True Crime All The Time - Matthew Macon

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Matthew Macon had a rough childhood and he, along with some of his siblings, were placed into foster care at an early age. Macon developed a pretty extensive juvenile record and spent time at a number of facilities for juvenile offenders. He committed his first sexual assault at the age of 14. He spent much of his adult life incarcerated, but during the times he was out, he murdered 7 women.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the life and crimes of Matthew Macon. He wanted people to think his murders were motivated by the need for money. But, his true motives came out in interviews when he said that he enjoyed watching his victim's faces as he exerted his power over them. A man named Claude McCollum was wrong convicted and later exonerated for one of Macon's murders and a home invasion could have prevented 5 of the murders.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 196 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime. Mike Gibson, Givie. How are you? Hey, I'm doing good about you. I'm doing really well, man. Good. My daughter's getting ready to go back to college.

That's causing me a little heartburn. Yeah. My youngest daughter is getting ready to get her temps. So there's going to be some heartburn there. But as of right now, as we sit here, I'm doing well. Yeah. We'll check in as the weeks come around. Yes.

As the weeks go by, check back in with me. Yeah. So we continue gives to have some great support on Patreon. Let's give some shoutouts. All right. We had Stephen for Carson. Hey, for Carson. Kaylee B jumped out at our highest level.

What's going on, Kayla? Mickey Boucher. Hey, Boucher. Natalie Bischoff. What's going on, Natalie? Jordy O'Donnell. Hey, thank you, O'Donnell. Fletcha Dynamita.

Well, thank you, Fletcher. Adrian O'Connor. Thank you, Adrian. Christy Bozenberg. Well, thank you, Bozemberg. Suzanne Rodriguez. Hey, Suzanne. Morgan Lee Thomas.

What's going on, Morgan? Rhonda Owens. Thank you, Rhonda. S.E.V. Well, S.E.V. That's unique. Mm-hmm. I don't know what that stands for, but you never know. Yeah. Lucas.

What's going on, Lucas? Remember that movie? Lucas. I remember the movie Lucas. Who's in it? I don't remember who the little kid was. His name was Lucas. Wasn't it Corey Haim? Oh, yeah. And then the girl from the Goonies was in it.

I forget. It was a good movie, though. Yeah. It was good. Gabriel Deschezor. Ooh, Deshaezer. Donny Janice. Hey, Tony.

Samantha. Samantha. Samantha. Jamie Arsenae jumped out to our highest level. That's an interesting name. Arsenal. It is. If I say it wrong or right.

You said it wrong. It's so interesting. Marion. Hey, Marion. Sarah Egan jumped out of our highest level. What's going on, Sarah? Christina Lambert. Thank you, Christina.

Julie Dutton. Hey, Julie. Pamela Randall. Thank you, Pamela. And then last but not least, Samantha, jumped out at our highest level. Well, thank you, Samantha. Then if we go back into the vault, Gives,

this week we selected Lisa Davies. Awesome. Thank you, Lisa. Yeah, very awesome. Been with us a long time. We appreciate all the new Patreon support as well as the people that continue to support us month after month.

We had some great PayPal donations as well. Nett Quisenberry. Well, what's going on, Quisandberry? Heather Victoria jumped out with a sizable donation. Thank you, Victoria. Sue Lewis. What's going on, Sue?

Heather Waits. Hey, Heather. And Jeremy DeVore. What's going on, DeVore? So thank all of you as well. Yes. Gibbs, right now, we have a brand new episode out on T-Cat Unsolved. We do.

We're talking about the Pascoe County Four. Yeah, it's an interesting episode. We're down in Florida in the 1970s. So, you know, I know you like the wild shirts they had back then. Well, I wondered why you wore the bell bottom pants for the episode, but then it all made sense. Yeah, I'd probably wear them outside of the episode, too, because, you know, it is kind of cool to have your pants, like, sweep the floor as you walk around, you know. But, no, it's an interesting episode. Four women, either hitchhiking, walking to disappear.

and then they're found in a pretty general location together within three miles of each other. And we're pulling a pretty well-known serial killer that is thought to maybe have something to do with it. So a lot of things going on with it. Make sure you check that out. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime All the Time? I am. We are talking about a serial killer out of Michigan named Matthew Macon. His nickname was Chili.

Chili. Chili. Okay. Yeah. And he spent most of his life incarcerated for one thing or another, but he kept getting out. And over a period of about three to four years, he viciously beat a number of women in and around the Lansing, Michigan area. Most of his murders were committed during the summer of 2007. Police believe that he's responsible for at least seven murders.

And Gibbs, I think one of the first things that jumped out at me about this case was the victims. They were so varied that it would be really hard to say that Macon had a type. Yeah. There was a very large age range in his victims. Really the only thing that kind of tied them all together was that they all lived alone. So this guy was a hunter of sorts, right? And he made sure that he only targeted women who lived alone. The other thing that really piqued my interest about this case was that a man was wrongfully convicted

for one of Macon's crimes. So we'll go through all of that as well. Matthew Emmanuel Macon was born on September 8th, 1979. He had a pretty tumultuous family life. His father was an abusive alcoholic who could be. extremely violent, when Matthew was just four years old. His older sister was placed into foster care after his father was accused of sexually abusing her. Matthew didn't last long in the family either.

He was placed into foster care as a young boy. So, I mean, for me, Gibbs, it's hard to know exactly how much violence, how much sexual abuse he witnessed at an early age. Sure. because he wasn't there all that long, but I do think the years that he was there, they were pretty bad. Pretty intense. And then I think you also have to ask what effect did, you know, some of these things

have on him down the road at the age of 10. He ran away from one foster home and around that same age. He pleaded guilty after being caught breaking into multiple. Lansing businesses. So here's this kid, right? Considered a ward of the court, a ward of the state at a very early age. Foster families took him in, but they couldn't control him. No.

Around 13, Macon was sent to a facility for delinquent children all the way out in Nebraska. Really? Yeah, which I thought was a little strange. It is strange. But I think it was a kind of one of the more famous facility. facilities of this type. I just don't know how much good it did, though, because at the age of 14, he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a girl under the age of 13 with a stick. Not good. No, it's not good at all. Going in the wrong direction. He pleaded guilty to two counts of

criminal sexual misconduct. So again, they send him to a Michigan facility for juvenile offender. Well, in 1994 he escaped. He stole a car and he took off. I mean, legally he's not even old enough to drive, but so he's out. He broke into a grocery store. He's hungry? Yeah. Yeah.

He's hungry. Give me some groceries. Yeah. I don't know if he was alone. I think he might have been with somebody else, but, you know, he was caught rather easily. Yeah. And ended up pleading guilty to that. So they sent.

him to a different facility for delinquent use in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Now, the thing about Matthew Macon was he underwent years of court-ordered sexual offender treatment at some of these facilities. I mean, obviously, he had done something very horrible to this extremely young girl. Right. Sexually assaulted her with a stick. But by 1997, he was 18 years old. an adult, he was set loose from the juvenile facility system.

One thing that I saw was that the people that oversaw his sex offender treatment, they wrote in his records that he was very unlikely to commit another sex offense. It's pretty confident. Yeah. I mean, I guess they have to make a determination one way or the other. Now, they're going to be wrong. I mean, there's no doubt about it, but. But I guess to allow him to exit.

facility. They have to put something like that in there. They just can't say, uh, we're not too sure about this guy and then let him go. Makin was in and out of prison for most of his adult life. I mean, think about it Gibbs. This is a guy who had very little education, most likely very little in the way of life skills. I mean, everything he'd learned, he did so from these juvenile detention facilities. Yeah. So I think he chose to do what he knew best, which was to steal. That's his life skills that he knew.

Yeah. The problem is he would steal. He would get caught. He would get sentenced and sent to prison. In 2001, he was sentenced to two to ten years in prison for robbing a woman of her purse after grabbing her by the throat. He was paroled early. The other problem that Macon had was,

he just could not stay on the outside. He kept violating his parole, right? When you got two to 10 years and they let you out after just a year or two, well, you got eight more years that you could potentially do. Right. So every time he would get in trouble, they would just,

you know, revoke his parole and sending him back to prison. Ship him on back. So he's in and out, in and out. In 2004, he decided to commit what is believed to be his first murder. His victim was 45-year-old Barbara Tuttle, who lived at 1017 North Washington Avenue in Lansing.

According to Macon, he knocked on Barbara's door and told her that there was a fire on the side of her porch. So somebody tells you something's on fire. You're going to walk outside to check it out. She did. She didn't see anything. So she turned back around to go into her house. That's when Macon struck. He grabbed her and he beat her to death.

And really with, you know, all of his murders, you know, he's in the house. He's killed his victim. Right. And then he kind of goes around looking for whatever money he can find. You know, we'll talk about the motives, what police think, what he says they were. But, you know, there's, there's a robbery aspect to, you know, almost all these murders. There's also a sexual assault aspect to some of them. So he's satisfying a couple of his needs.

Sure. His next victim was 60-year-old Carolyn Kronenberg. Now, Carolyn was a professor at Lansing Community College. And on January 23rd, 2005, she arrived at the college around 8 a.m. That much is known. People saw her. Security Guard saw her walk to her classroom. But at 8.40, a student found Carolyn dead inside her

classroom. So that's not a lot of time that went by from the time that she got there until, you know, she died. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled and beaten. Within two days, police arrested a 26-year-old man named Claude McCollell for Carolyn's murder. Claude was a student at the college. He was reportedly homeless and he often slept wherever he could on campus. He had some learning disability. Yeah. And a pretty low IQ. But he was taking business classes.

He wanted to better himself. Yeah. That was his goal. He was trying to make a better life for himself. When police questioned Claude about Carolyn's murder, it somehow turned into a confession. Interesting. Yeah. This is very interesting, you know, because it's a scenario that we've seen all too often.

For one thing, the entire question. was not recorded. So you see that a lot when things later turn out not to be quite factual. It's definitely a problem. From my understanding, the way it went down was police asked him to describe the killing hypothetically. You know Gibbs. Hypothetically, if you had done it, how would you have done it?

Yeah. And you've kind of seen that in some documentaries. We have. pretty high profile documentaries. Now, what Claude said was that, okay, I could have done it if I was sleepwalking or, you know, he was kind of, again, learning disabilities, low IQ, easily, uh, suggestible. Sure. If, if, if I'm using that word correctly, you know, that's a recipe for police being able to get someone to say something that maybe isn't. true. Yeah. Sounds like he was definitely manipulated in this situation. Yeah, I think that's fair to say.

But really from that point on, he was sunk, right? The police were viewing this as a confession. He was arrested, went to trial, and was convicted by a jury on Valentine's Day in 2006. He was given a life sentence for the murder of Carolyn Kronenberg. And he may have served the entire thing. if Matthew Macon had not been caught. And we'll get into how all that played out, you know, when we get to that part. Sure. So Macon has committed two murders that we know of so far. But he's not on police radar for either one.

Police have their man in the murder of Carolyn Cronenberg. They have no idea who killed Barbara Tuttle. Macon did go back to prison, I think on another parole violation. So there were a couple of years where he was unable to kill because he's in prison. Right. But I'm assuming Gibbs that he would have if he had not been incarcerated. Oh, I definitely think he would have. He was trending that way.

That way. Yeah. And I think to bolster that point, you know, he's paroled in late June 2007 and committed his next murder within a month of his parole. So it's kind of hard for me not to think that this guy was sitting in prison the whole time thinking, oh man, when I get out, I'm going back to doing what I was doing. And he did. On July 26th, Macon went to the home of 76 year old Ruth Holman. And Ruth lived pretty close to Macon's father's house.

Ruth had been a fixture in the community for years. She worked as a neighborhood activist. She tried to help keep the neighborhood safe. There were even some reports that she worked with police on where drug activity was taking place. Yeah. And her daughter was a councilwoman for the city of Lansing. Ruth was very highly regarded. I think that's one point to definitely make.

Kind of like you and your community. Oh, sure. Except for my neighbors, not as highly regarded. No. So Macon goes to Roos House and he asked her if he could borrow her lawnmower. And then at some point he asked for a glass of water. When she came back with the water, that's when he forced his way into her home. He found a hammer. And Gibbs, he struck her on the head with it. the description is that he swung it with such force that it actually went through her skull, created a hole and went into her brain.

That's extreme, man. Oh, no doubt about it. Yeah, I can't even. The sound alone, I don't even want to think about what that would sound like. Right. Because it gives me the willies. He rooted around Rousse House for money and then took off. But it's been reported that Ruth Holman didn't die right away.

You know, she was strong. She was a fighter. She crawled to the front door, but she couldn't open it. Neighbors did eventually get into the house and they called authorities. Ruth was rushed to the hospital, but she died there two days later. And I bet you he didn't get hardly anything worth of value. No, and we'll talk about it as we go along, right? you know, I mentioned his motive.

He's going to say it's money. Yeah. But at the same time, he's going to say, well, I never got hardly anything from these robberies. You know, he kind of makes it sound like he thought he was going to, you know, get this big score. Yeah. That was going to get him back on his feet. Well, he never did. So he kept doing it.

Looking, chasing the big score? Chasing, you know, but again, these. people and the houses that they live in, why are you expecting there to be gobs and gobs of money there? That's why it kind of rings hollow a little bit. And we'll talk about it, but it kind of gets more into the area of he wanted to kill. Exactly. Because as you and I talk about a lot, he could have broken into these people's houses, let's say tied them up, stolen their things, not killed a single one of them. But he didn't do that. Why? Because I think he wanted to kill, plain and simple. Yeah. And to that point, it only took him, what, two more weeks before he found his next victim.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is all going to happen very quickly. 36-year-old Deborah Kay Cook's body was found on August 7th in a park up against a tree by police. This was around 4.30 a.m. She was found nude from the waist down and she had been beaten to death. She had also been sexually assaulted. Now, what Makin would later claim was that Cook had informed to police about a crime committed by his brother. And that's why he killed her. Vengeance.

Yeah. So this, this crime is a little bit different. I mean, there's murder, there's sexual assault. He didn't break into her home. Now, whether that's true or not, as far as him trying to get revenge because she narked on his brother. I don't know. But that's what he has said. But then just two days later, Cook murdered 45-year-old Deborah Renfer's. Deborah had previously been a sex worker, but all reports had her getting out of that line of work and she was cleaning houses.

But Gibbs, there's a very strange aspect about this crime. So Deborah Renfers had recently rented the house at 1017 North Washington Avenue. This is the house where Macon committed his first murder. I was say the address sounded so familiar. That's why. He later told authorities that he went back to that house, found the front door open. When he got inside, he saw Deborah asleep. sleep in her bed. So he grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her to death. Now, we know that

killers like to revisit their crime scenes. A lot of them do. You know, they can, they can get a rush from, you know, almost like recreating that feeling. We've heard a lot of killers talk about that or read about them talking about that. But to go back to a house where you murdered before and then kill the person who who lives there now. It's different. I'm not sure if I've ever heard of that. For some reason, there might have been a similar aspect in maybe one of the Golden State killer crimes.

I can't remember. I don't know if it was exactly like this, but you'd have to say it's strange. Oh, absolutely. I think it's strange. For a serial killer to claim two victims in the same house, no relation to each other. they just happened to live there at the time. Yeah. Makin committed his next murder on August 27th.

He went to the home of retired GM worker Sandra Eichorn posing as someone looking to do jobs. And apparently he handed her some type of business card. And as soon as she reached for the business card, he grabbed her and pushed her inside the house. He killed her by stabbing her. her over 30 times with a knife. Then he went through her house, took whatever money he could find. It was Sandra's son who was the one that found her body. To me, that's a haunting thought.

It really is. Bad enough that your mother was murdered in such a brutal way, stabbed over 30 times, but for you to be the one to find her body, man, that's never leaving you ever, Gibb. definitely going to be traumatizing. Yeah, yeah, no doubt about it. So when you look at the timeline, right, these crimes, these murders, they're happening over, you know, a relatively small amount of time. But then when you look at his last three attacks, Gibbs, they happened in successive days. So he murdered Sandra Eichorn on the 27th. The next day, he attacked a 56-year-old woman named Chapel Jackson, by again posing as someone looking for work. Well, it's working for him.

That's why he's using it. Right. So a lot of serial killers have a ruse. And he's using this one now. Yeah. At first he said, you got a fire on your porch. Okay.

It did work. Yeah. But is he refining it? I tend to think, like with anything you do, the more you do it, the more you learn, it's tough to think about it in terms of, of serial killing, but I think it's true.

Yeah. You figure out, okay, this worked, this didn't work. So I'm not going to do that anymore. Just like being in sales. Or I've done this a couple times. Now I'm going to switch it up. So maybe I'm not getting connected with some of these other things. Yeah.

And that's a good thing to do if you're in that type of business of killing people. Right. If you don't want to get caught, you better switch it up. Yeah. I mean, we're not trying to tell people how to kill people. But I mean, I think it applies to anything you do. I mean, you mentioned sales, but no matter what you do, if you do it for a period of time, you're going to learn from your mistakes. You're going to try to eliminate those and focus on the things that you know work. Exactly. And serial killers are no different.

So he's telling Chapel Jackson that he's looking for work. At some point during the conversation, she turned her back on him. And that's when he hit her over the head with a bottle. I think the bottle broke. He ended up slicing her arms, put some pretty big gouges in her arms with the broken glass. But Chappell had an ally on her side, her dog. The dog came to her rescue, began barking at Macon, and ultimately chased him off. Wow.

Dog's our best friend, man. Well, it was definitely her best friend that day. because the dog saved her life. Jackson survived and was later able to pick Macon out of a police lineup. But she had something else to give to police. And it was something that her attacker left behind. It was a piece of paper with the name Chili Smith written on it. Now, I said up front, this guy's nickname was Chili.

This would later help put police on the trail of Macon after they found out that this was an alias that he often used. So not only was his nickname Chili, but he used a bunch of aliases and one of them was Chili Smith. Didn't use Chili Palmer though, huh? No, didn't use Chili Palmer. The very next day, Macon found 41 year old Karen Delgado Yates in a vacant house that was for sale. Gibbs, he took the heavy cover from the toilet tank and he used it to beat this woman severely. He's so brutal with his attacks. Yeah.

Very. Unnecessarily brutal. Right. I mean, I think everybody that has played around with those tank covers, it could be a damaging weapon. Especially some of the older ones that have the lead in them. I don't know how old this particular one was, but. Yeah, I don't either.

Yeah, but even just the porcelain ones are bad enough. He also sexually assaulted her. But incredibly, a realtor came to the house. I think it was the next morning with some prospective buyers. And they found Karen barely clinging to life. Wow. Lucky for her. They called an ambulance and she was rushed to the hospital,

but doctors couldn't save her. She died the next day. But imagine that. You go to look at a house and inside you find a woman beaten so badly that she's near debt. I guess that answers the question about how safe is the the neighborhood. Well, guaranteed you're not buying that house. No, I think it's a skip. And then most likely to your point, regardless of what the statistics say on that neighborhood,

you're looking for something somewhere else. Because here's the thing. This family reportedly had like their young child with them. Oh, traumatizing. So traumatizing for everyone, but especially, you know, a young child. Now, I mentioned that it was really the attack on. Chapel. That was the beginning of the end for Macon's murders. She was able to give police a description. She gave them the Chili Smith clue. Makin was actually arrested on the 28th, which was, I think the day before Karen's body was even found. But he wasn't arrested for the murders. He was arrested for parole violations related to a home invasion and for not registering as a sex offender. He neglected to do one of the more simple things to stay out and, you know, be part of the

society. He couldn't do one of the more simple things of registering himself. Well, he also committed a home invasion that we're going to talk about here in a little bit. So, but it's just, it's interesting that, you know, he's in the middle of kind of a murder spree here. Right. And he's arrested, it has nothing to do with the murders. Yeah, because they're not aware. No, they don't, they have no idea to him at this point. Now, they're going to put it all together. And after they did, you know, they begin to talk to him about the murders. Eventually, he does confess to all of these murders. And that confession included the murder of Carolyn Cronenberg, which ultimately led to the exoneration of Claude McCollum. Authorities matched a fingerprint found near the crime scene to

Macon. They also went back Gibbs and they reviewed video. surveillance footage from the day that Carolyn was murdered that showed Claude was in another building at the time Carolyn was murdered. Wonder why police didn't look at that video when they were investigating Claude. Well, it's funny that you asked that question because it later came out that they did. And not only did they look at it, there was a report that was written before Claude's trial even started that stated the video surveillance showed that he was in another building on campus at the time Carolyn was killed. It just never saw the light of day until after he was exonerated.

So never understand what's wrong with people. If you know somebody didn't do it and you have the proof that he didn't do it, why wouldn't you want to present that? Well, after the fact, it's all CYA, right? So the prosecution says, we hand this. it over to the defense. Yeah. The defense says, no, we never saw it. Well, who are you more likely to believe? If the defense had that information, right?

Don't you think they would have wanted to really play it up at trial? Because it kind of proves that their client couldn't have been the murderer. But I also think gives, it's one of the reasons why a lot of people have such a distrust in the system. because they keep seeing things like this happen time and time again and in some of these wrongful convictions that are starting to come out more and more. There's just nothing acceptable about them. And I don't know why people in those positions feel like they need to do that.

Well, I don't know either, but it's been proven, right, that there are some people in law enforcement, there are some prosecutors that will do just about anything to get a conviction. Now, I still think it's a very small percentage, but it has happened way too frequently over the years. So Claude served about a year and a half in prison for something that he had nothing to do with based on suspect evidence. And I really don't even know if you can blame the jury for this one or not. You know, I didn't spend a lot of time researching this case. It's a small, you know, piece of this entire episode. But I kind of got the feeling as though the evidence was shown or framed to the jury in a way that it kind of did make Claude look guilty.

Right. Obviously, you don't have this surveillance video. Of course not. That would have really cast a lot of doubt. And the confession Gibbs, I think, was framed more as a confession. Right. Then kind of the hypothetical part was left out. Yeah.

And it was it was framed more. Whereas, you know, it's all about context. Sure it is. What context are you delivering, you know, it to the jury? And is the defense able to write the context? And if not, then the jury sees what they see. And it's difficult because if you hear something, even if it's wrong, you just heard it. And maybe when they trail off with whatever afterwards, maybe some juror will be like,

okay. I have to discount that. Yeah, but some will say, I just remember here what I heard. Yeah. Well, and sometimes the defense team's not able to refute it in a way or, you know, kind of prove to the jury that what, that's not correct. Claude McCollum filed a lawsuit and he was awarded $2 million for his wrongful conviction. Good for him. Yeah. No, it, that part's good for him. I still go back to my theory. of, you know, would I give up a year and a half of my life in prison for $2 million? I don't think I would, but matter of fact, I know I wouldn't. Right. But now you're getting closer to the area where I think some people would have to think about.

$2 million is a lot of money. Could you do a year and a half in prison? Get three squares a day. Stay in touch with your family and know that when you got out, you would get $2 million. Now, he didn't know. Right. But if you knew it going in, could you do it? I think so.

I think a lot of people would really have to wrestle with that one. Yeah. Now, I'm not giving up a year and a half of my freedom to play Xbox and do the things that I want to do. I'm just not doing it. You go to the right prison. You might be able to get the Xbox. I might. But on those type of cases, I'm glad he got what he got.

But I also think if you can prove that they knew they didn't do it, I think those individuals shouldn't be able to ever practice, you know, in that arena ever again. Yeah, this was definitely malfeasance. Yeah. Which is, you know, word I don't get to work in all that often. But a lot of times, and I think we've touched on this, there's not a lot that happens to prosecutors, even when they do things that later proved to be unethical. Yeah. I don't know. Kind of have, kind of have, uh, carte blanche. I wouldn't say carte blonde. but there seems to be quite a bit of protection of prosecutors. I'll say that. Now, when we get back to Macon, and I've kind of already mentioned this, right, as he was talking to police, he told them that

he was motivated by money to commit his attacks. I mean, we've talked about it Gibbs. This is a guy that had been stealing for most of his life, but something changed inside him when he began murdering. It had to have because like I said, if it was just about the money, he could have gotten that without killing a single person. He also told authorities that none of his victims had the type of money that he was looking for. I mentioned that. But I really don't think any amount of money would have stopped this guy from killing. The Lansing State Journal reported that they obtained transcripts of a video recorded interview between Macon and detectives that occurred after his arrest. In this interview, Macon told detectives that he enjoyed the act of killing.

He said, I just like to see fear in people's faces. Terrifying. Yeah. That's a terrifying thought. He went on to talk about his victim selection saying he selected women who he thought were alone because they just weren't going to be able to put up much of a fight. That was his thinking. Well, like you said, beginning of the episode, he was a hunter.

He knew what he was hunting for. Well, and you could also say he was a chicken shit, too. He was a hunter. There's no doubt about that. Now, most hunters would argue that they want to go after the biggest, the baddest, the most dangerous animal. Yeah, the trophy. The trophy.

This guy was purposefully. trying to pick on the most vulnerable women who were alone. That's who he thought was the most vulnerable. Right. But after the arrest, after all of this came out, this guy's family came out to support him, which I found strange. I couldn't really find a lot about, you know, how the family kept in touch over the years.

You know, obviously we mentioned it up front. They went their separate ways. many of them into different foster homes and things like that. But his family came out to support him. They held rallies. They proclaimed that he was innocent. But then in early September of 2007, the Lansing State Journal came out with a report that Matthew Macon had kicked in a window at the house of an ex-girlfriend.

This woman called 911. And she actually gave. Macon's name to the operator. So she identified him by name. Right. She said that he threatened to kill her. And I think gives what is so incredible about this encounter is that it happened not that long after he was paroled, right?

And we know he murdered about a month after being paroled. This happened before his first murder. But police didn't notify corrections officials. until well after Macon began his summer of murder. It was ultimately what got him arrested, right? I mentioned it. Home invasion, parole violations, and it led to police understanding that he had committed all these murders,

but if they had done it timely, right, this is something that could have gotten his parole revoked, and he most likely would have gone back to prison. before he had the chance to murder anyone in the summer of 2007. Now, it would have had no effect on the first two murders. Those, those had already happened. But he ended up murdering five more women, and there is a very good chance that all of that

could have been avoided. Matthew Macon was only charged with the murders of Sandra Eichorn and Karen Delgado Yates, as well as the assault with intent to murder of Chapel Jackson. accent. And gives this is something you and I talk about in certain episodes, right? When prosecutors, district attorneys sit down and they, they look at, you know, how to charge. Right. I don't want to say it's a game, but there's definitely calculations involved. Oh, absolutely. It has to be. So they believe he committed seven murders. They're only going to charge him with two of the murders. And I believe it's because it was those two murders. It was those two murders.

and the attack on Chapel that they had the most damning evidence of Macon's guilt. Yeah, you're going to go with the ones that you feel more confident about for sure. Yeah. And the thought probably was, well, let's see how these go. We can always try him for the other five murders if something goes back. Right. If this doesn't go the way we think it will. Macon's trial started in early May 2008.

He pleaded not guilty. And his defense team got a big win when it was ruled that his confession could not be used at trial. I mean, I think that's huge when you're talking about a guy that confessed to seven murders. And specifically confess to the two that you're trying him for. That's a big win for the defense team. Yeah. It was huge. The prosecution was very straightforward in their theory.

They said Matthew Macon killed for money. But he also killed for the thrill of it. One of the prosecutors called killing his hobby. They pointed out some of the strange things that Macon did at some of the crime scenes apparently gives he staged items inside the house. Like he would take a photograph and he would move it and maybe put it next to the victim or put it in a place where it didn't belong. He took a business card and placed it on a bowl of spaghetti.

I mean, these things were very out of place. It was like he was playing games or he was getting some type of thrill out of it. Right. And I think that's what the prosecution said. You know, why would someone do these things if they weren't getting some type of enjoyment out of it? The prosecution's first witness was the son of Sandra Eichorn. He testified about finding his mother dead in her home. And it was very emotional and probably.

very powerful to the jury. Chapel Jackson took the stand and testified how Macon attacked her and she only survived because her dog scared him off. It's a pretty good witness for the state. Yeah, it really is because obviously she survived and she saw him. She got a good look at him. I know they developed some sketch, some composites off of her identification. Now, Makin's family would look at them and say, well, it doesn't look anything like him. I think his defense team also hammered Jackson on the stand because, you know, yeah, she picked him out of a lineup, but then said maybe she wasn't 100% sure, you know, some things like that. The medical examiner testified to the victim's injuries.

And there was quite a bit of DNA evidence testimony linking Maken to the murder. A work glove was found in the home of Sandra Eichorn, and it contained Macon's DNA. All right. That's not good. Not good at all. How are you going to explain that this glove has your DNA? But also, inside the palm of the glove, they found a clump of Sanders hair. So this woman was murdered.

Her hair's in the glove. Your DNA's on the glove. That's not good for you. It's not. And by the way, all these people are throwing these gloves down in the parking lot, the grocery store. Guess who's been collecting them, putting them in a little baggy? The collector. The collector.

A.k.a. Gibby. It would be used at a later point. A shoe that was taken from Macon's girlfriend's house had Sandra's DNA on it. So one of his shoes. It's not good. Not good. Experts also testified that Macon's DNA was found on a baseball. cap found in the house where Karen Delgado Yates was beaten.

So I don't think there's any doubt why prosecutors chose the cases that they did. They chose the ones where they had the most physical evidence, the most DNA evidence linking this guy to the crime scene. Well, it should be a slam dunk at this point. Yeah, on top of that, they had cell phone evidence that put Maken near all three of the attacks for which he was on trial at the times they occurred. So again, all of that, you know, really strong evidence. I mean, as the prosecutor, you got to feel really, really good. I would think so. But there was something interesting about the prosecutor. You know, in various

newspapers, they pointed out that during the trial, he referred to Macon as chilly. Oh. Which I always, I thought was strange. And I think a lot of other people, found it strange. Normally you see attorneys address someone, you know, they would as Matthew or Mr. Macon or something like that. This guy just kept calling him chili. Maybe he was trying to warm him up for cross-examination if he ever had the chance. Or maybe he was trying to link him even further to the Chili Smith alias that he used and just keep planting that in the jury's mind. I don't know. I think that's probably what he did right there. Makin's defense team countered the prosecution by saying there were no eyewitnesses that could testify that

making killed these women. Well, that's not an untrue statement, right? Nobody saw him with their own eyes kill these two women. And they tried to punch as many holes in the DNA as they could, right? They said, you can't believe all of this DNA evidence because there were errors made during the testing process. But what I found interesting was that it was reported the defense didn't call a single witness, not one. Why wouldn't they do that?

Well, then I got to thinking, who are they going to call? Most of the time you would see the defense team at the very least call some character witnesses, although his character wasn't great. And it was you could pretty much prove that by, you know, the things that we've talked about. And then, you know, you would try to call some type of expert, maybe a DNA expert to try to punch some more holes or I don't know. I don't know why. The one thing they did try to do was offer up the theory that, okay, Makin didn't kill these

women. It was actually his brother who had committed the murders and attacks. Well, it didn't work. It took the jury only two hours of deliberation. to find Matthew Macon guilty on all counts. He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. So I mentioned Gibbs that they only tried him for two murders. And to me, that's an interesting aspect of this case,

that the prosecutor came out and said, you know, he would not try him for the other five murders. You and I often talk about all the factors that go into making this type of decision. and one of them is usually cost. Now, I've seen varying reports on this. Some said that the prosecutor did cite cost as a factor. There were some reports that he said cost wasn't a factor at all.

He said it was more about the fact that Macon already had a life sentence that had been upheld by the Michigan Court of Appeals, you know, by the time that he came out and said this. So he's never getting out. So what are we going to do? Add some more life sentences that are not really going to do anything. Right. But we're going to turn around and utilize the taxpayer's money to get a conviction when it's not really even needed. The other thing that the prosecutor said was that, you know, because Macon really had nothing else to lose, it wasn't like he could get the death penalty, right? He could only get additional life sentences. is the prosecutor had a fear that this guy was going to turn any additional trials into a circus and really kind of take pot shots at the victims, maybe the families.

He didn't want that. He certainly callous enough to do something like that. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think the prosecutor thought, why do we want to open ourselves up to that? So, you know, it was kind of all of those things that went into the decision not to try making for the other five murders. But as you can imagine, that didn't exactly sit well

with the families of these other five victims because it's almost as though they didn't get their justice. Yeah. You know, they didn't get a chance to sit in court and hear a jury conclusively say that this man killed their loved ones.

They didn't get that. So there's kind of an, open-endedness to it, I think, as far as the family was concerned. They were upset. They were definitely upset with the decision. But I mentioned that the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld Macon's conviction. He appealed on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. You see that on appeal all the time, but the higher courts rarely buy into it. In a court document, it was stated, effective assistance of counsel is presumed, and the defendant bears a heavy burden proving otherwise. In order to overcome this presumption, defendant must first show that counsel's performance was

deficient as measured against an objective standard of reasonableness. Secondly, defendant must show that the deficiency was so prejudicial that he was deprived of a fair trial such that there is a reasonable probability that but for the council's unprofessional errors, the trial outcome would have been different. So I thought that was interesting because you hear about ineffective assistance of counsel all the time. Right. So here's what the court is saying that you have to do to prove that claim. Well, that's a pretty tall order. It's almost impossible to prove that. Because you could go back and say, well, how come my defense team didn't call a single witness? Okay, it's a fair question. You and I kind of questioned it too, but would it have changed the outcome of the trial? Most likely not.

No. Because who are they going to call that's going to refute all of this DNA evidence against making? So no matter what you say your defense did or didn't do, there was so much evidence against you that the trial couldn't have gone any other way. No, you'd almost need that aha moment, you know? Yeah, you would need like something in the trial of Claude McCullough, right? Right. And that wouldn't even really be ineffective assistance of counsel because as far as I know, they didn't know about the video and the report and all that.

But you would need something like that. Your defense team had something and they just didn't bring it up at all. And that something would have proven or at least put that doubt in a jury's mind. The other thing I found that I thought was a strange twist was this prosecutor in Macon's case, he resigned in 2016 after being charged with prostitution or solicitation. I don't mean he was a sex worker. I mean, he was solicitating. He was paying for sex.

Yeah. So didn't have anything to do with this guy's trial. but I thought I'd pointed out. So that's illegal? It's illegal. It's definitely frowned upon. Except in where Nevada, right? At some places in Nevada.

One of those brothels. The bunny ranch, it's not illegal there for some reason. I mean, so we hear. No, I've watched documentaries on it. I like documentaries. I know you do. One other thing uncovered by the Lansing State Journal was that Matthew Macon's name was not on the mission.

public sex offender registry. We kind of knew that because that's why they, they busted him. Right. Right. Because he didn't register. But his name was apparently on a hidden registry available only to law enforcement. It was said that most people on that list were on there because they committed their sexual offenses as youths, youths. Uts.

Two Uts. But the paper said that in 2007, There were as many as 20,000 people on this hidden list. Wow. And that's a little scary. So as we wrap up this case, I think there's a few things to unpack, right? You have a guy who had a horrible childhood. I don't think you can argue that.

Now, did it contribute in some way to what he became? I'm sure it did. But, you know, the flip side question of that is, could he have turned his life around in a more positive direction? as so many others who've gone through horrible child experiences have done. Yeah. I mean, I think we feel like he could have.

Yeah. I think the answer is yes. I think Macon made the decision early on that he was going to survive and he was going to take money in order to do it. You know, he could have got a job maybe at Arby's or Wendy's or something like that, but he didn't want to do that. He wanted the easy, and to him, the easy money.

Yeah. The reason. And he was going to steal it. He was going to steal it. But then at some point, he made the decision to murder. And he said it himself. He enjoyed seeing the fear in people's faces as he exerted his power over them. I think that's what's especially sad when you look back on this case is that, and we've mentioned

it, right, there were a number of instances where these murders could have been avoided. Really in every instance. Right. He was an animal. And I go back to that one question. If your motive is money. If all you're looking for is money, then why do you need to kill? To me, the answer is because you want to.

Yeah. And you're fooling yourself if you think you're just after money. You want to kill. And then you're going to take whatever money you can find. And then I think you have to really think about, you know, making, trying to attack his ex-girlfriend. If that gets reported correctly, I think his parole gets revoked and he's back in prison before he can commit the additional murders in 2007.

Now, would he have murdered when he eventually got out years later? Maybe. There's no way for anybody to know that. I do think what it points out is that in many of these cases, there is one or two missteps by authorities that have huge ramifications later on. I absolutely agree. And I don't even think these are things that are done on purpose. I think these are just errors.

But think about how dire the consequences of that type of error can be. So costly. People lost their lives. Macon is currently housed in the McComb Correctional facility. And Gibbs, I think, unless something very, very strange happens, he's never getting out. I can't imagine him getting out. No.

I mean, life without parole. So it would take something miraculous, some piece of information, some evidence that proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that he's not guilty. And I don't know where it would come from. Or a error inside the administration office during a COVID breakout. Like that, like what almost happened to that one serial killer? Yeah. Ridgeway.

Ridgeway, yeah. I did see when I was looking him up, because I always looked people up to see where they are now, make sure they're still alive and where their house. So when you do the offender search, there's a section for tattoos, at least on the Michigan site. And it said that he had west on his left knuckles and side on his right knuckles. So I'm assuming if he held him up, he could go west side. Although it seems like now that I'm thinking about it, they'd be backwards. Let's be seen.

Side West. Yeah. Wouldn't you want West to be on your right? You would think. Huh. Maybe he looked in the mirror and thought he had him right. Then he got done. He's like, son of a.

Oh, that's true. That could happen. Did it wrong. Now everybody's like, what's up with Side West, yo? And you're like, I don't know. I just don't know. That's it. That's it for the case of Matthew Macon.

I mean, obviously a lesser known case. It wasn't one that I was familiar with. But as I started to get into it, and I think you and I both said the same thing. There were just some really interesting aspects of this case. Yeah, there really was. Some things that you don't really see very often at all. We've got some voicemails, Gibbs. You want to check those out?

I always want to check those out. Yeah, this is Justin from Northwest Kansas. He just did the Hunter and Remed from Rametta episode. and that actually happened in my hometown when I was about eight years old. My dad came home from work because his boss sent him home and told everybody to be prepared. So I was eight. My dad walked in and loaded a shotgun and propped it in the front window because nobody knew where that they were and what part of town they were in.

And that stuckies, one person working there wouldn't have been surprising because it was in a town of about 150 people. Love your show. See you later. So that's good information on the Stuckies. Now, the question is, why would you build a Stuckies in a town that only has 150 people? But that's a separate question. Probably for the gas tanks that set outside, those diesel tanks get those truckers coming through.

You could be right on the money. Yeah. Now I'm starting to think I've never been to a Stuckies. Oh. I'm starting to think I thought Stuckees was something totally different. more like a Denny's. You've got me thinking it's more like a like a roadside gas station with a little bit of food in it. The ones I've been to.

Yeah. Yeah. But it could be both. Hey, I trust your your information. Now, loading up the shotgun and being prepared because there's a killer on the loose, I get that. Got to protect your family. And you're in a small town like that.

You've got to always be ready. But as an eight-year-old, that would be scary as you know what. You're like, I just, you know what. want to go stuckies and get some pie. It would be scary right now, but as an eight-year-old, that would be scary. Hi, Mike, hi Givie. This is McKenzie. I'm from Saskatoon,

Saskatchewan in Canada, and I'm just calling to say that I love your podcast. It's amazing. I listen to it all day at work. I drive a tractor all day, which is totally farm girl of me. I know. Very stereotypical, but I love you guys. I'm Team Mike and Teet and Givie. And I just wanted to recommend a

podcast topic. It is the Dunblane shooting. Dunblane is in Scotland. I lived there for about five months before coronavirus hit, and every time I said something about a gun or anything like that, people would gasp dramatically. So I thought it would be interesting to hear more about it. I don't know that much, but I know it was Thomas Hamilton shot a bunch of children and a teacher at the Dunblane school there.

So, yeah, stay safe and keep your own time thick and bye. Well, thank you very much for the voicemail. I've heard of that case. I'm not super familiar with it, but I'll be safe. I'll make sure it's on the list, definitely. She just wanted us to try to say Saskatchewan. Well, you know, okay, to me that's not that hard to say, but you add Saskatoon in front of it. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

It makes it harder to say. Now you say it. Saskatchewan. You got to say the whole thing. Sastatune, Saskatchewan. You sounded like you were ordering Seshwan at some place. One of my favorite restaurants. Let me get the Sasky-Thing.

Yeah. I can't even imitate you. No, you don't even try. I can't even imitate myself. Hi, my name is Tom from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I called you guys early this week. And I wanted to let you guys know about, I don't know if you guys did this one already, but this story is about a guy named Jonathan Schmitz,

who murdered a guy on after the filming of the Jenny Jones show back in 1995. So really crazy and insane story. And then, yeah, keep up the good work, guys. So I don't know if you remember this, Gibbs. I remember it. I can picture it. Yeah. I can picture the episode.

So it's a big case, kind of famous. because of what happened. Sure. Definitely on the list, but I can picture this guy sitting in the chair and the other male comes out and he finds out that this guy has feelings for him. Yeah. He's attracted to him. Yes.

But this guy is heterosexual. And so they kind of, he kind of fakes his way through the whole taping. He's ambushed. Right. Essentially. And after that, he ends up, you know, committing murder. But, you know, Jenny Jones had to go on trial and there's a lot of pieces and parts to the, to the episode. It would make for a good episode.

Kind of ruined that whole gotcha. Yeah, I don't know if that was the decline, but it certainly had to have had something to do with it. What you're saying, the whole gotcha surprise. I'm cheating on you. This is the baby daddy. I don't know what all those shows were. It's not like they just ended, but it had to have caused some changes. There's no doubt about it.

Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Ashley from Aurora, Colorado. And I just wanted to give a shout out to the woman that I saw my run yesterday morning. Right as I passed her, I realized she was listening to something on her phone speakers, and it was T-Cat. So I thought that was kind of interesting. I've never met another T-Cat fan in the wild before. And also just thanks to you guys for doing a great job. I remember when you only had about 25 episodes out, and you've really come a long way.

So keep up a good work and keep your own time taken. That's really cool. That is cool. Yeah. And you got to watch out for those T-Cat fans out in the wild. Yes. And the most dangerous. Keep your head on a swivel for those T-Cat fans.

But, you know, Gibbs, nothing like that's ever even happened to me. I've never gone anywhere and heard somebody listening to T-Cat or anything like that. Now, one of my really good friends did call me. He lives in another state. He said he was at his son's, um, baseball game, I think. Yeah. And some guys were sitting around.

They were talking about the podcast. That's cool. So he said, oh, that's one of my best friends. You know, so I've gotten some weird things like that, but, uh, you know, nothing where some, I've just been walking down the street. Maybe it's because I don't walk a lot or run. Don't walk at all. Or exercise.

All right. We did have one thing in the mailbag. All right. The propions sent my daughter a get well card. Really? It was very nice. Had a Starbucks gift card in it. Yeah.

So that was very amazing. She was over the moon. I think she's amazed that people are actually caring about her. Right. To send her things. That's really kind of blowing her way. And me too. I know she was just blown away from all the well wishes.

Yeah, she was. She was. So that's it, buddy. That's it for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gabi. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking. Thank you.