Small Town Murder - The Ozark Thumper - Coward, South Carolina
Episode Date: July 3, 2026This week, in Coward, South Carolina, a divorced couple can't seem to stop fighting, with the wife constantly stalking the ex-husband, and even severely beating him with a large stick that's used to c...heck a large truck's tire pressure. When this man disappears, everyone assumes that his ex had something to do with it, but it seems like it may be "no body, no crime". Until one day, when a man recovers what he thinks is a pumpkin, wrapped in a towel. But it definitely isn't a pumpkin. Things get really crazy form there!! Along the way, we find out that naming your town after an insult that no one wants to be called is an interesting choice, that an "Ozark Thumper" was not at all what we thought it was, and that if you're going to get rid of a decapitated body, you need to find a REALLY good hiding spot!! New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com 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!!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.
Yay, and Choo!
Oh, yay, indeed, Jimmy.
Yay, indeed.
My name is James Petrigal.
I'm here with my co-host.
I'm Jimmy Wiseman.
Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today, all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station.
We have a wild show for you, as usual today.
Just a weird one of those.
We'll get into it.
Don't worry.
It's a weird one, so it'll be a lot of fun.
Can't wait to get into that.
Before we do, head over to shut up and give me murder.com.
Get your tickets for live shows.
They are available right there.
Next live shows that we have available to get are September the 18th at the PAPS in Milwaukee.
Not a lot of tickets left for that one.
If you want to get in there, get those tickets right now.
Then the next night, get your tickets for the state theater in Minneapolis.
Get those right now.
We're excited about those shows a lot.
We're going to that area of the country in a nice time.
year.
Beautiful.
Come on out and see us.
Then October, Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, November, Terrytown, and Boston.
So get your tickets right now.
Shut up and give me murder.com.
Also, you should check out our other two shows.
Because if you like this, I don't see why you wouldn't like that.
We'll put it that way.
Yeah.
Crime in sports is one.
You go, well, I don't like sports.
That's for you don't have to like sports.
We're just talking about the whole thing is someone's fall from grace.
Here's a person who didn't have to screw up and shows to anyway.
It's a lot of fun.
And they did it.
And they did it.
We just finished up a big Yahweh Ben-Jawa murder cult series, too.
So check that out.
And also listen to your stupid opinions because it is just hilarious.
It's just hilarious.
I love listening to people's complaints and grievances.
It's fun.
It's a good time.
It's so good.
Then get yourself Patreon because that's where it's at.
Patreon.com slash crime in sports, just like the name of that other show that you don't listen to.
Check that out.
Anybody $5 a month or above.
That will get you everything that we have, everything that we can give.
The blood from our veins, that's all there.
First of all, as soon as you subscribe, you're going to get almost 400 back bonus episodes.
You've never heard before.
It's a whole separate feed there.
Then you get new ones every other week, one crime and sports, one small town murder, and you get them all.
This week is no different.
This week for crime and sports, we're going to do hostage situations, part two, just because the first one was so much fun.
Honestly, it went so much better than we thought.
We were like, well, we need to do the part two here.
then for small town murder it's back again everybody it is that time i feel like we're
mcdonald's announcing the macribb or some shit like when we do this the prisoner dating game is
back everybody there it is you know how that goes i line up four bachelors four bachelorets in front
of jimmy and the only thing they have in common is they are all incarcerated violent felons
and what we do there is jimmy picks one of each based solely on the profile they present just what they say about
themselves and then we get to find out what they did and how wrong of a decision that he made.
It's great.
It's a lot of fun.
Can't wait for it.
Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of that.
And there's more.
Oh.
You get everything we put out.
Crime and Sports.
Your stupid opinions, small town murder.
All ad free with that Patreon as well.
What?
Just take it.
Add free.
Damn it.
And then you also get a shout out at the end of the regular show too.
So you can't beat it.
Get in there and do it.
patreon.com slash crime in sports.
That said, I think it's time, everybody.
What do you say?
It's time to sit back here.
We've got to clear the lungs here.
What do you say?
Arms to the sky.
Let's all shout.
Shut up and give me murder.
Let's do this, everybody.
Okay.
Let's go on a trip, shall we?
Yeah.
We are going to South Carolina this week.
All right.
down to Coward, South Carolina.
With a D or no D?
D. C-O-W-A-R-D, Coward, South Carolina.
What the fuck?
There you go.
And the way it's, what it's named, there's a lot of, a lot of, you know, contention over how the name came, too.
So that'll be interesting.
Next week, we're in Chicken Shit, North Dakota.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're in Pussy, Minnesota after that.
It's going to be good.
In Yellowbelly.
Yeah, Yellowbelly, Montana is where we're going, Nick.
Eastern South Carolina this is.
About an hour and 20 to Myrtle Beach, so not too far from there.
About two and a half hours to Charlotte, if you want to go up that direction.
And about three hours and 15 minutes to Travelers Rest, South Carolina.
Our last South Carolina episode, episode 671, baby-faced and deadly.
That was a bad guy.
It was pretty remote shit, huh?
Yeah, yeah, that was pretty remote.
Travelers rest.
No, no, this one.
This is remote, too.
It's not really remote, but it's very small, as we'll talk about.
This is in Florence County, area code 843 and 854, which seems to be a lot of South Carolina.
Population here is 612.
Tiny, tiny.
Pretty damn small.
Median household income here way under the national average, $40,536.
What?
Why?
I don't know.
And then the median home cost is way lower than the national average, $134,600.
So basically, it's like 1991 here.
You make 40 grand, your house is $130,000.
What is happening?
They're just, I think they're just caught in a time warp.
I really do.
A lot of these places, that's what it seems like.
They're like just behind everybody.
I mean, the housing prices, that's a pretty good thing to be behind in, I guess.
History of this town.
Okay.
It's all going to be all about the name that we're going to talk about.
The most likely account, according to the historical society here, is that in 1831, Captain Solomon Coward,
was granted 126 acres spanning a section of the Lynch's River.
Jesus, that's a bad one for South Carolina,
in Southern Florence County, which at the time was within the Williamsburg District.
Then it wasn't until the early 20th century that they actually adopted the name Coward.
Some other records indicate that the town was named in honor of Colonel Asbury Coward,
who was a Confederate colonel,
and later became commandant of the South Carolina Military Academy.
Other records indicate the town was named for John Wilson Coward,
a member of the Committee of 50,
which was responsible for petitioning the state of South Carolina for the charter,
for the charter which incorporated the county of Florence.
How do you run around with that as your last name?
This many people.
And like military men too.
Yeah.
A captain, a colonel.
Yeah.
How do you go into the military?
Follow the coward, everyone.
We're going.
Follow corporal coward.
He shouldn't advance beyond private, for Christ's sake.
I love how it's Colonel and Captain, which is hilarious because it's just illiterate.
It's great.
I love it.
So they also, Coward became a farming community.
It's real rural out here.
So, I mean, tobacco and cotton and corn were the primary cash crops back in like the 40s.
And its lumber industry was supported by the railroad because they needed their lumber.
So that's how it worked.
It also was home to a sawmill that was operated and it's kind of the whole town employment for a long time.
Town wasn't incorporated until 1963.
And they have some problems.
In recent years, the town has been troubled by rising water levels in the Lynch's River and increased flooding.
They're the ones that have it all.
Yeah.
If it keeps going, they might not be a town anymore because it might just flood out.
There's a couple of places that are like that right now.
It's happening a lot.
Here are reviews.
There's only one review of this town that exists with 600 people.
It's not a surprise.
It's four stars.
Coward is a good place to live in.
It's a good place to start a small business,
but you do have to know the people around in order to work with them.
It's a nightmare.
They won't allow it, huh?
It sounds like a nightmare.
You have to kiss a bunch of yokel's asses if you want to open a fucking ice cream stand.
No, I don't think so.
Things to do in this.
town. Here we go. The Coward Harvest Festival. Yeah. That is about it. It's got a parade.
It starts at 10.30 a.m. Followed by a day. Oh, yeah. Followed by a day of family fun.
I believe this is going to be fast. With inflatables, face painting, and a balloon artist for the kids.
Oh, boy. Delicious food vendors, art and craft vendors, and the third annual car show.
That's the big one. That's where everybody loves it. And that's the whole separate thing.
they say it's judged by a panel from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The show...
Oh, this is a whole deal.
It's a whole... This is like the whole day. Yeah. This is... I mean, there's a parade and all that,
but then you go back to the car show. Um, so they will recognize the top 35 entries,
the top five rat rods and the present best in show awards for both classic and modern vehicles.
You're telling me, in 900 people, there are five rat rods?
600. I see...
The whole county's got to come out for this, but even...
I don't think there's five rat rods
and a goddamn whole county down there.
That's unbelievable.
They have the top five of them.
Must be a big deal.
Well, you know what you get if you win.
This is why.
This is the thing.
I mean,
you'd come from far and wide for this.
Winners will receive state plaque awards.
Oh, yeah.
So like a plaque that's the shape of South Carolina.
Piece of loose sight in the shape of South Carolina.
My uncle had a 67 dart that was, it was,
I mean, the dart, that's not a very,
You'd think it wouldn't be very...
It was a beautiful car, though.
And he had a trophy room, James, was just
pieces of wood cut out in the state of Arizona
all over his fucking room.
Yeah.
With whatever car show it was.
He's got state plaques, baby.
Yeah.
And of course, his name was Ricky, so likely...
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, obviously.
Ricky can't live long.
Rickies don't live long, as we know.
Ricky buys it on a dirt bike.
That's just how it works.
We all know that.
So.
You bought it in the sun, Jen.
Oh, that's not good.
There's also another thing separate of this.
Explore the treetops.
Oh, what is that?
What is that?
Swip lining?
Walk the 147 foot high suspension canopy walk.
No thanks.
At Lynch's River County Park for sweeping bird's eye views of the river and cypress trees.
Suspension canopy walk?
Who the fuck?
That sounds like one of those bridges that like moves and, you know, in every movie.
It probably is.
those scary bridges.
You probably tethered to a fucking table or something.
Get the fuck out of here. I'm not doing that down there.
I'm not going up there. Jesus. I'd rather do one of those
bouncy things in Mexico than fucking do that. That sounds crazy.
I want to see from up there, I'll fly a fucking drone.
Yeah, I'll fly a drone. I'll get in a plane and fly over this place because I'm not
stopping here. So that's good.
Anyway, that said, let's talk.
Let's talk about a murder, everybody.
Here we go. Here we go. Let's start out with the main players here.
All right. Let's talk about Brenda Miles, okay?
Brenda is born in 1964 here.
Yeah.
Now, she is apparently married and divorced, and by the early 2000s has a teenage son that lives with her.
And she ends up getting remarried to a man named Randy Dellen, D-E-L-Y-N.
Dillon, Dillon, I don't know.
Bratsky is his name.
B-R-A-T-S-C-H-I.
Bratsky.
Okay.
He's born November 1st, 1950, so a little bit older than her.
He, his parents are Alfred and Dorothy.
And his dad's name is Alfred Gilbert and goes by AG.
Hell yeah.
And his real middle name is Hawkeye.
What?
His dad's real middle name is Hawkeye.
How cool is that?
Alfred Hawkeye Gilbert.
Alfred Gilbert Hawkeye Bratsky.
That's his name.
A.G. Hawkeye.
Bradley, Bratsky, that's what he goes by.
That's awesome.
I would drop that last name and just go A.G. Hawkeye.
That sounds awesome.
It's a cool name, man.
So he meets Brenda, Randy does, and they get married and live in a trailer together and everything
else, as we'll talk about.
Randy works at a place called Smurf it, Smurf it, like Smurf IT, one word.
Smurf it, which just sounds like a smurf that's had enough.
Oh, Smurf it.
That's it, man.
Smurf this.
At the end of his rose.
Yeah, at the end of his little blue rose.
Ah, smurf it, man.
Never mind.
I've had it.
No, no, smurf you.
Smurf this all.
I'm done.
So tired of smurf it.
Just brushing me off.
She smirfed him good.
I'm not doing it.
I'm like, no.
She cheated on me.
Smurfing this guy.
Smurfing that guy.
I've had enough.
Smurf at all.
She smurfed papa.
It's enough now.
Smurf made a tears.
Oh, smurf my life.
This is bullshit.
I'm at it.
This is bull smurf.
I'm done.
I'm done.
So smurf at stone container is the place he works at, which sounds like some sort of industrial thing.
They work something with stones.
I don't know.
Brenda's 17-year-old son as of 2004 lives with them also in this trailer.
So he's got a 17-year-old stepson, Randy does, and his wife all living in a trailer here in rural South Carolina.
So they have a couple of friends who'll come up a little later.
So we'll introduce them now.
Kathy Merrill and her husband Russell, Merrill also.
They were longtime friends with Randy.
They were friends for years and years with Randy.
And then Brenda came into the picture.
And they became friends with Brenda too, as couples do.
And yeah.
So they started, they were friends with them when they started dating.
And, you know, they were one of the couples they hung out with type of thing.
Love it.
Now, things in this marriage, from what I understand, were a bit rocky between Randy and Brenda.
A little rocky from the start, and then they kind of got a little worse.
Brenda is a little bit possessive.
Oh.
A little bit possessive.
She's the one, huh?
She's the one.
Yeah, for sure.
Now, October 21st, 2004, let's jump to that.
There is an incident.
9-1-1 calls from both Brenda and.
and Randy at the same time.
Yeah.
competing 9-1.
They're happy with the other.
Dueling 911 calls that day.
Love it.
Now, we'll go with Brenda's first, and their accounts completely, they're talking about
the same thing that just happened five seconds ago, and their accounts couldn't be more
different of what happened.
Neither agrees already.
It's already we got some problems.
We got some acrimony here.
Now, Brenda, screaming at the dispatcher, says her husband just attacked her with a garden
tool, but she managed to get away with a garden tool, which is, that's, that's nice and rural.
Does she say which water or just that? Oh, yeah. No, she'll get into it. She said, he hit me and then
screams on to the, she's screaming and yelling, and a lot of it doesn't come out on the tape.
And she says, I ran away and got in my vehicle. I hit him several times. He tried to kill me.
Oh. Okay. Now, she, she's saying he tried to hit her with a hoe.
Yeah.
He's attacking her with a hoe.
Brenda says that she left the residence and is on her way to the town hall to report the incident.
That's where the police department is in a small town.
So on the way to the coward town hall to report this incident.
But then Randy's also on 911 as well and he's got a completely different story.
He says, quote, my wife's trying to kill me.
That's his lead.
Uh-huh.
It's a strong lead, I would say.
It's not bad.
He's breathing heavily.
the whole time. He said, we were on
the way to my work. And she said she had to
use the bathroom, so I turned around and went home.
She said she didn't feel good.
Shit bathroom, not pee bathroom.
Yeah. Can't hold it bathroom.
Horrible bathroom.
Not good. Yeah. I was just going to the car, and she
started hitting me with a club. I don't know
what happened. She just hit me and kept on hitting me.
Oh. We'll find out what kind of club,
because it's fucking crazy.
In a second.
The club from the car?
No, no, no, no.
Way crazier.
So Randy goes on to say that he has a gun and is going to shoot Brenda if she comes back to the house.
He said, she took off.
She comes back.
I'm shooting her.
Can you just say that?
He said, quote, if she comes in, I'm going to kill her.
I mean, that's as straightforward as you can be.
He said, I'm going to have to help myself.
I'm afraid of her.
Okay.
Now, Brenda does not return to the residence.
day, which is nice.
Gun play averted.
That's good.
When officers arrive, they find Randy there bruised and bleeding and really fucked up.
I mean, not doing well.
Looks like he got hit by a car.
I mean, he's really fucked up.
They also recover the weapon that was used to beat him, which is what they call an Ozark
thumper.
You know what that is?
The fuck is that.
An Ozark thumper is a big fucking wooden.
thing that truck drivers use to thump the tires to check their air pressure.
You ever seen them doing that back in the day?
No.
It's a big heavy...
That's not how you check tire pressure.
That's how you do it if you're a hillbilly.
In the Ozarks.
Yeah.
If you don't have a gauge, just go boom, boom.
That's about right.
Not sure, but that's...
What's the number that registers and where?
I think if you do it long enough, there's a specific sound you're looking for.
I think.
I don't know.
I think it's like a divining rod for truckers.
You know what I mean?
They just bang, bang.
That's about, that's 42 pounds per square inch.
That's the craziest pressure gauge up ever.
That's going to be perfect.
What was it?
A log at one point?
Now they've just got a piece of wood that it's a universal thumper?
Some sort of cudgel.
Yeah, it's a big stick with like a thing on the end so you can like whack, whack, whack on it.
Yeah.
It's a fucking heavy.
It's a big club.
I mean, it's a thumper, James.
Yeah.
The Ozark Thumper, which that is crazy.
That sounds like a boxer's nickname that they pulled out of a fucking swamp somewhere.
The Ozark Thumper.
Some shit biscuit from fucking Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Yeah, called me the Ozark Thumper.
So that's the club.
And they recover half of it because it's broken.
She broke a thumper?
She broke an Ozark Thumper on this man's head.
Wow.
Now, we'll find out.
Maybe he did something to deserve getting half of fucking Ozark Thumper broke off.
But now, more on Randy's 911 call, by the way.
Because about four and a half minutes into the call, the 911 operator informs Randy.
Brenda is not outside the trailer, and she's not coming back because she's here.
I'm looking at her.
She's at the police station right in front of me.
Randy said, I don't know.
He went, I don't know.
Like, he didn't believe her.
Like, I don't know.
He said he was still bleeding and he needed help.
And he insisted he didn't know where Brenda was.
And the operator said, I'm telling you, I'm looking at her.
I don't know.
She's standing here saying the opposite of what you're saying.
So I'm pretty sure it's her.
So please put your gun in the closet.
The cops are on the way.
Yeah.
Please don't be holding your gun when the cops get there.
Thank you.
You are clearly Ozark thumped and you need to put the gun down.
You need to put it down.
And he just kept going, I don't know.
I do know.
And they're like, that's what he said.
She said, I am looking in her face right now.
I'm looking at her.
Like, I can hold on to her physically.
And she's not there.
Put the fucking gun down.
I need you understand you've been thumped.
Yeah, where you've been thumped.
So the operator also asked him what kind of car, Brenda drove.
And he answered back a black azoo rodo that belongs to him.
Nice.
He's been letting her drive it.
Now, after some silence and no question by the officer.
operator. I don't know if they're typing shit or what.
Randy just says, she started hitting me.
She's trying to kill me.
He said he had to break the door to get into the trailer because he dropped his keys
running away from her.
Oh, Jesus.
Which is the nice part about living in a trailer.
If you absolutely have to get in, you can lean, you can probably Ozark thump your way right
through that door.
Those things aren't made a shit in the trailer.
That's the beauty of a trailer.
You don't even need an Ozark.
Boom.
If the door doesn't break itself, the whole frame will come out.
The whole wall will come down.
Just the frame will shoot out into the living room.
So Randy said all of that.
He dropped his keys.
So the 911 operator told him,
put your gun away and step out onto the porch.
And Randy said, well, I'm going to go back inside and put my shoes on then.
And she's like, I just, Jesus Christ, these people,
one's yelling at me from in here.
This guy won't stop, won't listen to me.
What is happening?
He says that he's going to go put his shoes on and then shortly thereafter,
then help arrived.
The cops arrived.
so the call ended.
She said, Randy, breathed heavily and sounded distress throughout the call, as he should, because he's bleeding from like six different places.
Investigator Michael Rhodes responds to this domestic violence call.
He was on the way to the scene, and he was redirected to the Coward Police Department where Brenda was located.
So they said, no, no, come on back and grab a statement from her first.
Now, Brenda tells this investigator that she and her husband, Randy, were at their home walking to their car to go to a credit union in Coward.
which is at his job.
According to Brenda, when she looked behind her,
she saw Randy approaching her with a garden hoe in his hand.
Oh.
She said that he struck her on the hand,
and she grabbed a wooden tire thumper,
the old Ozark thumper.
It's just laying around in the yard.
At the ready.
Well, you never know when you need to check your tires
out in the driveway, Jimmy, you know.
It's a nice thing to do before every trip.
You should always check your tire pressures.
Give it a little thump, thump, and see how it goes.
And began hitting him with the thumper just to get him away from her.
Now, all she has is a very small laceration on her thumb.
And his head is just beaten.
His head, his body, he's all fucked up.
Now, the thing about it is, so if she's telling the truth, wow, she responded quickly.
Oh, thusly.
Very impressively.
But they're also a little suspicious because if a guy is attacking you from behind,
with a garden hoe, you should have more damage than a nick on your thumb.
Perhaps she was wearing those glasses with the mirrors on the inside.
She saw the attack coming.
She saw it coming.
Thank God for that thumber.
Oh, thank God for the thumper.
Sput on her heels and went to work.
So they're like, that's weird.
Yeah.
And she said, well, then I just beat him with the thumper.
I mean, that's what you do at that point.
She's situationalally aware, James.
They're both taken to the hospital.
Her for a very mind.
I mean, they like literally.
for a band-aid.
Clean it out and put a fucking band-aid on it, basically.
Randy is in deep shit, though.
He goes to Lake City Hospital for treatment.
The doctor who treated Randy after the incident said that his injuries were, quote, pretty severe.
Sounds like it, yeah.
Quote, he had multiple contusions and pretty severe facial injuries.
She's beating him in the face with his fucking, in the face.
In the face.
In the face.
The doctor also said the injury.
injuries were not life-threatening, but could have been, could have very well been.
He said, he said, no, no, even where she hit him is the key.
She said, looking at the injuries sustained here, they were pretty strong blows.
So if it had the right place, yes, it could have killed him.
Holy!
Basically said if he was hit in the back of the head, as hard as he was hit in the front of the head, it probably would have crushed his skull.
Shit.
So she was fucking wailing on this guy with basically a hillbilly baseball bat, which is.
Yeah.
Home run blows every time.
Fucking crazy.
His face is very swollen.
He has severe facial injuries,
laceration all over the place,
bruising on his chest,
a skull fracture,
and several injuries to his other parts of his head.
He's fucked up.
He's not doing well.
Very lucky.
Now, the county sheriff investigator,
Kathleen Street,
she went over to the hospital
after the attack and met with both Brenda and Randy,
and she said that Randy had obviously
been beaten very badly,
and Brenda also claimed to have injuries.
Hey, everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show
and tell you a better way to buy your gifts with Zazel.
Z-A-Z-Z-L-E dot com.
I'm telling you, gifts are so hard.
They are so hard.
I got a little brother's birthdays in a few days,
and it's hard.
I've been trying to figure out what to get them.
And you know that feeling.
You're a few days away, it's someone's birthday,
and you're like, uh-oh, this is bad.
You have no idea what to get for them,
so you get something generic.
Here, I'll just get you that.
and oh great, I'll put that on a shelf and never look at it again. Thanks a lot.
That's, you don't even know if you like it. See, this is the problem that Zazel is here to fix.
Zazel is a custom marketplace where you can take basically any product, a mug, a tote bag, a card, a phone case, and make it mean something.
You're not buying a gift. You're making a gift. And that's people are going to appreciate the personal nature of it so much more.
You can browse millions of designs or start from scratch and build something completely your own way.
Either way, you're the designer.
So it really feels like it came from you because it did.
You know, that's the way it is.
You're making this gift, browsing millions of designs.
Everything is made on demand.
There's no out of stock.
You pick it, you customize it.
It's done.
That's that.
Over 30 million customers have trusted Zazel with their most important gifts.
Yours is next.
It's really cool.
Get somebody, think about it.
Who doesn't want a mug with their dog on it?
That's pretty cool.
I kind of want you.
I think everybody that has a dog wants their mug, wants their dog on their car.
You feel good taking a sip with that.
You can't go wrong with that.
That's a very simple gift right there.
The person would be thrilled.
It's personalized.
It's awesome.
Just something simple like that.
And you can make it complicated, simple.
Either way, it's really great.
And right now, save 25% on your first order at zazzle.com.
That's 25% on your first order with zazel.com.
Go make something's amazing.
Zazzle.com.
Now back to the show.
She said, quote,
She told me that she had a cut on her finger and also a nod on her head.
I saw the cut on her finger, but I didn't touch her to see if she had a knot on her head.
She's kind of gross.
No, that's not what she said.
That would have been a great quote.
Didn't touch her.
She's gross.
She said she had been hit with a garden hoe.
Randy said, quote, he never hit her with a garden hoe, according to the police report here.
He said he'd gotten the hoe when he was trying to get away from her and used it to bust out the
window to get inside of the house.
Oh.
That's what he got to go for, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the
just to try to bust in the house.
Use those, that is a key.
So the investigators were, recover the part of the tire thumper, which basically
looks like a small baseball bat.
Um, yeah, uh, outside of the old Georgetown road residents, the day of the
incident.
Now, this street, she said she conducted research on the tool to determine if they
often break.
Are they real breakable?
Now they do, and according to those she talked to, basically when they break, they sling wooden shrapnel when they split.
Okay.
They'll shrapnel.
So that's, she said that led her to believe that Brenda most likely cut her finger when the tire thumper broke.
Get the fuck out of it.
That's how she, because when she hit him, it broke this way and got, you know, and got splinters in her hand and cut her that way.
So that's how she got it.
Her own weapon didn't hit her at all.
Beating.
That's, that's, well, I mean, that's what they think.
Yeah. Now, Randy said that, you know, they said, she said, tell me from the top again.
And he wrote that, you know, she had a stomach ache, wanted to return home. There, return home. And quote, out of the blue, I felt a blow to the back of the neck that brought me to my knees.
Oh, my. Wow.
With a thumper in the back of the neck. From behind. Wow. I managed to turn around, but was kind of in and out of consciousness.
at this time Brenda was beating me repeatedly about my body with a wooden club truck drivers used to check the hair on the tires.
Good Lord.
I was continuously beaten until the stick broke.
She just beat him until it broke.
She had kept going.
That's crazy.
The police officer said she felt Randy's life was in danger and encouraged him to seek a protective order from a judge.
Randy's statements were further used to confirm.
convey his danger saying, quote, I have several broken bones in my face, cracked ribs, and several bruises and lacerations.
I do believe Brenda was attempting to kill me, and I'm afraid for my life.
What did he do?
Wow.
Well, we'll find out.
He's not much, put it that way.
Now, there's an investigator with the county sheriff's office crime scene unit, investigates the Brenda and Randy's home and yard.
He collects six guns and multiple boxes of ammunition.
from the home as well as another gun from Randy's boat.
Now, I'm hearing seven guns and a boat, but you live in a fucking trailer.
This is an issue.
This is something.
How about...
She attacked him with a club when there's that many guns at the ready.
Yeah.
How guns are expensive?
Boats are pricey.
2004.
204.
Pretty expensive.
Pretty expensive.
Boats are pretty expensive.
But you live in a fucking trailer.
What are you doing, guys?
Everybody.
What are we doing?
living backward. Yeah. Yeah. What the fuck is happening? So at the time of this incident, by the way,
Randy also found out that his bank account was overdrawn due to withdrawals by Brenda. So he's laying
in bed and he's poor and he took all his guns. But he's got a boat. But he's got a boat. So that's
something. Now Brenda is going to be arrested and charged with assault and battery with intent to kill,
which is a pretty good charge, pretty hefty. It's not good. No. Randy eventually recovers from
this attack pretty, you know, quickly, I guess.
Brenda is prohibited by a family court order of protection from contacting Randy in any way.
So he's got a TRO on her at this, at least.
So they said they, later on, somebody asked one of the cops was scant.
Randy scared of Brenda after that attack.
And the cop who talked to him in the hospital said, terrified is a better word.
Right.
Yeah.
So after the protection order hearing, Randy visited.
Brenda once with police presence there to retrieve his Black Azuzu rodeo that he had previously
allowed her to drive, one that she was driving that day.
Now, she pretty quickly violates this protection order.
Oh, really?
Pretty quick.
Yeah, two separate occasions, at least, that we know of.
One of them here is after this, a little time goes by, and Randy begins dating another woman.
Okay.
Somebody less quick to the club, I hope, for him.
So now there's one occasion here where this is, we'll go back to Kathy Merrill, their friends that know both of them.
Kathy Merrill said Randy and another friend, Susan Hill, began dating after Randy and Brenda's altercation.
He said, I'm moving on.
Kathy also said that sometime after the altercation, Brenda told her that she had hired a private investigator who took pictures of
of Randy and Susan.
Why?
Why?
Yeah, he'd probably tell you, yeah, I'm seeing someone, you crazy ass.
Fuck yeah, you beat me half the death.
I'm moving on.
What are we talking about?
You hit me with a tool that most people have never even heard of.
No, you have to be like an old-timey truck driver to know what the fuck this is.
It's crazy.
Kathy further said that Randy previously had guns stolen from his home as well.
Oh.
So there's that.
Now, Susan, Susan Hill, the lady he's dating, she said that they said that they
started dating right after the altercation, and she indicated that after she and Randy
began dating, she returned to her house one time and found a light on, a door, a jar,
and her inside dog outside.
So someone was in her house.
She had left the doors locked and the light off.
So that's weird.
Now, Kathy and Susan also both said that shortly after the incident, they went to Randy's
trailer to clean it for him.
and they found the door locked
even though Randy had left it unlocked for them.
So Brenda is a snooping.
This is pretty possessive shit that's going on right now.
Letting dogs out locking doors.
She's not even trying to not be found.
She doesn't care.
She wants you to know.
Yeah.
Be scared of me.
Yeah.
There's always an Ozark thumper right around the corner.
You never know.
That would be a good nickname for her.
Like if she went to prison for what she was charged with,
everyone should call her the Ozark thumper.
That'd be awesome.
I don't know who wouldn't.
If they find out what she did, you'd certainly do it.
That's going to be the name of this episode.
I'll tell you that much.
The Ozark Thump, how do you not?
So November 22nd, 2004, shit escalates.
All right.
This is at the home of Susan Hill, Randy's new girlfriend.
Now, Susan said that she had met Randy many years ago when they worked together at Stone Container.
She said they hung out in the same group of friends.
but they started dating after the domestic dispute when he was single.
Susan said that she and Randy eventually were dating,
but only alone together for the first time.
This is the first time they've been alone.
They're going to fuck tonight, I think, is what this means here.
November 22nd, 2004.
She said Randy came to her house this day.
It's a Sunday.
And near her, near her, her,
Susan Hill's house, there's a dirt road, and Brenda was on the dirt road by the house.
And Susan said, Brenda was sitting out on my dirt road.
He was a little nervous, meaning Randy.
Minutes later, he said, Brenda called her house and said, quote, have fun with my husband and hung up.
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
Hill said that she and Randy continued their date, heading out to a local nightclub and also spent time together the following day.
and she said she didn't hear from Brenda again.
But Brenda was stalking them to at least going to the house and calling.
And, you know, that's crazy.
If that was a guy doing that, it would be very scary.
You know what I mean?
Frightening.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
So November 26th now, four days later, this is the morning.
This is the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Next day.
Now, Randy, I think, I guess he had to work the overnight, I believe, Thanksgiving night.
which sucks because he checks out of work at 7 a.m.
He had plans to go on a turkey shoot with some friends that day that Friday.
So he clocked out of work before 7 a.m.
And his friends arrived.
A day after Thanksgiving were going to hunting?
Yeah, day after.
People are off.
They don't need the fucking bird anymore.
Yeah, I don't care.
I don't think the turkey is the goal there.
I think beer in the woods and shooting guns is the goal there.
You're probably right.
Getting away from your collective Brenda, I think, is the goal there.
While being armed to the teeth, she can't fuck with me.
Yeah, this is a guy.
That's the one day he feels safe.
This is just a guy thing.
I'm sure he told everybody, hey, look, if Brenda comes, we're all opening fire on her.
This is great.
I'd like to be armed, and if you're all armed, then it makes me feel a little better.
I feel better about everything.
Just carrying around a 12 game.
So his friends arrived to pick a little bit.
up for turkey hunting, he doesn't answer the door.
So like, what the fuck?
Randy's reliable.
Randy's Azuzu Rodeo was there.
However, Randy's truck and boat were gone.
His boat's gone.
Boat and truck that he tows it with are gone.
He chose to go fishing instead of bird shooting.
Weird.
So Randy's dog is inside the trailer and a makeshift alarm system, a makeshift alarm system,
that Randy set up after the incident with Brenda was not set.
They know about the alarm system he has.
I don't know if it's like an elaborate thing where a ball goes down a thing and falls and a bucket comes over and drops a bird.
Exactly.
Some Rube Goldberg contraption that fucking does it.
Fries an egg for you.
Yeah, at the end, there you go.
You have an egg and the dog's fed.
So the following day, Randy didn't come to Russell and his friends there, Russell and the other one there, Kathy, didn't come to their house for oysters like they had planned.
They had a big oyster date planned.
Oh.
Randy was also scheduled to work special shifts on Saturday and Sunday, but never showed up at work.
He skipped.
Targis shoot oysters and both work shifts.
This is not.
Double time.
Something's wrong.
There is not a redneck on earth.
No.
That would do this.
Skip all four of those?
No.
Hunting and work?
No.
You might skip work for hunting, but you're not skipping both.
That ain't happening.
Yeah.
So both Brenda and Skipp.
Susan called Russell's home looking for Randy that weekend, and Russell contacted the police on
Sunday about Randy because he hadn't shown up for anything. And Brenda also contacted the police to report
him missing. I don't know why you would report anyone missing who has a fucking restraining order
against you. That's crazy. Why do you know that? Exactly. You shouldn't know anything about
where they are. Now, Frankie Miles is Brenda's 17-year-old son who lives with them, or lived with them
before the altercation.
Now, Russell, the friend, believed that Frankie had borrowed the truck and boat to go fishing.
That's what he thinks.
He doesn't even think that Randy has the truck and boat.
And later on, an investigator verifies that Frankie was on a fishing or hunting trip
several hundred miles away since Friday.
So he's gone.
Now, investigators believe that Randy made it home from work the morning he clocked.
out of work on Friday morning because they found his work clothes and lunch container there.
So he made it at least to the house.
So they search his property.
They search his trailer.
And they find Randy's, he's a diabetic, by the way, Randy.
Yeah.
They find his blood glucose meter at the home, which was last used on Thanksgiving at 547 p.m.
Ah, right after that big old fucking meal.
That's right, making sure he's good.
But that needs some insulin.
Yeah.
That is telling because a diabetic would never.
go four days without using their glucose meter if they normally use it.
They didn't find anything in his trailer that was suspicious or anything like that,
but that's the last time that he used his glucose meter and it's still there.
The police use, they take cadaver dogs all over his property just in case.
They don't find anything.
So then they are, several people saw a dark colored Azuzu rodeo at a public boat landing
on the PD River in Pamplico
over the Thanksgiving weekend
beginning on Friday afternoon
and thought it looked like it hadn't moved for days.
Oh, okay.
One officer testifies later
that he ran a tag on the vehicle at the landing
on Saturday night at 8.03 p.m.,
but it doesn't come back stolen.
So he just leaves it there.
Another sheriff's office person said
that someone stopped by his farm
on Sunday afternoon
and told him of rather than calling the cops,
just stop by the cops farm and let him know about it.
Wow, this is a small fucking town.
Do I just call?
Well, I'll just go over to his house.
I mean, it's right over.
I mean, it's right there.
Why not?
He's out there hoeing right now.
Yeah.
Now, he tells him a suspicious-looking black SUV is on the landing.
So he calls into the sheriff's office to have someone check out the vehicle,
you know, because he's at home on his farm.
So the investigator says he observed the black.
vehicle on the line. Another investigator said he observed a black vehicle on the landing on Sunday at 5 p.m.
and ran the tags. Okay. Okay. Again. So just to make sure it's still not stolen. Now the Monday after
Thanksgiving now, another investigator observed the Azuzu rodeo on the landing Monday morning and ran the
tags again, not stolen. So the tags have been run three times in four days. It's just abandoned
at the bluff landing off Old River Road.
in Pamplico. So it's not his truck. It's his rodeo that's out there. It's the Zuzu
rodeo that's out there. Yeah. So the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, we're five days now,
almost a week, the investigator that talked to Randy in the hospital, Investigator Street,
she entered the Azuzu into the National Crime Information Computer, the NCIC. Yeah. And it's flagged.
It comes up as a belonging to a missing person because Randy's been reported missing since Sunday.
So now it's a thing. So, now it's a thing. So,
So the Wednesday following Thanksgiving, they ran the plates.
That's when they ran the plates and it indicated the car belonged to him.
Wow.
They searched the car.
Yeah.
And an envelope containing $900 and $100 bills was found on the driver's seat during a search of the vehicle.
Okay.
Small spots of blood are found on the steering wheel, steering column, dashboard, and gear shift.
That's more than was on, in OJ's Bronco, by the way.
Yeah.
So that's a lot.
The blood spots were later determined to be several days to a week old.
No usable fingerprints found in the vehicle.
And it doesn't appear that a body has been transported in the back of the vehicle at all.
Okay.
Okay.
Now, the car did not appear to have been hotwired either.
So nobody broke into it, cracked the column.
The police searched the area around the vehicle and river and found nothing, nothing at all.
So now, Brenda's nephew says he saw Randy driving the Azuzu on November 28th, but several law enforcement officers and a few hunters who went by the bluff that weekend said the Azuzu hadn't moved since November 26th until it was found.
Yeah, there's $900 just sitting there.
$900.
But somehow Brenda's nephew saw differently.
I don't know.
Yeah, $900.
So they search his vehicle.
They searched his home.
they have no leads to nothing, no clues of where the hell he is.
So they, investigators start to get worried when they see the blood pressure medication and diabetes monitor have been left behind.
They're like, this is bad.
Something has to have happened to him.
Now, another guy here, a friend of Brenda and Randy, saw Brenda leaving Randy's property during the daylight hours on either the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving, saying that Brenda was driving a little Brand,
town tannish car.
She has a restraining order
shouldn't be near that property, which is interesting.
Another friend said he
visited Randy to get some life jackets
from him on the morning of Thanksgiving or the next
day, and he was there and fine.
So we assume that's Thanksgiving.
Then there's a witness
named Jerome Edie.
He lives near the boat
landing where the Azuzu's found.
He said the Friday after
Thanksgiving, he returned home from work
sometime after 11 p.m.
Everybody works real odd hours in this town.
Fascinating.
He observed someone walking alongside the road wearing camouflage.
That someone went to his neighbor's house and then came to his house.
That someone is Brenda.
We're in camo.
Camo at 11 o'clock at night coming from the area of where the Azuzu was parked.
Wow.
Not good.
Brenda told him she needed a ride home.
How did she get here in her camo?
Yeah.
Where's your car?
So this guy, Jerome and his mother gave Brenda a ride to Coward.
They dropped her off at a trailer home development near Randy's trailer.
Same area, same neighborhood.
She knew better than to have him pull up in front of the trailer.
He said he was not certain which night around Thanksgiving he gave Brenda a ride, but he was pretty sure it was Friday.
Now, Jerome Eadie did not believe that Brenda was nervous, angry, crying, or bleeding.
Nothing, you know, wrong with her.
Just calm and casual.
He said she thought, he thought she seemed calm.
So after police hear about that, they're very suspicious of Brenda.
Certainly.
Obviously.
So they go and they search parts of Brenda's family's farm.
And because it was near where Jerome took her in that area.
It was between the two places.
What they find is a recently dug rectangular hole near a deer stand that was about a quarter mile from
Andy's house, and the investigator said, that's a grave.
That's someone dug a grave.
There's nothing in it.
Very clearly, a body fits in that.
But obviously, that's what you put in there.
That's what fits in there, yeah, like a glove.
So that's what went on there.
Now, then they do tests of the spots of blood all over the car, and they belong to Brenda.
Oh, wow.
Steering wheel, skeer shift, dashboard.
Why is she bleeding in his car?
Why is she bleeding in this car?
I mean, she was driving it for a while.
Yeah.
But still, there's blood that only seemed to be less than a week old when they got it.
So she shouldn't have been anywhere near that car because he's had possession of it for the last week.
So why is her blood in the fucking car?
This is a good piece of evidence, especially with the combined with the camouflage.
Yeah, that story sucks.
Coming out here.
But it's still not enough to know what's going on.
It's not arrestable.
You can't get a warrant for that.
No, no, no, no, no.
So February 2005, a couple months have gone by now.
Several searches are conducted, including one where about 100 volunteers take part in an in-depth acre-by-acre search of two tracks of land in lower Florence County.
I guess there'd been a tip saying there possibly a body there.
Then three years goes by.
What?
Three years go by.
We haven't even bothered with that rectangular whole thing?
She's got a grave dug, blood on his steering wheel, and fucking coming away from his car after he was missing wearing camouflage in the night and needing a ride home from a place that how the fuck did she get there?
It's a real head scratcher.
Who knows?
But April 3rd, 2008 now, Brenda is arrested.
Not for murder, though.
What for?
She's arrested for 13 counts of forgery.
What's she doing?
She was accused of taking two checkbooks from a Lake City resident sometime between February and March and used them to spend $5,200.
That's a shopping spree.
Yep.
Then May 21, 2008, she's arrested again.
Also not for murder.
She's arrested and charged with forgery of a value of $5,000 or more.
She's accused of cashing checks belonging to someone else without permission at various locations.
Again, twice.
Deal.
She's a scam artist.
So July 16th, 2009, somebody buys Randy's property at a tax sale, apparently.
It owes back taxes, so they auction the property.
Marty McDonald is his name.
He purchases the property, and he's having the trailer removed from the land.
It's an old trailer that's been sitting there for years and get rid of it.
The door's broken.
You get the windows busted out.
He noticed something under the trailer.
and he says it was, this is fucking crazy.
It's, wow, it's wrapped in a tarp.
And he said, quote, at first I thought it was a gourd, but then I found out real quick that it wasn't.
He thought there was a pumpkin under the...
Wrapped in a tarp.
It's a, it's a head.
Oh.
It's a, that's why I look like that.
It's a fucking head.
It's just a head.
Just sitting there.
First, I thought somebody wrapped up their Halloween pumpkin from years ago.
Nice big squash or something, you know.
I thought maybe some kids threw some seeds under there and one sprouted.
It could sprouted.
Hey, look at this.
It's a miracle.
Even in the absence of sun and water, it's still sprouts.
It's a miracle.
I got me a, I was ready to go to church.
Yeah, I was ready to go to church that weekend.
Thank the Lord.
He found a human head.
He found a human skull under his, yeah.
So, he obviously freaked out.
Yeah.
Called the cops.
Cops come.
And they find not only that,
They find underneath that in a shallow grave, anywhere from 8 to 18 inches deep, not even very far, they find a skeleton, clothing, and a pair of boots.
Uh-huh.
Just a human without the flesh, essentially.
Wow.
And the head was off and wrapped in a tarp separately.
So, yeah, that was off before.
That's, yeah, well before.
That didn't tumble off and wrap itself up.
And wrap itself up separately, no, no.
So is it Randy?
Let's find out.
It's under his trailer.
A forensic DNA analyst from the North Texas Health Science Center said the bones sent to her office matched Randy.
Uh-oh.
Based on DNA samples from his relatives.
Cause of death.
Can we find that out?
They sent it to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
And all of those tests are unsuccessful.
They are unable to find out a cause of death.
I mean, the head was off.
The heads off, that's part of it, I assume.
That's helpful.
But they didn't know if that happened afterwards or what.
So, but they don't, it's just a skeleton at this point.
They don't really have anything to go on.
So December, that was, that's 2009.
Months go by, six months go by almost.
Then December 7th, 2009 here, Brenda is pulled over and she thinks she's ran a stop sign or something.
And she's pulled out of the car and arrested for murder instead.
Oh.
not only murder, but also burying a body without notice, which is hilarious.
Without notice.
You have to tell, yeah, you have to announce it because I believe the law.
Well, in a lot of states, I just heard this recently is it's, you know, not cities, but towns like this.
A lot of them are basically, if you get all your neighbors to okay it, you can bury, you can have something in your yard.
You can bury a relative in your yard or something.
You have to like post notice and then?
Yes.
You have to like someone has to have the chance to say, no, you can't do that, basically.
I believe that in some municipalities, that's how it works.
I don't know about all.
So that's what she's arrested for.
She has a bond hearing.
And this isn't good because listen to the quote the judge said here.
Quote, the Bratsky family has been through a long, long, hard, torturous journey to get to this point.
Randy had a big heart and all these people here have big hearts.
But in the courtroom looking at this woman,
our hearts have shrunk to nothing.
What does that mean?
She's the antithesis of a heart?
She's just, yeah, she's a, you have no heart for her, I guess.
Okay.
Randy's sister, Sandra, talked after the hearing and said it was very difficult.
But again, I want to thank the Florence County Sheriff's Department, the solicitor's
office, or anybody who had a part in this case.
We feel that the judge made a good decision today, holding her without bond.
Yeah.
And we're happy with his decision.
We've had a lot of confidence in the people.
that are handling this case. How? It's been four years. Right. It's been five years now once they
arrest her. How do you have confidence in them? He said, we've been doing this for the past five years,
and we're going to see it through. We just want justice for our brother. The judge said he wants
to bring closure to Randy's family and said, I feel so sorry for them. They have so many questions for so
long. And now some of the questions have been answered, and we're going to work very, very hard to
answer the remaining questions they have and bring justice in this case.
Okay.
Now, her son Frankie, whose 23, is also arrested.
Oh, would he do?
He is charged with Ms. Prisian of a felony, which is a legal term that refers to the concealment
of a serious crime like a felony by someone who is not an accomplice or the neglect of
an official duty by a public official.
So he knew about it, didn't help, but knew about it.
say anything basically. That's what that means. Okay. So that's, I mean, that's an accomplice
after the fact in most places, right? He didn't help with anything. He just knew about it.
So they're calling it that. And he's released on personal recognizance. Like, they don't even
hold him. But the prosecutor or a lieutenant with the sheriff's department said, we think he
knew about the murder and didn't report it. Period. That's it. You would have to, right?
You'd have to. She couldn't have done any, all this without help. You know what I mean? So at some point
in here, Brenda confesses.
Why?
At some point, she confesses.
I don't know what they did to Cracker, but she confesses at some point.
They had some piece of evidence, huh?
Had to have.
But the problem is, however they got it, and this is not detailed in any of the
fucking court documents, and it really drove me crazy trying to find it.
Somehow, her confession is not going to be allowed into trial.
I don't know if they didn't Mirandizer properly.
I don't know if what the detail.
of it are. I'd love to know, but her confession is not allowed at trial, which is a big blow to the
prosecution. They get to trial. It's a jury of nine men and five women. There's two alternate.
I'm sorry, nine women and five men, two alternates there, 12 and two. Her confession can't be used.
The cornerstone of the state's case became the domestic dispute that happened six weeks before
he disappeared. The Ozark Thumper incident. Yeah. So the state introduces the 911 calls.
Brenda objects to Randy's call being played, arguing it violates the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment and was unfairly prejudicial.
Confrontation clauses to confront your accusers, yeah.
So if someone's dead, even their voice coming from a thing that can't be cross-examined.
But they're saying it's a previous thing.
You can't cross-examine a tape anyway.
You would maybe be able to cross-examine Randy about what he said on the tape, but it's really not.
We're letting the tape in.
You can't kill someone and then say, we're not letting a 911 tape in of you, them being scared of you.
Think about that.
You know, that doesn't work.
You can't just kill them to shut them up.
So that's overruled.
Brenda's son, now Brenda's attorney in opening statements implied that her son might have had something to do with Randy's disappearance.
Her lawyer's throwing her son under the bus.
Then they call him to the stand.
Like he didn't want to talk to you now and help you.
He said, I invoke my Fifth Amendment right.
I do not wish to answer questions.
What did you do for me?
He answered that to every question asked of him.
Every question.
Why does anybody think that looks?
It doesn't matter how it looks legally.
It's a per shield.
It doesn't matter how it looks.
That's not good, though.
No, no, no.
But it's better than charges, perjury charges.
Yeah.
I mean, think about what.
When Mark Furman did that in the OJ trial, it destroyed the entire case.
But he went, that's one less perjury charge I'm going to get because I perjured myself earlier.
So that's why he did it.
You got to live until he died too.
No shit.
That's one of those cases where if you're on the jury, if you see what the jury saw, it's completely understandable why they, if I'm sitting on a jury and the guy that found the fucking evidence that they're touting as the biggest piece of evidence.
and he's asked directly, did you fabricate or plant any evidence in this case?
And he takes the fifth, I'm acquitting, period, right?
Aren't you?
Yes.
That's it.
Do we need to do that?
And rest.
Everybody rest.
We're going home.
It's over.
Yeah.
And the judge even would say, well, then they're, what are we talking about here?
Yeah.
Like, that's.
So, other brothers.
I wish Nathan Lane was really Effley Bailey.
I do, too.
He's so much.
He's so much better than he is.
So much fun in that series.
He's my favorite person.
Oh, he's great.
Fucking David Schwimmer going,
Juice, juice for 10 parts?
Oh, God, he sucks.
He sucks so bad.
Nathan Lane, like, spinning on his heels going,
pardon?
What'd you say?
Yeah.
Now, other Brenda family members testify.
Her nephew testifies Brenda moved in with his mother,
I guess,
probably Brenda's sister,
and his father,
once Randy obtained.
in the restraining order. He testified he heard Frankie talking to Randy on the phone this
Saturday after Thanksgiving when they were returning from their hunting and fishing trip.
He estimated the call lasted three to four minutes. No phone records can be found of that,
though, unfortunately. On cross-examination, because it was years before this,
on cross-examination, he indicated he only had met Randy once, but had talked to him on the
phone before. Dennis Matthews, another nephew of Brenda, testified he saw Randy driving his Asuzu
between 3 and 3.30 p.m. the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Oh.
Now, Dennis said he'd never met Randy before but had seen him.
Now, this contradicts tons of strangers who have no horse in this race at all.
There's no fucking way.
A man that's unfamiliar with a guy saw him definitively and what day.
And what day?
And also, cops had seen it there before that.
So it had not moved.
Impossible.
It's impossible, literally.
Brenda's uncle, William, also testified he saw Randy the Sunday after Thanksgiving driving the Asuzu.
Impossible.
Impossible.
Randy's girlfriend tells about the time when Brenda showed up at their house four days before that whole incident.
She showed up and said, I have fun with my husband.
The cross-examination, they're like, this is wild.
Cross-examination of Susan Hill.
They said, did Randy come running inside, screaming?
Oh, my gosh, she's here.
Call the police.
She's going to hurt me.
Did you hear any screaming or raised voices outside?
And she admitted that, you know, Randy didn't seem too alarmed by the encounter and said that she didn't hear any arguing.
They said, isn't it true that Brenda approached Randy, shined a flashlight in his face and said, hmm, I wonder how long this has been going on, then simply turned around and walked away?
Susan Hill said she was inside when the encounter took place and couldn't comment on what the hell happened there.
So I don't know.
But think about that one.
Flip the fucking flip any of this around.
Yeah.
A guy stalking.
Wonder how long this has been going.
That's terrifying.
It's the same thing.
You can't do that.
No, it's just he's less physically afraid of her if she doesn't have a fucking
thumper in her hand, probably.
By the way, the prosecutor several times called her manly during this case as well.
She's not a dainty one.
She's like five-five, you know, hefty or, you know, hefty or one.
Not a giant woman or anything like that.
She's not a big scrapping woman or anything like that.
Would you call her manly?
I don't think manly is the right word for it.
That's weird.
So the defense before closing arguments asks for a directed verdict, which is when you tell
the judge, take this out of the jury's hands and call not guilty right now.
The judge has the right to say, not enough evidence has been presented to possibly find this
person guilty, so I'm dismissing the jury and giving a directed verdict of not guilty.
Oh, God.
They can even do that after the jury.
A jury can come back with a guilty verdict and a judge can throw that out and say, and give a directed verdict.
So they said, they spent, this is the defense's case, they spent two days talking about the assault and battery with intent to kill case that Brenda hasn't even gone on trial for.
This has been a trial within a trial.
The only thing they can establish is that, that's the only thing they can establish and it looks bad.
Okay.
The judge says, no, we're going to let this go to the jury.
Thank you.
That is evidence that she was beating him and stalking him four days before
after six weeks after a beating.
That's all evidence.
In closing arguments here, the prosecutor said that, you know, that Brenda attacked Randy that day
because he was about to discover she'd been withdrawing large amounts of money from his bank account
because that's what they found once he was in the hospital.
She was a quote, she was about to get called.
spending all the money. That assault and battery with intent to kill case was her first attempt to kill Randy.
Here's what I think happened. Randy came home that day and before he could get his boots off, before he could let his dog out, Brenda ambushed him.
That morning at 7 a.m. Yeah. The verdict comes in here. She has found guilty of murder and poor disposal of a corpse or whatever it is.
And no here you, hear you. No without notice. Yeah.
So that's interesting.
Now, during sentencing, this is when more information comes out.
Shit that wasn't known during the trial for evidentiary rules that couldn't be let in.
One of those things is the members of the court audience learned that Brenda confessed to the murder at that point.
Oh, shit.
They learn about the confession, but she claimed it was in self-defense.
That was her claim.
Her claim was she came at her or she came at him and she killed him by, you know, self-defense.
defense injury. So the confession was suppressed on legal grounds and was never heard by the jury, but just so everybody knows, we know she did it.
He must have put up a fight and whipped her ass when she took his car and bled blood in it, you know what I mean?
But only a few little drops of blood. She wasn't bleeding that much. Maybe he didn't whip her ass. Maybe he just got her in the nose or something.
Maybe. You never know. Or she cut herself. Maybe she could have stabbed him, cut her hand. I mean, anything could have happened.
So for mitigation, they bring in her son, sisters, family members, two of her sisters spoke to the judge.
Her sister, one of them said, Brenda's guilty of a lot of things.
The forgery, she's cleaned my bank account out more than once.
What?
This is some mitigation.
This is the lady on her side.
I mean, I know she's robbed me blind more than once.
But Brenda is not a violent person.
Well, we know she is.
She beat the man with an Ozark thumper.
I've never even heard of it.
Never even heard of it.
There's just no way she did this.
Brenda's older sister expressed sympathy for Randy's family, but said her sister's no killer also.
She said, I've never doubted for one minute my sister's innocence and begged the judge for mercy and leniency and said, until the day I take my last breath, I'll believe in her innocence.
That's crazy.
Brenda sobbed uncontrollably as her family member spoke, basically did the same thing that Corey Richens did, whereas only cried when some.
someone was saying good things about them.
When her brother went up and said how wonderful she was, she had tears.
It's touching.
Touching.
But when her kids were saying what a piece of shit mother she was and how they never want to see her again, she was making, she was mugging.
She was like, rolling her eyes, elbowing her attorney.
So anyway, Brenda sobbing uncontrollably.
They're saying that she might not ever see her elderly mother again and all that.
She eventually had to sit down in a chair, a sentence and continued.
and indicated through her attorney,
she could not compose herself enough to address the court.
It does hurt.
The judge, on the other hand, is plenty fine to address the court.
He can, he's composed?
And he said, you, ma'am, may fuck off life in prison.
I'll address the court.
That's going to be without parole, by the way.
Yeah.
She's also convicted of the burying the body,
which she gets a three-year sentence for,
and she's given credit for time served on that sentence, too.
A little bit of time served.
Randy's sister said, quote, it's indescribable.
I couldn't be happier now that it's over and we can go on with our lives.
I know Randy's smiling down at his little sister.
The day we got the call, he had disappeared.
I promised him that I'd never give up and I would see this through.
And I didn't give up.
She's really giving herself some pats there.
I did this.
Well, she didn't investigate this case.
Yeah, I did this.
This is me.
I did all of this.
I'm the judge.
I'm just the judge.
Yeah.
Not the shit on the victim's sister or nothing, but I mean, this is pretty self-examination.
congratulatory. And I didn't give up. I didn't give up. Randy can rest in peace now and so can we.
There's a lot of eyes in there. You're welcome, Randy. You're welcome, Randy. I did it.
She also said we knew she had confessed, but it couldn't be used. That was hard, but we had to have faith in the justice system.
She appeals in 2015 a little bit here. She appeals saying the court should have given her a directed verdict. And they said the court did not.
not error in denying her directed verdict motion, unlike in these other precedents cases that we have
no time for.
Brenda's blood was found somewhere unexpected with no reasonable explanation provided.
So that right there is enough to go to the jury.
Brenda had not had access to the Azuzu in several weeks.
However, the undisputed evidence that was that her blood was found in the car was at most a week old.
Brenda's argument that the blood on the steering wheel of the Azuzu was from the argument five weeks earlier is not supported by any evidence.
or testimony presented at trial
and was directly contradicted
by the uncontested scientific evidence.
She's saying the shit from her thumb
got all over? No.
That's what happened.
Five weeks ago.
And they just can't tell the difference
between six-week-old blood
and fucking weak-old blood.
So there's that part.
They said a directed verdict
is not required merely because the state
cannot conclusively show the defendant
was at the crime scene at the relevant time.
Also, the evidence.
Brenda says all the evidence is
circumstantial,
including,
they said,
here's all the evidence
there is, though.
Brenda and Randy fighting
violently,
Brenda charged with assault.
Brenda,
getting a restraining order
against her,
that she violated
on several occasions,
confronting him and others
about his dating Susan,
hiring a private investigator.
His Azuzu
found away from the home,
small amount of her blood
found in it.
Brenda got a ride
from a stranger near
where Azuzu was
at 11 o'clock
Right.
While she's wearing camouflage, for Christ's sake, she was seen at Randy's trailer around the time of his disappearance despite the restraining order.
And the grave-like hole that was dug on Brenda's family's property less than a quarter mile away.
She was going to do that and she changed her mind and put him under his own trailer.
Just put him under here.
Fuck it.
Don't put him on the family farm.
But didn't fill the grave back in, unfortunately.
That's fucking nuts.
Wow.
Also, she's talking about the confrontation clause shit.
she was going to go back and get him.
At some point, but then she couldn't.
How was she going to do that?
Wow.
And then she didn't own the property anymore.
Yeah.
I think she just put it there and like, she's a, any of those thief people, they're like gamblers, those people who clean out people shit.
There is no tomorrow.
No.
It's like a junkie, basically.
Whatever it is, it's going in my arm today and I'll figure tomorrow out tomorrow.
And that's what gamblers do and that's what these thieves do.
And that's what she did.
I'll put that there.
We'll figure that out later.
For now he's away.
Good.
Got a hold dog.
I'll figure out how to get him in it some other time.
Also the 911 call thing and they said, you know, you can have somebody from the grave if they've been murdered.
That's fine.
So affirmed.
Wow.
And there was an episode of Snapd about her that aired on December 22nd, 2015, season 8 or season 16, episode 8.
You can see that.
And currently, she is at the Graham.
facility, whatever that is.
Her ID is
0.0350569,
if you want to look her up there.
She apparently is, her projected
release date is not eligible.
Projected release date, never.
Life without, babe.
And she is like shaved her head pretty close down
now too. Really? Yeah.
Manly, maybe, you could say.
No, I'm kidding. Prosecutor. So there you go,
everybody. Coward South Carolina.
Yeah. There it is. What a
in wild case. Is that wild or what?
I'm shocked, man. Jesus. At least we know
what an Ozark Thumper is now. Something you came
from this. That's good. I'm shocked. They got her.
I know. But that's a dude.
He may have gotten away with it.
Possibly. It's crazy shit.
It's pretty amazing.
There you go, everybody. If you enjoyed that,
please get on whatever app you're on and give
us five stars. It helps so much.
Really helps drive the show up the charts. If you're on
Netflix, those thumbs up help a lot.
So thank you for doing that. You guys are awesome
that do that. So,
appreciate all you do for us. You can definitely follow us on social media at Smalltown Murder on
Instagram at Smalltown Pod on Facebook. Definitely head over to shut up and give me murder.com and get your
tickets for live shows. Holy shit. We can't wait. The second half of the year is kicking off on
September the 18th at the Pabst in Milwaukee. It's a great theater. That is a good place to watch a show.
Then the next night, just as a great of a place to watch the show. The state theater in Minneapolis,
We will be there on the 19th of September.
And get your tickets now because Milwaukee's beating you right now.
You can't have that in Minneapolis.
Get in there.
Then October 3rd in Dallas, October 16th in San Jose, 17th in Sacramento,
and then November 13th in Terrytown, 14th in Boston.
So get your tickets right now.
Shut up and Give Me Murder.com.
Then get yourself Patreon.
That's where it's at.
Oh, daddy.
Patreon.com slash crime in sports,
just like the name of this show.
That is where you get all the bonus.
material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get everything we put out. I'm talking everything. As soon as you subscribe, you're going to get almost 400 back bonus episodes you've never heard before, which is awesome. That's great. And then you get new ones every other week, one crime and sports, one small town murder. And you get them all this week, which you're going to get for crime and sports, we're going to do hostage situations, part two. Because part one was a blast. So we're going to do part two. Then for small town murder, prisoner dating game, everybody.
Damn it.
It is back by popular demand.
I'm going to line up four men and four women, four bachelors, four bachelorets in front of Jimmy.
And the only thing they have in common is they are all convicted, incarcerated, violent felons.
Jimmy's going to pick one of each based solely on the profile that they present.
Right.
And then after he picks somebody on each, where we are going to find out what they did and how terrible of a decision he's made.
So it's a lot of fun.
Oh, it's a lot of fun here.
So that is patreon.com slash crime in sports, just like the name of our other show, which you should also listen to and check out your stupid opinions as well.
So yeah, you get that.
Then you get all the shows we put out ad free with your Patreon too.
And then on top of that, you also get a shout out at the end of the show, the regular show.
So do that and keep coming out and hanging out with us and do all that good stuff.
And you also get everything ad free, which is incredible.
So that's awesome.
There you go.
Do that.
If you want to follow us on social media, shut up.
and give me murder.com as drop down menus
that'll take you anywhere you need to go.
Well, not anywhere, but our shit
anyway. So for us.
For us. So do that. Grab
that stuff. Get in there. Get your tickets.
Come hang out with us. And until
next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.
Bye.
Hey, everybody. Listening to
Small Town Murder out there. Hi.
Good to see you out there. I'm here with Jimmy, too.
And this is an ad, but not an ad
for a product. This is an ad.
This is the best kind.
Yes, come see a live show the 2026 tour.
All the tickets are for sale right now starting out with February 21st in Nashville,
March 6th in Durham, March 7th in Atlanta.
Phoenix is sold out.
We do have tickets, though, to your stupid opinions on the 21st of March.
Salt Lake City sold out.
Denver has tickets.
Be there on May 2nd.
May 29th, Buffalo sold out.
Royal Oak, Michigan, May 30th.
We have September 18th, Milwaukee, September 19th, Minneapolis.
October the 30th.
in Dallas, October 16th in San Jose, October 17th in Sacramento, November 13th in Terrytown,
November 14th in Boston. Come see us. The live shows are spectacular. Come join all of the other
STM people. You're going to meet so many people. You're going to have fun. Make some new friends.
Like crazy and make some new friends. Come out and see us. Shut up and give me murder.com is where
you go for those tickets. Get them right now while they're hot. See you on the road.
