Sword and Scale Nightmares - Cheers

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Cameron Kirk was a sad, depressed middle-aged man who found himself living back at home with his mother, Paula Kirk. Things had never been good between the two, but as her drinking increased, so did his resentments and it would all end in a gruesome murder. 

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pick up the phone to chat. Teresa hadn't seen Paula since the beginning of March, and thought she should reach out. What was she doing? Maybe they'd both been so busy that time and slipped away. Teresa had been busy too. As she grabbed her cell phone and began scrolling down to Paula's name and her contacts, she nestled down into a chair at her kitchen table. She typed out a message, something like, Hey Paula, how are you? It's been a while. Are you doing okay? Then she put her phone down and headed towards the sink to tackle a few stray coffee cups

and spoons from breakfast. She turned on the water and let her finger run under it, feeling the stream go from icy to warm. She stared at the sunlight cascading onto the flower garden out her kitchen window. Suddenly she heard a ping from her cell phone. Theresa left the tap running and reached for her phone, flipping it over. It was a text from Paula. She smiled at her friend's name on the screen, next to the little green square.

I'm on vacation, it read. Leave me the fuck alone. Theresa was stunned. Paula never spoke like that. She wouldn't say the word fuck, let alone type it out and aim it with such vitriol at her best friend. Teresa tried calling Paula's phone, but she didn't pick up. She tried again.

Nothing. She got that sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you just know something's wrong. But you don't know what it is. Something was wrong. She called one last time. Teresa thought maybe she was overreacting. Maybe she actually sent that text. Her next call was to 911 to report a wellness check on her friend. She gave the operator Paula's address and asked that they call her back with any news. Then she nervously washed the coffee cups in the sink and waited. When police arrived at Paula's small bungalow, the smell of decomposition was so strong it could be detected from the driveway. The rotting stink of flesh seeped under the garage and into the muggy air. Police knocked on the door.

A man answered. He was a thick-necked 41-year-old white guy in cargo shorts and black tube socks pulled up just under his knees. His face looked tired and rough under his thick glasses and mutton chops. He had faded tattoos on his hairy arms and legs. He said he was Paula's son as he cautiously invited the cops inside the house. Welcome to Sword and Scale Nightmares. True crime for bedtime. Where nightmare begins now. For a limited time, switch to Shopify Point of Sale and you could save up to 20% and improve your bottom line.

We're so serious about savings, we've made this ad 20% shorter. That means you get 6 seconds back. Just enough time to visit Shopify.com slash POS20. Now that's an efficient ad. Eligibility requirements apply. See Shopify.com slash POS20 for details. Paula Kirk had lived in Florida most of her life. She had a few children, but the child she was always worried about was her son, Cameron.

Cameron had been a problem since he was small. After Paula divorced her kid's father, Cameron was often shipped off to live with him, when she could no longer deal with his overwhelming emotions and disrespect for her authority. Cameron's father was in the military, so he traveled around a lot, often overseas. Cameron spent a huge chunk of his youth in Japan with his dad. The exotic lights, the cuisine, and culture enamored young Cameron, and he soaked up every minute he was there. But then he returned home to the United States.

He was sent to live with Paula. You see, even Cameron's father couldn't handle him. Cameron was about 15 at the time. His hormones were in full swing and he was tired of being tossed back and forth between his two parents like a hot potato. So Cameron reluctantly settled back into Paula's place in Florida and enrolled in high school. Things were going just fine until her new boyfriend moved into the house. One night Cameron exploded on Paula's boyfriend and he resorted to throwing a bunch of Cameron's belongings into the fireplace. After that Cameron was shipped off yet again to live with his dad but this time the military

had him settled in Virginia. And so the cycle went on for Cameron, being passed back and forth between parents like a pet that no one wanted to deal with, but they just couldn't put down. Over his teenage years, Cameron developed major anger issues and resentments towards his parents, especially his mother. He returned to Florida in the early aughts and got a job working for UPS for a while until he enrolled in college in Fort Lauderdale for graphic design.

Finally, he was living away from his parents and starting to make a life of his own. But when Cameron graduated college, the economy slowed down as things headed into 2007. Jobs were scarce and he found himself floating aimlessly with college debt and a degree that he couldn't seem to make much out of. He reconnected with an old girlfriend from high school and soon the two fell in love and got married. Once 2008 hit, and America dove headfirst into recession and a housing crisis,

Cameron felt the pressure to provide for his new wife. So he followed in his father's footsteps and decided to join the army. But Cameron wasn't suited to serve his country. First off, his heart wasn't in it. And secondly, he was slightly out of shape and had a strong disdain for authority. He spent five years in the infantry, but didn't even make it through boot camp before he left

on his own volition. He started drinking a lot and using drugs occasionally, and the fights with his wife escalated as she grew sick of his lack of ambition and apathy. One evening, their entire marriage shattered when Cameron woke up from a drunken slumber to find his wife straddled on top of him. He opened his eyes as he felt the warmth of her small hands clasping his neck like little claws. Her nails were piercing his skin.

She was seething. Her teeth clenched together as she spat out obscenities at him. He could feel specks of spit hitting his cheeks. Cameron became enraged. With one swift motion, he tossed his wife off his belly and onto the bed, then he towered over her small frame. Her face went from menacing to meek as Cameron raised his thick fist and punched her once, then twice in the face. She winced and screamed, but he ignored her,

blinded by his anger. He punched her again and again until the flesh under his eyes became red and puffy. He punched her until her screams became so raw and desperate that he snapped out of it and realized what he'd done to this woman he claimed to love. After his divorce, Cameron found himself back at his mother's house. He was 31 years old and back at home like a loser. Hey, I've been there. You really do feel like you're a loser. Cameron had never felt so pathetic in his entire life. He became depressed and angry. Every night he slept in his childhood bedroom, hating himself even more than the day before.

As the months and years passed, Cameron and Paula lived together in an awkward and angry household. Paula needed her son to contribute to the household income. But times were tough and as easily as Cameron would find a job he would get fired again. He couldn't seem to hold it together. He spent his nights at the bar, getting drunk, and whenever he had too much liquor, getting into fights with whoever looked at him the wrong way was kind of what he did. Cameron was a big guy, but over the years of living back at home, he'd gained weight. He grew

Living back at home, he'd gained weight. He grew longer facial hair. He covered himself in dark tattoos. Everything he did was an attempt to mask himself from the world. He'd fallen into a depressive pit of despair, and his mother was the punching bag for his misery. Paula drank just as often as Cameron did, so the two of them swirled in this alcoholic vacuum. They sucked one another, bringing up old resentments every time one of them had too much to drink and the other just happened to be in earshot. It was a house brewing with ancient, unresolved issues and trauma. And as miserable as it felt, things were about to get a lot worse.

In 2018, Cameron pulled up his bootstraps, swallowed his pride, and took a job at Walmart. He was happy to have steady employment, even though he thought he was too good for the job. He wasn't, by the way. Meanwhile, Paula had retired and her drinking had become a severe nightly problem. Paula was just as sad as her son. After divorcing Cameron's father, Paula acted like she'd moved on with her life, but she hadn't. She was the kind of woman who always had to be in a relationship to feel secure, even

if that relationship was no good for her Paula had many long-term boyfriends over the years even a few men who wanted to marry her But she could never get over Cameron's father This prevented her from pulling the trigger on any other man who came into her life It also didn't help that Cameron often acted as a wedge between her and some of her more serious relationships, like the guy who threw Cameron's stuff into the fire. In early 2020, Paula's drinking had hit rock bottom,

and the only one who saw how horrible things truly were was Cameron. They were still living together, and though he spent a lot of time at Walmart or out with his friends, he was there to experience Paula's misery. She wasn't a happy drunk, let's put it that way. She would wallow, she would cry. It was obvious that she was in extreme emotional pain and Cameron wasn't exactly the person

to deal with that. He was becoming increasingly irritable with his mother's drunken outbursts. Then, at one point, she had herself Baker acted. Some nights, he'd come home from a long day at Walmart and see his mother slumped in the living room, on the sofa, her eyes half open as a glass hung lazily in her frail hand. She was half a person. The little empathy he had for his mother slowly turned into resentment. Then everything came to a head the first week of March.

Cameron was already in a foul mood when Paula started telling him what a loser he was. He had been sitting in his room reading a book about Ted Bundy for some reason. When she pushed herself into the doorway and muttered something under her breath about him. Cameron narrowed his focus on the book and tried to ignore her, but she kept going. Paula was incoherent and slurring her words. She told him she was going to go for a drive somewhere, maybe just end it all. Cameron got up and slammed the book down on his bed. He followed his mother down the hallway into the living room. Paula's house was so dated.

The same carpet and wood paneling that had been installed in the 80s remained intact but worn and stained. Cameron yelled after Paula as she swayed and fumbled her way through the house. She was looking for her car keys. Paula bumped into the kitchen counter and flung herself forward practically clunking her face into her purse on the countertop. Cameron had it. He was so sick of this.

He lunged forward and snatched her keys from her purse. Then he took her debit card and held them both above his head so she couldn't reach him. He was sick of his mother and her pathetic, drunken stupors. He was sick of himself, of this life he'd been living. He felt the anger bubbling up inside of him. It started small in the pit of his stomach, but as he watched his mother struggle to get the keys from him, his anger rose and rose. That's when it happened. Cameron puffed his chest and lifted his chin as he wound up and swung his fist into her

face, his chubby fingers red and tense, connected with the soft skin of her cheek like a Christmas cracker breaking open. Paula flew backwards, falling onto the old nasty carpet. Cameron lunged towards her, kneeling as he winded up his arm again and punched her over and over, just as he'd done with his ex-wife. But this time, he couldn't stop. The blood sprung from Paula's face and she protested, too drunk to fight back. But Cameron punched her one last time for good measure, and then he stood up, shaking

off his hands as adrenaline pulsed through his arms. Suddenly, the shock of what he'd done sunk in, like a million pinpricks all at once, into the middle of his soul. He'd beaten up his own mother. His heart stopped as he looked down at her writhing in pain on the floor like a dead deer on the side of the road. Now she was a wounded animal. Unwanted. Cameron didn't know what to do. He could go to prison. He knew that for sure. He backed up and thundered towards his bedroom. He pulled down the shotgun from the closet. He cocked the gun as he marched back towards his mother, his socks flapping on the floor with every step of purpose. He aimed the rifle at her head, looked away, and fired. The sound was deafening.

Paula was dead. Cameron lowered the gun. It was only then that he noticed his hands were shaking. He looked at his mother. Her head was a mess of blood and brains all over the floor of the house. The house that she'd always let him return to when he didn't have a place to go. It was then that Cameron remembered he had to go to work in half an hour. He dragged her into the other room and covered her with a blanket. He'd deal with that later. For now, he has to lay in the same position on the carpet where Cameron had left her for

his shift at Walmart. He just couldn't bring himself to do anything about that just yet. It had been a few days. She wasn't decomposing. By the end of the week, Cameron summoned the courage to move her into the garage. He stood in the kitchen taking nervous, angry pulls off his beer as he gathered the strength to do what he knew he had to do. How was he going to get rid of the body?

What was he going to do? He took another chug of his beer and walked over to his mother's dead corpse. She was stiff and cold. He made sure not to touch her skin with his or put his hands on the blanket as he pulled her into the garage. It was cold and dark among the clutter and mess. Cameron felt a sigh of relief as he rested her body on the floor. At least she was out of the house. He stared at her. His poor, stupid mother.

He hated himself. Cameron walked back inside and tackled his clean-up job. He used bleach and other chemicals to attempt to scrub the blood out of the carpet. He grunted and moaned. It felt like he was just pushing her blood further into the fibers. Cameron had to make a plan. He decided he would say she left with a guy she met. They went down to Florida for vacation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll work, he thought to himself as he worked away at the stains. That's believable. Somebody will buy that.

A lot of dummies in Florida. Anyway, Cameron continued to go to work at Walmart. Convenient place for a killer to work, actually. Meanwhile, Paula's body stayed in the garage, slowly decomposing and leaking bodily fluids. Cameron would peek his head in to check on her, like she was some kind of house guest that just wouldn't go away.

After a while, he noticed a soupy liquid seeping out from underneath her body. Thinking fast he grabbed a bag of cat litter and poured it all around to soak up the liquid. That would tie him over until he could gather the courage to get rid of her remains. You know, the job doesn't get a lot easier the more you wait. Paula had told her family that she always wanted to be cremated, and her ashes spread in a specific place. Cameron knew he had to dismember her. How else was he going to burn the body? That was the plan. Paula had a fire pit in her backyard, and Cameron figured that if he could cut her up and burn

her piece by piece, he would get away with it. Then he could give her a proper goodbye and scatter the ashes, the thoughtful son that he is. Cameron had seen dismembering in movies and he'd read enough serial killer books to know what to do. He had a cheap electric chainsaw. That should work. One night after a couple of drinks he trudged into the garage and decided to start the process.

He gathered as many tarps as he could find around the house and taped them up around the room. Paula had been dead for two weeks now. Her flesh was rotting and turning black. Cameron looked at his mother's cold, lifeless feet and decided he'd start there. He turned on the saw and pushed the blade down into her ankle. and pushed the blade down into her ankle. Feeling the weight of the bones hit the blade. He gagged. The sound of the buzzing blade on her body. The smell of her flesh. The fresh plastic of the tarps. The sickly smell at the back of her throat. Cameron shook his head and kept going until, finally, he watched her foot fall off her ankle. He did it.

He was Neil Armstrong. It was so disgusting, but he kept going and cut off the other foot. Then the saw broke. The next day he went to Home Depot to get a gas-powered saw. That would be more powerful. Then he could tackle the legs. That night he got good and drunk before revving up the new chainsaw and starting the same sickening procedure on Paula's legs.

With every slice he told himself what a piece of shit he was. He wanted to kill himself. But then what? Everyone would find her and him. They'd know what he'd done. He had to keep going. Over the next few days Cameron cut off both her feet and legs and threw all the pieces into the trash.

He couldn't bring himself to burn her limbs in the yard. He spread more cat litter around her body like a moat. He would wait until she decomposed more to tackle the rest of the remains. Meanwhile, more texts and calls kept popping up on Paula's phone. Cameron responded to some and ignored others. He knew it was only a matter of time. Then one night it occurred to him. He should report her missing.

He needed to call 911 and say he hadn't heard from his mother in weeks. So that's exactly what he did. But it wasn't until Paula's best friend Teresa Bryant received that strange text message from Paula's phone that the police would show up and find Cameron. He let the officers into the house and they could smell the body. Believe you me. Cameron had become so used to the odor that it no longer fazed him. When they asked Cameron if they could go into the garage, he hesitated. They told him they'd get a search warrant

if he wouldn't let them. He swallowed hard and asked if he was under arrest. When they said no, he walked out the front door and didn't look back. After the police located Paula's body, they picked up Cameron around the street corner. He'd been living with his mother's dead body for over a month. At the police station Cameron confessed to everything. He broke down, he cried, he hung his head in shame. He asked the police how he could get the death penalty. I know it's not up to you, he said, but how do I get it? They told him he'd have to wait

to talk to the state attorney for that. Cameron was charged with second degree murder for the death of his mother, Paula. Today, he sits in a prison in Florida, wishing he had done anything other than what he did. Now, he will have to live with the memories of her murder and the miserable, depressing failure of a life that he lived right up until the day

that he killed his own mother. If you enjoyed the show, please consider joining Plus at swordandscale.com slash PLUS. But if you can't, consider leaving us a positive review on your preferred listening platform. Sweet dreams and good night.