Small Town Murder - Secrets Of Murder Pond - Nettie, West Virginia

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

This week, in Nettie, West Virginia, a tragic scene is found, when a woman appears to have been killed in a most unusual way. She's found in a pond, on her farm, with a gigantic tree holding her under the water. He husband appears to make a valiant effort to save her, with no success. The problem is, everything doesn't quite add up to the way it appears. The dead woman has bruises where she shouldn't, and her husband has been having an affair with their live in farm worker. Was this a horrible accident, or an absolutely diabolical murder set up?? Many shocking details, and a family that won't give up, make the whole thing clear!   Along the way, we find out that decorating potatoes sounds like a pretty boring background, that when a drifter blows into town, you shouldn't automatically trust them, and that you should be very careful about whop you tell about your murder secrets!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder 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!!

This week, in Nettie West Virginia, a frantic caller to 911 says that a woman has been killed in a tragic and unlikely way. But detectives uncover a whole web of lies, including a wild affair, a huge effort to cover it up, and an absolutely brutal and terrible murder. Welcome to Smalltown Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petrogalo.

I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Whistman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today. And another wild, crazy adventure known as Small Town Murder. We have just a crazy one again for you today, as usual. And we're back in West Virginia this week, so you know it's going to be extra crazy. And it absolutely is. So we'll get into all of that and more.

First, though, definitely head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get everything. There's new merchandise up. There's all sorts of stuff up, but especially get your tickets to live shows. Live shows. Live shows. They're the best, the live shows. You've got to come there.

They're live, you say. They're live. We're there, actually on a stage, and you're in a seat. And we're going to tell you a murder story. More importantly, though, it is a huge comedy show, and it's so fun with a crazy murder story, and you get to see all the pictures and everything like that. We're taking April off the road, but we are back in May. May 1st Salt Lake City sold out.

May 2nd, Denver, get your tickets. Oh, boy. May 29th, Buffalo. That's also sold out. But Detroit, or Royal Oak, actually, on May 30th, tickets available for that. So get them right now. Shut up and Give Me Murder.com. You should also check out our other two shows, Crime in Sports and Your Stupid Opinions, which are hilarious.

So you should listen to those. You should get yourself Patreon. Oh, yes. Do yourself a favor. You deserve it. Do yourself a favor. That's right. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material.

Anybody $5 a month or above, you get everything that we put out. As soon as you subscribe, you get hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. Then you get new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder. And you get it all, baby. You get it all, you get it all. That's right. This week for crime and sports, we're going to do, just because we've come across these and collected them over the years,

the craziest names in sports history. From the 19th century on, we're going to talk about the crime and give little bios, and it's going to be a fun time. Then for small town murder, Stockholm syndrome. Yeah. We've all heard of it. That's where you're, you know, you start identifying with your captors if you're kidnapped and that sort of thing. But we're going to talk about where it came from, the incident that coined the phrase because it's the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life. And I didn't know it until now.

So it's going to be awesome. Check that out. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And on top of all of that, you get everything we put out, all three shows, all ad free. Add free. That's right. Damn it. You know it.

All ad free. And then as well, you also get a shout out at the end of the show where Jimmy will mess your name all up, even though he'd love to get it correct. Sorry about it. That's right. Pamela, you say? Pamela. You said. Yeah, that's you did. So that said, disclaimer time.

Yeah. This is a comedy show. We are definitely comedians. For sure. Definitely murder is going to happen. And it would be kind of false advertisement if it didn't because that's the name of the show. So those things happen at the same time. And they go together.

You might go, how does that work? Well, very easily. We never make fun of the victims or the victims families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. But we're not scumbags. That's right. So if you think that that sounds good to you, you're going to hear a crazy story.

If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever go together. I don't know what to tell you. I mean, this is what we're doing and it's going to happen. And we think it's a little more tasteful, honestly. I think to make it. a little more digestible than just sit here and be morbid about and then their head was removed from their body. Nice.

That's almost like, that's creepier. Yeah, we're, we are uncomfortable with it. So we're doing this to make ourselves more comfortable and hopefully you more comfortable with it too. So if that sounds good to you, let's do this. I think it's time to sit back, everybody. Let's all clear the lungs here. Arms to the sky.

Let's all shout. Shut up. Give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah, let's do it. We're going to West Virginia this week. Oh, boy.

There's a coal in those hills. Oh, boy, there's a lot in those hills. There's some other stuff. There's some murder in them there hills because this might be, I think, our most covered state. Is it? They have, A, the most murders, it seems like, for a small state, too. And just the craziest shit that I've ever seen. on in West Virginia. It's wild. We've had some crazy ones there. I mean, there's some obvious

psychology that plays in the app. But there's something happening up there, though. It's wild. It's desperate. Go back and listen to Leyland, West Virginia. That's like a 160 something the episode. But it's one of these episodes that they've had the only person here that we've actually rooted for the murderer before because the person being murdered was so bad. We were like, You know what? Good. This is, yay. He was like hitting Grandma with a frying pan kicking kids across the room. It was wild. You're like, okay, shoot somebody shoot this guy. That's how crazy West Virginia is. Put them down. Yeah, this is in NETI, NETTI, West Virginia. Now, some of the info we're going to give you is for another small town nearby, but one that's the county seat called Somersville. Because Nettie is so small and kind of in the middle. of nowhere that there really isn't any, it's like three, it's like three churches and a dollar general. That's pretty much what goes on there. That's all they have. So, now, this is in central West Virginia, kind of right dead in the middle of the whole thing. So you got a lot of time to get

out of there. You're in West Virginia here. Right in the center of the chicken. Oh, that's right. About an hour to Beckley, about three hours to Pittsburgh. So that's the closest big city. and about an hour and a half to lash meet West Virginia, which is our last West Virginia episode, Deadly Dark Delusions. And that one was crazy. Lash meat. Lash meet.

M-E-E-T. Like I'm meeting. I don't remember. I'm meeting at the lash. This is in Nicholas County. Area code 304 and 681. Somehow they can't, tiny town. They can't make that one area code.

But okay. Now the nickname is for Somersville, which is known as the world's largest speed trap, quote unquote. That's their nickname. There are a lot of towns in Utah that would argue that. As I say, they've never been to Texas, obviously, because that's a huge place and it's all a speed trap. So anyone in Texas is nodding right now. Yeah.

Texas, Utah, New Mexico. Boy, do they love a speed trap. Drive from Dallas to Houston without getting a ticket. I dare you. I dare you. Houston to Dallas. Enjoy. Yeah, that's not going to happen.

So Somersville, a little bit of history there, because it goes a lot. It's a small town right next door. That was laid out in 18. 24 named for Lewis Summers, who was a local judge. Not shocking there. It was home to, Somersville was home to both Union and Confederate encampments during the Civil War. They were able to get along. Well, West Virginia was one of those states where it was both.

So, no, they weren't. They just stayed on opposite sides of the town and waited. The town was mostly burnt to the ground by a Confederate spy named Nancy Hart Douglas during the war. Then they rebuilt it in a case. 1884. Just, you know, why not? It seemed like it worked. Now, the reason why it's a speed trap is because they made U.S. 19, the highway that goes through Somersville. And it goes from a two-lane highway to a four-lane highway there. And basically, that's it. People that, they say that northern travelers going south take a shortcut through there and they just get tickets. That's the little works. And they drop the speed limit. That's what they do. Yes. And they say that literally is like a lot of their economy is. So 35 mile an hour's out. Yeah.

So that's what they're doing out there. They, the Somersville Dam they built, okay? It's a 2790 acre lake that holds the dam holds the lake in, basically. And it's huge around here, this lake. People come from all around. It's a huge lake. It's really nice.

It's West Virginia's largest lake. 2700 acres doesn't sound that big, does it? It doesn't. No, it doesn't for a giant lake, no. But it's what's under it that's very large lake. very interesting. From the 1800s to 1960s, there was a farming village named GAD, G-A-D, that existed where the Somerville, Somersville Lake is now. But Gad was sold to build the dam and all the residents, they sold their town. All the residents had to leave. It was sold. And then flooded it?

And then made it, just flooded it. So underneath this lake is like an Atlantis, basically. Wow. You know, a redneck Atlantis. Hillbilly Atlantis is under this lake. Nobody wants to see. I'm picturing like someone like a, you know, like half man, half seahorse like you see. I'm picturing people like that, but just like with those like red flannel hunting hats on, meth pipe in one hand. Bubbles coming out. They put the meth pipe up and bubbles come out nice. It's very weird.

So the officials, they were going to call it the gaddam. And they said we can't do that. So they called it summer. Why the fuck not? Literally because they were like, nope, too close. So they called it. Blasphemous. Somersville, damn, instead.

On June 23rd, 2016, here's the revenge of the gad. Huge flood in Somersville. Take that, asshole. See how you like it. What do you think? This resulted in the middle school being demolished and relocated to trailers for a while until they fixed everything. Somersville and the surrounding locations like Nettie are featured in the 2018 game

fallout 76. So that's what we're talking about. Fallout? Like, fallout. Nuclear. Yeah. Like, shit has gone bad. That's what we're talking about.

Wow. That's the town these people live in in the area. Great place. Notable people, only one, and he's got the greatest name ever. Buzz Nutter. N-U-T-E-R. Buzz Nutter is his name. Who the hell is that?

An NFL center and linebacker, back when they played both ways. 58 and 59. He was in NFL champion, so he must have played for the Browns, I think. And he was in the Virginia Tech Hall of Fame as well. Buzz Nutter. Whoa. Reviews of this town.

Okay. This is for Somersville. There's nothing for Nettie, but it's all the same, so it doesn't matter. Three point eight stars on Nitch, which is not bad, actually, when you're talking about a West Virginia town in the middle of nowhere here. Here's five stars. Okay. Very friendly and caring people in Somersville.

Multiple restaurants to choose from. They have more than one restaurant. That's excellent. Several summer activities with Somersville Lake, hiking, biking, swimming, and camping. Those are all the activities. Those are all kind of one activity. And they're all one activity. It's five activities that you can do in a weekend.

But it's all one. Yeah, you take the bike to go camping by the lake and then you swim and hike. It's a lake day. Yeah. It's a lake day. Very good school board. We've never heard that in a review before. The school board.

I've heard the school is good. Pretty huge community. I don't know who's on the school board. Who knows? Yeah. Unless they're doing something crazy, like, you know, banning books or some weird shit. You don't know any of these people. With well-maintained grade school, middle school and high school.

They must have rebuilt it. That's good. Private school is also an option with New Life Christian Academy. I am a current resident of Somersville, and this is where I grew up. And I plan to stay here and raise my family. Good for you. I was born here and dag, damn it, I'm going to die here. Go blazing saddles on this thing here.

Through four stars, Somersville, West Virginia is best known for its lake. It is said that there's a small town under the lake. No, not it said. It is. It's historically accurate. This is not a whisper in the forest. This is not, I hear tell of Bigfoot in the area. There's definitely a town.

They fucking flooded and buried under there. It's a beautiful little town with many friendly people. Here's three stars. Okay. I've lived in Somerville for over 20 years and I wouldn't recommend moving here. The job market is stagnant. The mindset is 50 plus years outdated. The economy isn't anything to write home about.

And most of the people are closed-minded and rude. It's a town for old religious people that don't mind winter. That's a good. What a weird sentence. You didn't think it was going there, did you? Who don't? You would have said don't like these people or that. Don't mind winter.

I would have never expected that. If I said fill that ellipsies in, that don't? Take a lot. Don't they? Yeah, you'd never get to mine winter. There's virtually nothing to do, nothing for kids to do, and anything there is to do is too expensive for anyone that lives here to be able to afford. The only good thing is there's almost no crime.

Somersville is a sleepy little central West Virginia town, and you can tell there's one stoplight in town, basically nothing to do in the downtown area and our groceries and health care are pretty costly compared to most other places. The population is declining and there's good reason. Yeah, you're not recommending anyone do this. I wouldn't recommend anyone moving here

that has any intention of having any kind of life other than working and sitting at home as there's nothing else to do. I don't know, that sounds pretty decent. I was going to say, that's pretty much what I do. Yeah. It's not bad. Kind of like it.

That's not so bad. Not at all. This guy's too ambitious. This is his problem. You just calm down. What are your expectations, motherfucker? Chill, chill. Everybody calm down.

Two stars. It's horrible for anyone trying to experience any kind of progress or growth. This place is not a sustainable environment. Oh, and it's not sustainable. Apparently, yeah, it's probably going to fall in from the coal. I'm not sure. Coal being extracted. People here in Netty, I'm sorry, 322 people.

Very small. Wow. And this is on farms and there's no like central area. So this is a tiny, tiny, tiny place. More men than women, 51.7% men, which is pretty high. But for a small town, the stats get all out of whack. Median age here is 44, which is higher than the national average. Right.

And the stats here show you what a small town it is, too, just based on they're not outside the norms a lot. 77.4% married. That's a lot. It's usually 50-50. Only 12.8 people are single with children. Race in this town, 100% white. White. Religion, 33% religious.

Oh. I don't know. Maybe there ain't no God in the minds. That's all I can think of it. I don't know. And the highest one is Baptist. As we know, Baptists are the Catholics of the hill country, I guess. I don't know.

North and South. of the Appalachians. Unemployment, higher than average, which is West Virginia in a nutshell. Median household income of this place here. This is for Somersville. Couldn't get one for Nettie. Or no, this is for Nettie. I'm sorry. $23,485 a year. Household. Median household income. It's 69,000 in the rest of the country. 23,485. These people are in trouble. They're in trouble. And the cost of living, 100 is regular in the rest of the country. Here it's 74, which is low.

Low enough. But not that low. Yeah. Median home cost, here we go. Now we're cooking. $56,300. I don't even know if these places have roofs or doors or what. I mean, that's essentially two years' salary for the house.

Yeah. But everywhere else, it's about five times the salary, I guess. I guess. Pretty decent in terms of how, but it's going to be pieces of shit. Oh, they're not going to be for that kind of money. They're not going to be great. They're going to be old and, you know, these people haven't been afforded to like renovate them like crazy or, you know, get them up to date or anything like that. So if we've convinced you, West Virginia is your future.

We have for you the Nettie West Virginia Real Estate Report. Now, all these houses are actually from Somerville. There's nothing in Nettie for sale, really. Here is a three-bedroom, two-bath, 980-6. square foot. Very exciting trailer. It's got like siding on it, you know. So they tried to make it look like a house. And the, you know, they have that corrugated shit on the bottom so you don't see under the trailer.

That's like all messed up and broken down. Oh, yeah. Up and down. It looks like it's sliding. It doesn't look like it's sitting flush with anything. It's not level. It's not level. It's built in 1985.

You get an acre of land with this. 39,000 bucks for that. And it also says. will make you roll out of bed. Yeah. And it also says the trailer is in need of extensive floor repair. So this thing is a disaster. It needs a new trailer.

For sure. Here's a three-bedroom two-bats. How much was that? Oh, I'm sorry. That is $39,000. It's a bit steep. Bit steep for that. Here's a three-bedroom two-bats, 1689 square foot place.

It's built in 1955. It's a nice little brick house. It's not bad. Inside is okay. It's got some features from different eras that you know those like frosted glass blocks that were going on in the 80s. Oh, yeah, from the 80s. It's got that going on in the living room, which is kind of weird. Not terrible, though.

Half an acre, $298,000 for that, though. Median income is $23,000 a year. Who are you aiming that at? Yeah. Then finally, 17 acres of land. Yeah. A house, four-bedroom, three-bath, 5,6-76-square-foot-out. Dang.

Gigantic. Built in 1975. Pretty nicely. Like, updated on the inside. Everything's been redone. The big giant living room looks like a big, like lodge. Like a main lodge area. One million 150,000.

Who can afford that? Everyone that lives here together, they couldn't afford the mortgage on this place. I'm not trying to be insulting to them. That's a joke, obviously. But holy shit. It's got a bar and a separate brick guest house, a separate one-bedroom bunk house, a stocked pond and a basketball court. That's the best deal of a property I've ever heard.

17 acres. It's crazy. Yeah, that's if you're looking for a million dollar house, that's cheap. Things to do here. Well, we got the Nicholas County Potato Festival, everybody. Do they grow potatoes? It beats the shit out of me. I have no idea.

Or do they just love them? You pull a potato out. It's all black with coal dust. You're like, what happened? Pull it out of the ground. Do they have a mute? Amusement rides, craft vendors, a tractor show, a pet pageant, parades, potato decorating contests. How do you?

Okay. I don't know. A sack race, a potato display. Yeah. How do you decorate your potato, James? I do it with sour cream and balls on it. And bacon. Little eyeballs, little feet on the bottom.

Try to find them. I decorate mine with butter and cheese. That's the best way to do it. There's a car show, a cornhole tournament, a Queens reception, a spud hunt. the potato idol contest I don't know fireworks there's the

I got to show you the 2025 potato festival queen winners were Mia Bailey and then the teen queen was Tallulah Hoover so congratulations to you

potato queens let's see a lot of different events here the potato decorating contest you drop off decorated potatoes for the contests at the quote city building Whatever that is. No, no, I have no clue.

One of them? There's only one. The city building. The Janet Williams Memorial Pet Pagent. We got that. What the fuck? You named it. I don't know.

You named it for a dead woman. It makes no sense, man. There's a mashed potato eating contest on Main Street, which sounds fine. I'd involve myself in that. There's a tater-taught Sunday eating contest. Tater-tot Sunday. How do you do? I assume a stack of tots.

I hope you don't put like, you know, syrup on that. Syrup and cherries and shit. There's hot fudge on the taters. There's a problem. That's what I mean. That's an issue. Cornhole competition. Let's see, we got some high school bands, a hot wing eating contest. Sure.

Potato idol contest. A show's by a cricket who's a guy, it says, D.C.'s top banana. I don't know. But he's got, the picture of the guys, he's in a dress shirt with red suspense. and a red bow tie and he's doing this here see this this this thing he's doing that whatever that's the top banana top banana um there's that that's amazing uh then finally your your big headliners for this show because the cricket's not the headliner even though he's the top banana he's DC's top banana they need a top potato for this thing and the top banana is not going to cut it here

um the top bananas here actually will be saturday night entertainment at the the city pavilion stage. Opening will be Jack Blocker. Sure. I don't know. He's in a denim shirt. That should tell you all you need to know. And then after that,

headlining, it says, a guy in a trucker hat named Kelsey Hart. That's a guy? It's a guy. Yeah, beard and trucker hat and everything.

I don't know. Kelsey Hart. Kelsey. And then that's downtown Somersville fireworks finale immediately after Kelsey fucking strums that last. note the fireworks are going to start going off.

You're going to get the fireworks. After Mamie White sings, Co-Miner's daughter with him. I mean, coal miners' daughter. And her holler. You have to see the wild and wonderful whites of West, West Virginia, if you haven't seen it, because that's Mamie.

That's a pretty, pretty spot-on Mamie impression. It's pretty good, honestly. I got to be, I'm impressed with myself there. That wasn't bad. That's his best impression. It's not bad. I'm pretty good with Mamey. I can do her.

Here is crime rate in this town. Property crime, about half of the national average. Wow. So, I mean, you're on a farm. I don't know what crime. There's only 32 people. Yeah, who are you robbing? I don't know if there's any crime.

That's what I mean. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is all. It's about one third beneath the national average as well. But it's two thirds of it? Two thirds of it. Yeah. Jesus.

Who knows here? That said, let's talk about some murder, everybody. Here we go. Okay. Now, this whole county, by the way, Nicholas County, there's more deer per capita than people. Yeah, they like to say that about upstate New York, about cows and shit. But this is for real. This is for real more dear per capita than people.

There's not a lot of land, a lot of woods, not a lot of people. Now, Nettie is just really a small community, windy roads, hardwood forest. It's that kind of thing. It's not a big community. You've got to know where you're going to get around in this type of area. Let's talk about a woman who knows how to get around this area and knows what

she's doing. That's right. Teresa, we're going to talk about Teresa Lucente Rollins. Well, she'll be Rollins later on. At one point, she's Teresa Caposi also, which I believe is her first married name. Now, Teresa here, she's raised in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

and she is. Now, if you might have noticed by her name, it's pretty Italian. Yeah, yeah. Now, we've talked about this before, because in case you're not aware of the name James Petrogallo, I'm pretty Italian too. Yeah.

So it's strange when I discovered that there was Italians in West Virginia years ago when we were doing this show because, you know, if you grow up in New York, you just think we're all right here. Maybe some in Philly, if you in Boston, you know, and that's it. That's the only places we are. Really a couple in Chicago. Yeah, Pittsburgh.

We got a couple over there. You know, that's about it. But then we discovered anywhere where there was a mine that they could slide our greasy asses down. We are there because when we came to this country, that was work you could get. Needed work. Yeah. Get you right down those damn mines. So that's why there tends to be a lot of Italian people in West Virginia and in Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania, places like that.

Now, she comes from a very large Italian family, like real large Italian family. all sorts of cousins and uncles and an Italian family, I'll just say. You know, I don't really have to say it's a large one. It's just an average for us. Did she grow up here in Nelly? In Clarksburg is where she was born and raised, as we'll talk about. And her families also has pretty well known. They have a lot of connections and things like that.

They don't seem like wealthy people, but they are well-connected people. They're doing okay. They know what they're doing. Easy with that word, but yeah. Yeah, that's true. You never know. Well, it's West Virginia. What are they going to be connected to?

The mining syndicate? No. There's all you could really be connected to there. Big coal mob. Big, yeah. They're really shilling for big coal is what they're doing down there. Well, they're doing. They got an opening in the front and opening in the back and the coal just goes right the fuck through.

Right there. Her mother's name is Velma. Her dad's name is Joe. And she's got four sisters, five girls. All girls. Which, again, I feel very close to this because my mother is one of four sisters with no brother. Oh, shit. And so I grew up around all four of the sisters all the time.

So when I read this at first, I'm like, oh, I know this situation. I know exactly how this goes. So there is, of course, Teresa. There's Maria, Joanne, Valerie, and Regina. These are the sisters. Not a single Marie. No Marie's. Well, there's a Maria.

Yeah, that's close. Yeah, close enough. You can't name one Maria and the other Marie. That's too close there. That's rough. So now she graduated from Notre Dame High School in Clark. So that's kind of her whole, her, you know, growing up time is in Clarksburg. And she ends up, she's married and then divorced.

And she ends up here for about 20 years or so because she's born, Teresa's born October, 1954. So you figure she comes up by, what, 72. She's graduating high school. Then by the late 80s, she ends up opening up her own beauty salon. That's what she does. It's called Teresa's Total Look. Not bad.

Head to toe. Yeah. It's a salon. And she put it right across from Notre Dame High School where she graduated. So she's got that going for her. Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you how to get better plants and trees with fast-growing trees. Fast-growingtrees.com.

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small town murder for 20% off your first subscription order and use the code small town murder for an additional $10 off. Once again, that's brotto.com slash small town murder for 20% off your subscription order and an additional 10% off if you use our promo code small town murder. Now back to the show. And she becomes really enmeshed in people's lives because a beauty salon can be like a central gathering place. for people. And also, a lot of people who do hair, you spend two hours with somebody. You get to know the people and you get to be friends with them and that's kind of how things go. And prom season there has to be outrageous. Oh, it's wild. You know that. We have upwards of a dozen girls are going to the prom. So it's a two days work. Yeah. Clarksburg's a little bit bigger. But she made a ton of

friends here. She's described as a very outgoing, affable person who was deeply religious and had no enemies. Okay. Which, she's running a beauty salon. Who's going to fuck up the lady's hair? You can fix it. You fuck somebody's hair up. They hate you forever.

Until you fix it. Yeah. There's probably nowhere else to go to fix it. They hate you for upwards of six months. Upwards of six months. Her sisters all say she's very trusting. That's her thing. She prefers to see the good in people type of person.

Preferers to look at that side of them and think that that's what they have. She's very trusting, which can be a great quality but also very dangerous if you don't have some kind of red flag mechanism that goes off. One of her sisters said Teresa was wide-eyed, open to anything in the world. She's loving and honest, so she expected others to be as honest and genuine as she was with them. Right. Which is tough. That's tough. I mean, that's, you just describe the word naive, you know what I mean, which is tough.

You can expect it, but it's great because those are, those are the best people. Yeah. They're actually nice people. They're not cynical shitheads like us. You know what I mean? They actually expect the best. If everyone was that, the world would be a wonderful place. I mean, we all are.

Perfect. And then we turn seven. That's the thing. That's, I mean, I'm talking about adults to be an adult at this point. Right. You know, and to have that, if everybody who was an adult felt like that, that would be, world would be easy, you know. Nobody would be trying to fuck you over. Yeah.

I mean, if you've been in a place where people don't do that ever, I guess it's fairly easy until you turn seven in a big city. Then you're like, oh, fuck, there's shitheads out here. Well, you would think after a divorce that would be all over with. I mean, that's the ultimate, A, this is the fairy tale. And then once that fairy tale comes crumbling down in like ashes and molten lava, you would think that you'd go, whiff, all right, I'm not going to be like that. Even if it's amicable, it's still fucked. Yeah, that's what I mean. She apparently has enough spirit to put that behind her and keep going, which is a nice quality to have.

Good for her. But it's tough if there's people looking to fuck her over. That's the only thing. So she's also big in the Italian Heritage Festival in Harrison County. She deals with that too because her family's involved. Do their own San Giro, huh? Oh, own little San Gennaro. That's got to be an interesting one there.

A little feast. I wonder how your sausage and peppers are in West Virginia. We'll find out. She's big into outdoors. She likes the mountains, which is good because you're in West Virginia. There's a lot. She reel into animals and nature and shit like that. She makes baskets and blankets and does needlepoint as well.

She's crafts. Every holiday, she'd put up a big display for all sorts of, you know, whatever the holiday is. beauty shop and everybody would be happy because she'd make things and all that kind of shit. Apparently, when she likes a guy, she likes a guy. Yeah. She falls and falls hard. Oh.

Which the naive among us often do that because they're not, they're not, you're not, you know, reserved and holding something back and stuff like that, which again, if everybody was like that, great. But it's good. It's tough. So in 1999, a man walks into her salon. Really? Strolls on into the salon.

Fucks he won't. Into her life. A haircut. Okay. He wants an haircut. Gary Lee Rawlins is his name. We always know to trust people with the middle name Lee based on this show. Never goes wrong if their middle name is Lee.

Any guy that we know his middle name. That's not good. That's bad. That's bad. He's born January, 1958. He's about three years younger than her. Comes into the shop for a haircut. By the way, do not confuse this Gary.

Lee Rollins with a Gary Lee Rollins Seattle-based guitarist, singer, and composer known for jazz fusion folk in original compositions. Shockingly, they're not the same guy. That's who I thought it was. I saw that look on your face, like, that sounds real familiar. I know that guy. The jazz fusion guy? I know him. A composer.

Goddain. Yeah. Jesus. He released albums such as Love View and from Orange County with love. and he's been featured in such magazines, such publications as Agenda, which we all know. Love View. Yeah. Nice.

Not bad. It's like all of two. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And from Orange County with love. Nice work. Yeah.

From Disneyland with love. And also. From Orange County of Washington? Who the fuck knows? New York, Florida. God damn California. I have no idea. Also, not Gary Rawlins, the billionaire and CEO of Rollins, Inc.

Not that guy either. Shocking. Now, this Gary Rollins is originally from Florida. Yeah? Here. He comes to Clarksburg, Virginia, sometime in the 1990s here, shows up. He has no job, no address. He just rolls into town like a tumbleweed.

Made in a haircut. Like a drifter, yeah. Yeah. Just a nice smile. and he's charming and he's talking about, yeah, I'm in the area, I'm new, I'm living with family around here. You know, it is, it's fine.

Now, he's got some prior issues that we'll talk about, some prior legal issues that nobody knows about. Oh. And he's also a certified EMT as well. Oh. Which is just a, he's a real odd bird, man, just to have these different backgrounds that he has. Okay.

With being an EMT. He's going to end up working on a farm and eventually being a vegetable farmer here in town. Yeah. That's what's happening. People who know him say that he's kind of a jekyll and hide type. Okay. Shocking.

In public, he's real clean cut and just a real, knows how to be like that down earth, salt of the earth. I'm a farmer, just a regular old cuss kind of guy. Like, that's how he comes across, real charming. Do we know why you left Florida? I have an idea. A couple ideas. A couple ideas here. When we get to his criminal problems here, right?

I get to a couple ideas, yeah. Seriously. People say that in private he is more abusive and controlling to people that he has control over, such as girlfriends, wives, kids, you know, if they're around, things like that. As far as I know, neither of these people have kids. Now, they might have kids, but if they did have kids, somehow they're not mentioned in anything in this story. Gary and Teresa?

The publications. Yeah. Separately, I mean. Or together or anything else. I hear no mention of children ever. Wow. So if Teresa or Gary does have kids out there, sorry that I don't know you exist,

but it wasn't in the public eye. So maybe that's good for you. You probably didn't want that. Anyway. That's positive. So Gary's past criminal issues. He lived in Cocoa, Florida for a while. Yeah, Cocoa Beach.

And this is just Coco. Is it Cocoa Beach? But it's not COCO. It's Cocoa. No, it's COCLA. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know that.

All right. It's down near Daytona. It's shit. Okay. So just trash. Trash. Okay. Yeah.

Blonde women with bruises all over their lives. You betcha. You nailed it. You've been there. So just like Tampa and just like this one and just like, okay. Orlando and Jacksonville. You've been there. Wherever.

Yeah. Now, he is busted in, this is a light one in January of 1993 for an experience. for an expired registration that's been expired for more than four months. So making no effort to renew it is what that says. I'll get it fixed when I get pulled over kind of thing. That'll worry. Yeah, just whenever I get pulled over. Now, he ends up also in July of 1993, still living at the same address in Coco, Florida.

I see him with a possession of more than 20 grams of cannabis. Sure. That's fine. I'm not upset about that. but also methamphetamine, sale, deliver, manufacture, possession with intent to sell. He got arrested for it. Yeah. And he's probably down to 20 grams of weed because he sold some.

It doesn't sound like he may be doing it too. That's probably his personal stash. You think so? And then he's selling the meth. That's 20, 20 grams? That's not even an ounce. Three quarters of an ounce. Three quarters.

It's quite a bit. I guess. I don't know. It's not really a lot of weed. Nah. I mean, I've seen your push cart. Yeah. Yeah, I have a bar cart full of these.

But in 1980. 1993 in Florida, maybe that was a lot. I don't know. Seems like a lot. It seems like he got an ounce for himself and he's chipping off of it. But the sale of meth is a problem. That's the big one. Then in 2006 later on, this is after he gets to West Virginia and everything, he's also going to be busted for manufacturing of a controlled substance.

So keep that in mind when we go through our timeline. Okay. This is a guy who I only say this. I didn't mean to blow the surprise of the timeline, but 13 years apart gets busted for meth sale. Yeah. So that's a. Probably filling that 13 years with it as well. Exactly.

That's what I mean. He's just been lucky. Yeah. Been lucky for 13 years. So her and him and Teresa, I mean, they hit it off right away at the shop. He's real charming. She's a sweetheart. And they get along and they start a relationship pretty quick.

Wow. And I don't know if she knows about his former careers in meth sales or anything like that. She's likely synced it, right? I would think so. Yeah. Now, her family doesn't like him. No? No, which, again, I come from a large Italian family. We don't like a lot of people.

If you get them together, too, they'll decide that they don't like anybody who's trying to get their way in. It's an uphill climb to get into that click. But her family, also, we're also good at, though, kind of knowing when someone's a shithead. We're pretty good at that, sussing that out. So her family knew that he was a fucking turd. They just knew it. This guy, they could smell the meth on him. And they said it from day one.

That guy's a piece of shit. No good. It's like turpentine. That's it. But they couldn't prove anything ever, but they just knew. But Teresa, like she sees the good in everyone. And she thought, I'm going to give this an honest run. And I'll be honest with him.

He'll be honest with me. So they become a couple. Her sister Maria said that Teresa, was, quote, smitten with Gary right away. Yeah. All in him. He had a charming personality. And she said that he spoke to her as if she was the only person in the room and made

her feel special. This is how my dad got nine wives. That's what I mean. This is what charmers do. Uh-huh. It usually leads to bad things. Yeah. This is, you know, like Ted Bundy was good at this.

You know what I mean? Like, this is not good. This is where, actually it's, uh, what's his name? Oh, my God. We did a 10, eight-part episode on him. When? God-Dame. I-5 killer.

Oh, yeah. Gary Ridgeway. No, that's the fucking Jesus, not Gary Ridgeway. It popped out of my mom. Yeah, I played for the Packers. Yes. Yeah. Shit.

Randall Woodfield. Randall Woodfield. God damn it. All these serial killers floating around in my head and these people and everything else. Randall Woodfield, that's how everyone described him. Yeah. He would, like, get a girl in a bar and it would be like, he'd have this.

just enveloping. For a week, he'll just shower. Just love bomb. It's a love bomb. Yeah. Yes. And that's very, it's ugly. It's very ugly.

So they're going to get married within a year, pretty quick. Within a year. Yeah, that was a bit like late 90s within a year or two. By the year 2000, they are buying a farm together in Nettie. You're going to buy the farm. They're actually buying the farm. They move into Nettie and buy a farm. It's on Rollins Ridge Lane, which is interesting.

because his last name is. It is. Rollins. Yeah. I don't know if they, I don't know if they named it after him because there's nothing else out there. So whoever lives on the road, they just name it after them. Not sure. It's probably his road.

He probably has to maintain it. Oh, I'm sure they do. Yeah. That's why they label it so they know who's responsible for this shit hole. I don't see the salt trucks coming through when it snows around here. Put it that way. You got to love the winter, James. You got to love the winter, as we found out earlier.

So he's working a vegetable, a vegetable farm here. They have a farmhouse, a storage building, fields. They have a cornfield, and they have a pond. The pond is used for irrigation. Right. For their vegetables. So this is a real old school operation. Right.

Literally irrigating from a pond here. He's maintaining pumps and shit. Oh, all sorts of. Yeah, you'd have to. And Teresa loved the pond because she liked to go down to feed the fish and the ducks. Yeah. It's fun to her. She likes all the animals gather around there.

Who the hell doesn't like to go feed fish and ducks? It's fun. is a, why is that so fun? I don't know. It's very satisfying. That it really is. Especially a fish. If you throw something in there and a fish eats it. Yeah. It's like you're communicating with something that lives underwater. It's crazy. That's amazing. I think our minds can't handle that.

It understands that this is edible. That's bananas. And all I did was throw it. And then I throw another and it eats it so it must have liked it. It keeps doing it. Cool. Yeah. That's cool. And then he brought friends. Totally. And you can't control birds at all. And you give them food and they hang out by you and you give them more food, that's like, hey, these ducks like me. Look at this. They're going to peck your nuts sack if you're not a bread, but still.

So, you know they are. Yeah. So this is a big change for her. She spent her entire professional life in a salon. She's lived in Clarksburg, which is a much bigger place. And now she's in the middle of nowhere on a farm with a guy doing vegetables. And she liked it. Yeah.

And they own it. Yeah. One of her sisters said she loved farm life. She loved it. So she, wherever she goes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's...

The amount of work. It's crazy. It's a lot. It's the hours, too. Yeah. Which in this one, though, I think the hours are different because it's a vegetable farm. Oh? You just work when the sun's up.

Yeah. You work whenever you want because they're vegetables. You don't have to feed them at 5 a.m. They're not going to be pissed off at you if you don't show up with food. That's a great thing about vegetables. They're not on a schedule. They don't get real loud when they have any... They don't get loud.

They'll just sit there. Which, when I read about this, we'll find out what I'm talking about. but it seems like the workers come to work at like 9 a.m. here, which is like real casual for a farm. Yeah. And then I thought about it. I was like, on a farm. And then I was like, but there's no animals. So yeah, of course you've come out.

Who cares then? And it made me think of the, you've seen mystery science theater shit, right? A few of them, yeah, even the new ones. Yeah, the new ones don't count. They're no good. And I love the people involved and everything, but it's not, it needs to be those guys. Anyway, they're doing new ones now with the original cast. Oh, great.

Second original cast. the ones that do rift tracks. Anyway, there's one called The Touch of Satan, right? And it's a hilarious movie. It's terrible. It's like a 70s movie. And when they show up at the farm,

these people run a walnut farm. And as the guy walks up, there's an old man with, you know, those big, like they use for ice blocks or hay, like the big hooks. Yeah. He's got that and he throws a hook in and he's got a big bail of hay,

huge bail, and he's putting it on something. He's sweaty. And the mystery science theater guys go, those walnuts are tearing through that hay. I'm like, why do you have hay? And that's what I felt like here. I'm like, yeah, you don't need hay. You don't have to feed the walnuts or the vegetables.

That's probably for a horse that has to drag the fucking things around. Maybe. But it's still funny. It's just funny. See him sprinkling hay to the tree. Yeah, down to the walnuts. Well, he put it like on a big pile. They had so much hay.

Like, it was like this is like a ranch full of hay you have here. And it's a walnut farm. What are you doing? They're just tearing through it. Walnuts are just tearing through that hay. The way he said it is fucking hilarious. Man. So anyway, this is around 2000 and she's doing it.

They're growing the vegetables. They pick the vegetables. They harvest them. They take them to farmers markets and sell the vegetables. It's a full process. Yeah, it's not easy to do. And it seems to be working for them too. Yeah.

Which is amazing. The amount of tomatoes, you got to sell to make a mortgage. I can't. imagine. Cucumbers. Imagine how much. Cucumbers are like 69 cents. Yeah.

I buy a bundle of big tomatoes at the store for like $5 and then they die in my fridge over the next three weeks. Yeah. You're like, I meant to make salad. Nothing. Yeah. It seems very cheap. That's how I feel about bananas. I've rented so many bananas.

Yeah, I've smelled a lot. It smelled now. I found out I'm allergic to them. Aren't you really? Yeah, that's why they made my mouth. I always used to tell people, I'm like, I love bananas, but man, I wish they didn't make your mouth hurt so bad. Yeah.

Like razor blades. And walnuts, too. Like banana bread is fucking poison. Oh, you give me banana bread. I am fucked. It's got like everything I'm allergic to it. I'm just my mouth. I won't be able to eat for a week.

You're only killed James. He's run up behind him and mash his face. I'll be going to, wheeze in. It's not going to be good, man. It's going to be bad. Tempted murder with a gift of banana bread. Here you go. Would you like some banana bread?

Oh, God. No. It's got like nutmeg and cinnamon and shit in the shores. So much shit in it. So much shit I can't have. Just a little allergic to, yeah, it's bad. A brick that murders you. A murder brick.

That's perfect. It's one murder weapon we haven't come across yet in 685 episodes as banana bread. But maybe this will be the winner this week. Fingers crossed. So over the years, they hire workers. Now, in the 2000s, he gets busted for the manufacturing of meth on this farm as well. Oh, that's a great place to do it if you got the room. So I think that is part of the reason why he wants to be a vegetable farmer is that he also wants to be a meth farmer.

And West Virginia is not a bad place to sell meth. Yeah, that'll shake the tail. You know what I mean? If you've got anybody keeping an eye on you, if you got a vegetable farm, that'll make them go away, right? Yeah, all they smell is shit anyway. Yeah, yeah. And that was kind of the point of Copperhead Road was that they'd, up a person. in the holler, they plan a thing

of weed. And it hides in the trees. Absolutely. There was a time in this country where there was a lot of farmers that were real square people with a spot of weed on their land because they needed the fucking money. Especially in the 80s when people are getting

foreclosed on and shit. Someone would come to them and go, hey, I'll cut you in for this much a month if you just give me a portion of your land on there and they do it. Much smaller piece of land that pays mortgages than fucking corn. Fuck yeah. This guy's probably got a shed that pays mortgages.

Right. Oh, boy. Yeah. Back up back there. Yeah. So he's got some local workers they hire over the years. Come late 2000s here, 2007, after the meth bust. We have a crew of Tanya Wagner is one of them.

K. Rudd is another one. Sure. And then in 2008, April Bales comes in here. All gals, huh? Yeah, that's an odd farm crew. All chicks. the all-woman farm group. Not that they can't do it, but it's just, you don't see a lot of that.

That's all it's just, I'm sure they can farm just fine. Very small amount of them that are women run. Yeah, well, that are just all women on the farm. Yeah, they're just all women, yeah. It's strange. So April, she also has April O'Brien. So she goes by two different last names. Okay.

Bales is B-A-I-L-E-S. And O'Brien is whatever, O'Brien. So she's in her late 20s and she gets hired on. And she is, described by people as, quote, a country girl who didn't have much. Yeah. That's who she is. And she shows up at the farm with a young baby, too, to work.

So she's got a, like, a very under a year old baby. Oh. And she's a country girl who doesn't have much, and she shows up to do farm work. And she had recently been evicted. Oh, God. So she's just, so much help. So Teresa, Teresa is the kind of, she's, the rounder upper, rounder upper of lost puppies and things of that nature.

Yeah. That's kind of what she does. She's hurting. She herds the ducklings in and makes sure they get across the road safe. That's what Teresa does. She's just a nice person. So she sees a young woman with a, you know, with a new baby and nowhere to live and no job. And, you know, probably who knows if she's, you know, no education, nothing like that.

So Teresa says, well, we have a spare bedroom in the farmhouse. Stay with us. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. We're not going to have you live on the street. That's nuts. She said, quote, I have two bedrooms in a brand new home that no one's even using. Amazing.

So you can stay in there. So April moves in in 2008. So that's nice. That's very sweet of them to do that. Yeah. Right? In a time when it's very tumultuous economically. July, 2008.

Yeah, things are moving fast. Things that are still selling vegetables and meth. They sell well. Always. People will always. Yeah. They'll always buy, you know, Brussels sprouts and fucking speed.

They're into that. Yeah. So they're so friendly to her that in July 2008, Gary gets extra friendly with her and starts banging her. Really? Yes. How old is she? In her late 20s.

Like 27. Okay. All right. It's like 27 and she's, uh, 50, 52. probably at this point. All right. Yeah, he's pushing it. Shouldn't be doing that.

For him, he's looking at it like, hey, look at me. Still got it. He's also married. Yeah. He's also married. And this girl probably thinks if she doesn't do this, maybe she won't have a place to stay anymore. Right. Yeah.

So, you know, it's not really fair what he's doing here at all. No, it's for anybody. Yeah. Teresa apparently finds out about it or at least hears enough rumors about it that they become credible after a while, which is not good. Yeah. Exactly. So one family member of hers said, I heard rumors, you know, that he would take April with him somewhere when Teresa was gone, like to the farmer's market. But Teresa still stays, though.

She ends up staying. Okay. So we're not sure exactly to what extent she knew or maybe she's suspected or maybe she found out. They said, sorry, it'll never happen again. And she forgave them, which is also possible, too, because she's a very sweet person. Sure. And also maybe perhaps because of the timing of the economic shit going on, maybe she's so upside down on this farm. She can't. Yeah. What are we going to do? Sell it. Yeah. I'm not sure. We don't know what it is exactly. But by 2008 here, late 2008 into 2009, this affair keeps going on. God damn, Gare. And he's telling her that, you know, we're going to get married and have a family together, me and you.

Oh, April. He said at some point he said he said he needs to get rid of. Teresa and then they can be married. What the fuck? If I can get her off of here, then we'll be married. So this goes all the way into August of 2009. So this affair has been going on for over a year now. In August of 2009, Gary and April head over to the old dealership to pick out a new truck. We're getting a car.

We're getting a new truck here. So that's, like I said, that's with April, not with his wife. Yeah. They drove to the dealership together. April picked out the car. color and then picked out her own picked out the truck too. Is that right? Yes.

Now the salesperson, but there's a lot more to this, by the way, that we're going to find out later that happened during this meeting, but during this purchase. But the salesperson noticed when Gary came back to sign the paperwork that the next day he came back to sign the paperwork with a different woman with him. Oh, with the wife. With Teresa now. Yeah. Yeah.

And he said that the salesman said he found the whole transaction unusual. Bizarre. It's an odd thing to come with your gumar one day and then fucking come back the next day with your wife. You're asking a lot of that dealer too. Yeah. You're asking. Shut the fuck up. It was just me yesterday.

You're asking a lot of that dealer. That's a bad fuck up. He could have said, hey, nice to see you again. She would have went, what are you talking about? Uh-oh. Wait a minute. Who are you? I did that one time waiting tables.

Oh, what did you say? I worked at a place in Phoenix that was a, you know, It is an Italian place and dark lighting and, you know, had a little romantic edge to it. People come and bring dates and drink wine and all that kind of shit. And this guy who was, God, he had to be in his late 50s, 60s, gray-haired guy and all that. He would come in all the time and he'd bring different women all the time. And there was like one week where he came in twice in the same week with different women. But the women looked fucking identical.

They were very similar looking. He's got not all the time, but the. these two looked the same. So I thought it was the same one. Oh, damn it. So when he came in, I said, hey, good to see you two again. Hey, blah, blah, blah, blah. And his face was like, and she looked at me.

His face went to, oh, God, you're fucking this all up. It wasn't like this is a new girl. It was like, this one's my wife. Don't tell it. Yeah. You're going to ruin my house. She looked at her face immediately. And I was like, oh, no, I have made a catastrophic error here.

And then I got out of it by going. going, oh, Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry. I thought you were Frank. Oh, my God, you look like Frank. I go, yeah, no, I know you. Yeah, you guys have been here before, blah, blah, blah. I could have really, that could have gotten ugly. She would have broken a wine bottle over his head.

Like, I saw the look on her face. Or burn the whole house down when they got off. Yeah, but I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. I thought you were Frank. And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah. It was great. But that's, you don't want to do that. No.

The truck costs $44,255 by the time. that's a nice truck. Decent truck, especially 2008. That's a F-250. Yeah, that's a good one. So now we go to October 5th, 2009. About a month and change later, month and a week later here, five weeks. 7.30 a.m. we'll start with.

Gary leaves the farmhouse. And he says he's going to clear a path for deer hunting. That's what he's doing at 7.30. You're going to go make a trail, basically. Take the new truck and drive it through the woods. That's what we got to do. Teresa is inside getting ready to set out the Halloween decorations. It's October 5th and she's prepping and this is what she does.

She's preparing them since the week before. So she's really into it and she wants to get the farm looking festive. That's what she wants to do. Fall on a farm is amazing. It's so nice. But also that's kind of just for you. There's nobody around. What is this for?

Unless she's got a corn maze or some shit set up. You know what I mean? I think it's, yeah, I don't think it's anything for profit. It's just, she just wants it to look nice. All right. I think she's just into decorating. Sure. Sure.

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So that's what I'm saying. I think they show up for work at 9 on a farm, which isn't bad. So he talks to them, tells them kind of what they need to do and what's going on. And then the group heads out to work in the fields. So doing whatever. So that's, you know, they do that for about two and a half hours. Okay.

And then 1130 is lunchtime. Yeah. So all four of them, this is, we got Teresa Wagner, we got Kay Rudd, and we got April Bales here. Right. The three of them and Gary all head to the house for lunch. And they eat together. Okay. Now, you notice there's one person not here at the house for lunch, and that's Teresa.

Yeah. She's not around. And Kay Rudd asks, where's Teresa? Yeah. She wasn't out there. She's not in here. Sure. Where'd she go?

So Gary says, that's a good damn question. I don't know where Teresa is. God damn. He says, I'm going to go look for her. Yeah, where is? He starts, hey, Teresa, you know, he starts going around the house there. He checks the storage building. It's not in the storage building.

That's weird. He checks the house all around the house. around, different rooms, closets, everything. Then he goes to the cornfield, he said. It seems like you could see if someone's in a cornfield in October. I mean, you can see how they got in there, that's for sure. You can see for sure. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I don't know. And I don't know how these are eight foot high stocks of corn. Yeah, how big are they? And isn't it, aren't they harvested by now? October? Not necessarily. And even if you do harvest them, you don't have to cut the stock down. You can just take the ears off of it.

That's true. Yeah. But does that how they do it or do they do it with a machine? It depends on how big it is. Sure. You can do it by hand, I'm sure. Yeah, if you had a small patch. I mean, I don't know how big of a cornfield this is.

But either way, she's not in there. He searches around. And then he heads toward the pond, you know, where the ducks and the fish are and all that and shit. Which also from that MST episode, this is where the fish lives. This weird line. The girl on the farm takes him down to this pond and they're just standing. standing there in silence and she just goes, this is where the fish lives. Is that right?

And he goes, okay. Not in the barn, you say. Not in your room, in your bed. So he says that he is going toward the pond. It's beyond the cornfield from the main farmhouse. It's like farmhouse cornfield pond beyond that. Sure. If you can all imagine that.

And he says there, out of nowhere, he comes running up the hill after a minute, screaming, call an ambulance, call an ambulance. Yeah. Screaming. And then he runs back toward the pond and toward his tractor to go to the pond. Okay. In the pond, he says he saw, there's Teresa, in the pond, face down. Oh, no.

Pinned underwater by a gigantic tree that fell down. A huge tree looks like it fell on her and pinned her under the water. Oh, that's terrible. Which is horrifying. That's like a... A nightmare in real life. Yes. Especially if the tree doesn't knock you out.

Oh, I've heard plenty of stories, too, of being in the woods. And if you hear some shit, it's like, don't look, just run. If you hear shit crackling, because it could be a tree falling on you. And it's... My luck, though, I'd run right to where the tree is falling. Yeah. Oh, shit. Wrong direction.

My hearing is off. Yeah. So he, according to him, she's not breathing, face down on the pond with a giant tree on her. And he says he ran down the pond and tried the pond and tried to pull her free, but he couldn't get the tree off of her, he said. It was too heavy. So he said, you know, he's soaking wet. He walked into a pond. He comes back out and then ran up the hill, call it, screaming, call an ambulance, call an ambulance. So April apparently ran to her car to

get her phone, took it out and dialed 911. Yeah. And she's about 85 yards from the pond at this point, which is almost a full football field. It's a good distance, yeah. Good distance. It's not visible also because there's a hill. So the pond isn't visible from where she makes the call. Okay. That's important to know. She tells the 911 operator and this is like immediately

she's not like hold on, let me get more info and relaying it. She gets on the phone and immediately says that Teresa Rollins is here. She is pinned under a tree in the pond and she's not breathing. Oh. She just came out of the house and said that.

That's what I mean. She He came out of the house to him screaming, call an ambulance, call an ambulance, and then getting back on his tractor. Yeah. And she hasn't been down to the pond, but knows that she's pinned under the tree not breathing. Okay. Which is odd. So that's immediately strange. So help arrives here.

Emergency responders come. And by the time they get there, one of the other workers, Tanya Wagner and Gary have extricated her. We've already got her out of the pond by now. Yeah. Apparently, Gary used his tractor to push the tree off her body. Not lift it up, push it off. Oh. A giant, which would make it roll on her more, which is strange.

The tree is 60 feet tall and weighs over 1,000 pounds. Yeah, that's a big tree. It's a big, goddamn tree. And Gary pushed the tractor off it. The tree was approximately 35 feet from the edge of the pond. The stump of the tree was 35 feet from the edge of the pond. Okay. So that's where it fell from.

So 60 feet tall, 35, another 25. 30 feet of tree in the water. Yeah, 25 feet of tree in the water or whatever. And Tanya Wagner had jumped into the pond and dragged Teresa to the bank and tried to give her CPR on the banks of the pond. And it fails. It doesn't work. The first responders try as well. They can't get anything going even.

So Teresa's pronounced dead here. Wow. She's dead, which is obviously terrible because she never did anything to anybody. That sucks. Took a tree and drowned. Best case scenario, she's just trying to feed some ducks and got crushed by a tree and drown. That's horrible. She's impressed that she can talk to the fish.

That's it. This is where the fish lives, everybody. So, Gary tells Deputy Kenneth Sales that he believes that Teresa had gone to feed the fish or the ducks or the squirrels or some shit because she did that all the time. He said she's probably sitting there in the tree. probably fell on her while she was there. She probably never saw it coming. Oh, boy. And the neighbors, they all see the emergency vehicles and begin to gather because there's not much to do around here. And that will draw a crowd. Yeah, this will draw a crowd anywhere. You could be midtown Manhattan. People would be looking at what the hell's going on. People are still nosy, even if they're used to shit. Noisy. It will not stop that shit. Never, never. So Gary's asked what happens, what happened by the neighbors. And he says a tree fell. Teresa was there and it pinned her under it. And it said,

is horrible and it's tragic and they photograph the scene and do all that. And they accept what he says and they're like, it looks like an accident to me. I mean, medical examiner's got to go over, but that sounds pretty fucking tragic to me. And on a farm, weirder shit happens than that. People die in weirder ways than that on a farm. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I mean, all sorts of shit happens on a farm.

Equipment and everything else. Trampled by a cows. Yeah. Keeping the head by a mule. There's all kinds of shit like to kill you. Yeah. Anything could happen on a farm. Oh, my God.

Bedlam over there. I had a friend whose kid was electrocuted because the pump for the irrigation electrified the water because whoever did the wiring for the pump. That's what your friend says anyway. Kids out there playing in the water and got electrocuted. He got action parked. He got action parked. That's what happened in action park. The water was, the pumps were electrifying the water?

There was a bad connection and a kid fell out of the boat and fucking got completely fried in the water. Horrifying. Yeah. Horrifying. It's terrible. Yeah, that's why I don't like heated pools. I'm terrified that there's going to be some electrical thing and it's going to explode. But yeah, I get where's that.

Still, I'm going to explode. I think it's bad. So here comes the autopsy. Gas, huh? Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. That makes more sense. The electrical ones will maintain the heat, but it's hard for those to get the water up to.

It doesn't. I get you. Nobody cares. I don't know. I don't know. I never had a heated pool. I only had a pool once. Anyway, October 6th, 2009 is the autopsy.

So the next day. Dr. Zia Sabat of the West Virginia State Medical Examiner's Office performs the autopsy. He notes small scratches on Teresa's face, bruising on her back. And that's it. Okay. No major injury. no broken bones. Oh, that means she did drown.

Yeah, no. But there's a 60,000-pound tree is on her back. How does she have no major injuries? That's the weird part. No hemorrhages or anything. It just seems that I don't know how that would happen. Hit her with like a paperweight and just held her down. Yeah, like it, but gently, you know, it stopped and then gently laid on.

It baptized her. Yeah, there you go. And there you go. The cause of death is listed as pending investigation. Now, October 7th, the detectives returned to take more pictures because part of the death ruling, it's not just the body in front of you. They take in all the evidence, too. You know what I mean? Like there's stories of plenty of stories of people that it looks like a murder or it looks like a suicide or it looks like an accident.

But based on the surrounding stuff, the medical examiner will rule it a homicide if it is. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so they return to take pictures just to give the, to take more pictures of the scene to give the medical examiner a better idea what happened. So once they get there, the fallen tree has been removed from the pond and it's nowhere to be found. Oh, it's gone now. Wow. It's just gone.

A thousand pound tree has disappeared. Not just pulled out, but. No, no, no. Gone. Not at the scene. Very dusted. Gone. Gone.

Yeah. Taken somewhere else, apparently. Okay. I don't know if it's Gary getting his revenge on that tree and just took it and cut it into a million pieces. Yeah. Yeah. So on October 13th, 2009, police interview Gary. They're like, we got a couple odds and ends we got to talk to you about here because of the tree and all that.

So he agrees to be video recorded for an interview. The deputy requested, you know, he comes down to the Nicholas County Courthouse and all of that. It's a recorded interview. They read him as Miranda rights. He waives them. the deputy said, from the circumstances of this case, we have changed it to a murder investigation, possibly. Said that to him? He said, yeah, we don't know if it what it is at this point.

So he repeats his story. He says, I found her in the pond. I jumped in to save her. I failed. Couldn't get the tree off of her. And then they say, what about April Bales? Yeah. How's that going?

What's up with that? Yeah. Yeah, what's up with that? We heard you're having an affair. Yeah. Like since last year when you met this girl, you've been having an affair. But you're very involved and you told Teresa. Yeah, she lives in your house.

Works on your farm. And he described it as it's a fling. You know, that happens. He's not serious. So they said, listen, this is this affair. And then your wife dies in a strange way. We got to look into this. This is our job here.

What are you talking about? So the guy says, the deputy says, yeah, the circumstances that came. up that arose since then and he said Gary says okay and he says you know with the affair and everything the deputy says oh yeah yeah yeah like yeah I know what you're talking about right right yeah just some guy talk that's all having some guy chit-chat here yeah I was banging her and you know is that right yeah you know yeah but I didn't kill my wife right right wink and a nudge and I'll see it down at the bar I think that doesn't make me a murderer that's great yeah that's exactly what it is so the deputy says yeah I mean and then

then Gary cuts him off and says, well, you guys call it an affair. What do you call it? You know, the Webster's Dictionary calls it an affair. By definition, that's what it is. Yeah, he said, that's fine. I mean, yeah, I was kind of seeing a woman. You're banging the lady who lives in your house. That's more than seeing a woman.

He's real loose with it, huh? Real casual. Well, he's trying to act like it's not a big deal. The deputy says, well, I mean, what else would it be? Right. And Gary says, a fling. Oh, a fling. A year and a half fling.

Thank you. The deputy says a fling for over a year? Yeah. Yeah. That's dead serious, man. And then Gary says extramarital affair. Bingo. There.

Yeah, that's what we said, remember? And then you said no. What are we talking about? Now you're getting it, Gary. So they're sitting there just as perplexed as we are with that response. And then Gary volunteers some other information. He says, listen, I understand that everybody sees on TV when there's a death and there's an affair going on, another woman, you know. The first thing they suspect is the spouse.

I understand that. I get it. Do you, Garrett? I get why this is suspicious. Look, but he's real casual. Like, let's just get that right out of the way and cross it off your list here. And the deputy says, and a jury would absolutely hammer you. Nah.

Now we're talking about juries. That's like, ooh, hey, hold on a minute. Now we're going to talk about... In court, it looks worse, Gary. Yeah. So then he says, wow, Gary says, quote, they would probably be eating it like a piece of candy, looking at me saying, oh, boy, he had to have done it,

like a piece of candy. Eat it. What, they'd be eating it like a piece of candy. Look at me. So the deputy continued the interview by questioning him as to the events of the day and things like that. So after that, and he gives the same story of, yeah, that day, woke up, saw them, went inside, ate lunch, hey, Theresa, where is she, call an ambulance, going to get the blog offer? Okay, so we do all that.

So the deputy then says, all right, well, if Dan, who's another investigating officer, if Dan thinks of something, then he'll give you a call or, you know, anything like that. I can't think anything else. We've gone over it a few times now, you know. and Gary says, okay, well, I'll tell you the truth. Oh, you haven't yet? He's giving you the other guy's card saying give him a call if you see anything. You're standing up straightening your pants out, tucking your shirt back in. Like, yeah, no, I'm getting ready to leave.

I've been sitting for a while. He says, I'll tell you the truth. I think once you guys get all the reports back from the autopsy, and the deputy says, uh-huh. That's his exact, uh-huh, like a slow one. And it shows there wasn't no toxins in her system. And it shows that she drowned in a pond. And it shows that a tree and stuff hit her. A tree and stuff.

Tree and stuff. Tree and stuff. That a tree and stuff hit her. I think you guys might be a little bit more at ease because, yeah, that's how she died. She, nobody killed my wife. And the deputy says, exactly what I was just going to say. Okay.

That's exactly what you say. Okay. Like, is there more? Nobody killed my wife. Let's go over that statement one more time from the top there. Don't go suspecting much. No. And it did the autopsy and it shows there wasn't no toxins in her system or something.

When did toxins get brought up poison? We weren't investigating that. Now we might. No, now we might. Yeah. I never even thought to check that. And it shows that. She drowned in a pond and it shows that a tree and stuff hit her.

I think you guys might be a little more at ease because, yeah, that's how she died. She, nobody killed my wife. Nobody killed my wife. That's amazing. And the deputy says, okay. Yeah. And then Gary says, I mean, nobody, nobody could. I mean, she might.

complain and she might have been hard to get along with sometimes. Gary, what the fuck are you? I mean, there were reasons. But I don't think anybody did. People were taking their car keys out of their pocket to leave, Gary. What are you doing? This is terrible. Not good work, Gary.

She's a pain in the ass. I mean, yeah. I'm cheating on her. Yeah, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to bang her no more. She's a pain of my fucking cullions. Yeah, you know, all that kind of shit. But, you know, that doesn't mean I killed her. He's such an idiot.

Here's all the reasons I should be suspicious. Here's why I'd be suspicious of me. By the way, look for toxins. It's another thing. Which if your wife was killed by accident, you'd be like, check for toxins. I want to see if everything's okay. I want to make sure it's all right. You wouldn't be...

Yeah, please don't just file it under freak accident. Please look carefully. Let's look deeply and carefully into this shit. Yeah, that's how a normal person would have. So, yeah, he said that, but she had a heart of gold and nobody could do something. Nobody that, nobody could do that to somebody like that, meaning no one could have killed her. She's too nice. And then he goes on.

There's a pause and then he continues. Although. They should just never answer him and just let him go. He'll talk for the rest of the night. He said, I've questioned myself, you know, why she didn't, you know, hear that and get out of the way or something. Yeah, we've questioned it too, Gary. That's why you're sitting here, Chief. We're questioning for the same thing.

A reason why you're sitting in front of us. Then he gets wild after that. He said, and I don't like talking bad about anybody because, you know, I love my wife. Okay. Which means, you know there's going to be some bad shit he's going to say about her. Right. That's the fucking, that's the preface here. He said, she was like, like I said, just a hard.

heart of gold, but she was slow as far as thinking goes. What? Never heard that. She ran her own business successfully. I never heard any of the slow. Seems to be doing fine. Seems to be doing great. Other than liking you, I can't see any gaps in her judgment or character or anything

else. I might consider slow. Yep. So he said, because you know, I love my wife. She was like, like I said, just had a heart of gold, but she was slow as far as thinking. She, no numbers, no spells. and no nothing.

What? I mean, no number. She ran a fucking salon for 20 years. She can't read or write or arithmetic. She just took a big thing with crayon and put, you know, drew a picture of a lady's head with her hair all different now. On the window,

it had a messy head and then an arrow and then a clean nice head. That's all it had. No sign on the outside. No phone number because she wouldn't have been able to. Come on, Gary. Give me a fucking break. Give me a goddamn break here. The address was the most perplexing.

You never could find it. So no numbers, no spelling, no nothing. I mean, when it come to that, she'd always come to me and you'd tell her something. It was like telling a person a joke. Well, a half hour later, she'd start laughing. She'd get it. She was just slow. So she was on the way home before she got the joke from the comments.

comedy club is what they're saying. Oh, that closer was hilarious. Feels like Gary's a bad joke teller. I think he is. It feels like his jokes probably stink. And also, he's basically saying if she heard a thousand pound tree falling,

she's so stupid she wouldn't have got out of the way of it. That's essentially what he said. She might look around and then it falls on her she's essentially the wet bandits. Yes. Yes. Once they get in there, they're terrible. But they somehow get their way in the house. She's Marv.

Marv would step on all the nails and get stuck to all the tar. That's what he's saying. Which, again, no one else has ever said this about this. This is completely ridiculous. Then after he said she was just slow, he said, it's just. And I've always thought, well, if a tree would break and she probably would have turned around and looked and says, oh, a fallen tree. And then she's that type.

and then what? He just said she'd turn around and go, oh, a fallen tree and not realized to get out of the way of it. That's what he just said. She would not live to be 54 years old she was when she died. Right. She would certainly not be alive 54 years

if seeing a speeding car coming at her, she'd go, oh, pretty color red. It's going so fast. Never. No, this is crazy. He literally was like, she'd be like, Oh, a fall in, a tree falling, duh, and then it would fall into her. And we're supposed to buy that story.

Why is it a terrible thing to say about the wife that is not that way? She's only been dead a week and you're already calling her a dummy. He's like, yeah, she's pretty dumb. Oh, pretty stupid. He's a terrible guy. So then also he says about the affair. They're like, so is the affair over now? And he goes, oh, no, no, no.

Now it's even better because now I don't have to worry about Theresa. basically. He said, yeah, no, no. And he's not embarrassed by it at all. He said, I'm not, no, that's, I'm, now I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, now I'm, I'm, now I'm, now that I'm, now that I'm, now that I'm, we're probably going to, now that I don't have a wife, I need one of those. What am I going to do? Yeah, I got to get a wife. None of the other chicks on the farm will marry me. So here I am. So October 20th, 2009, with all of this, the fallen tree, the lack of broken bones, stuff like that. Gary's incredible, incredible fucking interrogation there.

The investigation is ruled complete. And the Dr. Sabot and the chief medical examiner, Dr. James Kaplan, rule that it's an accidental drowning complicated by compression. asphyxia. Is that right? The theory that the tree pinned her under water as she drowned. So it was pushing her and smushing her and she couldn't get breath and she's under water. So accidental death case closed. Done.

Wow. Thank you so much, everybody. It's been a great episode of Small Town Murder. Catch us next week. Yeah. No. You can't arrest an oak. That's the thing.

We tried to cuff him, but it's just, he's slippery, boy. They don't fit. They don't fit. Yeah. So that's it. Now, everybody just shrugs and accepts it, except for Teresa's family. They're not going to go into the night. No. And if there's anything like my family, this is only just begun.

You know what I mean? This is only just begun. How dare you write that? Yeah, now they're pissed at the medical examiner. Accidental. We're about to see an accident. Accidental my ass. I'll show you accidental. Let's you tell you what, once you park behind my truck and I'll call that, we'll see how much of an accidental death you could have. Just stand right there, would you? So, Therese's family is told this shit, and they go, I don't think so.

Right. I don't think so. And the deputy even told them to like, hey, relax. You know, to get this thought out of your head that it's this big murder conspiracy. Sometimes trees fall on people. It happens. If a tree falls in the woods, you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying?

And your sister's under it. You know what I mean? You've heard that statement, right? The tree falls in the woods. Do you have a sister? Yeah. See what I mean? answer, by the way, is no in case you didn't know that.

We found that out from our medical examiner. So the sisters, though, said, I don't think so. I think we're going to keep looking into this. I don't think we're going to take your word for it. So there's four sisters now, and they've all watched crime shows. Yeah. They watched documentaries. Oh, and it's 2009?

2000 CSI and all this shit, and they're like, hmm. A&E is 24 hours. Is it A&E? What is, headline HLN is 24 hours of Investigation discovery. ID is, yeah, all that shit. The first 48 is on A&E all day long.

Doesn't stop. So they said, I've heard of this happening before and families pushing and let's keep this going. Let's hold their feet to the fire here. So they do all this. They research, they Google stuff.

They've tried, if they search as much as you can in 2008. They find a very prominent pathologist here, a very prominent doctor that they want, that they email to try to get him to look at the case. Okay. It's Dr. Cyril Wecht. And we'll talk about him a little later. I've heard of him.

So they put him, yeah. I'm sure people who follow true crime stuff have heard of him. He's been involved in some very big cases. He's kind of like the Dr. Bodden, except I don't think he's, in my opinion, much more credible. Yeah. Yeah. Let's put it that way. Because as we've stated, in my opinion, I have to say that, Dr. Bodden is a completely full of shit.

In my opinion. I could be completely wrong. But I think he's a bought and paid for hack. Well, it feels as though when a side asks him to testify for them, he does what they say based on salary. That's what it feels like. Just based on our observations that are not truth or anything like that. allegedly and in our opinion. There you go.

Is that enough? Eat dicks. I don't know. But I can say, go fuck yourself. You fat-faced ass all that. I can say. I can't say you look like Chef Boyardy. You fuck.

No, well, you could. That's an opinion. It's a hard opinion. I like it. So, 2009. Yeah. All right. After Teresa's death, obviously.

Okay. Teresa's family goes to the farm to see the scene. They want to see where it happened. Yeah. So it can make sense to them, obviously. You wouldn't just take out, that pond in a tree. So her sister asked Gary if she could borrow Teresa's camera to show their parents. Yeah.

Because I want to take pictures. The digital camera at the time. And I want to take pictures. I want to show the parents the scene. So they'll shut the fuck up, babe. That's probably how they put it. Look, we got to show our parents. So they calm down and, you know, whatever.

We need to borrow this camera. People are mad. We need to fix this. Yeah. So Gary says, sure. Sure, borrow the camera. Now, it's not digital, too. It's film.

They had the film developed at a photo lab because there was already film in the camera with some shots taken. Yeah. Okay. The pictures came out and here is what one of the sisters said. I was expecting to see the beautiful blue pond.

And unfortunately, I saw pictures of my sister that nobody would ever want to see. Yeah. Pictures of Teresa with bruises all over her are on this film. bruises on her chest, a significant bruise on her chest, bruises all over her body. Not dead Teresa, alive, Teresa.

She's been documenting bruises. Yes. She's been documented the abuse that's been happening to her. There's other pictures, two, selfies. There's ones that other people took, and there's selfies that she took in, it's self-documentation. She's showing her bruises. That's exactly what it is. And her sister said, my sister, Teresa, was speaking to us from the grave.

Wow. She had taken documentation of herself, of bruises that were on her body. I knew that was a cry for help. How about it? Isn't that incredible? At a girl. Incredible. From the fucking grave.

She's... Yeah, he would have no fucking idea. She's way more useless than any of these detectives. Yeah. Useful than any of these detectives, I should say. Not useless. Yeah. So, wow.

So they take this evidence and they go to the police. who've told them to chill the fuck out and calm down. They get to the police and they're like, we have the evidence. Boom. Put it on the counter. Oh, boy. You'd expect they're just going to be like,

get the cuffs and let's go talk to Gary, basically. How they wash this? Well, this is from Teresa's sister. He told me I needed to get this crazy thought out of my head because I needed to go mourn for my sister. He said, go give me some evidence, then come back. No, you They told him to fuck off, not interested.

Go do my job. Yeah, go do my job for me and then come back. I'll be sitting here eating. So now they have looks like abuse, lots of bruising, and they know he had a year-long affair, and he said his wife is a fucking dumb-dum who doesn't get a joke. And, you know, I like her and everything,

but she doesn't do numbers or counting or fucking reading or anything like that. She never get out of the way of a falling tree. Too dumb to get out of the way from a falling tree. That's what's going on. So the sisters say, no. You want evidence? You want evidence. Oh, you want evidence, you say.

It's evidence. So they keep trying to get Dr. Cyril involved in this. And he is a forensic pathologist from Pittsburgh. He's been involved in the autopsies of JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson. He does high-profile shit. The same ones that that Scummy Ron Jeremy proclaims he was part of. Oh, yes, exactly. He's a small dick drawn Jeremy, I mean?

More scummy Ron Jeremy. Yeah. In our opinion. Yeah, yeah. So he reviewed the records, and he said that the case struck him as off from the first second he looked over the paperwork. He said, quote, I was wondering, gee, what caused the tree to fall down exactly at that moment? There were a lot of things that were puzzling and quite atypical. So for all those reasons, I felt that it was something I was willing to become involved.

with. Yeah, at that moment. They should have looked more at the stump, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That should have been just, they should have went out and had, I don't know who does, tree guys, arborists going out there.

But I've seen a tree break. And that's never. I mean, you look at a stump and you go, holy fuck. Yeah, it's all twisted. All the time happens. Yeah. It's crazy. So now that they have this guy willing to be on the team or at least take a look at it,

The family then uses their whatever connections they have to try to basically get phone numbers up the political ladder. Oh. I know a guy who knows a councilman. That councilman might know a guy who knows this. And then this guy knows a state legislator who maybe can bring you to this guy. And eventually they get all the way to the governor. Of West Virginia? Who at that time was Joe Manchin.

Okay. He became a senator who doesn't know what the fuck he believes in. So you never know what Joe Man. And that's not a political statement. Literally one day he'll say, I like this. The next day, I don't think I like that. You never know what the fuck Joe Manchin's doing. So anyway, Joe Manchin is the governor.

They go to him. They contact his office to insist that Teresa's death was a murder. And he said, yeah, what do I care? Reopen it. I don't know what the fuck. We want some family calling you every day. You can either have these four sisters calling you every goddamn day or you can just tell the state police, fucking look in and win again.

Shut these people up. And I think that's what he did. I don't know if he actually, if you never know with a governor if they actually give a shit or not or if they're just tired of hearing from people. Yeah. And also, it's resources we have allocated. Fucking look.

There's 332 people. How fucking busy are you? You're on the clock. State police, go take a peek at it. Why not? And yeah, and the family,

this is what you have to do if you believe in something. And this is what they did. Anyone who, if I get murdered, I really hope my family does this. You know what I mean? This is what you want? your family to do for you. So the state police reopened the case. They reinvestigate, basically.

Just do a start from scratch and do the groundwork again to make sure it was done correctly. Now, the people they brought in were specifically brought in because the original deputy investigation had been inadequate because they really didn't go, didn't really go to like homicide detectives. It was just deputies. And it was fairly quick, it seems like. Yeah, within two weeks It was medical examiner closed the case. They talked to Gary. He said crazy shit. They didn't follow up on it.

Who knows? It's almost like they took it to the medical examiner. Medical examiner said what he said. And they were like, great, we don't have to do any more work on this. Exactly. Well, that solves that then. Done deal. Moving on.

Yeah. And if you're not a homicide detective, too, maybe that's the other thing. You wouldn't push for something because, I don't know. It's easier to not investigate that. I don't know. It's a lot of aspersions were capital. because we have no idea what happened. There's a lot of responsibility on a guy that hasn't been to the scene,

just looking at a body and making a decision. Yeah, and we don't know how poorly trained the local cops are. I don't know how well they're trained for death investigation. It is a ton. So one of these cops said I was asked by my supervisors as well as the prosecuting attorney to take a look at the case. There were a lot of unanswered questions. We had to start pretty much at ground zero and work forward.

So they go through everything, the 911 call. the autopsy report, the photographs, the witnesses. And as they're looking into it, they start seeing some pretty clear, you know, birds-eye view here, pretty good clear cracks and everything that's happening. A lot of weird shit. First of all, the tree. Let's discuss the tree. All right. Because that's the first thing they looked at here.

Gary's story required, obviously, a gigantic tree to have fallen at exactly the right moment to knock Teresa into the pond and pin her face down under the water. Yeah. Okay. So 1,000 pounds, 60 foot tall. And it would have to keep like crush her down into it, not even like knock her out of the way or anything. I mean, best case scenario, she sees it, dives under to try to get away from it and it gets her while she's underwater. Best case scenario. Yeah. Well, if she didn't just look at it and go, it's a pretty tree, like Gary says. It's so pretty. Like we're supposed to believe. Yeah. So the tree does not break any of Teresa's bones. And they're a little skeptical about any time a thousand pound object falls on. You're probably going to have a broad. broken bone or two. Yeah.

Just the way it works. They said also it didn't leave major hemorrhaging consistent with the impact of a thousand pound object. Right. It's a huge thing. It left small facial scratches and some back bruising. So one of the cops says a 2,000 pound tree, it's 1,000 pounds, but whatever, falls and hits you in the back and knocks you into the pond.

This is probably going to knock your glasses off and probably going to break something. Did she have glasses on? Let's find out. They found her glasses. Yeah. They were analyzed by the crime lab. They looked for diatoms, diatoms, which are microscopic organisms found in pond water on the glasses, which would confirm they were submerged with her body. Gary claimed he removed her glasses from her in the water.

He said she still had her glasses on. He took them off of her to train them. Impossible. Okay. Yeah. The shot, it would fly right off. Anyway, yeah, I don't wear glasses, but you know. I sit hard enough on the couch and they're gone.

There you go. Now, the glasses, he says, were in the water. He removed them. There was no diatoms on the glasses, which they would have to be there if they were in the pond. In the water. Yeah. Yeah. They said, just bruising marks consisted with having been struck while someone was wearing them,

not with having been in a pond. Okay. So, they said, if these glasses had been in the water, which Gary claimed they were, they would have had some of these diatoms on or about them. They had none. Huh. Okay, so now we got a glasses lie right away. That's not good.

The glasses were never in the water. Never in the water. But it's a crazy scene. Maybe you got mixed up. Who knows? You can't put a guy in jail for, you can put him on death row for that. Because glasses didn't have diatoms on them. Nah, not do that.

Don't worry. We got more. That's what I'm saying. The tree, also a meteorologist, they brought out, said that the wind conditions in the area indicated the tree probably fell several days before October 5th when it was windy. Oh. They said October 5th was a calm day, not enough wind to blow a 60-foot tree down at all. Okay.

And it don't just rot and then in a calm day just fall, huh? Sometimes they do, but more likely to be blown over by some in a strong windstorm. Like my trees, about 100 trees fall down and 80% of them are from wind. Yeah. Sometimes they just get rotten and fall. In 2009, we are keeping track of the wind and a log of it so that somebody knows how fast it was blowing the other day in which direction. Totally. Yeah, absolutely.

So that's just the weather service. They can get all that information and they got a meteorologist to do that. Then they look at his clothes. Remember where he said he jumped in and tried to save his life? He said, I almost went under trying to save her. Like, the tree could have taken me too. So that's what he said. Now, the farm workers, Tanya Wagner, K. Rudd and April were all asked whether he was wet when he came running to the house after trying to rescue Teresa.

Yeah. No one had asked them this before. Really? And they said, no. He was dry. Yeah. Yeah. And they said, was he like damp?

You know, and they said, no. Just dry. Yeah. Just crispy dry. Has not been in the water. Yeah. They said, quote, he said he almost. went under when he jumped in and tried to pull her out from under a tree, but yet when he runs

back to the workers and says, find a phone, call 911, his clothes are dry. The investigator says, no way, no way. Impossible. That's physically impossible to do that. They also found that his statements in his first interview were suspicious. No shit. Jesus, didn't take much to. Yeah.

We have hundreds of thousands of people out there. Did everyone else find those suspicious as we did? So far. Yeah. So the claim that he jumped into the pond to save her life didn't match any of the witnesses saying he was dry. Based on that, they didn't believe that he was wet enough to support his claim that he jumped into the pond and attempted to pull his wife free. Now, still not a crime. No. I mean, she was dead already, blah, blah, blah.

It's not a, it's shitty, but it's not a murder to not have your shorts be wet. Yeah, she has no injuries that. to speak of that are a murder. Then they find out that Gary's a certified EMT. Oh, right. Yeah, he should know how to do things. CPR like a motherfucker. That's the thing.

So they said, you watch your wife, basically, he watched his wife float face down in a pond and made no effective attempt to resuscitate her before just leaving to get a tractor. And went and got the slowest vehicle on earth. Yeah, hold on, running. Hmm. people running by you to the scene.

I'll be right there. There's people passing you on foot. And you're like, I'm almost there. So they said, I knew Gary that Gary made no attempt to save Teresa, is what an investigator said. Then they find out another thing. And this is really amping it up a bit. They find out that in August and September of 2009, the two months leading up to the October 5th day of the death, Gary purchased two half-million-dollar life policies on life insurance policies on Teresa over those course of two months.

Not one but two. Not one but two. Wow. Both specifically included accidental death riders, by the way. He actually sought higher coverage but adjusted amounts based on her health. He wanted more. He wanted a million dollars or something. He discussed the insurance with the truck salesman that he bought that truck from.

I'm with April. Really? Yes, and we'll find out about that. The salesman says, because now they go talk to the salesman. Yeah. That while on the lot looking at cars, but before negotiating a deal on a vehicle, he asked about life insurance options sold by the dealership. Did you know that was, did you know you could buy life insurance from a car dealership?

No. I've never heard of that. What do you all got in the way of some term life? I'll take the 2004 Mustang and a term life on a. a 30 year. What are we talking about? I've never heard of that before. Can you throw in about 80 grand in accidental, some AD&D? For my wife who's not here. What do you say? Wow. So the salesman said that in his experience, it was uncommon for prospective buyers to discuss insurance options prior to deciding on a vehicle to purchase. Already before.

Yeah. Before he's interested in the car, he's interested in the car, he's interested in insurance. I'm here for the AD&D, but if by chance you got a lariat, I'll take a peek at it. I mean, I'll grab an F-150 if that's what you're putting out. You got a king cab. I'm your man right here. So he purchased a truck for $44,000, $45, and $82, financing the majority of the purchase price. The salesman later said that Gary said that he'd, quote, be paying it off pretty soon. Okay. Okay. But that the financing period he selected 60 months was not the shortest the dealership offered. Then he also purchased life insurance to cover the cost of his truck up to $50,000.

He did buy it. From that, I guess you could buy it for your truck. I'm shocked. The policy covered both his life and the life of his wife. Another representative at the dealership said that because Gary was named on the loan, she appeared a day or two following the sale to sign paperwork, the life insurance document. Because she's, right, yeah.

Because she's trusting. She doesn't think he's gonna fucking do anything. And she's listed in both, so she asked to sign on it. And she's probably like, that's smart. We should have insurance. Genius idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Women tend to love it when you go get life insurance. They're like, good. You drop dead. You're not going to fucking screw me over here. It's actually a very smart thing to have life insurance if you have a, if you're buying a vehicle at the time. Because then if you die and the vehicle's not paid for, then your family's stuck with this fucking truck.

And I got to deal with the property. Payment. Yeah. Yep. That's the truth. So he, like I said, he wanted a higher coverage, but because of her health, they said he can't have it. So he adjusted. So then September 4th, 2009, Gary made a call to increase his wife's life insurance and increased it to increased his coverage by $30,000 or $300,000. I apologize.

He attempted to increase her coverage by $300,000. as well for both natural and accidental causes, but was informed by the agent that to cover natural death, she would need a new physical because of her previously disclosed cholesterol issues. So they said, you got to get her in here and get her physical. So he said, all right, never mind. Fuck that. Fuck the health portion.

They usually only let you up it each year by like 10% or whatever. Otherwise, it's suspicious and you have motive to murder people. It looks weird. Looks weird. So he said, when he came back, he said, yeah, I don't want that health portion of the insurance. He said, quote, yeah, because I'm looking for, what I'm looking for is just the accidental. We're not trying to increase life when neither of us is planning a natural death for at least another 30 or 40 years. He's like, neither of us are going to die natural death anytime soon.

So the only thing that could happen would be an accident. So let's juice that up a bit. Planning a natural death. We're planning an accidental. I'm planning on getting a natural. accidental debt. He said that the reason he wanted to purchase the additional insurance was, quote, because we are under the assumption that our mortgage was insured also, so basically that what we're covered in now will just barely pay off our mortgage. Okay. Total coverage for each spouse

with respective $300,000 increases was half a million dollars. Okay. So they said Gary purchased a life insurance policy 32 days prior to Teresa's death. So Gary, would have profited from the death. Now, the domestic abuse, the pictures. They find all sorts of evidence of what the state's going to call an ongoing theme here of violence, that it's a pattern of violence that ultimately led to a murder. That's important in the court case. There's a guy named Jimmy Thompson here.

Jimmy Thompson's a friend and a neighbor of Teresa. He said that he witnessed Gary shake his wife. in spring of 2009. Shake his wife. Saw it? Like a baby? Shake is old. You saw it?

Who shakes an adult? What are you doing? Unless it's like an old movie and they're hysterical. You know, snap out of it. Oh, God, sorry. But the sh-psh, psh. Not your wife.

You don't do that. Putting your hands on somebody aggressively, if you do that in front of people. That's wild. And that he also saw Gary, quote, swat her head in May of 2009. Hit her in the head? I don't know if he hit her or took a swipe at her or what.

I'm not sure if he made contact, but just swat at her head. All right. So either way, neither of those things are normal or regular or excusable. So then also this Jimmy Thompson took photographs of the bruising on Teresa's body on three separate occasions. Oh. The shit she couldn't get to. She'd get Jimmy to do it. The first was taken in July 2009 and showed a bruise on her chest.

The second was also, wow. still July 2009 and showed a bruise on her nose. And the third was in August 2009 and showed a bruise on her thigh. So Jimmy Thompson said that Teresa told him that Gary had inflicted the bruises upon her and all of that. So this is a lot. So they look at all of that. Not only do they have bruises, that could have been documenting when I fell off the tractor. You don't know.

Sure. But if there's a guy there. You got Jimmy Thompson who can narrate this shit. That's helpful. And knows what it's from. Yeah. That's helpful. Also, they're going to fully investigate this affair just to make sure because he says it's a fling and it ain't a big deal and all that.

And they said, no, this is a long-term relationship. They're still together. And April had told friends of hers that Gary was going to leave Teresa and it was just going to be her and Gary on the farm. And then they were going to have a family. Yeah, because she's already got a kid, but he'll give her more. Wow. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. They said, she said that one of the friends said to the cop, so this cop said that this guy told him that Gary was leaving Teresa and was going to move her in and they were going to have a family together. And Gary also, that wasn't the only affair he had. Is that right? He had affairs with other employees. His hiring process is, would I bang her in a farmhouse? About, you know, five o'clock all the sun's going down. Can I groom her? Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Maybe he thinks she's got something going on that would allow me to fucking play her out. This is fucking bad. So he had multiple affairs with multiple farm workers. None of them as serious is April, though. And April's been his main squeeze for a while now, which, I mean, we shouldn't be surprised. He was also making meth at one point. Right. Yeah.

And he's from the Daytona area. Well, obviously, that's going to be a problem. Now, they also talk about the 911 call. that April made. That April placed from not anywhere near the pond. Yes. And they thought about it. They're like, he's running up the hill, shouting for an ambulance.

He didn't explain why an ambulance should be called. She made the 911 call after retrieving her phone from her vehicle. The point from which she made the call was approximately 85 yards from where Teresa was in the pond, yet she told 911 that she was, that Teresa was trapped under a tree in the pond and wasn't breathing. So they were like, how could she know all that? How'd she know? It's impossible. So they said she couldn't see the scene that she described. She must have known that Teresa was dead prior to placing the call.

Right. That's what they think. So January 2010, the medical examiners revisit this stuff. Is that right? Now they have all this information that they didn't have to begin with. All they had before was, here's a lady we found under a tree. And they were like, I guess the tree fell on her. I don't know.

they didn't have anything to counter his narrative of, I found her laying under a tree. Now they do. So they hear about the insurance policies, the affair, the dry clothes, the 911 call stuff, and they changed their ruling.

They changed it. Oh, yeah. Cause of death was revised from accidental drowning complicated by compression asphyxia to asphyxia due to probable strangulation. Oh, oh. That's much different. Where did that come?

from. Yep. And the manner of death being undetermined, which this is huge. Yeah. Where did they get the strangulation from? That's obviously some, some factors. Other information. Yeah. Yeah. Asphy of some kind. It has to be. So that's what they think. But undetermined isn't enough to get an indictment. They got to get it, you know, to be a homicide. They need more evidence. They need Teresa's body. Oh. No, did he? She's been in the ground in a long time, Jimmy. They got to exhum her. Oh, no. At least we can. When they end up, yeah, it's true. When they end up exhuming her, it's two and a half years after she's dead. What are we going to find?

Apparently a lot. Really? You can find if you have a broken high-oy bone, stuff like that, yeah. So the Dr. Cyril Wecht said, I talk families out of exhumations more often than I encourage them to go ahead. I try very hard to help them understand what's involved, financially, psychologically, psychologically. In this case, I felt in order to understand what transpired, it was necessary to see the body of Teresa Rollins. Yeah. So they made the decision. The sister said my sister, my sister had to be exhumed. To me, it wasn't a choice. Your love for the victim has to conquer

all, which is true. Yeah. So 2010, Gary gets arrested. For what? Not for murder. No, for meth. Nope. He gets arrested. because due to his felonious background, they find out that he'd been hunting and checking in a deer during hunting season. He can't have a gun. He's a convicted felon. He's not even supposed to have a rifle

to shoot squirrels with. So he is charged with felony unlawful transport of firearms. Transport or possession. Transport, yeah. I guess. That's going to be a big deal, though. transport might be taking them from your house somewhere else.

Yeah, it's even worse. Just home into the home is crazy, but to take it somewhere, you're an asshole. So September of 2011 now, fast forward, he's going to be sentenced. It's a federal firearms case. That's a big deal, yeah. So they didn't weren't in any rush because he's been in detention here. And they sentenced him to, you, sir, may fuck off three years and one month in federal prison. Okay.

But that's prison time. He's not getting that for a while. That's prison. And at the same time, they indict him for murder as well. So let's throw that one on there. Because of the asphyxiation shit, we can get you. Okay, all right. Now they can indict him for murder.

So now about April, one of the investigators said that we both knew, me, myself and Corporal White, both knew that April had more involvement and more information than she would tell us in interviews. So she kept seeing him essentially. While he was in jail, she kept seeing him. Really? While he was in federal prison or whatever being held for the gun charges, even while he's arrested for murder. She still goes and ceasing. Oh.

She traveled all the way to the central regional jail in Flatwoods to him, to see him there 43 times. That's a lot of times. Holy shit. How far is it? Not sure, but either way. It's far. It's not in the Nicholas County Jail.

I don't think so, no. And then she also said that she traveled to the jail with his mother as well and said after having to be refreshed with the jail visitation logs, she brought her three-year-old daughter along. She was like, oh, they said, do you ever bring your kids? And she said, no. And they said, that's funny. And the jail logs is here. And she said, okay, I brought my three-year-old to jail to see this asshole. Yeah, we're going to go see a murderer along with her to participate in visits with him in April 2010, May 2010, and August 2010.

What is that? She continued her romantic involvement with him until December of 2010. She accepted, wow, accepted phone calls from him four or five times a day. God, damn. And sent him photographs and letters of her and the baby. all that kind of shit, to act like they were married. Still together.

10 years and everything's going great. Yeah. Like, wow. So October 7th, 2011, April's arrested too. Yeah. Yeah. As an accessory to murder after the fact,

which is still a heavy, heavy charge. So the theory is she knew that Teresa was dead before calling 911 and then someone must have told her what to say. Right. It's the only way.

So they press her. They said, did you see her in the pond from up there when you called? And she said, no. And they said, you could not see her. Did you go down there first? And she said, no. And they said, so how did you know she was under the tree not breathing?

Right. Which is a great question. Yeah, you just fucked yourself so hard, right in front of her. Her answer not quite as good. Uh-huh. She says, quote, I just knew. I just knew. and then she tries to chalk it up to clairvoyance.

She says, I'm a bit psychic sometimes. That's basically what she says. I'm a real good guesser. Yeah. She said she's got some clairvoyance or something. And the investigators are like, I don't think so. I think you're a dummy. And I don't think this is happening.

So the detective said there's only one way you should have that had that information. You either helped put that body there or someone told you what to say before you called 911. Yeah. And she said, I just knew. And they said, well, have fun. Dummy. Would you get out of the way of a falling tree?

Because you're the dumbest fuck I ever met. No shit. I got a tree I'd like you to sit under outside. So they put her in jail. Yeah. And say, go sit in jail for a while and see how you think about it. Well, that lasts about six days. She must hate jail because in about six days, she cracks.

She asks to give a statement. Oh. Now she's crying. She said that Gary had abused her too, that she was scared of Gary. And the investigators put it this way. April was afraid to tell us. But April knew she was under arrest for accessory after the fact of murder. And she was crying.

And she asked for an opportunity to tell the truth. April indicated to us that she was, in fact, scared of Gary, that Gary had also abused her. and ultimately she finally told the truth. Yeah. Here it is. Okay. Now, obviously, they're getting a bigger picture of Gary of a totally different guy behind closed doors than in public because this is, it's not even like they've been married for a long time. He's abusing her off the bat.

He's just a dick out of the gate. Yeah, he's a dick and a violent asshole. So he says, or April says on the morning of October 5th, Gary pulled her aside behind the tractor. Uh-huh. And she was like, oh, it's time? And he was like, no, no, no, zip up. Hold on. I've got to talk to you about this.

Yeah. He said, the way she put it, like he was looking through her. She says, quote, we unloaded the stakes. And he had took me by the arm to the other side of the tractor. And he just looked at me like with this look like he was looking through me. And he just said, I killed Teresa. Oh. And I just looked at him like, you know, like what?

And he said it again. He said, I killed Teresa. And he said that I'd be the one to call 911 and tell them about her under the tree. And then if I didn't go along with it, that me and my daughter wouldn't be here anymore. So we don't know if that's a death threat or she's going to kick him off the farm or what. But she says also prior to Teresa's death, Gary had talked about, quote, when he got rid of Teresa and mentioned marriage, I think, once. He also threatened her child, she said. and by her own, you know, words here, she said that she called 911 and said exactly what Gary told her to say.

And she spent the last two years living with that and feeling guilty. She said before the murder, you know, she had talked about getting rid of Teresa at least very often. Not, you know, it wasn't a one-time thing. So Gary in March of 2012 is taken to county jail for the murder charge from federal prison. May of 2012, Dr. Cyril Wecht comes in with a new autopsy. This gal sat free for two years, didn't say shit. Six days in the Nicholas cage. She couldn't take it.

In a goddamn county jail. And she said, this is terrible. How bad must Nicholas County jail? Well, you figure the nicer houses in Nicholas aren't that great. So what's the jail like? You know, Jesus Christ. May of 2012, here it is, Dr. Cyril Wecht, two years and seven months after the death of Port Teresa. Her body is transported to his office in Pittsburgh.

And now they have him and they have a Dr. Joseph Cohen that's going to be working for Gary's attorney there. They're going to be working together. They both participate. He gets to be there too. So when they did the original autopsy, they had not removed the spinal column and spinal cord to look for spinal injuries. They hadn't do that. They didn't do that. So Dr. Wecht said that the injuries on the body did not fit the profile of having a thousand pound tree fall on.

They were looking for a specific broken vertebrae. So he's got all of them. Yeah, he pulled it right out like Mortal Kombat. Yeah, he's got the whole thing. he can look at every piece. That's great. Every piece of, yep. So he said that it doesn't fit that.

A tree of that size would have produced significant damage, lacerations, broken bones, deep hemorrhaging in the pattern of the tree's shape. Right. Obviously, yeah. So he said that what he found was consistent with forcible drowning. Someone holding Teresa's face underwater. That's what he found. The bruising on her back is consistent with someone pressing her down, not a tree falling on her. These small injuries on her face, one near the left eye, one by the bridge of the nose,

and one just inward from the right eye. He said these injuries were consistent with her face being pushed against rocks or pebbles on the bottom of a pond. Mushed into the fucking bed. Mushed. And then the glasses. She wore glasses. She had a bruise on her nose. If you're right-handed and you punch someone wearing glasses on the left side of their face,

the glasses are driven back into the nose leaving a bruise. The pad guy. her inside the eye. Yeah, right there. Pushes the glasses. He said Ms. Rollins had the same bruise on her nose. There was also evidence as of zipper marks on Teresa's neck, consistent with Gary pulling her jacket tight while holding her down and drowning her.

Oh. So he says that he is going to reclassify this a forcible drowning homicide. Wow. He says, I've done about 19. thousand autopsies in my career, and I've reviewed about 39,000 other autopsies. I've been involved in all kinds of cases. JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson. I wonder how long it normally takes them to drop those names when you talk to them. So you want the number three with a large Coke? Well, I've been involved in cases with JFK, Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson. So we're

going to call it medium and let me get the shake. I feel like you can't talk to this guy for 10 minutes. Side of barbecue, please. For sure. Michael Jackson's doctor's a piece of shit. By the way. Yeah. That's not an opinion. That's just real. He said aside from the well-known controversial cases, the majority of those cases involve regular folks like you and me. Yeah, that all that worked on Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson murder investigator, real regular folks, doctors who work on the president's autopsy. Regular folk. Just the normal ass Dallas resident. Regular old West Virginia mine folk. That's all. He said, These cases cry out for justice just as do the cases of prominent people.

These cases are the same kinds of medical mysteries that must be solved. And often, when you think the case is solved, it may prove to only be the beginning. So he did all this. The prosecutor called him our hero. Oh. Yeah. I mean, he's saving the day for sure. Definitely.

His theory, this is his reconstruction of how it would have happened. Yeah. She was either at the pond or lured to the pond, which was. wouldn't have been hard to do. It's easy. They could have said, oh, there's a bunch of ducks. They're so cute. Come on down here.

Come feed them with me. Yeah. I'm, Gary. I'm coming. I'm on my way. I'll be right there. Gary either ambushed her from behind, striking her on the head. There's a sub-scalp hemorrhages discovered in the autopsy that are consistent with a blow.

Yeah. That enough to render her dazed and then push her into the water and hold her down. Or she might have been drowned in the house and transported out to here. Oh, wow. Is the other thing. He said, my scenario is that Teresa Rawlins was at the pond, whether she went down there to feed the ducks and fish, which I understand she did quite often, and that fit in, whether somebody else was with her or somebody snuck up on her. I believe she was then struck on the head, pushed into the water, held down forcibly. That would fit in with the bruising in the back, pressing down, squeezing on the shoulder areas, fit in with the cause of some little abrasions, maybe even pushing the head down, causing scrapes from rocks or pebbles.

I think she was drowned, then the tree was brought in place on top of her. Uh-huh. Okay. The zipper marks are a big deal, too, because they say Teresa's jacket had been pulled tight in a way consistent with Gary gripping it from behind to hold her down, which would have created marks. Yeah. And that's a big deal. And the prosecutor says the victim had zipper marks on her. The medical examiner believes Mr. Rollins pulled her jacket tight while holding her down and drowning her.

Wow. None of this looks good for Gare. Gonna plea? Gare bear is in trouble. Oh, boy. They got you, Gare. He says he's innocent as a motherfucker. He's going to run innocent?

This is crazy. Not guilty. Crazy, even though your girlfriend said he told me he killed her. Quack science and she's a lying whore. That's it. I don't know what you're doing. Science. Jesus, the only science I know is if you mix enough battery acid and enough

suit of fed and enough other shit together, you get a product that everybody want to buy. That's the only science I need to know. That drives people crazy. Formula for a good meth batch. That's right. So August 2012 is the trial. Now, the state's theory is either in the house,

in the bathtub, the sink, or the toilet, they think now. They've come to the conclusion that she was drowned in the house. Okay. And they think it was the night before she was drowned. Oh. They think he did it before anybody got there. Like, well, it was still dark outside.

He drowned her, then transported the body to the farm, and positioned the dead tree over her body and set the scene. Now, the problem is he thought somebody would stumble across it. And he'd go, oh, my God, and run over there. But nobody found it. So he had to go find her. He fucked up on that one. What was that? What was the one that...

I forget. There was a movie where a man like kept fight. Oh, never mind. You haven't seen it. It's awful. It's a bad. Is it old? No.

It's like this time, 2006 or whatever. The new guy with DJ Qualls. I saw that. Where he kept punching the kid and knocking him out and then like the hallways cleared. And then he's like, fuck. And then he had to like pull the fire alarm and get everybody to come out. And then he punched it. an already unconscious man.

And then knocked him, so everybody could see it. Anyway. Okay. I just kept seeing that and you said that. And I was like, oh, no, it's a bad movie.

The James probably too. Like 11 people saw it. It's a terrible reference. I saw it in, when it came out on like HBO or something. It was like, yeah, this sucks.

I never seen that again. I saw it in the theater and then I bought it on DVD. Wow. You should see the size of the DJ Qualls poster that Jimmy has at his house. It's remarkable. I fucking love.

I do too. I think he's great. I think he's goddamn great. I'd watch him in anything. He's so good. The show he was on with Jim Jeffries. Yeah, legit.

There you go. Where he was in the wheelchair. He was fucking great in that show. He was so good. Like, just a good actor. It's interesting. Anyway. His story of when he came out as gay is the greatest story of all time.

You'll have to hear Jim Jeffries. They're at an Elton John concert and Jim Jeffrey. It's a mighty fine place to do it. One of the two of them. You want support. That's the place. One of the two of them screamed the F word. And then he was like, now would be a great time to come out. The second F word.

The bad F word. Like the insult. Well, the F word is the F word. That's F word B. Yeah, the gay effort. That's the other effort. Yes, there you go. Yeah, the slur.

And Jim was like, Ah, save my ass now, sir. Tell everybody, tell this entire crowd of Elton John audience, how I'm not a bigot. I don't know what this man is talking about. Then they took him away and beat him senseless. Yeah, it's a, I just love DJ. Anyway, so yeah, I owned the new guy on DVD James because I don't know

T. You must be very proud of that. Watch that bullshit. Oh, man. So that's what their theory is. The defense's theory is, what a tragic accident. That's going to be really. This poor woman.

She went down to feed the fish because she's sweet, heart of gold, and a massive tree fell on her. This investigation, not only is it flawed, not only is it bullshit, but it's also politically motivated. Oh, because mansions involved. This is politics over fact is what this is. They say it's driven by pressure from the governor's office due to the persistent lobbying of these fucking group of guineas. We got in this goddamn courtroom. This guy wants to be a goddamn senator and he's going to use me as the scapegoat. I will not have it.

That's what they're saying. Yeah. So he said the state's own medical examiner. The old medical examiner ruled it an accident and that ruling was correct. just because the family's putting pressure on doesn't mean that science changes. That's their thing here. So the prosecution puts up 20 witnesses. It's a lot.

The defense calls one forensic pathologist, the guy who was doing the autopsy with Dr. Cyril Wecht there. So the prosecution's case here is April's going to testify to Gary's trailer side confession there, tractor side, I should say, and his threats to her and her daughter. Yeah. And his prior statement about getting rid of Teresa. And she said he took me behind the thing, you know, the tractor. He said, I killed Teresa, told me I had to make the 911 call. She did everything that she said she was going to do there.

She testified also that she had not received anything from the state in exchange for her testimony. Okay. She is charged with accessory after the fact, as we remember. Now, Teresa, I'm sorry, Tanya Wagner, who worked there, she testifies that she followed Gary down to the pond, jumped in the water, helped retrieve Teresa's body, and attempted CPR. This poor lady. She didn't know. She was just trying to help. She's doing CPR on a very dead body.

For hours, yeah. That's, wow. Also, she testifies Gary was not wet. She said his clothing was dry when he returned to the house and when emergency responders arrived. She also provides the timeline of events from a rise. at the farm through the lunch break, the timeline that made Gary's story of discovering Teresa at the pond seem, you know, at that moment, very, seem very suspicious and pre-plan, as the prosecutor said.

Kay Rudd, the other farm worker, she was at lunch when she's the one who asked, where the hell's Teresa, Teresa, which initiated this discovery. Right. So Gary's like, either someone's going to stumble upon her or eventually someone will ask about her, and that's when we'll find her. Wow. Wow. The deputy and the coroner here all testified that Gary was dry when they arrived. They play the 911 call with the specific knowledge of what happened to Teresa, even though she's 85 yards away over a hill. They bring up the insurance policies of $500,000 each with high accidental death riders purchased in the weeks before the death. The truck purchase with the salesperson testifying that Gary brought a different woman than his wife to select. vehicle, asked about insurance, and then brought his wife back the next day. Meteorologists testifying about the wind conditions, talking about the October 5th was a calm day,

and the wind would have been insufficient to bring down a dead tree, although there was a wind before that a few days would have taken a tree down just fine. They bring in a friend of the family and the neighbor testifying to Gary physically abusing Teresa in the months before her death. They bring in the original pathologist that provide an autopsy history, and then they bring in Dr. Cyril Wecht. Uh-oh. And he's the coup de grace. He's incredible.

Yeah. His courtroom presentation was described as prosecutors as clear and coherent, the kind of scientific testimony that a jury can follow and believe. Yeah. He is the medical equivalent of part D. as psychological. He's good. Incredibly believable and not just believable, but you go, oh, well, I guess, yeah, that makes all the sense.

You're just good at this. And testifying is 80% of the battle. I mean, you can do all the science you want, but if you can't explain it to the jury in a way that they understand and believe, it doesn't matter what you do. Like, if you watch the whole OJ trial, they bring in Dr. Henry Lee, who's very renowned and his skills are great, but he doesn't. He speaks real good English. That's the problem.

So he's very hard to understand. And when you're speaking in broken English, not using connector words and shit, it's very hard to understand a complex scientific thing. Right. When you're, you don't even know what that guy just said. So that wasn't going to help any. And the old trope of broken English means you don't understand what you're saying. Yeah. Well, you do.

I think that's why he's only using the words he. Yeah. I mean, he speaks fine. Better English than I speak Chinese, I'm sure. But the fact is, I wouldn't want to go to a court in China and testify in Chinese. And that would be terrifying. You know what I mean? That'd be that.

Whoever's, whoever I'm testifying for is not getting anything beneficial on me. No, I really hope he's Chinese, by the way. Yeah, I'm going to fuck it all up. I really hope Dr. Lee is Chinese, by the way, or else I just made a real asshole out of myself. He's got to be. He's Asian. I don't know. He's certainly Asian.

But I'm, Lee sounds like. No, anyway, moving on. Yeah. So he gets up there and does this. He lays out the methodology, his findings. He, his conclusion is that the, they said it was with the authority of someone who'd stood in front of juries for 50 years and explained exactly how people die. He said the injuries don't fit the tree story. No diatoms on the glasses, bruising pattern inconsistent with the tree, but consistent with forcible submersion.

And that's what it is. The prosecutor said Mr. Wecht was one of the final witnesses. He made as clear and coherent to scientific presentation as needed, and that was the type of proof needed to push this case over the top. Hell yeah. What does the defense say, though? They called Dr. Joseph Cohen, who argued that the injuries could be consistent with a tree impact. And they're like, yeah, but you don't know Michael Jackson. Have you seen the inside of JFK's head?

I don't want to hear. You've seen Marilyn Monroe in. in state of, you know, death. That's terrible. Yeah. So he mounted what evidence supports was a plausible if untimely, unpersuasive expert counterargument, they said. Just didn't work here. They said that then they also tried to argue that the reinvestigation had been politically driven again. Right.

He argued the state's own original medical examiners ruled in an accident, and he hadn't persuaded two doctors to change their minds. for nothing, so they were going to get it right and get this guy convicted, and that's what it is. They argue the case against Gary is wholly circumstantial, no eyewitnesses who placed Gary with Teresa at the time of her death. Medical examiners there, the re-investigations politically motivated, the case against him circumstantial. April Bales only testified to save her own ass. Right. Her testimony came only after her arrest, and they're saying that they have a deal in place with her,

whether formal or informal or informal, but it corrupts her credibility. They have a doctor saying... To save her own ass. That would mean that she murdered her. No, no, no. That would mean that she's getting the accessory to murder charge dropped in exchange. Right. But right.

But if she's just here testifying to save her own ass, then that makes your fucking client guilty. That too. That's what I mean. Not good. Save her ass. Like if she did something wrong, he must have done something wrong. Exactly. And these aren't, you know, not a terrible argument.

Yeah. But the problem is the dry clothes, 911 call, truck glasses, insurance affair, prior abuse, Dr. Cyril West. It's a lot here. They even said with April, the defense said it's a desperate lie. You not don't believe a woman who spent two years saying nothing and then says everything once she's arrested. which is very common, by the way, here. I guess all four of the medical expert witnesses at trial, the state's three witnesses, and the defense's one witness, agreed that her, Teresa's body, did not present with any large hemorrhages or broken bones.

They also agreed that on her wounds, the tree could not have knocked her unconscious and that she was conscious while she was submerged in the water, which is horrible. So she would have drowned? Yep, the experts, the prosecution experts and defense experts just disagree on the American. mount of bruising on the back and their ultimate conclusions here. Closing arguments happened. All right. Now the defense, this is attorney Van Bibber. He says April Bales only testified because the state promised to not prosecute her.

He said she knew what they wanted her to say because they'd been trying to get her to say it for two years and they couldn't do it until they put the cuffs on her. She knew what they wanted. In the end, she gave it to them for her freedom. Yeah. he said she's joined their team. She's gotten on the governor's freight train express. We're all going to railroad Gary Rollins. So now what does she do to get out of it?

She's not in jail. She's not been indicted. You heard that she was arrested. She was taken before a magistrate, but she's not been indicted. You can't get convicted if you're not indicted. And who hands out the indictments? Points to the prosecutor and says, that man right there. That man.

He says, P.K. Millam, the prosecutor. Is he going to indict his star witness, do you think? Is that what's going to really happen here? After all is said and done, he gets his conviction, thanks to her lie. He's going to repay her by indicting her? You think they thought of that? Or do you think they thought that? Yeah.

So the prosecution says, that is insulting. I dare you, sir. I would never. And smacked him with a glove and fucking challenge him to a duel, yes. he asserted there was no agreement with her and that he is planning on indicting her for being an accessory to murder as soon as this trial's over.

He said, we interviewed her again and again and again and gave her every opportunity in the world to help herself and she didn't and she got arrested for it and she's charged with accessory after the fact. Now he wants you to believe that she's getting some kind of consideration out of that. You can bet you're behind

that I'm going to indict her next month. You can bet you're behind, buddy. If she'd told us this from the beginning two years ago, three years ago now, this case would have been totally different. But she held that information in her pocket for two years and didn't tell anyone until she was in trouble and she tried to save her own behind. Well, it's too late at this point. She's being prosecuted. He likes behinds. She's being prosecuted as an accessory after the fact in this case.

And he said this on closing statement? That's right. And then they said, well, they said, why? said if Miss April O'Brien or Bales, whatever you want, whatever her name she goes by, had been given this information, it could have saved thousands of man hours and tens of thousands of dollars for us. So I tried to indict her, wanted to indict her for the accessory after the fact because we knew it all along, well, not all along, but very shortly into the investigation, that her, that

she knew more than she was letting on. And that was simply because when she made the 911 call where she was at, she couldn't possibly see Teresa's body. So we knew she had more information because she gave an accurate description as to what happened without being able to see it. So we knew that she had this information, but she continually denied that she had any information about what was going on before or after the fact. It wasn't until we had spent all this money, all this time in the case that she finally told us what she knew, which was that Gary had told her that he'd killed Teresa. So I personally was upset with her. The state police are also upset with her because all this time of ours that she wasted really could have changed this, you know, this case early about how we performed it.

You know, we wouldn't have had to spend all this time if we knew he'd already told somebody. We wouldn't have had to spend all this extra money and time. So my plan was to indict her. She wasn't getting any breaks from me. Yeah. I'm real mad. That's right. She said, he said, she's going down too.

Don't you worry to the jury. So the jury goes in and deliberates one hour and ten minutes in the room deliberate. And when they came out, he probably, he's such a dipshit, he probably went, oh boy, they must have thought I was really innocent. Awesome. Run it up. So innocent. I'll start. You guys start lighting these cuffs up.

I'm going to get myself ready to go now. Guilty of first degree murder. Incredibly. You're fun. Now the sentencing, very simple. It's mercy or no mercy. Death or life? No, there's no death.

It's either life without or life with. Okay. So that's mercy or no mercy. All right. Teresa's four sisters address the court. No mercy. They talk about her compassion. They speak of how she was a lovely woman and a beloved hairdresser and festival organizer.

People, all the farm people loved her and a woman who couldn't hear about someone in need without trying to help them. They speak of years of knowing Gary was a piece of shit, basically. We've always hated him. We have never liked that man. Let me tell you a sudden. You get a group of Italian sisters together. They will break down everything about that guy. And if they don't like him, he ain't going to be around very long, usually.

That's how it works. That's how it's always worked in my family. And if he sticks around and long enough to talk to a judge about it, we're going to tell you every Christmas that he's ruined. Every goddamn Christmas, all about it. Yep. So they said that years of telling themselves It wasn't their place to get her to leave him and all that kind of thing Then mom stands up

Mama Velma here she is Teresa's mother She walks to within feet of Gary Which I'm sure they were like uh oh There's ballast going do we need to tackle an old lady right now Because this is getting dangerous Should we stop her or should we just watch Should we just let her do it?

How about how bad could she hurt him? You know she's old She got an apple knife I think she's 80 at this point or something, or in her 80s, she walks up and says, why did you do this to my daughter? Which is just fucking, oh, that's great. Good for you, Velma. So, Gary then speaks.

What? What's he going to say? To the judge or to them? It's during sentencing, so it's to whoever he wants to, to the judge, to the people. Well, he turns his attention to Joe and Velma. Oh, not smart. Nope. He says that he loved their daughter.

He loved Teresa. He didn't commit the crime. He says he wasn't even there when it happened. Oh, boy. Wasn't even there. The judge says, quote, after hearing all the evidence, I have no doubt that Rollins is guilty and that he was motivated by lust, greed, and other evil. No mercy. You, sir, may fuck off.

Life without parole. You can't talk to the family and claim your innocence after. wild. 12 people just told you you're guilty. Especially, dude, the evidence was, come on, man. This isn't like, this is obvious, bud. This is obvious. They buried you in evidence. They, they not, they put a thousand pound tree on you in a pond worth of evidence. They did the same thing to you that you did to her.

They dug this poor woman up three years after the fact and found more evidence. You, you're in a lot of trouble, man. And the family had to go through three years of shit before they got to. this happening, you know, an actual fucking conviction. Three young ladies that wanted answers on their sister's death are the reason that this

kept going. Otherwise, he could do it again. April's in so much danger. There'd just be a farm. He'd be threshing people and burying them and who knows. And he would have owned it. Yeah, he would have.

Now this is how classy the family is too. The family's attorney said that They were, quote, just thrilled to see justice finally done. Then the sisters ran into April in the courthouse hallway because April's free. Oh, boy. Now, this could be bad. This could be three women about to just go to jail themselves.

Four Italian chicks about to beat the shit out of a girl. Oh, there's four. There's five daughters. There's four. Yeah. There's goddamn four of these chicks. That's your northeast, south and west. You're in Trump.

Oh, you are a deep shit. And trust me, four sisters. They've done this before. You know what I mean? They know the angles. You're going around the back. She's a good one to hold her. I'm good at punching.

I mean, that's what it works out. Like, I know this for my family. But they're so goddamn classy. They walk up and thank her. Oh. That's how classy. We're in trouble. They said, if you had kept silent, we'd be fucked.

Thank you for telling them. I don't care how long it took. Thank you for telling the truth, which is, I couldn't imagine doing that. I think I'd be like, I'm going to leave. I'm not going to talk to her. fucker. The prosecutor said there's still some unanswered questions as to how exactly Teresa was killed, but they were able to get some questions answered too.

And they said that, you know, the family did a good job with what they did, really. And he believes that the conviction will stand and the sentence will withhold all appeal challenges. He said the judge gave Gary really every advantage he could ask for at trial. So they don't really have a lot to appeal. Okay. Next up, all the shit he has to appeal. Yeah.

Because what that says is I did a perfect job. Yeah, I'm amazing. Which is, yeah. So they appeal based on, number one, the April Bales problem. He said, you can bet you're behind. I'm going to indict Ms. Bales next month. He never indicted ever. Ever.

Not the next month, not the next year. Never. Never happened. Just let her go. Which, that's lying to the jury. That's not good. Good. So following the trial, the felony accessory after the fact charge just disappeared. Eventually was dismissed.

Really? The defense attorney had argued all along the state had made a deal with April and that she's getting leniency in exchange for a testimony, which is something the jury needs to know. What is inducing your time? They don't have to say that it's not true, but you need to tell them what they're getting. And a lot of times they do that fun. They say this person, I just watched the Corey Richens trial, which is an incredibly interesting trial. and they got the lady who sold her the pills that she allegedly gave to her husband to poison him. And it's very similar type of thing.

What's the problem with saying? Yeah, we've got a case, but it's strengthened by this person's voice. And yeah, we could have indicted her. And we're not going to because she's helping us get a murderer off the street. What's the problem with that? That's exactly what they do with her. And this is the same situation. This person denied doing this several times.

before she finally got busted for something. And then they were like, hey, you want to talk now? And she was like, let's talk all about it. And they gave her immunity. What's the problem with that? That's what happens. And it was out in court and everybody knew about it. So, yeah, they said that the jury convicted Gary partly on the basis that believing April's

testimony came at a personal cost to her, but it didn't. No personal cost. This belief became the basis for the main part of the appeal that the state had withheld evidence of a plea agreement would. the key witness, with the key witness for Christ's sake, which is a Brady violation, they're saying. That, if you don't know, the Brady deal, it's Brady v. Maryland, requires the prosecution to disclose evidence favorable to the defense, including secret deals with witnesses. Anything that could help them, you have to tell them. It's called a fair trial for a reason. Yeah. So they go to the West Virginia

Supreme Court of Appeals, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, not the West Virginia Court of Supreme Appeals, which would be a very different court. So the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals considers his arguments, including the Brady claim and sufficiency of evidence here. And they affirm his conviction in full. In full in 2014. The court finds no reversible error. Conviction stands. But a dissenting judge has a little bit of different shit to say, basically.

They say that the Brady issue is a big goddamn deal. problem. Yeah. And we'll get his quote in this. There's a habeas proceeding after that, which is the real big deal here. He follows a state habeas petition. And at that hearing, shit gets interesting. He argued he was prejudiced by a remark made by the prosecutor during closing arguments,

which is that you bet you're behind them to indict her. The circuit court erred by refusing to strike a juror, and we'll tell you why. They erred by failing to strike a biased juror upon discovering a. previous relationship between the juror and the prosecutor. Oh. We'll talk about what that relationship is. Oh, no, they were not fucking. The most innocent thing possible, but they still knew each other.

The circuit court erroneously permitted the presentation of evidence of domestic violence, but they said it's an ongoing pattern. The state's presentation of three medical experts was cumulative and prejudicial. Like if you have three experts and I only have one, they're going to believe three over one, is what they're saying. 20 to 1 is a pretty bad. Yeah, it's a pretty bad ratio. Yeah.

They said he was subjected to an unfair surprise when one of the state's medical expert witnesses testified in a manner inconsistent with their original report. And they say the cumulative effect of all of these errors warrant a complete reversal. So they have April's public defender up there. Her name's Cynthia Stanton. She says that April's charges were she was told in an oral agreement. with the prosecutor that April's charges would be dismissed or reduced to a misdemeanor with no jail time in exchange for truthful testimony against Gary. So she admitted she received a letter from Gary's trial attorney prior to the trial asking

if April and the state had reached a plea agreement. This letter requested that Ms. Stanton reply in writing. The prosecutor also received a copy of this letter. She never replied to the letter. She explained that her failure to reply to the letter was based. on her disdain for Gary's lawyer. Hated him. Hates him.

Personal doesn't like Gary's lawyer, so she's not going to answer a very legally fucking requisite question. This is crazy. Because fuck him. Yeah. Because fuck him.

I don't like him. Yeah. She also, Ms. Stanton, the lawyer, the public defender, was asked if the prosecutor asked her not to disclose the plea agreement to Gary's trial counsel,

she said, no, I made that decision. All right. Okay. Not yours to make. Following the trial, Ms. Stanton testified that she met with the circuit court judge and prosecutor and informed then that she had an ethical duty to report prosecutor Millam for ethics violations based on his statement at trial that he intended to prosecute April, which was counter to their oral agreement. Either you're lying there or you're lying to me. Either one, it's not ethical. There's a lie.

Yeah. There's a lie. During cross-examination, Ms. Stanton, the public defender, agreed that the plea agreement could have changed based on the court. of the trial testimony from April. She said, yeah, if the plea agreement could have changed, it would have, it could have changed. She had, if she had not done well on the stand, I believe it could have, she would have had to have plea to a misdemeanor. So Gary's counsel asked Stanton, if the prosecutor kept his agreement with you and your client, and she said the charges were dismissed by the circuit court judge, not by the prosecutor. She explained that the judge dismissed the charges after three months of inaction because they didn't fucking do anything.

Oh, so they filed the charges and then didn't do anything and then... And then let a judge dismiss it so their fingerprints are on. Because on the docket, they just, nothing was done here, dismissed. Yep. My opinion, anyway. They said when asked if she knew that this thing was going to be the manner in which the case was dealt with, Stanton stated, I suspected that. After I went to a judge, I suspected that that would be what would happen. While testifying that the prosecutor upheld her as part of the bargain, she also said,

the prosecutor wasn't the one that actually dismissed it, but no, she was not indicted, and that was the plea agreement, but the judge dismissed it. She also said that this was common practice. She explained a motion was filled to waive the time limit of April's preliminary hearing and that the motion included the notation further investigation. And that's how it went. Sure. So the county prosecutor, the current county prosecutor, not the one who prosecuted Gary,

but the current one, Jonathan Sweeney, at the time this is going on. who was assistant prosecutor at the time of the trial. He testifies and says that he reviewed documents from the magistrate court showing April's preliminary hearing had been repeatedly delayed pending further investigation. He said that's how his office traditionally handled oral plea agreements with cooperative witnesses. He says a sticky note found on the prosecutor's file indicated they were going to hold this in abeyance until after the grand jury so they could keep the pressure on the witness. to testify. Okay. Now, April testifies here and contradicts her trial testimony.

Oh, April. Saying it was not about the murder, but about this stuff. Yeah, it was her understanding that her attorney had reached an agreement with the prosecutor under which she would not be indicted if she testified. She testified there, she thought there was a plea agreement and she wouldn't be charged. She couldn't remember who promised her that. When asked if the prosecutor agreed to not to prosecute, her if she testified, she stated, I don't think so. I don't remember how that all came about.

However, she acknowledged that she had given a deposition in which she testified that it was the prosecutor her promised her to not prosecute her if she testified. So she also testified that no one, including the prosecutor, told her to keep the plea agreement secret. She never signed a plea agreement and that her lawyer did not go over the terms of the agreement with her. They left it vague, so on the stand she could say there's no deal. Oh. That's a That way, because if it was all signed, then she would have had to say, otherwise it'd be perjury, that I have a deal in place. And so with the prosecutor, he'd get fucking disbarred. Sure.

But instead, it's an oral agreement. So technically, she didn't perjure herself. There's no. Yep. She said that during the trial, Gary's trial, she testified she'd not been promised anything in exchange for her testimony. She was then asked by Gary's counsel, as you sit here today, were you promised that you could not be prosecuted in exchange for your testimony? Is that correct? And she said, yes.

That's what it is now. However, during cross-examination, she was asked whether she testified truthfully during the trial, and she said, yes. They said, Ms. Bales, in the three times you testified under oath in this matter, being the trial, your deposition, and now here today, which time would your memory be better about all these events? It's all different. And she said, at the trial, and they said at the trial back then.

And she nodded. They said, did you tell the truth? And she said, yes. The original prosecutor gets in there, and he says the state did not have an agreement with April, stated that he never granted immunity to someone in a murder case without putting the agreement in writing. Further, the prosecutor testified he intended to indict Ms. Bales following the trial. However, after researching the potential criminal charge against April, he determined that an employee could not be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact,

for the criminal acts of her employer. Really? It wasn't in the furtherance of farm work. What are you talking about? You can't. Yes, you can. I think they probably do that in the mob a lot. It's only what is your employer.

That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. He then says his representation to the jury that he was going to indict her was truthful. So they said, so you previously testified here that you intended on prosecuting her all the way through the trial. That was not truthful, was it? and he said, yeah, it is. Oh, boy. But you didn't. So it's definitely not.

Whether your intent was at the time was truthful. Now that it hasn't happened, it wasn't truthful because it didn't happen. And there was no intent at that point because he had already made the deal with her. And it was on closing statement that he said that. So there was clear. She'd already testified. You had no intention of prosecuting her ever again. During her testimony, she said that.

It's crazy. The second thing that they talk about here is that one of the jurors was April's uncle. Stop it. I couldn't fucking make that up. You can't have family involved in this. Couldn't make that up. Nelson Paul Bales. But you just have Teresa's sisters on the jury.

Yeah, have them on there. They're, I'm sure, unbiased. Damn it. Though the original witness call sheet, which was read to the jury during the voir dire, was to ensure no connections between jurors and witnesses, it's stated. April Bales' name as April O'Brien. He didn't know? Which he didn't recognize. When Ms. Bales was called to testify, she was identified as April Bales.

Nelson Bales, the juror, according to this Gary's filing here, knew or should have known the familial connection between him and Ms. Bales. After hearing April Bales identify herself as April Bales during the testimony, he should have alerted the court to a potential conflict. Okay. Now, the habeas court heard this testimony and said April Bales testified she'd never met Paul Nelson Bales prior to the 2018 hearing in this habeas proceeding. So until right now, she doesn't know this guy, even though they're related. Real?

Which, that happens. He said Nelson Paul Bales testified that he never met April Bales prior to the October 18 hearing, 2018 hearing on the proceeding. Based on testimony of Nelson Paul Bales and April Bales, it's clear that the witness, April Bales and the juror had no knowledge of each other at the time of the trial in the underlying criminal matter. Didn't know each other. That's fascinating. Which that happens. They also, he also asserts ineffective assistance of counsel under this assignment of error saying that his counsel should have noticed that Nelson and April had the same last name.

Oh, God. He said this should have led to a line of inquiry where the connection between them could have been uncovered and you could have removed him from the jury. The last name alone, it's the exact same last name. You can't just go, do you know that person? Are you guys related at all? Yeah. I've seen that before. And when they're doing jury stuff, I've seen that before.

Smith for Chris sake. I don't give a fuck. It happens. Yeah, they will ask about that. Next up, another juror problem. Yeah. Gary insists the circuit court erred by allowing another juror, uh, juror Chrislip, to remain in the jury,

despite the discovery after jury selection was complete. that this juror was a former client of the prosecutor. Okay. The prosecutor immediately should have said, I know that guy. Used to be my client. Off the jury. Fucking insane,

but nobody said anything. Dude, come on. Get out of jury duty every time. Yeah, you can't have this. I know him. You can't have this backwood shit going on. You can't do it. This is the light of the rest of everyone is shining upon this,

and you can't do your normal bullshit. You got to get it right. Specifically. like this. That's what I mean. You've got a dead lady horribly fucking murdered and you're fucking around like this.

I get the idea of wanting to get the conviction, but you've got to get it right or else it doesn't stand. So they said, you previously filed a motion, this is to the defense attorney, to remove the juror. Do you want to renew that motion since we have an alternate juror?

His attorney, though, said, no, sir. So his attorney didn't file to get which would have preserved it from you. They knew. So they said, you just want Mr. Chryslipp to stay. And he said, well, Your Honor, I don't want to waive my original objection to him, but I would choose him over the alternate.

Oh. Okay. Well, the alternate is juror Montgomery, who was biased because the children of the prosecutor and the juror had played sports together. Could we just get 12 fucking people who don't know any of these people from Adam? Can we just get that, please? It's too hard. Dude, you can't govern yourself then in these towns. You have to go to somewhere else to where.

There's 300 people here. They can't do it. We don't. Yeah. That's what I mean. You have to go somewhere else where you're not all known to each other. I'm sorry. This is crazy.

If at the town reviews, you guys, lawyers, prosecutors, go to niche. If it says everybody knows each other, different venue. Different venue, change a venue. Right on. Also, the domestic violence testimony, they do that. They talk about that. They say that the only evidence explaining how the bruising occurred was the alleged statements of his now deceased wife as presented through the testimony of Jimmy Thompson. He argues that the statements are not reliable enough to support a finding by a preponderance of the evidence that Gary Rollins caused the bruising through acts of domestic violence, meaning on the pictures to make it an ongoing thing.

In conjunction with this argument, he argues that Mr. Thompson's testimony as to the specifics of his discussion with Ms. Rollins or inadmissible hearsay that the photographs which relied on these hearsay statements were not relevant. Okay, that's how that goes. So the conclusion here, they say that Nelson Bales and April Bales had never met each other, did not know they were related when the trial occurred. The court held that when a prospective juror is closely related to a prosecuting witness or a witness for the prosecution who has taken an active part in the prosecution or is particularly interested in the result, he should be excluded upon the motion of the adverse party. They said clearly the purpose of this rule is to prevent a juror from being biased in favor of a family member's testimony. We disagree with the state's argument that because Nelson Bales and April Bales had never met and didn't know they were related, that there could be no concern that Mr. Bales was prejudiced against Gary in favor of Ms. Bales due to a familiar relationship and no concern that Ms. Bale's testimony was somehow impacted. That's what that, that's the dissenting one there.

They also talk about the deal. They said on the issue of whether a deal existed, the evidence is mixed. This is what the court says. It finds the circuit court's finding that no consummated plea agreement existed was plausible. Okay. What they say, we emphasize, though, Ms. Stanton, the public defender for April, testified that there was a plea agreement that the alleged agreement, she said, was reached, lacked a number of definite terms. First, it was unclear what relief she'd received for her testimony. She stated that Ms. Bales would, depending on the...

the veracity of her testimony, either have her charges dismissed or she'd have to plead to a misdemeanor with no jail time. They said, clearly, there could be no Brady violation without a plea agreement. So you could just make an oral agreement. Don't sign anything. Put them up there. Have them say, I have no deal. I'm doing this.

Just get it off my chest. And the prosecutor can say that. And that's perfectly fucking legal. Come on, man. I guess so. That's wild. That's fucking one. Another, not everywhere.

That's so weird. They said, however, he testified after researching the issue, he determined that an employee could not be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact for the criminal acts of her employer. Finally, without existence of the plea agreement, the petitioner cannot sustain his argument that Ms. Bale's trial testimony was false. Wow, that's ridiculous. The West Virginia Supreme Court majority affirms. The dissent is on the Brady law. They said the conviction on first-degree murder for his wife, which, she was sentenced to life in prison without mercy,

was based in large part on the bombshell testimony of his mistress, April Bales. Okay, they go on, blah, blah, blah. The credibility of Ms. Bale's trial testimony hinged upon the prosecutor's false statement to the jury that Ms. Bales was not getting some kind of consideration for her testimony and the promise of, quote,

you can bet you're behind them to indict Ms. Bales next month. Yeah. The problem here is that his statement was not actually true. Rather, the substantial evidence of record showed the state had made a deal with Ms. Bales, Bales in exchange for a testimony, exactly what we sent. So that's a lot.

They said the prosecutor's untruthfulness with respect to Ms. Bales was seemingly without limits. The majority recounts that prosecutor testified that he intended to indict Ms. Bales following the trial. However, he didn't. So also the prosecutor said, quote, I don't believe she committed a crime because I don't believe she willfully called 911. I think she was under duress.

If she testifies what she told us to previously, then I do not believe she committed a crime, and I'll put that in writing as being the state's position. That is interesting. That's interesting here. Despite making this in open court, he said, you can bet you're behind him and indict him, thereby bolstering her credibility. They said the majority, this is the dissenting opinion, had failed to recognize that prosecutor played fast and loose with the truth and his relation.

to Mrs. and as it related to Ms. Bales and clearly erred in giving any credence whatsoever to the prosecutor's testimony related to the existence of a plea agreement. So either way, affirmed. All the way affirmed. Affirmed. Yeah, there's a dissenting argument, but that's how it works. But my point is they didn't take it to the U.S. Supreme Court yet. Not yet. They tried to go federal with another one in 2020, 2024. I think the 2024 one that he filed might still be in the works pending. I mean, I don't like that. No, no. I hate saying Jesus Christ, that's not fair to the guy because, fuck him, because he's a goddamn piece of shit who murdered this nice lady. But at the same time, we got to do this shit right. Yeah.

It's tough. We got to do it right so he stays there. I want it done right so he doesn't get out. That's the point. Not so he goes free. I want him to fucking not get out. I do like the statement that she didn't commit a, uh, a crime. rhyme because she was

instructed to do so under duress and she's, I mean, they're making it like she's a completely helpless girl. That's what I mean. If you're in the fucking mafia,

right? Yeah, yeah, normal intelligence. Yeah, if you're, she writes and does numbers. Would she get out of the way? I don't think she might. If you're in the mafia

and your boss tells you to do something, they don't go, oh, well, the boss told you and, you know, you were in trouble if you didn't do it. Yeah, he's the boss. He told me.

He pays me. Would your family be in danger if a mob boss was mad at you? More than likely, yeah. But that doesn't fly, so why is it fly for her? I don't know. There we go. 2016, there is, I guess this is a movie, a TV show, the body detective, one hour. So it's got to be a TV movie.

Oh. And it says that it's all about Teresa Rollins, found dead face down in a pond. It's written, what is it, stars Tammy Lynn Caliph. I don't know who the fuck that is. I don't know. So yeah, there's that. Then there's a federal habeas. It doesn't matter.

There you go. He still sits in prison. Poor Teresa is still in the ground. And hopefully at least her family gets, I hate that they have to keep going back in this. And imagine if you're them and you'd want to strangle that prosecutor. You dumb fuck. Why would you say that? Because it's not like saying we have a deal in place would have made her testimony.

Like the jury would have went, oh, fuck her then. Stop. They would have still believed her. He still did what he did. Yep. They would have still believed it. That's the way the evidence stacked up. It was unnecessary for them to do that.

That's what was so fucking stupid about it. And the juror thing is so fucked. That's just weird. Yeah, that's just make sure nobody's fucking related. Make sure you don't know any, but come on, man. Blowing it for no reason. There you go, everybody. That is Nettie, West Virginia, as crazy as any other West Virginia story.

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Hit me with the name of the people. all the names of the people who would never, ever, ever claim a thousand pound tree fell on us when they just drowned us in their own toilet. Please, Jimmy, hit me with that list. This executive producer, Gary Howard in... Gary. Kakuna, Wisconsin. Is that right? I don't know where that is. Happy hours in Splendora, Texas.

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