Small Town Murder - The Scariest Staircase - Highmore, South Dakota

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

This week, in Highmore, South Dakota, when a farm couple has problems, the wife begins to tell people that if anything ever happens to her, her husband will be the one who does it. When the husband comes home from an errand, one day, he finds his wife in a bloody heap, at the bottom of the basement stairs. He claims it's a tragic, and terrible accident, but the autopsy shows something much some sinister than a fall. It shows that she's been horribly beaten & strangled. But was it actually the husband who did this??   Along the way, we find out that the "Old Settlers" must have loved boring festivals, that a radiator cap is never more important than getting someone medical help, and that when your own daughter takes the stand against you, you've really screwed up!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

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Ready to get started? Visit night and day, decor.com or call 647-360-6151. That's night and day decor. dot com. Hello everybody and welcome back to Smalltown Murder Express. Yay and choochoo! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.

My name is James Petro Gallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another crazy wild edition of Smalltown Murder Express. They're always crazy. This is no exception. We got some wild stuff for you in a real rural, you know, kind of salt of the earth kind of area where there's some bad stuff going on.

I love that. That's so great. I love when it's just this place where they're like, oh, it's just everyone here's so nice and everybody treats each other so well and then they murder each other and then we talk about it. Except for this guy. Except for this guy. So we'll get into that in a minute. Before we do, certainly head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets for live shows, everybody.

After the summer is when they start up again. September the 18th. At the Paps and Milwaukee, not a ton of tickets left for that. So if you want to get in there, I'd get those tickets now. And then the next night, September 19th, we are in Minneapolis at the state theater. Get those yesterday. Get those also. Listen, Minneapolis, you don't want.

Don't wait. You don't want Milwaukee people to embarrass you by coming out stronger. So do that. And then also September 3rd, or I'm sorry, October 3rd in Dallas, October 16th and 17th in San Jose and Sacramento. And then Terrytown on November 13th, Boston, November 14th. So that is the schedule. Get your tickets. up and give me murder.com.

Listen to our other two shows to crime in sports, which if you like cult stuff, you want to check out the series we're currently doing on crime and sports. It's on the Yahweh Benyaweh cult because one of the main enforcers and murderers of that cult was an NFL football

player. So not a lot of sports involved in that, just a lot of murder and cult stuff. So that's a lot of fun. Check that out. Also, your stupid opinions it's just the funniest show going. You got to check it out. You know what it is. It's hilarious. We make fun of people's reviews of things. So that's good stuff.

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Because after we did that Stockholm one, I started getting deeper into it. And it's pretty interesting. Remember when that band held that radio station hostage? Oh, I do. I do remember that. They just wanted to get their tape played. That's all they wanted. But that girl stole the master coffee.

Unbelievable. What are you going to do? So, yeah, if you're – Dog pissed on it. If you're younger or older than us, you will not understand this at all what we're talking about. But it's a movie reference. For a small town murder, we're going to do Corey Richens part three because there's so much to cover. Her sentencing was wild because all of her kids' statements came in, which completely contradicted all of her statements to the police.

So she – I mean, it's why – and then her allocution's insane. She's her faces. She's nuts. She's outrageous. We'll get into it there. That's patreon. dot com slash crime in sports. That's how you get all of that.

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Get in there. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. That said, I think it's time, everybody. Here we go. I think it's time to clear the lungs here. What do you say? Arms to the sky. And let's all shout.

Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? We are doing it. Where to? We're going to South Dakota this week. Yeah?

Oh, yeah. We haven't been there in a while, and South Dakota is interesting. So this is Highmore, South Dakota. And we haven't done a ton in central South Dakota. That's the thing. A lot of it is kind of on the edges. And like Deadwood on the one side, this place is right. smack in the middle of South Dakota. I mean the middle of nowhere. It's about three hours to

Sioux Falls to the east, about four hours to Deadwood to the west. And then it's about 50 minutes to our last South Dakota episode, which was in Pierre, which is how they pronounce Pierre, because they hate French people, I assume. Is this bordered by Idaho? This is bordered by a lot of South Dakota. It's right smack in the middle. Okay. Yeah. In the west side. What's over there What? Deadwood. Oh, yeah, yeah. Wyoming and Montana and all that stuff.

Montana is between that and Idaho. The last episode was episode 650, so it's been a bit. That was a deadly blame game was the name of that. That was a wild episode. This is in Hyde County, H-Y-D-E. So it can be high. You never know, like High Park. Area Code 605, although they hate the French and anybody else like that,

so I doubt they're pronouncing it. Area Code 605, population 7707. 79 here. Not a lot. Pretty people. People. Well, way more cattle probably. 7.79. Not a lot. Median household income here slightly below the national average. It's usually 69,000. Here it is $60,208. But that's affordable if you look at the housing, the housing prices here. Median home price here, $111,300. That's amazing. Less than one third of the national average. with that is that's incredible. The motto, and I'm telling you, some ad company back in the day went around and said, we can make money just giving the same motto to every town that hires us. A great place to, what do you think, Jim? Work and play. To live, work and play. That's the motto. We've seen that about 30 times already. Someone out there in small town murder,

listenerdom, please compile how many towns have had that motto. I bet it's a... And where'd they pay for it? Yep, I bet it's, and see if you can trace it back to an ad agency. here. Now, history of this town, the reason it's called High Moore is because it is in the high plains, it's at high elevation. So they call it High Moore for some reason. Apparently, the founding had some rivalry here, which is pretty normal for the late 1800s. In 1882, developers A.E. Van Camp and E.O. Parker, why did no one have a first name back then, by the way? no one had one, established competing business districts along parallel streets. So mine's here and yours is here.

Yeah. And we're going to fight it out. Iowa Avenue and Commercial Avenue creating a unique kind of a dual main street layout. Back to back. Yeah. Most small towns don't have like double main streets and they do. They still have it. So the county's formal organization here was in 1883 and there was a lot of disputes.

over where the county seat was going to be and all that crap, as we know. By 1884, they smoothed it all out. Now, this place, Highmore, was the place that the South Dakota Attorney General, so the Attorney General of the state, Jason Ravensborg, struck and killed a pedestrian in 2020. Oh, fuck. Absolutely. Yeah, he said that he discovered, this is crazy. There was a guy walking on a rural stretch of highway, and he fucking hit him and killed him.

and how with his car yeah i get that's the joke yeah not with a clothes line out the window obviously how how the fuck do you do that on accident he was driving home from a fundraiser and apparently hit this guy he said he called 911 after the crash and didn't realize he'd hit a man until returning to the scene the next morning he said to look for the deer he thought he hit which is weird. He was, he knows. And he had a 55-year-old man named Joseph Bover,

which is pretty fucking... What a. Yeah, there's still investigation going on into it. And he's coming home from a fundraiser, which you know what they have at fundraisers. Do they have the alcohol there? I have a couple, a little bit of booze. I'm not saying that's what happened, but,

you know what I mean? He's driving home in a rural area, you know. Perhaps get a... and somebody a ride home that was leaned over the seat while he was... We could have a Ted Kennedy situation. There's so many, yeah. There's so many speculations you could make here. A lot.

And if you don't report it... Right. Yeah. That's the problem I'm having. That's the issue there. What the fuck, sir? Yep, he said he called 911 right away, but nobody ever found this dead guy except for him the next morning.

So I don't know what happened here. That could be an episode in its own. Reviews of this town. Here's five stars. It's only one review of the entire. town that I could find. Highmore is the small town that you hear about on every TV show and movie. It's the place where you know everyone's first name and cars.

It's the place where you know every single person in your school and are friends with mostly everyone. Highmore is home. Great place to get a backwards drunken... Roadhead Blowy. Also, great place to get run over by a politician on the way home from a fundraiser. What an asshole. All right.

So things to do here. There's only a couple. Old Settlers Days is one of them. It's a three-day deal. Jesus. There's not a lot going on here. There's a lot of rodeo stuff. Ranch rodeo at Highmore Rodeo Arena. Rodeo Roundup Club.

Yeah, that's pretty much a lot of that. I guess they ran a rodeo, and they're like, let's run it back tomorrow. They have a parade, and the theme is Celebrating America, which just reminds me a Drop Dead Gorgeous when they're doing the theme for it. It's the same every year. It's American made. You know, salute to America, celebrating America. Same thing where they have floats and all that good shit here.

Ice cream, roast beef meal at the fire department. I mean, this is some small town shit. There's bull riding also, which is, of course, got to have bull riding. It says there's music, but I'm not really finding any music. You know what it is. It's Chase Moore. We get it. What's going on here?

Fill it in. Just grab two first. names and that's a guy. That's the guy. Or the lady. Or the lady, yeah. She might be trying to do that. And there's also a sunflower festival, which is just sunflowers. No Little Miss Sunflower? I mean, it's just come look at the Sunflowers, really. I think there's like sunflower seeds. You can get like a sunflower smoothie. Well, sunflowers run wild. And Sunflower season is so awesome in some areas of the country. You're just driving down the freeway. It's just as far as I can see down the stretch.

Beautiful. So that said, let's talk about some murder here. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about Tanya Jean Bushler, B-U-E-C-H-L-E-R. She'll only be Bushler for a very short time in our story anyway, and then she'll be A-S-O-S-O-L-A-O. Like A-S-O-P, like the guy who writes. A-E-S-P.

Yeah, but with an H. So I'm going to say A-S-O-F. Now she's born October 8, 19-4. 49, Tanya is. She grows up. It seems to have a pretty uneventful life from what I can gather. Nothing crazy happened to. No, in South Dakota, yeah.

I can't find a lot on her childhood or anything like that. So usually that means uneventful for the most part. Yeah. I'm assuming 4H and Sadie Hawkins and all that good shit and that's what's going on. A little FFA later. So October 1975 is when she marries David George Asoff. He's about three years older than her. And essentially, they build their life on a farm outside Highmore.

It's a pretty big far. They have five kids. Holy. Farm equipment. I mean, it is an agricultural family living on a farm in the middle of goddamn nowhere. David runs the whole operation. So much work. He's the farmer.

Tanya trained as a nurse over the years and ended up working part. part time at a hospital and a clinic in the next town over. So she's, she gets out of the house at least a little bit, which is good for her. Pretty much anybody with five kids should be a certified nurse. I think right away. I mean, you are one. You are one. You've raised five kids. You're a nurse. Oh, man. Yeah, that's scary though when they try to be their own nurse and teacher. That's scary considering they have no training for that. But she actually has training for it. So it's good. Yeah. I mean, don't go nursing or teaching anybody else's kids, but certainly, or your own. You're a nurse. Or your own, really. I'll take your advice. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's,

I mean, I guess if you live out here, you kind of have to be too. It's not, yeah, it's kind of the middle of nowhere. You got to learn some, some, some, some, some first aid stuff. They own, uh, own and lease 4844 acres of land. Five thousand acres. Seven point five square miles. That's enormous. That's so big. Square miles. Think about that. You own seven and a half square miles of shit. That's...

Holy. That is too much. So the thing is, that's their life. So it seems like they have a pretty uneventful, you know, they're that old picture, the American Gothic there with the pitchfork and the guy. And that's who they are is essentially what you're picturing with their kids in the background here. But by the 90s, things start to kind of unravel a little bit here for them.

They've been married 20 years at this point almost. It's pretty easy to have some baggage. Apparently, Tanya, she wanted something on the record. She went to the police, the Division of Criminal Investigation she went to in 1993 and says she wants something on the record. She doesn't want, she's not reporting a crime. She doesn't want anything done or any arrests made, but she wants to put something on the record. And this is the DCI agent, Dan Jihala. and he said, quote, she had fears that she thought her husband may try to kill her if she tried to divorce him or that he knew people that would have that done if she tried to leave him.

So she wanted it on record with law enforcement that I'm not leaving my husband right this minute and I haven't been threatened or anything, but I'm pretty sure if I leave and I end up dead, that's where you should look first, basically. Put that on the record. He hasn't threatened me. Nothing illegal has happened yet. Nothing that I want a report or that I want, you know, investigated or anything like that. But she said, if it ever happened to me, he would make it look like an accident. Do they take those reports? They'll take any report you give them, I guess.

I mean, why not write it down? Who cares? You're sitting there talking to it? I don't know if they take that. Yeah, they'll take that as a report. They'll take a report about anything. Really? Yeah, you can take, they'll take a report.

on anything, literally. Especially if we don't have to do any legwork. Fuck, yeah, we like that report. We just want it noted and put in a file just in case. Okay. So she didn't even want to take his business card because she was afraid David would find it and know it was going on. So she's like, I don't know.

I just want to let you know that. And even if he doesn't put it on the record, if she ends up dead, he can go, that's the same lady who talked to me and said this. So it's something, you know, to look at. So she told the agent that David demanded she account for every penny she spent. And so the DCI agent advised her, well, why don't you leave the marriage? It sounds like you're not happy. You should probably leave the marriage. And she said she wasn't ready because she was afraid of what would happen if she tried. So she sounds like she needs a counselor, not some cop to

talk to at this point. You know what I mean? Sounds like she needs somebody to encourage her to go. Because this guy's just telling her, well, why don't you leave then? And then she goes, well, I can't. I guess I'll write it down, but. So the agent said she wanted us to be aware that this was going on, what her life was like. So in the event that something happened, we were already aware of the issues in her relationship with her husband. Does that answer? She needs a friend. She needs a friend, yeah.

A friend, a fucking therapist, a, I don't know, a particularly friendly cow she can talk to. It's somebody. Well, he may have already, she thinks he knows people that get people gone. I think a farmer, all he knows are bulls. But how many degenerate farm hands that go from place to place does he know, transient? There are rumors in small towns about ranches that there's a lot. The man's got seven and a half square miles to make her disappear. That too.

And he's probably hired 150 criminals over the last 25 years. that he can go back in his little, you know, crime roll with that. Desperate men with alcohol and drug addiction problems. Now, she does have friends. She tells other people of her fears as well. It's not just the cops, but she wants that on record with the cops. She told her sister Robin that if David killed her, he would make it look like an accident. She told a priest, which that's going to for counseling, a priest, Father Anderson, that she was afraid David would kill her.

She told her friend Jan that she was afraid David would kill her. kill her. She told a co-worker, a doctor, that David verbally abused her and shoved her around. She told her cousin Vicki that she felt threatened by David and that he verbally abused her. She told the same thing to her friend Carol. She's told a coworker and friend, a woman named Wilma, that David verbally abused her and shoved her around. She told a car salesperson, Janine Rathart, that David was going to kill her for spending money, which that could be. I mean, oh, man, he's going to kill me when he finds out how much I spent on that. People would say that casually.

But still, if you come home and you replace the cabin air filter, we will have words. There's going to be something. I can go to AutoZone and do that in five minutes. No, shit. But this is to buying a car. She told her divorce lawyer, who she'll talk to later, Lee Bird, that she felt threatened. And if that David killed her, he would stage it as an accident. Then she told the DCI agent to put it on record.

And two of Tanya's coworkers were also told that she would not walk in front of a vehicle if David was driving it because she was afraid. He would just run her over and say it was an accident, you know, like the Attorney General. Yeah. That's how the tough things go in South Dakota. If you hit a guy, they go, I mean, you know, there's a lot of space. Sometimes you get hit by a car and it just gets done. So. Call tomorrow about it.

What? In the morning, I'll go check it out. So one of their daughters said that their mother. was, quote, treated like a slave. That's how she put it. That's also not really accurate either because she is allowed in the main house and sleeps in there and stuff and, you know, is allowed to leave and, you know, that sort of stuff. Come and go at will, you know, things that slaves were allowed to do.

She's to eat with the family? Oh, yeah. She's even allowed to eat with the family. Yeah, it's ridiculous. So, wow. So 1994, from the outside, if you looked at it, They look like a farm family. It looks like everything's going great.

Unless you were one of Tanya's friends who have told her, it was, you know, told a sob story and a horror story too. So in 1994, Tanya goes to a Sioux Falls divorce lawyer. Fancy going all the way to Sue Falls, which is an hour three hours and change away. So that's all day. You got to want that appointment. Yeah. The grounds she alleged were extreme cruelty.

She said David abused her mentally, physically and verbally. and described him as a husband who needed to control everything down to the penny. So that's what she wants. Now, sometime after this, she withdraws everything and says, never mind to the divorce lawyer. Pulls the divorce away. Pulls the divorce away and goes back to the farm.

It was never filed. She was filling stuff out and getting it already, and they never filed for divorce technically. So she just says, never mind. That's still cost money, doesn't it? Oh, to get him to prepare it? Yeah, I mean, he said, I don't give a shit. It's still billing you.

But you can take it back or not. You'll be paying for it. You're still paying for it. So she returned to the farm and she said it was for the sake of their five children, which at the time that this was going on were nine to 17 years of age. So this would just, I mean, a divorce would, that's a real tough age group of five kids to put a divorce on. It's all of their formative use. Not one of them are not in them.

Everybody's home still. It's tough. So she kept her nursing job and she just went back to what she was doing here. They actually end up seeking counseling together. So he goes to, David's willing to go to counseling. But it didn't help any, basically. No. Nothing happened.

So a few more years go by of, I assume, uncomfortable silences and, you know, outbursts. Terrible dinners. Terrible dinners. Terrible awkward dinners. With, yeah, like the old SNL sketch, we just hear their knives go. and Will Ferrell starts yelling at everybody that he drives a Dodge Stratus. It's that one. I drive a Dodge Stratis.

Yeah, that's the meal, though. Yeah. You look at each other. So David in 1998 is arrested for DWI. Uh-oh. Which is not good for him. What year? 98.

And he's convicted that same year of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in a completely different incident. Wow. So David had some, had some drinks in 98, let's just say. A couple of times. Which I don't know how the fuck you could live on a farm and not be a goddamn alcoholic. I can't believe you leave the house and drink. That's what I'm saying.

I'd be done with the farming shit and I'd be like, well, I got to go to bed in about an hour if I want to be up at four. And I better start drinking. This is... Stare at these cows and drink fucking whatever I've got in the fridge. Whatever. Angrily. Yeah, just swigling. that shit.

Menacing snarls. Grunt at the kids when they ask something. And then you take a drink. So their daughter here said that during the 1999 harvest season their father was especially shitty.

Which it seems like he's going through a period of some pretty decent alcoholism is what it sounds like here. So she said that her mother stayed home from her nursing job to help on the farm so the kids wouldn't have to miss school to help. Yeah.

But during the harvest season, and that should be the time that you smile the most. You're about to get paid, babe. I guess, but it's also a lot of work, I think. It's the same thing. So October 1999 here, things are going very bad. And Tanya decides, I got to get out of this now. She's done.

She's done. So she emails her daughter, one of the funniest emails ever here. Well, just the beginning of it. Okay. This is an email from to her, from her to one of her daughters, where she says, quote, dad is being a poop pet again. which is great lied I don't think I can take another three years

which is when the last kid would be out basically I'm looking for a place in Falkton which is where she works I'm just tired of the whole mess and I'm going to file for divorce okay now what she needs here to be able to get out of everything here because she's kind of planning everything

and setting it up like dominoes she needs a car to get out you can't leave without a car how the fuck you're going to do that So what she does is she wants to buy, she's going to buy her own car. She has her own money in a separate account from her job where she has money. She's been saving up. So she goes to Har Motors in Aberdeen.

And she apparently bought a car. And she told the assistant sales manager here, you know, later on, she ends up calling the next day freaking out. This woman said she was, quote, frantic, bawling, screaming and hollering. she was calling to find out whether the dealership had cashed her check yet. Oh. And they said Tanya told the dealer here that her husband was going to kill her because she spent some money, even though it was from her account. So she bought the car. It was like, I'm doing this.

And the next day it was like, oh, God, what's going to happen when he finds out? Which is, I mean, screaming, not just like, oh, boy, this is going to be inconvenient. Like, oh, my God, he can't find out, like, which is crazy. $36,000 out of my account. He's going to flip. He's going to flip. Yeah. So November 7th, 1999, Tanya takes off.

She's gone. While David is sleeping, she and the youngest of the five children move to an apartment. She takes a couple of the kids, yeah, because a couple of them are gone by now. They've moved out of the house. They're 16-year-old. They take the youngest of the five children. Yeah, the daughter, I think, here. Okay.

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You should do this. One last time, that's 60% off your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com slash STM. Stop serving your little carnivar, a bowl of processed shortcuts. Now back to the show. So Tanya decides to move out and basically this is fucking crazy. When she moves out, this is how to the penny this guy is. David makes her sign a list of everything she took from the home. What?

So she can't say she didn't take something and blah, blah, blah. Which would be fine if we're talking about German barabonds that are untraceable and like, you know, fucking, you know, a fabric. Bricea eggs or some shit. Like. Priceless china. Things of the jewelry, things of that nature. No, no, no. This is down to a jar of salsa and a box of fudge brownie mix. A box of mix.

A box of mid. Not even completed brownies. Everything down to things that cost $3.29. Yeah. And the salsa, from what I understand, was open. So like a three quarters open bar, like already had some chips dipped salsa. and a box of Duncan Heys. What about that third can of pace?

I want that talking. Yeah. Bring away. Where'd the rest of my salsa? Where'd that go? Imagine that. Imagine your wife leaves with your kids and your biggest concern is,

where's my fucking salsa? I brought some Tostitos home tonight. This is bullshit. Meanwhile, it's a jar of it. It's not good. It's a shit jar of salsa. And once you open a jar of salsa,

that's only good for like a week and a half before weird shit starts growing in there. Yeah, Before that, like, weird line forms around the lid. And then you start getting mold in it and shit. You got to go through a jar of salsa pretty quick. There's a crusty ring around that. That falls in it.

And you're like, oh, you got to pick it out. I'm going to have to eat that. So that's what's going on here. This guy, she's not bullshit when she says down to the penny. He's cheap. Yeah. He says, I want my half jar of salsa and I want it now. Yeah.

So, whoa. She took it. I want that documented. Wow. Because if we're splitting it down the middle, I get a sixth of that. She owes me a third of a jar of salsa at this point. And I'd like it.

That's half of what I get out of that jar. I'm entitled. I am entitled to that. And not for nothing, half a tray of brownies, if we're talking serious here. Does the labor to make them count? I mean, I don't think he would count it. But yeah, it should count. Should count towards something, shouldn't it?

Yeah. So November 16th, 1999, she calls her divorce lawyer, Lee Bird, to reinstate the divorce from 1994. Hey, can we get that going again? Remember that thing five years ago? You probably threw out all the paperwork. He's like, you're going to have to fill that out again. I don't have the form from back then.

So he noticed a difference in her immediately from 1994. He said, in 1994, she'd seen beaten down and just kind of meek. She said now, quote, she was sitting upright in her chair. She was. She had a lot more confidence, he said. This bitch has got swagging her now. She comes in. That's right, motherfucker.

Yeah. Fuck him. I'm out. You know how much fucking salsa I got at home? What's up? Bring it. She got the swagger of a gal with a box of uncooked around. A chick with some Duncan Hines ready to go right now.

Wow. So he also said this is what Tanya wrote in her filing here. David has become so controlling over the years that we have become virtual prisoners on the farm. Okay. So that is November 16. Now, November 18th, it is 1999, 930 a.m. here, okay. Tanya drives to the farm to meet David. They have a joint appointment in town with a court services officer about one of their son's juvenile cases. So one of the kids got in trouble. One of the kids is the problem. He was probably shooting up signs or some country horseshit that's, I don't know what he could have gotten into on a farm, really. He stole somebody's fertilizer. What are we talking about? You would be shocked how bad these motherfuckers are. They're bad, but I'm saying what is there to get into?

They own seven and a half square miles. They'd have to go so far just to get off the property to get into something. That's what I mean. Shooting somebody else's cows or something. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I mean, I don't think they're holding up liquor stores probably because there aren't any. No. You're recognizable.

They might if there was liquor stores to hold up. So they ride into town together in David's pickup, not her newly purchased. car. So right away, he's driving. Now, late morning after the meeting, David drives Tanya to the bank so she can make a deposit. Then the two of them sit down with an attorney in Highmore to discuss the divorce. Sure. Okay. All right. Here's what it's weird. Now, David believed that this attorney, he arranged an attorney and said, okay, if you want a divorce, this is how we're going to do it. And he thinks that this attorney is going to represent both of them and it's just going to be an amicable split. He should do that?

No, not at all. But in his mind, in his mind, he can control it if he does this. You know what I'm saying? So he doesn't know that she's already hired another lawyer. And she's just trying to keep him at bay. So she just goes, yeah, I'll come and meet with the guy, sure, like, you know, acting like she's going to go along with it. Yeah. And she's with him.

So at 1110 a.m. the Hyde County Sheriff Mike Volick sees David and Tanya driving in David's pickup truck headed back to the family farm. It's only because they know, everybody knows each other that they would even notice them. And he waves at them and that's that. So 1143 to 1155,

David and Tanya call their oldest daughter, Rebecca, who is currently in Italy as a foreign exchange student. Nice. So they... That one's got it together. I would say. said, hmm, where's the farthest from this fucking farm I can get? I know, Italy.

Nothing like a South Dakota farm. Nothing. You can't get far. In culture, you can't get farther away than that. My brother is the biggest fuck up in town. I'm doing nothing like him. My parents are getting divorced. Where are cliffs and ocean.

I've been trapped on this thing. I want some guy in a Vespa with a shirt open to call me a very sexy lady and then take me for cappuccino. That's what I'm looking for. I'm going to run my fingers through clean chest. That's what I'm looking for here. It doesn't have dirt and manure in it. So they talk for 12 minutes because I'm sure that's an expensive call in 1999.

Oh, that's crazy. That's a real expensive call. So 1 o'clock, Tanya has an appointment with her priest, Father Randy Phillips, at the parish office in Falkton. At 1 p.m. is the appointment. She never shows up. Oh. And the priest said she's normally pretty reliable, so she thought he thought that was odd. But who knows?

She's got a lot going on right now. Yeah, I think it's odd that there's a Catholic church up there, but okay. I agree with that. Fascinating. Who knows? So at 108 p.m., David calls an implement dealer in Miller, South Dakota, asking about a radiator cap he says he needs for farm equipment. Yeah.

Okay. At 208 p.m., David arrives at the dealership in Miller, an hour after he called, to buy the radiator cap. Now, he said that the guy at the implement dealer said that he didn't seem to be his usual self, David. He said, normally he likes to give you a hard time, and I was surprised he didn't. He comes in and breaks balls, and now he's just coming and getting the cap and leaving. So that's where he is. Now, 301 p.m., David calls the former Hyde Park, or Hyde Park, that's by me, sorry. The former Hyde County Sheriff, okay?

Former. Former, the guy named Martin Warkman and tells him that Tanya fell down the stairs and died. Oh. That's what you call the current sheriff, motherfucker? I always say this and people never call the cops first when they have someone dead in their house, ever. On this show, when you watch documentaries, they always call a family member first. They call their mother. They call somebody they take.

somebody they trust. A guy that doesn't do the job anymore? I don't know if it's that people don't trust their own eyes or like they have to tell someone their close. Even in cases that aren't murder or anything like that, people tend to call other people first for some reason. I don't know why. Have we trained ourselves to gossip before we solve the problem?

Well, I think you go for emotional support, obviously. I mean, that's clearly it. I don't know. This person's dead in my house. exactly gossip. No, but that's what I mean. It's not exactly calling for, to fix the situation.

You know what I mean? No, but it's, I need advice of what to do. When the answer's the same every time, you got nines and ones on your phone, motherfucker? Well, use them. Why'd you call this number? Yeah, why are you calling me? That would be terrible, but that,

long story, but I have been called in this situation. Right? I go, what? Call the fucking cops. Don't call me. Yeah. With a dead body? A dead body?

A dead body. Natural causes, but a, dead body. I have had people call me. Freaking out, I go, you're screaming at the wrong person. Call the goddamn cops. Then call me back when you're done. I'll help you pick up the pieces, but you got to fucking, at least sweep them into a pile first. You know what I mean? I can't go find them in the quarters. I'm glad I'm the bottom rung.

Fuck, man. Or the cops. Jesus Christ. So he calls and tells this guy, the retired sheriff that he was friends with. So it's a familiar guy who is a, you know... At least there's a law enforcement connection. An ex. Yeah, he would know who to call or where to call. So then at 3.16 p.m., 15 fucking minutes go by.

I don't know if he was on the phone with this guy for 15 minutes or what, but 15 minutes later, he calls the current sheriff. 15 minutes later. Mike Volic, the guy who saw them in the pickup truck that morning. Yeah. And he tells them, yeah, Tanya's dead. He's what? I just saw you guys.

Well, now she fell down the stairs and died. So there's that. That's it. So you might want to come over and take care of that. So at 3.45 p.m., the youngest daughter calls. She called to talk to her mother at 3.45. David told her that she couldn't come to the phone right now. I mean, he's not lying.

It's the truth. She said, he said she's busy, and I asked again, and he said she's outside. Those are both incorrect. Those are wild fucking lies. it's incorrect. Yeah, very much so. So then 3.55 p.m. the sheriff finally arrives.

No one's in a rush here. No kidding. I get that the farm moves at a slower pace, but for Christ's sake. And he told the sheriff she's dead. She's dead at 316. It took this guy fucking this long to get here. That's crazy. So anyway, he shows up.

He finds David coming out of the bathroom when he goes into the house. Oh, I was taking the shit. Don't go in there. No, no. Yeah. So who you don't want to go in there, boy. Who, he closes the door, the fans going. Yeah.

He said when he saw him, he was very calm and not emotional at the time. So David tells the sheriff that he had moved. This is crazy. He says, yeah, I moved Tanya's body. How's you do that? This is why? So you described. Taryn, why'd you do that?

You destroyed the crime scene is what you're saying here. You idiot. Wow. I moved your body. He said, yeah, I didn't want the kids to see her. You know, in case they came in. They said, and at that moment, he was telling the cop that he was just got done washing blood off his hands, and he was just wiping it down with the towels.

He's like, I'm just destroying all the evidence, you know, just, uh. Holy shit. Just hanging out, destroying things, making it impossible to really do a physical crime scene here. You know, that kind of stuff. Welcome to the crime scene. You're a half hour late. Then Volick looks over and notices the washer and dryer. are running.

Oh my God. And inside the washer, we find out, is David's work coat. And inside the dryer is a pair of jeans, a mismatched pair of work gloves, underwear, shirts, socks, and a towel. He didn't. He just cleaned the crimes. He just said, well, I'll just make, do clean all his house. And he sorted the loads.

He put the coat in separately. Yep, put the coat in separately. Well, the coat's got to go on a gentle cycle, otherwise it'll mess it out. It's the other things, you know, we go regular. It's amazing. So it's in there And the cop Fucking turn the washing machine off

Yeah And he said, who started the washing machine And David turned the machine back on What? And then said, Someone else must have started it. Who the fuck else is here? It's you and a dead person.

Who the hell? Which one have you started this? Out of you and the corpse. She's really into housework. Yeah, by the way, it's halfway through the rinse. What are we doing here? It's going to be itchy if you put that on.

What is going on? This is what I mean. No one takes this like seriously like a dead person is here. When you shut it off, if he goes to turn it back on, you have to tackle that person. He just turns it back out. Someone else might have started and they just go, well, okay. Stop doing things. This is like fucking Fargo meets brain damage is what this is.

This is at least. Fargo, they had, you know, Francis McDormant was a good cop. She was putting the crime scene together and at least these people. are just like, who turned the machine on there, buddy? And oh, someone else. Well, okay, then let it finish. Well, you gotta, it'll smell. It's gonna be all musty.

We can't, you gotta at least let it spin. That's amazing. So Tanya's body was at the bottom of the basement stairs where he said she had fallen. He said he moved her, but then she's at the bottom of the stairs, which is weird. And he said, yeah, she fell down the stairs.

Now, there's no blood on the stairs. There's no blood on the railing, no blood on the walls. No blood like dripping down the stairway or anything like that. There's no blood here. So she tumbles down a flight of steps and the steps are completely clean, which seems off. She tumbles down hard enough to die but never cracks the skin, which seems a little... They've lost a drop on the way down. Seems a little odd.

So David tells the cop, he says, well, you know, she apparently broke her neck. I mean, that's, you know, I'm not a medical examiner or nothing, but, you know, I would say she broke her neck. Then he said, yeah, I moved the wife's body. He said, they said, well, did you attempt to revive her? And he said, no, I just, I called the sheriff, talked to him for a while, you know, caught up on him, see how he was doing. He took a while to get here, so I didn't think that that was necessary. They called the old sheriff first. And, you know, he didn't seem real concerned.

So I just threw a load of laundry in and stuff. And you know how it goes in your wife's dead at the bottom of the stairs. Felt like neither of you thought there was any bringing her back. Yeah, no, fuck it. No one seems in a rush. Everyone seems. Now, by the evening, the investigators arrive here. They get there at 525.

So then it's another hour and a half for the investigators to get there. And the coroner doesn't arrive until 7 p.m. Or any of the lab people either. Yeah. Wow. The lab director, the criminalist people who do the crime scene shit and collect. evidence and the coroner, none of these people show up till seven. This is insanity.

I don't know if they're far away or I'm not sure here. I assume everybody's keeping it together while they're not there. One of the disadvantages of living in the middle of nowhere or advantages if you want to kill someone in the middle of nowhere. You have a lot of time to do laundry and clean up. So he said, and it's this crazy thing too. He said, yeah, I was just washing up. Yeah, that's how it worked there. You know, he said, they said, well, you didn't try to revive her.

said, no, because I knew she was dead. No, there's no reviving her. No, I mean, on the farm, you would know when things are dead. You've seen a lot of dead things. You know, life and death happens on a farm. So they go and they're going to talk to David. They end up interviewing him three times this night. Never at a police station, always in his own living room, or dining room.

Just sitting at the dining room table, real cash. Real chill. In the crime scene, still. You know. Amazing. So the first one is about 13 minutes. Just to what you guys do today? Where were you?

I was here. Real quick once over. Just to get the timeline. The second one's about 45 minutes. And then the third one interviews about 60 minutes. So not very long here. They give him no Miranda warnings, no attorneys in the room. This is all real casual of what we all know each other.

And this is, you know, real casual what happened with your wife. Like it's so not legally. Correct. It's like it's 1915 or something. something. This is almost the year 2000 already. We have crime scene procedures that we do, but they don't. So, they say

that he's pretty calm still, real unemotional. He's making coffee for people. Hey, you want a cup of coffee? He gets up and makes it. He's giving people tours of the farm. What? It's real weird. Real weird. And they say that it's

not like, oh, he's okay, then he breaks. They said his demeanor never changes. He's just like you came, like he invited everyone over for a barbecue all day long, all night. This is where we milk them. Where's their dead body? Where do you keep your corpses? Oh, that's at the bottom of the basement steps, you know.

So he talked on the phone with family members between talking to them. I mean, you know, just walking around. He walks around the farm. He showed Lindberg, the one investigator, his machine shed, made everybody coffee. And the cops are drinking the coffee, too. We make the drinking this guy's coffee. This is way too casual, way too small town. So they sit him down.

The first interview he says, yeah, you know, he helped Tanya load some Christmas decorations in her car after the call to her daughter. And he said, I left for Miller to get the radiator cat. I was gone about two hours. I came back and I was working on my trailer. And then when I came in, there she is at the bottom of the stairs. I don't know how long she was there. I wasn't even hearing when it happened. I have no idea.

Then they sit him down for the slightly longer. interview, not very much. And he says, well, Tanya sometimes feels dizzy. She gets dizzy spells. Oh, is that right? Maybe she tripped over the Christmas decorations on the steps. That could be a thing, he says. He says he's pretty sure.

He's, quote, pretty sure it wasn't him that hit her and knocked her down the steps. Pretty sure. 20 minutes ago, he said, I was an hour away when it happened. I don't know. Now he goes, pretty sure I didn't knock her down the steps. Why didn't even say that? That's wild. And he said, they said that there was some blood on the left railing.

He said, because they said there's no blood on the stairs. He goes, well, there was some blood on the left railing. But I wiped it off. I had to clean it up. It's gross. He said, you know, the kids were coming home. I thought they were coming home. So, you know, you clean up the blood, you know.

I saw some pesky fingerprints. I got rid of those. Like, what are you doing? So he's cleaning the crime scene blood. He's done laundry. he's watched blood off his hands. So they said that, he said when I moved her, I got blood all over me. That's why I was washing up in the bathroom.

You know, getting all of her blood all off of me. Can't have that on me. It's gross. Yeah. So they said, okay, before he said, but I never laid a hand on her. I don't know what you're talking about. So then the cop says before the third interview, why don't we go down to the sheriff's office for a quieter setting.

There's a lot of stuff going on here. And David said, no, I'm pretty comfortable here. Let's just finish up here. I don't want to. I want to do it at the dining room table. And the cop says, all right. And keep, no, take him to a fucking interrogation room. Make him sit there for two hours.

Stu, do all the cop things that you do when someone's dead. What are you doing? Cop things. Do those things, stupid. So. Yeah. It's crazy. I don't know how they're going to get anything out of this.

What fucking evidence could they possibly have? Well, during the third interview, he says some things. They start getting a little more accusatory because it's pretty obvious that the story is very off. So at one point, he says, quote, if you're accusing me here, maybe I should call my lawyer. And then they blow past that. And he says, don't you think I should talk to an attorney, you know, at one point? And none of these things are, I want an attorney. At one point, he says to the cop, you're making sense, Mike.

I'm just afraid I'm just afraid to admit to anything. Maybe I should have an attorney. I'm scared to death. Exactly. It gets more interesting. Then he said, I should really call Jeff,

my attorney. Everybody's on the first name basis here, by the way. I should really call Jeff my attorney. I don't know. I really can't. I maybe can add a little bit to it, but I just, I can't.

Because they're trying to get him to elaborate on some stuff. So after the last, after the one he says there, maybe I can lend a little bit to it. After that, the cop says, David, you add something to it. Please, for our sake, just add whatever. Just trying to get him to talk. Fix it.

Fix it. So David says, well, I mean, maybe there was, quote, a little pushing and shoving out in the garage before she fell down the stairs. He said, you know, they argued because he was too harsh on the kids. So that's why they were arguing. And there might have been a little pushing and shoving. Okay. I thought you were an hour away. might have been slight domestic abuse is what that is.

There was a tussle. No tussle, as OJ always put it. We were tussling, rassling, you know what I mean? He called it rassling and tussling. That was OJ's all the time. Imagine rassling with your wife. That's crazy. Having a tussle.

I've never had a tussle with my any significant other I've ever had. No tussling, ever. I've never rassled a soul. No. Never happened. Tits get in the way. No good. Air, fuck.

All of it. So he says he freaked out when he saw her at the bottom of the stairs and then he left her there and drove to Miller for the radiator cap and didn't go down and see if she needed help. That's his story. Okay. His story is there was some pushing and shoving. And then when I saw her, I just went, well, she'll be fine. And I went an hour away to get a radiator cap and came back and went, whoops, she didn't get up. What he said is we pushed and shoved out in the garage.

Then I saw her at the base of the stairs. That's it. Then I went and got a radiator cap. Sir, that story has so many different spots that got to be filled in. And why are you doing laundry and why are you covered in blood and why are you washing yourself off and what's going on here? Right. So at about midnight on the direction of the state's attorney, because you know the cops wouldn't fucking do it. They arrest him. The state's attorney said, his story makes no sense.

His wife's dead. Fucking put cuffs on that guy. And they were like, oh, sorry, David. Oh, it's all right. Mike, you know, I get it. You're doing your job. I'm going to miss that damn coffee, sir. Wow, he's released the next day, $100,000 bond,

so he has to put up $10,000 in cash, and he must report daily to the sheriff's office to show that he hasn't run away, which seems real old school. Get up to a 24-hour head start? That's all. That's all you can get. If you call and then hang up the phone and get in the truck.

Not call, he has to go to the sheriff's office every day. He can't call. Because then, you know, shit, he could be fooling him. He could be calling from. Jamaica for all they know. Yeah. But if he pops by the station, then gets in the truck and starts driving, he could be 24 hours away before they even fucking think about him. I don't think they're real good at any of this.

So I think they're bad at shit. So the daughter here, this is Rebecca, he said, or she said, quote, he told me that she'd fallen down the stairs. My first impulse was, what the fuck did you do? What did you do? Yeah. The other daughter here, Jesse, who was the youngest child at the time. time. She was 16. She said that her father was not kind to her mother. She said, quote, he would call her fat or stupid or a dumb woman. He's abusive. He said that she said her father was drunk and physically

threatening her mother during an argument in the summer of 99. And quote, he told her if she didn't shut up, he would throw her through a wall. Oh, he used that one. Throw you through the wall. He used that one. He used that one. Very common. Back in 99, that was a pretty common. Yeah. I don't think I've ever threatened. That's like a dad threat. Not to a woman. That's what I mean. I just heard that threat.

Or woman. That's a threat your dad would say to you when you're 12 and being an asshole. I'll throw you through this fucking wall. I'll put you right through the fucking wall. So the autopsy comes. They perform it the next day. And remember, he said she fell downstairs and that was it. Here's what she has.

Quote, a blackened left eye, a large bruise on the left cheek, a through and through laceration on the left cheek. A through and through laceration on the left. lip. So totally split the lip open. A large impact abrasion on the left side of the skull where the skin had been scraped away and a smaller one on the right side, patiquial hemorrhages, which are the bursts in the eyes in the skin associated with strangulation on the right temple and lower right eyelid, bruising along the left jaw line in the neck itself, a voice box bruised on both the left and right sides, bruising on the left

collarbone, four or five fractured ribs, abrasions on both knees and the left ankle, torn panty hose at the knees and left ankle, and a bruise on the back of the right hand that they suspected was a defensive injury when you're

trying to block your face. So unless she got dropped from an airplane down the stairs. Oh, she jumped down those stairs. That's the craziest list of injuries for, unless the stairway was, you know, 14 stories long. And she tumbled down it but only landed on her head the whole way.

Her head, her neck, her voice box, you know, strangled, beaten stuff. Inside her skull, they found bruising under the scalp on both the left and right back side of the skull with skull fractures on both sides above and behind the ears. Oh, boy. Injuries to both sides of the head suggesting an impact with a hard surface, then a separate blow. It's not just one shot to the thing. No underlying natural disease, no broken neck, nothing obstructing the airway. So, okay, she wasn't choking.

So the conclusion is, cause of death is manual strangulation and blunt head trauma. Wow. Which does not happen from falling down the stairs, obviously. They said they couldn't, by the way, this is a carpeted flight of stairs also. So these injuries are not happening going down a carpeted flight of stairs. Those are my favorite ones, by the way, to light. to lay like and shoot down them.

You can fucking shoot down. Those are party. Those were great when you're kidding. Yeah. So she's all fucked up. Now in the garage, when they look, do a crime scene on the whole house,

the stairwell is very clean. The garage floor is not. Oh? The garage has scuff marks on the floor. On the lower inside panel of the garage door, there's blood spatter that matches Tanya's DNA.

Uh-huh. That's not good. Under a car parked in the garage is a car parked in the garage is a clump of hair that belonged to Tanya. And the floor appeared to have been recently cleaned. Yeah. So the insurance guy, he has this insurance guy that we're going to talk about.

It does his, all of us, you have an insurance guy. Everyone has an insurance person. So this insurance guy came over to visit, because he's out on bond, came over to visit David and said that he can't make it to the rosary service because I have other things. I have something I have a previous commitment. And David said, quote, I don't give a shit. She deserved to die. Oh. That's what he told the insurance guy.

Okay. Speaking of insurance, they also find out that David had two life insurance policies on Tanya, naming him as the beneficiary, totaling $1.7 million that are payable by, in the event she died by accidental means. You know, took a tumble down the stairs. Like the stairs. Yeah. Yeah. So a $500,000 policy.

dated April 6th, 94, when she was trying to leave him, remember, to which a $500,000 accidental death benefit was added later on. Then another second $500,000 policy dated June 1st, or June 21st, 1996 with a $200,000 accidental rider out of it on. So that's $1.7 million. The second policy, he had told his insurance agent that he wanted to cancel the first policy and replace it with a cheaper one. So the guy wrote it up, but David, had never canceled the first policy. He kept them both. He was fucking lying.

So that's interesting. And the guy, basically, he kept paying the premiums. Therefore keeping them current. Yeah, that's it. So November 12, 1999 is when he had called, he called his insurance agent. This is six days before Tanya has killed. Oh. He called this agent and said that, basically said that if Tanya died in an accident, he said,

well, he's talking about the accident stuff, but this is just not about insurance. This is just chit-chat with his buddy. And he said, the insurance agent? Yeah. And he said, quote, I'm going to kill the bitch. You know I can do it. Then he said, remember, she was the one that wanted the life insurance.

Which this guy doesn't know that at all. Don't forget that. In the same conversation, David asked this man whether he knows how to transfer farmland into his son's name and all that kind of thing. Now, David's phone record show he was in contact with an attorney, not the divorce attorney, a different attorney during this week 13 times he called this person in seven days.

So David's bond, by the way, will later be revoked when he fails to abide by the conditions of his release, which is funny. There's a long list of people he said incriminating things to, including a woman named Carol, who lives about nine miles from the farm, which is. probably the next door neighbor, I would assume. Fuck. And she heard David talk several times about killing his wife, but she didn't think he was serious. I mean, people talk about, yeah, I'm going to kill my wife.

You know how that goes. I guess David had told this woman once that he would rather have to get rid of his wife or have her killed there. She said that she wasn't sure what he meant, adding that once he talked of hiring a hitman. What? She said, quote, he's not a stupid man. I can't believe that he would do it himself. Well, I got news for you, ma'am. He's pretty stupid.

She's dumb as fuck. Her friend Vicky also said later that Tanya said in October her husband had been pushing, shoving, and slapping and threatening to kill her as well. And, yeah, she said when she had moved into the apartment, everything was looking up. She said she looked beautiful and relaxed and happy for the first time. Several other people said that David was abusive and all of that. there is one piece of evidence in his favor. One. What is that?

Particle number 68. Particle. Particle. There was a piece of physical evidence here. Under one of Tanya's fingernails. Now, keep in mind, she just got with him at 9 o'clock in the morning. So anything could happen before that. It's not like they've been together exclusively in each other's company for a week.

Under the fingernails, they recover a tiny pinpoint-sized clump of tissue that's described as skin-like by the lab. They send it for DNA testing. It's male, but it does not match David. Okay. So, it could be anybody else. But it doesn't even signify that it's as kids or any show. No, no, not even that side.

It's just a, okay. And they can't do anything more with it because the DNA test consumed the entire sample back in the night. Oh, shit. That's what happened. So there's nothing else to test. So all they have is they have this piece of skin that's not David's. under her fingernails.

So they're wondering, will the interviews, the three interviews he did at his dining room table, be allowed into court? Because he was never read as Miranda rights, mind you. But they said that, listen, and the detective even said, listen, I tried to steer David away from lawyering up when he would talk about a lawyer.

And this is standard operating procedure in an interrogation. They say, you can call a lawyer, but if you do, that shuts off all your opportunity need to tell us the truth. We can't help you anymore if you get a lawyer. Not that they're trying to help you by putting you in prison, but that's what they tell you. We can't help you if you get a lawyer.

We can't help you discriminate yourself anymore. We can't help tighten the noose around your neck anymore if you get a lawyer. So they said in a custodial interrogation, you know, that this is something, but basically he was not in custody. He was in his own house. Right. Making coffee, walking around the ground. They never followed him to the bathroom or they let him do whatever he wants.

wanted. He had run of the house. Well, I guess that means you, if you have run of the house, then you can say whatever you want. You're not in custodial, this is not a custodial interrogation. It's, you're just talking voluntarily to lead the cops. Now, they should Mirandize him if they think he's done anything because that's the rule, but he's still not, whatever. The defense argued, everything should be thrown out. But the court said that he was not being sweated. He wasn't being, you know, kept in a room. The questioning happened in his own table, in his own home by his own choosing. He said, I'll talk to you. The agents told him, you don't have to talk to us. They never

restrained him. It's in. Fuck you, David. Which is tough. There's, there's no, there's no, exposed strategy happening. No. That should let him know that he should, he can tell them to get out of my house at any time. Absolutely. At the same time, if you're going to, if you're going to bring up anything about a crime with a suspect that you have, to one inkling that he's a suspect, you got to Mirandize him too. That's crazy. You got to do it. Maybe at that point, they didn't suspect it as a crime? Yeah, they had to. He got to.

He said, I wiped the blood away. He's doing laundry. He said he moved the body. He didn't try to revive. Yeah, that's why they're talking to her. By the third one, they're like, dude, your story's changed, man. Your story sucks. The third interrogation should have been at least they needed to, but once they were real suspicious.

So he's charged with first degree murder, second degree murder, first degree manslaughter, and that's to give the jury a choice. Chance. there. They moved the trial to a different county to southwest of Kennebec in Lyman County. The jury selection, and this is some small town shit, oh my God, okay. Oh, okay. When the two summoned jury panels were, they went through by challenges and the people were all gone, they couldn't see it enough people. There's a small place. There's not enough, there isn't a lot of people. So the judge ordered the sheriff's office to, quote,

find more jurors. Go get more people, please. So a deputy named Rob Parker gets on the phone, and he rounds up 20 prospective jurors. The judge asked them, how'd you find these 20 people? So Deputy Parker explained that he probably, he said that he went to town to Oacoma, Reliance, Kennebec, Prechow and Vivian, these towns, to try to get three people per town. That was the goal. Yeah.

Just driving down. Hey, you 18? You are people? You are people? Are you an American citizen at all? So he went to town and get three people and he said, quote, we started at the top, letter A. Every third person down was getting called. They opened the white pages and called every third person.

Holy shit. They said if they weren't home, then we went to the next three. It was time consuming. So we went, we went, quote, I bet they're home. We called them. So when the judge said, did you call anyone you thought was pro law enforcement. He said, quote, half the list I'd say probably not. He said there's a couple of them definitely not pro law enforcement after we talked to them.

And he said most of the people that he called didn't even believe it. They had to call the clerk's office because it sounded like a prank call. Hi, I'm the sheriff from another county or I'm the sheriff from another town. Can you come to the courthouse and be a juror today? That's not how jury duty works. Yes, my refrigerator's running. Leave me a long. Oh, my God.

Yeah, I got Prince Albert in a can and I'll let him out. Don't worry about it. So he, the defense, obviously the defense lawyer said this, said that it looked like a systematic exclusion of Native Americans from the jury. Because the deputy said he didn't call anyone from Lower Brule and part of the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, in explaining that a large number of the lower Brul residence from the original pool hadn't shown up anyway. So he said, fuck him. I won't even try. So the judge says, you can't do that, stupid.

So he ordered him to go back and recruit from there the next day. You got to make it even. So they ended up three of those that he recruited that day ended up serving from the, from the, that had Native American surnames. A juror named Eagle Thunder deliberated through the verdict and an alternate name Middle Tent was excused. before deliberations. Now, we got to go through this pretty quickly, but basically, the prosecution's going, it's pretty goddamn obvious what happened. She's strangled and beaten, and there's no one else on the goddamn farm.

And the stairs can't do that. And the stairs can't do it. The defense attorney's like, it's an accident. That's what they say. They say, well, why was he trying to transfer land to his son a few days before? And they go, who doesn't want their son to inherit their land? that's literally what the defense said. Yeah.

So they talk about the life insurance signatures, and they say they're probably David's, by the way, and not Tony. She probably didn't even know this was on her. It's pretty goddamn. This is a tough trial. They said the prosecutor said divorce for him was not an option. That meant his wife would get at least half the farm, and he wasn't going to tolerate that. A guy that had so much control that he made his wife sign for the phone.

budge brownies she took from from the home a week before. He's not going to let her have an acre of that place. Unmade, Your Honor. Unmade. Powdered. You need eggs still for this. And oil. And he said, the first mistake of marrying the defendant brought her years of pain and

suffering. The second mistake was going alone with her husband to the couple's farm. That was her fatal mistake. It cost her her life. She was beaten from head to toe. You don't get that from falling down the stairs. This isn't an accident. This is first degree.

murder. Okay. Okay. So, and they say there's never been another suspect. The defense comes out and they go, there's a piece of skin under her fingernails. They've never, they never even looked at anybody else. They concentrate her right on my guy right here. Then he says, this is amazing. This case is not over whether David was a good man or a bad man. The fact that he's not a perfect husband doesn't make him a murderer. He's not on trial for being a bad husband. Right. Yeah. So they bring out the forensic pathologist. They bring out everybody, DNA analysts. Then they bring out a physicist, Dr. Sammy Shibani. God, how am I going to do this fast? Okay, he's an expert. He calls, he says he does something called injury mechanism analysis. A self-described blend of physics, trauma medicine,

and engineering used to determine whether a given injury could have happened in the way someone claimed. He claimed, he told the jury he was a clinical professor at Temple University, held four degrees in physics from Oxford in England, and that he was a licensed professional engineer, a quote, all over the world. He says, I don't even charge a fee for this shit. I do it as a community service. I do it for the love of the game. That's it.

The love of poking and prodding dead bodies. So he said, whichever way you slice it, it's impossible, not consistent with the laws of physics. Now, they had other just regular criminalists and crime scene people that said the same thing. The defense case, they tried. They really did. They brought on another criminalist who said that her position was postural asphyxia, and she was suffocated because of the unnatural way her body came to rest. And it's like, how did she get the bruising in her voice box, that asshole?

Right. That didn't quite work. David testifies in his own defense. Awesome. He says he pushed her around in the garage a little bit, but she was a little bit dizzy and blah, blah, blah. He said, when I found her, I cradled her head and got blood on my coat. So I dragged her body to the south side of the stairwell, and I covered her with a blanket so the kids didn't see her.

And that's why I was washing blood off of me. That's it. And he said, during the interviews with the cops, I was just pretty much telling them what they wanted to hear. That's all. Oh. Okay. Interesting. So the defense closing is, come on.

They concentrate on the particle. That little particle under the nail. And he said, it got there by scratching. It was somebody's, but it's not David's. The jury disagrees and finds him guilty of first-degree murder. First-degree. It's too small. And he said, I'm going to kill it.

It all lines up. So the sentencing, you, sir, may fuck off life without parole. Yeah. Yeah. So the prosecutor said, David was a cold-blooded murderer who had planned his wife's death for years. The jury found the truth. David will remain where he belongs in prison behind bars. Forever.

Yep. And they said his testimony didn't help him. He said, we would have gotten him convicted whether he took the stand or not, but he certainly didn't help himself by doing that. No. Nope. And they said he has no remorse, not an ounce. He's not shed a tear about this and he never will. He hates her.

Hates her. 2002, he appealed basically based on the particle and based on all this type of shit. And he's going to kill me hearsay and all that kind of stuff. It's affirmed. Very quickly. Remember the Shabani guy? The self-styled guy. Huge scandal.

He's full of shit. What? Complete fraud. Completely fraud. He doesn't even love the game. He went in the Michael Peterson staircase case, which is similar to this case here. And the defense exposed him as a lie. The chair of Temple University's physics department wrote a letter saying, denying any claim that he's ever been a member or ever been a filial.

with the temple physics department. He's a fraud that way. Plus, they said that this guy said he had to write the same kind of letter once a year because Shabani kept trying to establish his bona fides as an expert witness claiming a temple affiliation that doesn't exist. They said he had once had a at loose courtesy affiliation at best and essentially got parking privileges, but he had no anything. No tenure or anything.

No. So he's gotten a bunch of people new trials. A lawyer in Wisconsin said he's a fraud. Basically, he was trying to create himself as an expert so he could run around the country and testify in these cases. Why? And in a letter to the Associated Press, the lawyer likened him to Dr. Nick on the Simpsons. Hi, everybody. Just a complete quack.

So the Justice Department acknowledged his resume puffing as well. and yeah, that's... His bullshit. That's what it came. So then there's another appeal based on the scandal, and they said either way, you still would have been convicted because they had another pathologist saying the same goddamn thing. There's a federal habeas. That doesn't go anywhere. 2014, they're trying to pass Tanya's law, which is a law brought by some professor, actually, that will allow a person to seek a divorce without proving grounds such as adultery or extreme cruelty.

This is one of the few states at the time still had didn't have no fault divorces. What? Yes. Which, by the way, there's a lot of people trying to go back to, which is fucking insane. Get rid of that? Yes. Right now, there are three states that require mutual consent for a no fault divorce. That's what?

Where are they? One's Mississippi, which whatever. Tennessee is another one. That fucking state's nuts too. And South Dakota. Those three. currently David is remains in the South Dakota state penitentiary life without parole and tanya is at the st. Thomas Catholic cemetery cemetery in Falkton so there you go everybody there is the farmer and his

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