festival activity in Maine, that even if you have no enemies, you still may never be safe, and that when you let a killer go free, for over a decade, they have a chance to ruin even more lives!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay, and Choochoo! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petro Gallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us this week again for another insane edition of Smalltown Murder Express.

As you know, 10 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag is the way we like to put it. It's some wild stuff, and we have a crazy episode for you this week that just it's one of those where you. When we do the disclaimer in the regular show, we talk about, you know, we'll make fun of a bumbling police force that lets somebody. This is the perfect example of that of just a complete and utter screw up. We'll get to that and more. First, though, head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets for live shows. They're all there laid out for you here.

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That said, I think it's time. everybody to sit back. What do you say here? Let's all clear the lungs. What do we say? Arms to the sky and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. All right.

Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah. Let us do it. We're going to Maine this week. Lovely place. We love Maine. Maine is great stuff here. We're going to Fayette, Maine.

Fayette, F-E-T-E-E-T-E. Maine. It's in southern Maine. Just Fayette. Yeah, just Fayette. It's in southern Maine. It's near Augusta, kind of, which is capital up there. To the west? It's west of Augusta, inland from Augusta. It's about an hour 15 to Portland, about three hours to Boston.

So it puts it out of the commutable time, so the prices go way down. But weekendable. But weekendable. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. And about an hour 22 Carmel, Maine, or Carmel, I can't remember which one it was. I think it was our... Carmel. Carmel, our last main episode, episode 653, the surprising serial killer, which was about a surprising serial killer.

It's not pretty self-explanatory. Surprise. Surprise. This is in Kennebec County, area code 207 population here. It's a small place, 1,274. I love it. It's a cool little town. This place just, I mean, reeks of Stephen King.

Like, it's just, there had to be a story, but here. Probably. Had to be. Median household income here, a little below the national average, actually. It's 54,000, 375, which is about 15,000 under. It doesn't pay well. No, it doesn't. And then median home cost here, though, isn't too much less than the national average, $300,000. Oh, boy. So that's a little bit high for that money, but it's, yeah, so there it is. A little bit of history of this town. It was first settled as either Sterling or Starling. There's different things. I mean two different things. Probably Starling, because there's probably the Starling bird up there, right?

Well, there was the Starling plantation that was up there in 1779 on 7,000 acres. So I think that's part of where it started from. So we're not sure. But Fayette was named for the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who offered his services to the Americans during the revolution. That's where Fayette comes from. He said, he said, fuck England is what I, I don't care. But you guys, you don't even have like a government, that's fine. Fuck England because it's France and they hate England and England hates France and that's just the way it works.

They have a, they have like a friendly like a Yankees Red Sox rivalry. They're very close. They're right now. They're just across the channel from each other. They're both been around forever and they just, you know, like to snife at each other. Stand on the shore and tell them to go fuck themselves. That's it. Hey, fuck you.

We got a lot of ponds and lakes in this town, like a ton. And right around here. There's nine of them that are pretty big. There's a shitload of water up there. Tons. There's an 11-100-10-acre pond. Aker. Pond.

1610-acre pond. There's an 1185-acre lake. So I don't know what the difference between a lake and a pond is. If a pond can be bigger than a fucking lake, I don't understand it at all. I'm completely, that's what I always thought, right? You thought there's a town, then there's a city. And then there's a state and there's a lake. There's a creek.

And then, you know, there's a stream and a creek in a, a river and a pond in a lake and an ocean. Like, that's what you, that's what I always thought. Apparently, yeah. Only one review of this town that I could find. It's pretty quiet here. So, and it's a three-star review. And I said it's pretty quiet here.

And they concur, quote, quiet is the first. They got it. They nailed it. They spelled it right, though, too, didn't they? They did. They did. They did. Quiet, not quite, like we see so often.

Has a general store, 15 minutes from groceries, coffee and restaurants. So they don't have anything really in this town proper. Has a private school and private summer camps. Okay. For whatever that's worth. Now, things to do here. Okay. There is, this is so funny.

It sounds like, sounds like it's like the title, you know how like Borat's thing is like, you know, film for use of blah, blah, blah, blah, he'll use and different things. That's what this sounds like. It's called Fayette Heritage Days,

a practical celebration of community and nature in Maine. For benefit Kazakhstan. To benefit Kazakhstan. It's so funny. A practical celebration. Look, we're not going to go crazy. Very practical, real... Yeah, very practical.

Close to the chest. They say they open their arms to locals and visitors alike for Fayette Heritage Days, a festival that stitches together the rugged spirit of outdoor adventure with the genuine celebration of small town life. That is Maine. You just described living in Maine. For the families, for the families. festivals' children's activities include deer watching. That should be the only thing you do with them.

Yeah. By the way, if you've ever had little kids, see how long that they will, you know, go along with deer watching as an activity. They don't, that's not going to let's be at two seconds. Oh, wow. How long before they go? Can I ride it or touch it? Yeah. Now what do they do?

Do they do anything? No, they're just going to eat and stand there. Okay. That's it? All right. Are they going to take a sleigh up in the air? What are we looking at here? Also, watching and storytelling by local elders.

Nothing kids like more than hearing stories from old farts. That's what they love. Tell me about when you had a leather strap around your books. While they stared at deer, you know, nuzzling a pile of corn. That's what. Oh, my God. Shit that it doesn't eat. What the fuck.

pushing food around. Oh, my God. And then it says for seasoned adventures, the surrounding lakes beg for kayaking and fishing. They're asking for it. You betcha. They're asking for it. That's the problem, yeah. While dirt roads and hidden paths challenge the eye to find new perspectives.

Okay, there we go. So that said, let's talk about a murder, everybody. Here we say here. This is an idyllic place, it sounds. It's a very idyllic place, and what happens here is awful. So it's a, it ruined this. town for a while. I mean, these people were, it turned it from a, from a, you know, don't lock your doors.

Yeah. Anyone who comes over is a neighbor and a friend to who's there. Go away. Get away from the window. Like, it turned into that shit. Like, it's really fast. So, you just hear, you knock on the door and you hear a shotgun rack for a while. If my ring doorbell alerts one more time, I'm letting loose with both.

These barrels. Right through the door. I'm not even opening it. I'll get a new door. So let's start on January 6th, 1983. This is when this town kind of has a little broken piece here. New Year, new us. New year, post holidays.

It's cold up in Maine, snowing. January 6th is a punishing day. Oh, yeah. It's southern Maine, so it's not that bad. It's when you get Northern Maine, that's real bad. It's still pretty bad. It's like the temperatures here are like three degrees colder than where I am. It's not that bad, yeah.

Until you get north of like Bangor, then it gets fucking cold. That's when it gets ugly. Then you're in trouble. Yeah. That's when you're in some deep shit over there. I watched that sea wall in Portsmouth. The waves coming over. The waves were freezing.

Oh, that's awesome. I love it. I love that. Shooting ice at the cars. Oh, that's awesome. That's so cool. So on January 6, 1983, it's 11 p.m. Okay. Theodore D. Flag. Flag is with two Gs, by the way. He goes by Ted. Ted D. Flag. Teddy Flag over here.

Teddy Flag. The old Teddy Flag. Amazing. He returns from work at about 11 p.m. He worked a double shift at the James River paper mill in Chisholm. Oh, boy. That's a brutal day. And that's... What do you do with the paper mill? Does that turning... I mean, you're turning trees into paper. Yeah, I'm not sure. At this point, that's kind of where a lot of the guys still worked in town was at the mills, basically.

And he's a young guy here. He's about 25 years old, and he's got a young wife and a young baby that he's trying to support. And so he's taking whatever shifts he can. He's doing double shifts here. Now, he says he worked a double shift at the James River Paper Mill. And then he came in through the cellar door, as usual, which is a big East Coast thing to come in through the cellar. anybody? As not to wake anybody.

And if you come from a dirty job, it's to change. Okay. They have the Pittsburgh toilet. Look that up. Right. And we've talked about it before. It's like a drain in the floor where you can wash the soot off of you if you worked in a mine, basically.

So he comes through the cellar door and he sees that all the lights were off except for the light from the stereo when he gets upstairs. So you know that faint 83s. That 83 stereo light. You don't see much. Oh. you know what that is? That's the backlight of the turn dial.

Yes. Where the little needles there. And maybe the radio station bar, that kind of lights up usually too. But not digital. It's just a light that glows. It just glows so you can see it, but it's just all the band of radio stations across. That little red line that goes through that you turn. I remember my dad's stereo had one just like that.

And if it was on, that's what would glow that and behind the thing. Fuck yeah. So he sees that. He turns the lights on at the top of the cellar. stairs and he sees his wife, Judith here, who is, you know, young too. This is crazy. She is 23 years old. Yeah. Sees her lying on the floor in the living room and she looks dead. And she's got the telephone clutched in her hand next to her. And their one year old baby, Chad, is also there. So he's freaking out. Chad is laying on top. And,

of her chest. Okay. He's got blood all over him as does she. Oh, Jesus. But Chad looks fine. He's alert and he pops up. He seems fine. He's just covered in blood.

Yeah. Looks terrible. Yeah. Looks bad. Now, he sees that Judith's face is bruised and there's a blood stain on her chest and the telephones kind of beneath her body where she was holding it. And she has been stabbed multiple times in the chest. Lock that baby up.

It's horrible. Yeah, this baby is aggressive. He is dangerous. He's a dangerous young man. So the baby has blood on his clothes. And so Ted picks up the baby and goes back down the stellar stairs, he said, to get away from that scene and calls, picks up the phone. Yeah. And calls relatives.

What? Doesn't call the police. He calls relatives. So. Unless they're the police. Unless you got a relative who's a homicide detective. I don't know what the hell you're doing here. And an ambulance driver.

Yeah. So, well, she's well beyond an ambulance at this point. I mean, the blood's dried already. It's bad. So somebody, we're talking, dozens of people come over, tons of people, like his whole family comes over to support him. No. Somebody in this mix called the police, luckily. Someone said, hey, anyone call the cops at all? We should probably do that. And someone called the cops. I see there's all of us here and no red and blues. And I guess that would be a confusing scene to walk into, to walk in and find your wife dead and your baby. covered in blood and you go downstairs, do you call your mom or you're somebody? Oh, my God, what the fuck's going on? I don't know if your brain would work right at that point, but not sure. It's also a small town thing where towns tend to, they're so knit together. They're like, I need help.

I call my family. That's possible. Only us big city folk are like, get the police here fast. Well, yeah, they can probably get there faster than the cops, too, if it's a more rural place. So she dies of, Judith dies of multiple stab wounds to the best. back and chest. Now, the police tentatively set her time of death at about 11 a.m., 12 hours earlier. Oh. Now, he's been gone 16 hours, but 12 hours earlier. Also, she has defensive wounds on her hands, her fingers, and her left wrist.

Okay. And we find out she's also been raped orally, we'll say. Oh, Jesus. As well. And this poor baby's been there for. for 12 hours with a dead mom. Crawling around in the blood, basically, and just decided to crawl up on his mom and go to sleep.

I mean, that's just doesn't know. I mean, it's a one-year-old, so there's no idea. Now, obviously, first question, where was Ted? Yeah. We want to know where Ted is. But the problem is they find out Ted was at the local paper mill, the entire double shift. Everybody saw him.

He punched in, he punched out. There's no, I mean, his machine would have just been running without him if he wasn't there. So he had to be there. So he's definitely not the guy. Immediately they clear Ted is a suspect. So that's good here. They know that Judith is a stay-at-home mom.

She stayed at home with their 13-month-old son Chad all day. And let's find out a little more about Judith here. She's born Judith L. Dion, D-I-O-N. And that's January 3, 1960. So she just had her 23rd birthday three days ago. Very young. Parents are Pauline and Alex Dion. And she's got siblings, Doreen and David as well here.

She's been in the area of Fayette, her whole life. She's a local girl. You know, she went to Jay High School in the area, graduated in 78. She was into, she had a bunch of athletic stuff she was doing. She was on the field hockey team, the ski team. She was a cheerleader. So she's very active and stuff. Everything.

Yeah. In her yearbook, she said she wanted to work in the data processing field in the future. What does that mean? I don't know. Data, I guess, entered, data, not data entered, data process. I'm not sure in 1983, data processing means something much different than it means now. It's the tech industry of today. Yeah. In 78 when she graduated, that probably sounded like high tech shit. Like, ooh, the data processing industry. She wanted a 10 key calculator is what she wanted. Yeah. She married. She married. Ted Flag about a year after she graduated from high school. And he's from the area, too. It's a small town, you know, small town love and get married early and they have a baby. And he's working double shifts at the mill.

Like, you know, it's a Bruce Springsteen song. It's beautiful. It's crazy. She was also associated at one point with the Spruce Mountain Ski School and also coached skiing and water skiing for a number of years as well in her teen years. She's athletic. Yeah. Freeze it.

I'll ski on it. Yeah. It's on. I'll ski on it no matter what. She's very athletic and very, she's not a meek little thing. She can do things and she's kind of strong too. Capable. Capable.

I mean, like a small framed and not a big person, but athletic and, you know, kind of spunky, we'll say. So July 7, 1979 is when she married Ted. And like I said, Ted is also from the Fayette area. and they met and fell in love when they were teenagers. They've been going out for a few years, and they get married here. They have a son, Chad Alex, right after that. When if they get married, she gets pregnant, they have a son. I mean, they're doing, yeah.

John Cougar Mellencamp is taking notes. He's like, what are you guys doing over there? Okay, all right. If I just put that on a farm, I got something. Just take that story and move it to Indiana. I really got something here. Now, 1980, they buy a new home. This is the home that they live in when she is killed.

Right now. Okay. It is on Watson Heights Road. And they bought it from the estate of a man named Thomas Mitchell who had recently died. Got it. He's an older guy. They bought the house for $48,000, according to property records. I mean, that's 1980.

It's expensive. That's a pretty, that's a decent priced house, like a pretty, you know, not expensive, exorbitant, but not a cheap. Cheap house. High middle class. That's good. In a small town. Yeah, that's not bad. At this point, Judith is just a, she's a housewife and a mother.

She's raising the baby. The baby's a year old. I mean, she's been raising this infant for the last year and he's been working double shifts and that's how they've been doing it. So what was the day like on January 6, 1983? They're trying to piece together what happened here. They know Ted came home in 11. They talked to him. He said he saw Chad huddled against his mother's body.

He said, I quote, I came into the house and found my little boy curled up on my wife, cuddling her. He'd been crying and he looked like he'd been asleep. So he's probably starving, too. Yeah. He said he was covered in blood. He had nothing to eat all day. The fire was out. The house was getting cold.

Oh, Jesus. Yeah. This is horrible. He said, I turned on the light and he came running to me jibber jabbering and just dug his little fingernails into me, hugging and squeezing. He's probably been terrified all day. Poor kid. He doesn't know what's going on.

God, that poor kid, he said when he found his wife, quote, she was cold, rigor mortis had set in, and her body was stiff. So Ted's also pretty smart if he knows those things. Pre, you know, investigation discovery and all this shit being on all the time. If you knew that in 1983, you're reasonable intelligence and you know things. Or you've lived in the woods, where safety or where emergencies. services aren't necessarily rendered fast and you'd probably seen a dead body. No, no, no, I just meant he knows the word rigor mortis.

That's what I mean. Rather than she got stiff. Yeah. My point is he probably saw a dead body when he was younger and they were like, oh, rigors already set in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, there are a lot of dumb people that wouldn't know that in 1980. They'd know that now. Back then, I don't know how much the term rigor was thrown around casually in conversation. Now it is, but it's not. And they probably didn't say rigor like all casual, like. The problem is grigomor. Exactly.

Yeah. So for someone, a layman to know that, who's like 25 years old and works at a paper mill, he must read a book or two or see something and see a movie. So, yeah, he said that, you know, the lights were off. The baby was crying. Came to him. Somebody called the cops. He called his relatives. Somebody called the cops.

Now, when the police arrived, there were footprints in the snow leading to the kitchen door that they found to the kitchen door from outside. So that's a good thing. None of the relatives went that way. And Ted didn't go that way. So those are... Yeah, they went to the basement, right? Those are something to look at here. And blood stains on the floor in the baby's room.

So they're like, okay, this didn't just happen here. This had to go in multiple rooms. So they made casts of the footprints in the snow. And they took photos and all of that. They removed and bagged all the clothing. They bagged the child's clothes. clothing. They placed the bags over her hands and, you know, did the whole crime scene thing.

So they did all that correct. Yeah. Which you might go, yeah, yeah, who cares? That's crime scene stuff. But in 1983 in a town with, which at the time at about 600 people in it, you're not guaranteed to get a half decent crime scene. We've done shows like this where the mayor comes over and like, you know, mayor comes over, brings the kids. They're like dropping Cheerios on the floor. Like, it's insanity.

So. Game warden. showing up counting elk pelts. Yeah, yeah. How many elk pelts you got in here? There's a body. That's a problem. Yeah, but I'm about to find somebody.

I'm about to, hold on. Let me get my fine book out. So the deputy chief medical examiner performed the autopsy, took a blood sample of the fingernails and swabs of all orifices on Judith here. He put everything in separate containers and gave them to the main state

police crime laboratory. So that's how they did all of the crime scene. Now, what did Judith do that day? She spoke to a lot of people, so we can get a timeline. Oh, that's good. She's social. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, she's got talks with her family a lot, too. About 10.30 a.m. she spoke with her sister on the phone. She told her sister that a man had called earlier that morning asking for Ted. And he said that, or Judith said she told him this man that her husband was working and wouldn't be home until 11 p.m. So she just told the stranger that I'm all alone in the house until 11 p.m. You know, I'll even be here after dark.

Don't worry. Yeah. For quite a long time. Several hours after dark, because it gets dark at four here right now. Oh, yeah. January, that is $3.50. It is dark outside in Maine. So she said that man didn't leave his name and that he just said he was an old friend of Ted's and he wanted to surprise him.

So don't tell him I called, basically. during the phone conversation with her sister, she put down the phone because somebody was at the door. Judith does. When Judith gets back on the phone, she tells her sister that her husband's friend was there and that she'll call her back. I'll call you back, the guy who called earlier,

he's here now, which, why would you want to, you know what I mean? Why would you want to talk to this guy? I already told you he's not here. Right. He works at the mill. Go down there. Maybe can catch him at lunch or something.

Maybe he thought 11 o'clock is, Just in a few minutes, I'll just beat him there. Yeah, she said 11 tonight, though. Oh, okay. Anyway, she didn't call back, and her sister got busy signals every time she tried to call back that day. Her sister kept trying to call her back. About 10.45 a.m., Judith called her brother. She said that a man who claimed to be a friend of her husband's was out the house complaining of car trouble.

And her brother's a mechanic. That's why she called him. Can you come over and help this guy get the fuck out of my driveway, essentially? So he offered to come over and help, but the man said, never mind, I'll stop somewhere and Fayette. So the guy, so Judith's brother didn't go over to the house. I was like, all right, well, never mind then. About noon, a male person here was on her route carrying, you know, driving uphill toward the house with the mail. And the road is slippery because it had been snowing all day long.

So the day of the murder, it's a big. snow day. She saw an oncoming car here on she saw a car crest the hill and swerve into a ditch and then back onto the road so that

it almost struck her car but then the writer, the driver got her shit together and ended up driving past her. Which if you've seen snowy environments, that happens all the time. You'll see cars do a slip out, do that, whoop, poop, correct, and then get their shit together and go. And you get a good giggle. Yeah. But

She noticed the car because it did that. And she said the car had a maroon body and a tan top. She said that the driver was a clean-shaven male in his early 20s with light brown hair, wearing a tan coat, a gray wool scarf, and no glasses. She got a good look. Real specific look. And that's because when you're driving, especially on a back road like this, not a highway, and it's been snowing, you're driving seven miles an hour.

And you see somebody do something dumb and you go, who did that piece of shit? Yeah. Look at this fucking idiot. But you don't even think that in the snow when someone slides. You're just like, oh shit, don't slide into me. Once they get past you, you're like, okay, I'm safe. That's good. So she saw the cars, everything and the guy in it.

She said the driver looked straight ahead without making eye contact with her. But she certainly was doing there. She was definitely looking at him. Now, between 2 and 3 p.m., Judith's brother-in-law, so Ted's brother, I believe, or Judith's sister's husband, I'm not sure. Somebody comes over to the house to install a new starter in a truck that they have at the house. A lot of mechanical work going. In the snow, you're going to put a new starter in.

If we need that truck, we need that truck. We need it. So Judith's car was in the driveway, but he said she didn't come to the window when her brother-in-law drove in, and he assumed that she didn't hear him arrive or maybe went out with relatives or something. So he said he installed the starter and left after being at the house for 45 minutes to an hour. out of boy so that's good and right away the cops are like okay so you were at the house during the day we're going to have a chat with you then uh but it's it's all it all lines up he was only gone for 45 minutes yeah and uh the car had a new starter in it so that's yeah that's an hour job you know what i mean

yeah he would have been real fast if he could go in there murder her then change a starter and go back to work that would be pretty impressive i got to say that's a really that's a really thoughtful murder Good news and bad news. Good news. That starter, that thing runs like a top. Bad news had to kill your wife as a payment. Sorry.

And 75 Chevy's running like a top. Yeah, it's running like a top. So they set, like I said, set the time of death at about 11 p.m., 11 a.m. Basically, there's blood and there's other blood and there's some hair and stuff like that. But this is 1983. So that really doesn't mean that much. It doesn't do much, yeah. Blood is blood type, essentially, which means, you know, if you have a common blood type, okay, you and half the population could have been there.

Yeah, there's very little you can learn from the blood apart from direction, how long it's been. What color it is? What color is the right color? Yeah, that's about it. And is it dry or wet? That helps too, yeah, for length of everything. They did find sperm in her mouth as well, which is maybe the grossest sentence I've ever said on this show. I hate that you did.

There's no other way to put it. It's too Substance and its location. That's all. I have to say some terrible shit on this show that I don't want to say. And people please know that I'm not in taking it joy and saying they found sperm in her mouth. I think that's the most horrible thing I could think of. That's just bad.

That's the last place you want to find that after this happens. There's not a word scientific or otherwise that for it that is not vile. That's it. I can't. That's what they found. So, so they asked Ted, does Ted have any idea who or why this could possibly happen?

Yeah. Is any of you guys, you know, in a fight with somebody or you, anything? And Ted said, quote, I have no idea why.

We had no enemies. I'm easy going. She's easygoing. She couldn't kill a fly or a spider. I've never even stepped on anybody's toes. Like, we're just, take it as it comes.

easy going small town people. Nobody should want to kill us. There's no reason for it. Trying to raise a kid. Trying to raise a baby here. Now, the day after the murder, the mail carrier was again delivering mail on her regular route and saw the police were at the flag's home. And she stopped to tell the officers what she had seen the day before, the guy with the

maroon car tan top. Now, she worked with a detective to develop a composite picture of the driver she saw in the two-tone car. because, I mean, it's just a guy on the road, but they have nothing else. So this will help maybe. The mail carrier was never able to identify a particular individual as the driver and could not identify a specific car. So she turns out to be kind of useless, sort of. Yeah, maroon cars with tan tops back then were so common.

Yeah, but there's some specific things about this car that we'll talk about. That we'll make it less common. That kind of at least give you an idea of, okay, here's a guy who had a car. car like that. It doesn't mean he did anything, but at least kind of takes them in a direction that we're going to go in here. So that same day, the state police enter the investigation. They don't trust. The small town police force is not set up to do a giant investigation. They're just not. They don't have the resources, the officers, they don't have it. So they need the state police. So the state police moved in and set up a command post. And the commander of the

state police criminal division said what we get from the public is generally the most important information. And they said they don't want to be more than a local telephone call away. They said they don't want to have to, someone have to make a long distance call. They said if some, yeah, if some people have to pay more than 10 cents, they won't call. You don't get like at a pay phone. Yeah. You have to, they tell you to put an extra dime in, you're like, listen, I'm not doing an

LD here. This is crazy. Not happening. So they did that. Now, the town is fucking freaked, as we said earlier. The town is, it's wild. Here is the owner of the Fayette Country Store. She's got her finger on the pulse of the town here.

Gene Hewitt. She said, everybody's scared to death. All the women that are home. You're bound to be, you're bound to be when something like this happens. And then another woman here who was there at the time and lived there said, what ensued with the town was remarkable. By a year later, nobody was a stay-at-home mom. Everyone had jobs outside the house. Really?

It scared these people into the workforce. They didn't want to sit in there. Now, at the same time, the economy was terrible at that time, too. So they might have needed to get jobs, but people apparently didn't want to be home alone all day based on this. So they check out some leads here, and they say that the, you know, they did a door to a door investigation in the area. It's basically the whole town. They went door to door.

You know anything? You know anything? They don't really have much on it, though. They also have some evidence problems. This is the problem when you have 50 people come to a crime scene. They said the home was sealed for a week and a 12-man command center operated in the Fayette area for about a month to track down leads. The investigation began in the home and expanded to the neighborhood. but the people who visited the flag home complicated the investigation and may have cost police a lot of information.

One officer here estimates that 50 people trod through the flag house before police even got there. What? Before they even got there, 50 people were in the house. No one said, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Yeah. Outside will hang out. Unbelievable. They said potential evidence may have been destroyed, trampled.

other evidence might have now something we think is evidence is not evidence, really. Yeah. Somebody could have picked up a knife and been like, ew, this is gross. Wash it. Yeah. They said there were bloody fingerprints all over the house. We had to fingerprint everybody who responded that night. Oh, God.

They said there were so many people walking around outside. It would really help us a lot if they stayed away. And I don't know if this is in this case, if they destroyed any evidence or not. So we have no idea. And this is a problem here. Now, Ted, to the media, he said that he would, they asked Ted, you know, just how are you doing? And he said that he would like to thank God that whoever stabbed his wife repeatedly had not harmed his child at least. So at least there's that.

That's a pretty grim thanking God. Wow. So they have a whole command post set up here. And they're asking their questions are, did you see anything unusual, any strange vehicles, strange faces? what did you know about the victim? What else do you know? And if everyone said, I don't know, then they moved on. Oh, boy.

That's how they did it. They said they have a lot of tips coming over the phone and into the door. And, you know, but he said it's, they've talked to more than 150 people in the first week. But they said much of what they heard is just unattributed rumors. It's small town rumors. Nothing. They don't know shit. They got nothing.

Nothing of substance. They said, we need to find out how these. rumors start. A rumor might contain information only the perpetrator and the police would know when the police find out who started it, they may have the killer right there. So that's an interesting thing here, but they might not. That's the other thing. It might have just heard something at the old general store. I mean, who the hell knows here? They said a lot of people think the investigation stops. It doesn't. It continues to and through the first day of trial. We're always looking for additional evidence. They said oftentimes people decide who had withheld

information may talk to us now that the cat's out of the bag. So, yeah, and they say, too, there's a, some of these tips just don't really help. And by the way, the confidence in whether they can solve this or not is a little bit low because there is a whole article here from early 1984 about the stats of how much they solve. And it's not, it is not confidence-inducing at all. very bad. They said during 1983,

24 murders occurred in Maine, while 21 murder cases and one for, including one from the prior year, were cleared for a clearance rate of 87.5%. Not bad. I'd like to see how many people were convicted, actually, but clearance rate has to do with arrest. You can arrest somebody release them the next day.

That's still a clear case. Wow. Yeah, that's how the stats work. That's why they do that a lot, by the way, because they go by clearance rate. Forcible rapes, they get at 79.8% and aggravated assaults at 80.2%. Motor vehicle thefts all the way down at 39% and burglaries 26.2%. Wow.

Yeah. And this is kind of a break-in thing. So they're not good at solving based on evidence, it seems like. What if you combine all of them together except for that car theft one? That's a good. You know what I mean? That's because that's what this is. This is bad.

During 1982, though, I have that. During 1982, the national crime clearance rate stood at, take a guess. Nationally? National crime clearance rate. 85? 20.1%. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Unless you're a moron, you could pretty much get away with things. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, no. The crime rate was five times higher than it is now, not five, but it's way higher than it was now. And clearance, sub 30. And that doesn't even mean convicted. Like I said, that means you could have arrested someone, let them go because you don't have information. You don't have enough evidence.

And that's still a clearance. Which is pretty wild here. Now, 1984, not a lot of suspects. A year has gone by, but they have a suspect. Okay. They have one that they were kind of interested in. Thomas H. Mitchell, Jr., born 1957. He's the guy.

Remember, does that name sound familiar? Thomas Mitchell. No. Thomas Mitchell, Sr. is his dead father whose estate sold the house to the flags. Right. He's Thomas Mitchell Jr. And apparently, when his dad died, the house was left to his stepmother, and he was fucking furious about that. He thought it should have went to him.

God. So, Judith and her husband purchased the house from the stepmother. Soon thereafter, Thomas Mitchell arranged with the flags to collect personal items that he had left behind in the home. It was his dad's house. The first time Mitchell came to the house to get his shit, nobody was home. So he left a note basically saying, thanks for nothing. I drove all the way here for nothing. What the fuck?

You're not even here. After getting the note, Ted, rather than have a confrontation about it, just gathered up all his shit and took it to the realtor who did the house. There you go. You'd be the middleman. And then in 1981, Thomas Mitchell came to Flags home again. and when Ted answered the door, you know,

Flag was standing there. Yeah. When Ted told Thomas Mitchell that the items he wanted were at the realtor, he said he looked like he was pissed and he was like, all right, fine, and he left. Which, that's not really a,

he must be the murderer type of thing. You know what I mean? But he's somebody that might be mad at them. That's literally all they had. That's all we have at that point. Everybody else loves them. That's it. Now, the same thing, though, on January 6, 1983, a South Portland police detective saw Thomas Mitchell, whom he knew personally at about 7 a.m. driving a two-tone 73 Ford Thunderbird in Portland, headed north on the I-295.

Portland's about 70 miles south of Fayette by car. He said he was heading that direction, but he's 70 miles away. Just because you're headed north, he could have been going to Montreal. all. You know what I mean? It's an hour and a half away. Who knows? Now, a little bit on his background, which made him a little bit more interesting to the police,

he while on furlough from the main state prison for a 1978 kidnapping conviction, here we'll talk about, he got furloughed there. He was released from prison in 1980, December. In 1979, that's why his shit was still there. He couldn't get it when they moved out because he was in prison. In 79, he was in prison. In 79, he was convicted of kidnapping a 16-year-old girl in Portland. For what?

Oh, for what do you think? He served four years in prison. The jury did not convict him on a related rape charge somehow. But he kidnapped her, for no reason, apparently. In 1981, he was indicted and found innocent on charges of gross sexual misconduct and threatening with a dangerous weapon. What's his deal? I don't know. And the county sheriff's department investigators said they found a list of women's names and addresses in his possession when he was arrested, but they didn't give any other details.

He was going to do it a lot. That was apparently his thing here. They had like a Rex Eurman file going on in his computer or something. So there's a search warrant obtained to seize a pair of shoes of his from his South Portland residents to compare them to the casts of the snow footprints. They also obtain a sample of his blood and noted his possession of a car that was olive green with a tan roof and maroon primer paint on the driver's door. So that's what the postal worker would have seen. So he has a car like that. Maroon primer ain't a thing.

That's an old door from a different car. Yeah, I don't know why. That's what it says in the court talking about. But I understand. But the door is just maroon, though. The door is maroon, yeah. Wow. So they interview his aunt, who he lives with.

okay, Eleanor Foley. And she says that she has a handwritten account of his activities on the date of the murder. My aunt likes to keep track of, imagine your aunt keeping track of your activities when you're 27 years old and keeping it written all down and everything. Moreover, imagine calling the cops and saying, I have a handwritten description of everything that happened. There you go, so the fuck what? Yeah, big deal. What does that mean? So they also ask him about it.

And he refers investigators to his daily diary, which ran from 1982 to June 85. By the way, later on, we'll talk about what it happens to him in June 85. What the hell? I'll give it away now. In June 85, he's charged with raping and attempting to murder a woman in Cumberland County. So it stops there because he doesn't have the book anymore because he's in jail? Well, that's when he stopped writing. Yeah, they wouldn't let him take it in there.

He said he kept meticulous track of it. of his movements at the request of his family members who believe police were harassing and hassling him. So they said, keep meticulous notes of where you are. Like writing it down means you were there. You know, it doesn't mean shit. So his diary for the day is, and this is his aunt Eleanor, who made his diary entries, because apparently he doesn't write too well. She detailed.

He's got a stenographer. Yeah. She detailed, he told his aunt that he got out of bed at 815. She's his biographer. She's going to note everything. showered and got coffee before going to town with his aunt. They stopped at Bentley's for breakfast, then went to headhunters for a haircut while she ran an errand. At 11.45 a.m. he met up with his aunt, exchanged a shirt he got for Christmas and had a snack when he got home at 1230.

He said he went to a friend's house, returned home at 2 p.m., napped until 4.30 p.m. This guy's got quite the fucking life. I would love to live this guy's life. ate supper, then went to another friend's home and got home at about 11.45 p.m. Midnight. Midnight. Had a snack and went to bed. Good Lord. So there's nothing they can do to poke any holes in this. He has his time accounted for better than most people do when you ask him.

Where were you a year and a half ago? He goes, I'll tell you exactly where I am. Yeah. We do also have it in pencil. True. But that was in the Adnan-Syad case, that was one of the big things that they, that they thought was a big smoking gun as he couldn't remember where he was because who the fuck a random Tuesday a year ago where were you Jimmy who the hell knows you know what I mean I don't know Tuesday

shit but you have a diary they can't say anything so February 84 the rewards up to $4300 which doesn't seem like a lot seems like there should probably be more the one of the the guy leading the investigation says we're confident it won't go unsolved if it takes another six months or whatever were determined to solve it. Okay. We are going to solve it. He said that they were working it real hard, but then the police, quote, got clobbered with a series of murders and sex crimes that demanded their immediate attention. People are just raping all over the place.

We got to tend to it. Interesting choice of words. I'm real clobbered with all this rape and murder. Just clobbered by it. Tell you what. I mean, I'm just like penetrated by it. You know what I mean? if that makes sense to you.

Gob smacked. Yeah. So June 20th, 1985, that's member Thomas Mitchell. This is when he's convicted of

kidnapping and attempting to murder a 17-year-old girl in Standish. Wow. Yes, that is horrifying. He is sentenced

to you, sir, may fuck off, 35 years in prison for that. So that's a long, yeah. He's put away for a while. So if they ever

consider him a suspect, we've got him. You know where he is. He was a on charges of kidnapping rape and attempted murder. He was arrested about 9 p.m. at his home, a teenager who was found walking in Standish Monday afternoon after suffering from a severe neck wound named him as her assailant. Oh, God.

Wow. Now, they talk, they go back to, the press goes back to the flag investigation cops and they go, hey, are you going to go talk to him again? And the one cop said, there's no plans to interview Mitchell. They said that they've talked to him. they said and they wouldn't call it they go is his arrest a break in the case and they said not at all they said we interviewed him about a year ago his name came up because his father owned the residence where the flags live that's that was the only connection to it that was it um they

said that you know he was a suspect they said he was going there to get some furniture that had been left by his father and that's that why he was at the house two years earlier but other than that just like a trophy from little yeah this is this is big ticket item Yeah, he had like some furniture and shit. So, 1985, or 1995, November, 1995, there's a new suspect. 12 years have gone by. We have a new suspect. We have Lloyd Frank Millett, L, L, W, T.

He admitted to multiple murders. Oh, really? Yes, admitted to it. So now the cops are looking at six unsolved homicide or missing person cases over the last 12 years to see if either have a tangible link to him. So they're looking into that. He's the son of a truck driver. He grew up in the area, you know, sort of in the area here.

He had falling out with his mother as a teenager and got kicked out of his house and became a carny. Nice. I'm saying guilty right away. He's a carny? Whatever you accuse him up. And a multiple murderer. And a multiple murderer. Yeah.

Where is that? A multiple murderer. What is that? Oh, it's a Frazier episode. So never mind. Okay. He lived around Fayette in his mid-20s and became a friend of Ted and Judith Flagg when he lived near their home. Oh.

So he knows them. So they said that Millett was a pallbearer at the funeral of Judith. Yeah. So they said, what are the odds in a small town like this that your wife? Did it carry her? No, no, no, no, that there's another murderer who happened to be friends with her. but he didn't murder her. He just carried the gun.

Right. What are the fucking odds of that? You know what I mean? Was he already a murderer prior to that? Did that kick him over the edge? Carrying in a body like that? That's what they're trying to figure out. He's had tons of problems in the courts.

He was arrested in four years between 87 and 91. He was arrested at least 14 times. Wow. Was convicted of rape, assault, mischief, drunk driving, writing bad checks. He's a Renaissance man, really. Yeah. Does it all. The former district attorney called him, quote, a frequent flyer.

You bet. That's the guy here. A former boss said he was gentle with farm animals, though he was once convicted for cruelty to his dog. Oh. After the murder is when he left this area and drifted from town to town working as a logger and a farm hand. Shit. Then he got married in 87. He got arrested a whole bunch of times.

He was also, I guess, The, the, one of the people he's accused of killing was a 17-year-old girl that lived right by them. So that's not great. He threatened to blow his wife's head off. She divorced him. And she said she regretted that she divorced him because he became a constant pain in the ass. So that's their main suspect in 95. 1996 Maine States Crime Lab

finally begins possessing the technology and training to test DNA specimens. That's great. 96. Okay. 2003. So 96 to 2003, nothing happens. Seven years of nothing.

Seven years. They did nothing. Millet does not turn out to be the guy, they think, too. I think he had an alibi that day. Yeah. So there's a total new investigation. Police detective Jason Richards is assigned to take over the case, basically fresh eyes.

Look this over, see what we did wrong, fix it. Because now it's 20 years later, so all the people that were in charge that don't want to be embarrassed aren't in charge anymore. So now it's go back and tell us what we did wrong. Embarrassed years ago.

Yeah. So he does that. The footprint casts, they have, you know, that, he gets them out of evidence. They still have them. But they were broken. A crime lab technician, specializing in imprint evidence,

put them back together, piece by piece, like a puzzle. She said the prints allowed her to tell the size, tread design, and manufacturers mold used to make the shoes worn by whoever made the footprints. Nice. Okay. Now, of all the stuff they have,

they say, the lab person says they have matched the shoes to Thomas Mitchell's shoes that were taken in 1984. Is that right? Yes, they said they matched these shoes. Okay. Then they do DNA tests. The swab taken from the mouth to

protect the presence of sperm cells. They tested both Judith and Chad's clothing. The sleeve of Chad's clothing also contains traces of semen. There was semen on a baby. I don't think we've ever had an episode where there's semen on a baby, but there's semen on a baby, and I'm grossed out by that. That is so bad. The crime lab ran test on the specimens.

This is a procedure which screens out X chromosome genetic material, which typically exists in females and a Y-S-T-R test can exclude individuals, but it can't match samples to people. Now, the tests excluded 13-year-old Chad. He didn't rape his mother orally, 13-month-old Chad. A one-year-old is not the source of the semen. That's a, we can scientifically say that. Shocking. Okay. Now, they tested it to Mitchells, and they said the result was that Thomas Mitchell could not be excluded it as the source of the male DNA. So then you go from there and you do a more, you know, in-depth one, yeah.

You go down the funnel here. And they said that they detected two matches here when they did the next test, the PCR test. And one was Judith Flagg and the other DNA is Thomas Mitchell. Yep. They said the chance that a random person could have left the sample would have been about $300 billion to one. However, in this case, the random match probability was estimated. at 69 quadrillion to one. Uh-oh.

There's billion and then there's trillion and there's quadrillion. So that's a lot. That means they've got almost all of his alleles. Yeah, there hasn't been 69 quadrillion people who've lived on the earth since the earth has been a thing. Like there hasn't been. September 8th, 2006, they indict him on murder charges, Thomas Mitchell. Now, pre-trial stuff. There's some fun stuff here.

he tries to suppress all the forensic evidence on the grounds that it would violate his Sixth Amendment confrontation rights. Because the guy who performed the autopsy 26 years ago is retired to Canada. And he lives up in the middle of nowhere and he's old. And he says, I'm not coming here for a trial. I'm not doing it. I'm not coming to the, I'm not going to the States. I'm not doing it. So he said, well, you should have to throw out all the physical evidence then, which, no, that didn't work.

then he has an alternate suspect and part of the pretrial thing is whether he's allowed to introduce an alternate suspect Mitchell does Mitchell does and it's not bad I gotta tell you he offers proof

that included the following facts regarding a male neighbor of the victim who I believe is probably millet okay they don't say he wore a size 10 shoe same size shoe as Mitchell the neighbor lived down the street

a woman who knew the neighbor was prepared to testify that he owned a pair of shoes similar to the shoes obtained for Mitchell's residence and that the sole design may have resembled the design of the souls on those shoes. Because this isn't, this is a common shoe. It's not like Richard

Ramirez in the Avia where they had one pair of black avias sold in the entire western United States. You know, that's a different story. This is kind of a... This is a Wolverine. It's a... It's a Shields shoe that

fucking the Northeast wears. They have like seven types of shoes. Everybody has the same ones. You have snow shoes and shoes you wear in the rain. She also saw the neighbor wearing the shoes only once on a date near the murder. The neighbor had a beige jacket with a wool collar and sometimes wore a scarf. Remember the postal worker saw that. A woman saw the neighbor in a suede camel-colored coat that she never saw again after the murder.

A woman had been beaten up by the neighbor in the past, and this woman thought he was very violent. the neighbor owned a two-tone green automobile. The neighbor met Judith at a store where he once worked and said she was, quote, nothing but a slut. What? A young married mother with a baby. It's a huge, just cat and all around town. Ridiculous.

A bizarre choice of words. Right? Then Judith saw a man, or I'm sorry, Thomas, the husband, Ted. He saw a man working on his car outside her window two days before the murder and told a guest to visiting her that the man was a friend of her husbands who lived down the road. The neighbor's alibi that he was at the unemployment office and at a restaurant didn't check out. The neighbor went to the restaurant after an employee was interviewed by the police and said, you saw me here that day, didn't you? Okay. After the murder, the neighbor was nervous and fidgety. He frequently spoke about the

murder. The neighbor was having trouble with his car around the time of the murder and some damage to the front of the car was observed five days after the murder. The mail carrier, a carrier who observed a car driven into the ditch that morning, did not testify to having observed whether the car was damaged in any way, though. The neighbor's features were similar to those depicted in the composite drawing. The mail carrier also stated when viewing a photograph of the neighbor, number seven seems to have an unusually mean look. I would like to see him in a lineup with a camel coat.

I'd like to see him in that. You know what? I'd like to see him in a nice pair of brown loafers. When do you put those on him? What the fuck? I like to see him in black lace. Can you do that to him? I like to see how he looks in a little negligee.

Just a little black lacy number. What do you think? Put it on him. The neighbor had a fight with a... I wonder why. Yeah. The neighbor had a fight with a girlfriend who was Judith's best friend and Judith took her friend's side in the dispute. And by the way, in the 2006 report, the latent fingerprint examiner was not able to rule out the neighbor as a source of certain

fingerprints. Oh, no. After considering this, the judge excludes all of this. Not allowed. Wow. Not allowed. It's just confusing, they say. Now, June 2009 is the trial.

It has moved to Franklin County. Okay. As a publicity, obviously. There's a sergeant here who testified about seeing the Olive Green 73 Thunderbird with the tan top, chrome grill, maroon primer, along one side, operated by Mitchell, heading north out of Portland that morning. The mail carrier, they bring her in there and they're talking about that, talking about the Thunderbird, Maroon Thunderbird with a tan top and chromeville grill. The prosecutor says that she, you know, the description matches Mitchell's appearance.

Mitchell was not unknown to the flags. You know, he had come over before. He'd been kind of pissy, a little bit upset. But being a little annoyed two years earlier is tough to say motive. It's pretty well-fair again. Yeah, it's just he knew where a woman was in the house alone, basically, is what it was. So they said at that point, they said despite the main state police detective's early interest in Thomas Mitchell, which culminated in the search of his home, the case went cold in 84. And the prosecutor said at that point, the investigation into the death of Judy Flagg basically stopped.

Dang. They said the evidence will show that Judith Flagg fought for her life and her baby's life, which she did because she had defensive wounds. or she was fighting. And she's a field hockey chick. She's going to fight. She's capable. She's capable. If you give her a little stick, you're fucked.

She'd a beat your ass with that thing, probably. Now, the defense here, they gave the opening statement. They said, there's no dispute to the timeline of the murder. However, the evidence used by the state, they said it's been stored for decades. And this was taken prior to modern day evidentiary procedures. So who knows what they did with it? They could have stuck it up their ass, you know, twirled the, around, brought it out. We don't know. He said, there's no eyewitnesses to this crime. Because of that,

the state's case is entirely made up of circumstantial evidence. Oh, and DNA, stupid. That's the other thing they have. Well, there is that, yeah, but also conjecture. A lot of conjecture. He pointed out that there's as many as 15 people had been inside and outside the flag residence before the police had arrived. The police said 50. I don't know if somebody misheard 15 for 50 or what, but as Ted Flag called his family first, they said that footprints were broken. They were reconfirmed. They were constructed. They're not perfect. The fingerprints taken inside the home. None of them were ever proven to come from Mitchell.

And they say some to this day are unidentified. Could be anybody. So they said his client, who intended to testify, had stayed at his father's home years earlier in the baby's room where police would later determine a struggle had occurred. Now, they say Mitchell suffered an injury which resulted in him bleeding profusely years earlier in that room. So that's where his blood came from. He said, you heard me say earlier that justice is, justice delayed is justice denied. He said, and that's true when one considers what the flag family's gone through. But Mr. Mitchell has been inconvenienced by this delay.

Poor guy's been, he's been in prison since 1985. The guy's having a tough go. That's the thing. When they indicted him, by the way, he was five days from being released from prison. They're like, nope, my God. Nope, asshole, you're back. and he was in there for 20 years. And he was five days from being released.

They said, Mr. Mitchell has been inconvenience. The people he was living with, his mother and aunt are now deceased. And they said, so they can't, you know, they can't testify for him and tell him that tell you where he was.

They say three pubic hairs were found on the outside of her clothing. Those hairs examined at a microscopic level in 83 were determined not to have come from either of the flags. However, they were also to be shown to be incompatible with Mitchell. Well, let's run those,

some DNA on those and we'll find out. What do you say? Give that a run, yeah. So he testifies. Really? He does. He does it. He took the stand. He said, I was nowhere near Fayette that morning. Didn't happen.

Spent the day with my aunt in South Portland. They said, well, how'd your blood getting there? He said he injured himself and bled on the carpet in the house when his father owned it. He said that his father had cleaned the blood stain with bleach. I was there for a very long time before. My DNA is all over that house. It's all over. Now, the problem is, Ted and the realtor who listed the house, who looks it over meticulously, said that there was no stain or bleach mark on the carpet when the flags bought the house.

So that didn't happen. Mitchell's stepmother testified that she had no recollection of him injuring himself in the house when she owned it also. In closing, the prosecutor said, that man, this defended him, committed a crime so horrible that it must be every one. woman's nightmare. Yeah, I would say being alone in your house with your baby and having somebody come in and rape and murder you. That's a nightmare. Yeah. And leaving my corpse from my kid to jungle gym on. To crawl on. That's nice. He said that Judith Flagg fought for her life as she was stabbed in the chest, stomach and back. And he said now more than 26 years later, the evidence speaks for Judy and Chad Flag. Through the application of modern DNA technology, the evidence

speaks for them and it speaks to you. Okay. The defense, totally different thing. They said, quote, in this case, the long search for truth has simply been subordinated by the pressure to solve this cold case. Now, as 20 years go by, there's less pressure actually to solve the cold case. That's the thing. There was a lot of pressure in 1983 and four. At the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. This is, there's not. So this is just they found evidence that matched. There's a box in a room somewhere. That's the case. Yeah. They said that the state failed to identify or investigate Tom's alibi.

And they said that his aunt could have been interviewed in 1983 about his alibi, which she was. They said, but she can't testify because she's dead. She died in like 2000, I think. Oh, no. So this goes to the jury. And this is 2009. The trial takes place. So people are...

26 years later. And they're well aware of DNA by now. This isn't like... Oh, Jesus. This isn't like the O.J. jury where they was kind of new or whatever. This is a, this is a, you know. They expect it.

They know it. They've seen CSI's been on for 10 fucking years. So they get it. An hour and a half of deliberations. And they find him guilty of intentional and knowing murder. Wow. After the verdict, two dozen relatives

of the flags, when the prosecutor walked out, they gave him like a standing ovation in the courtroom for doing it. Outside the court, mother, Pauline, said the community is safe again. That's good. That's nice. And they said they've never let, they were thankful to the investigators.

They quote, never let this go, which even according to the prosecutor, they stopped investigating it in 1984. They're being very nice, we'll put it out. This is a very nice group of people, this family. They're trying to be polite. They also said that they were told long ago that Mitchell was a suspect. They said, Mr. Mitchell's been in jail for a number of years so we know where he's been. Now he's facing much more. This is not so much closure for us.

If he were out of jail, it would happen again. During sentencing, they bring up that this is the third time he's been convicted of attacking a woman. And he's been acquitted and charges dropped before. So this is not good. And with all that being said, judge says, you, sir, may fuck off life without. parole. Eat dicks. Dick Eat in lines that way, asshole. No loss. Freedom. No mass. You're here forever. Bet in 85, you never thought you were never getting out. But here we are. Got them. Fuck off. In 2010, he appeals based on the alternate suspect. Should the alternate suspect

have been excluded. That's a big deal. It's a lot of rule 701 shit that I don't have time to get into that. But I'd love to get into that because I love legal shit like that. It's very interesting. But anyway, there is a dissenting opinion in it that says that they should have allowed in the alternate suspect evidence. Basically, what the main fucking thrust of this is, hey, you could have allowed in all the alternate suspects you want. None of their fucking DNA was in there.

And his was. His sperm was on a one-year-old sleeve. That's a problem. Explain that, asshole. You know what I mean? It's a big problem. Did you leave a sperm vat behind when you moved out too? I bled on the carpet once.

Oh, and that's my sperm vat in the garage also. I have, it's about 12 gallons I keep here. It stays spreadable. It's always, it stays very, I keep a lid on it, so it stays, you know, how it goes there. So that's how that goes. That appeal is denied, though. 2018, he appeals again, lost a bid to start a process that could have gotten him a new trial based on errors in the FBI data used for DNA calculations.

So he's saying it's not actually 1 in 69 quadrillion. The calculations were off. Okay. But the DNA still matches you. It's just maybe it's one in 20 billion instead of 1 in 69 quadrillion. Much less imposing number. And they say, nah, you're good. Fuck off.

Hang in there. He's still in prison. He's a bad guy. And he's still there. So there you go, everybody. That is Fayette, Maine, and just a goddamn mess of a case. Just a... Does he still have appeals left?

Is he still trying? From what I saw, the last one I saw was 2018. Maybe he's content now. I don't know if he's loading up for another one or if he has nothing to appeal on anymore. I'm not sure what it is, but he's going through the motions here. So, wow. Crazy fucking story. And a lot of credit, by the way, to the family there.

The flags, you know, and the Dions and all those people. They were, Christ, they were patient and then they weren't even shitty about it. They were like, they never stopped working hard rather than going, we're all lucky this happened because you guys have dropped the fucking ball completely. And we ran through the crime scene a lot, so we apologize for that. That's us. Yeah, but we didn't know. We hadn't seen CSI yet. We didn't know.

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