True Crime All The Time - Stuart Hazell

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

Stuart Hazell was not wanted as a child by his parents in England. After his father went away to prison, his mother put him into foster care. He began drinking at age 13, was convicted at 14, and earned a long rap sheet throughout the years. In 2007, Stuart moved in with a woman who really gave him his first sense of family life. But even that didn't stop Stuart from murdering her 12-year-old granddaughter Tia Sharp.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the life and crimes of Stuart Hazell. Here is a man that seemingly finally had the one thing he'd been searching for his entire life. But he couldn't control his dark desires which centered around child pornography. First it was looking at pictures on the internet, then it graduated to voyeurism, until finally Stuart made the decision to take the final step; the most heinous step imaginable.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetime or through paypal at [e-mail] the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 126 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. Gibby, how are you? Man, I'm good. I'm doing good, man. Man, I'm good. I'm doing good man. So, uh, exactly what I said. Say it forward. Say it backwards, brother. Yeah. Going around in a circle. It's all good. It's all good. What have I told you? I need two mans in that first sentence. That's what tells me that the episode is really going to be good. There you go. You got it.

Made it happen. Somebody sent me an email the other day and it actually started out, Hey man, what's up, man? Hey man, what's up, man? And I know for a fact that was an homage to you. All right, we have a lot of new Patreon supporters. So let's start out there. We had Just Miranda.

Hey, Just Miranda. Donna Harkins jumped out to our highest level. Awesome. Thank you, Donna. Courtney Baker, Lori Wagner. Courtney Baker and Lori Wagner. Brian Linder. Hey, thanks, Brian.

Monica Cates. Hey, Monica. Lee Q. Leam Booth jumped out of their highest level. Hey, thank you. Kyle Lamb. Awesome. Priscilla McCarty jumped out of their highest level.

Priscilla. Steve Jablonski. Hey, Jablonski. You should be in that one movie. That's a dude that you do not want to meet in a dark alley. You just called him, dude. He's the dude. Probably is.

for those for hopefully he'll listen to the patreon minisode and hear what we talked about but i just picture a dude that you do not want to have to fight in the middle of the night in a dark alley battery plays hockey or yeah jablonsky sounds like a hockey he's a he's an enforcer got like a broken like a nose that's been broken five times missing a couple of teeth yeah jenny long hey jennie jennie jepin jennon jennie jennon jennon jennon jennon jennifer just jennifer Lesette Zambrana. Ooh, Zabran. That's cool.

Yes. Andrea Throck Morton. Hey, Throck Morton. How you doing, Andrew? Sarah Davis. Thanks, Sarah. Martricia. That's just, it's all you need.

Yeah, Trisha. When you got that name, that's it. You don't need anything else. Catherine Cutright. Hey, Catherine. Mandy Moore and Elizabeth Taylor. Good old Mandy, and there's Elizabeth Taylor. Rachel.

Just Rachel. Nicole. Hey, thanks, Nicole. Haley, Wainwright. Hey, Haley. And Eileen Glancy. Just Eileen Glancy. Just Eileen Glancy.

Yeah, Jis. So we appreciate all that new support. And if we go back into the Vault Gibbs. How far are we going back? About as far as you can go. This week we selected our good friend M. I love us some M. Yep.

So longtime Patreon supporter, just a longtime supporter of the show in general. We had a lot of PayPal support as well, Marianne Dean. Thanks, Marianne. Bjork. Oh, Henrik Biroch. Donnell Young. Hey, thanks, Donnell.

Stephen Wills. Thanks, Stephen. And Michelle Anderson. Hi, Michelle. So amazing, amazing support. Perfect. Right now, we have an episode out on Unsolved. We're talking about the Santa Rosa hitchhiking murders.

Yeah. One case that's been requested a lot. I mean, it's high up there on the number of requests we get for it. We knew we were going to do it. Yeah. then we got that request last week on one of the voicemails. So I said, why not go ahead and do it? So that pushed Jen to overdrive, right? Yeah. I said, let's go ahead and wrap it up. So we're in the 70s. We're out in California. Obviously, it's in the title, right? Hitchhiking

murders. Yeah. 70s, a lot of hitchhiking. We've talked about that before. I think there are some interesting aspects to this case. Probably one of the most interesting is when we start to talk about suspects, absolutely. We get into some really big names in the world of true crime. Not just one, many. Bunch. Yeah. You know, and this is a case that we've talked about before. We've weaved in and out of it in other episodes because of these people that we're going to talk about. I don't want to give anything away, but so definitely check that out. CrimeCon's coming up real fast. Just around the corner.

Yep. If you're still going to get your badge, make sure you use our promo code. Crime all the time, 19. I guess I better buy my plane ticket. You should buy everything. You should reserve this. You should reserve that. Buy a ticket.

Do it all. Get some new luggage. Yeah. Get a haircut. Do whatever you got to do. I'm going to let my hair just keep growing, man. You're going to go, you're going to go like the dude and, uh, yeah, I'm not going to cut my hair. The big Lebowski.

Not going to shave. Not going to cut my hair. Not going to trim my eyebrows. None of it. Go for it. I didn't know you did any of that anymore. All right, Gibbs. Are you ready to get into this episode?

I'm ready. I think this is one that people are going to be repelled by and fascinated by at the same time. They bloody well should be, man. We're going to England. We are going to. going to England. We haven't been in a little while. We go to England quite a bit. I like when we go. But this is a case that, you know, once I got into it, straight up captured my attention. You know, we're talking about Stuart Hazel who prayed on and ultimately murdered the 12-year-old

granddaughter of his girlfriend. Like we said, happened over in in Britain. It was a big story over there. There was some press here in the United States, but nothing like, you know, what they experienced over there. And you and I have been covering some cases recently, quite a few actually, where family members killed other family members, right? Whether it was parents killing their children, children killing their parents. Right. Or spouses. Spouses killing their, their spouses and. other people. And obviously with all the serial killers that we do, we talk a lot about people

killing strangers, right? There are a lot of murders that that take place like that, especially when you get into the realm of, you know, serial killers. Right. I thought this one was a little different. You know, it's a person in your life, not blood related, but who you feel like is family. You treat them like family. They treat you like family. So that's what we're talking about here with the brutal crime committed by Stuart Hazel. So who was Stuart? And what happened in his life to lead him down a very dark and twisted path?

I mean, we're going to get into some, some brutal areas, you know, extremely violent child pornography, some things that this guy gets into. But it ultimately. culminates with the murder of an innocent girl. So we start with Stuart Hazel. He was born in England in 1975 into a family that, to me, Gibbs, did not appear to be ready for children, well equipped to handle a child. I'm not even sure if they really wanted a child.

Stewart's father went to prison when he was very young. He rarely saw his mother. she worked as a sex worker. So was working, you know, probably the hours where a child would be in bed and then sleeping during the hours where a child would be up. Right. So after his father's death, his mother couldn't take care of him. So Stuart was placed into foster care.

And he began getting into trouble very early on. He has admitted that he started drinking. at the age of 13 and pulled off a large number of petty crimes before he was even a teenager. That early, man. Yeah. So he was into, you know, a lot of stuff at a very early age. He didn't do well in school. There have been a lot of people that said he was, is not very intelligent.

But I think you add on top of that, you know, bad attitude, lack of desire. And then really, he. just wasn't at school very often. Well, if you're not in school, it's hard to get the education you need to be intelligent. I would agree. I would agree. So he wasn't in school basically just because he was in trouble, you know, all of the time. So I think piggybacking off of what you said, if you're in the principal's office every day, if you're getting kicked out of class on a routine basis, if you're getting suspended, all those types of things makes it tough. I do think it's kind of a prerequisite that you actually be in the classroom. Right. When the teacher is, is, you know,

giving the lesson. Giving the lesson to learn. Now, that's for most of us. I know in your case, you can just look at the cover of a book and through, I don't even know what it is, sheer osmosis. It's an amazing ability. Just suck up every bit of knowledge in that book. Yeah, I just wick it in, man. Wicked? I wick it in. Wicked in.

Yeah. But most of us, we have to work at it. We are not all Mensa level geniuses. Sometimes I'll open and see the first page. Mm-hmm. Flip it over, read the last page, and then put it away. And somehow your mind connects all the dots in between. Yeah, does that little thing you do that.

That is amazing. Blu-blub-blu-blu-blu-blu-blu-blu-blu-blu-blu. whatever that noise you make. Yeah. And it blends it. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's good stuff. We're blending. Yeah. So Hazel was first convicted at the age of 14. That's early, man. 14. Yeah. It really is. You know, drinking at 13, your first conviction at 14, you are not going down a, you know, what's going to turn out to be a very good path, right? It was said that he was homeless for many of his teenage years. At one point, he ended up in a hostel for the homeless in Soho. And Soho's on the west side of London.

And this is where Stewart claims that he was raped at the age of 16 years old. And that's one of those things, Gibbs, that, you know, I think it's important to keep in the back of your mind as we get further down, you know, through the episode. Sure. I mean, I can reflect back on a episode we just did recently about another, you know, young man that was in prison at a young age. And it was just the norm. He was raped in prison. But it definitely had an impact on him.

Well, after we talk about, you know, Stuart Hazel's crime, I think it's natural to look back at some of these things that he claims he went through, right? There's no proof of this. but he says it happened to him. So we're up to age 16. And I don't think there's any doubt. You know, Stuart Hazel has had a rough go of it for sure in this, you know, first 16 years of his life. Later on, he would say that his early life.

And really most of his life for that matter, it was just one big mess. He had severe bouts of depression. He attempted suicide multiple times. and he was addicted to both alcohol and drugs. Yeah, it makes it a rough life, man, for sure. It really does. Depression's rough and then, like you say, you throw that alcohol and drugs on top of it, man. It doesn't make it better.

No, I think it compounds it. We talked about his first conviction, but there's going to be many more. It's really just a long string of convictions for Stewart in his late teens through his 20s and really up to when he committed this heinous crime. So I think we can go through some of them. There's so many we can really just highlight his rap sheet. But what I think is particularly interesting is that he was never arrested or never convicted. Or convicted, right, for anything similar to what he's going to do in 2012.

And I do think that's. somewhat strange. You know, normally when we talk about killers, now this is not a serial killer. So I do think that throws it off a little bit. Normally when we talk about those type of killers, we see that progression. We're going to see a progression here, but it's not really in his rap sheet. It's more in his behavior. So he received a disorderly conduct in 2001. He was arrested and convicted for a racially motivated assault in 2002, dealing cocaine in 2003. Well, at least he got three years for that. Yeah, he did get three years for that.

And he had convictions for burglary, theft, drug possession, things like that. Then we get up to 2010, he was arrested for punching someone in the face on the street. Well, you've done that. I've never been arrested for it, but. Well, we don't get caught. We punch and then we're right. We're done. We're out. He also was arrested, and this sounds like you, for possession of a machete in a public place. Well, sometimes the knife I have is big enough to be a machete.

So there you go. If I saw that on your record, I would say, or if you came and said, hey, you know what, I had a rough weekend, man. I got arrested for carrying a machete. I'd be like, yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah. You'd be bailing me out anyway. But so thinking about Stuart Hazel, he's just walking down the streets of a foggy London town with his machete, which is what you do. How cool that, I mean, just picture, you know, the foggy alleys of London walking on the cobblestone and you see me come out of the fog with my machete. You're saying how cool would that be?

What a cool look, man. What a cool look. Not for anybody that has to see it. they would run and shite their pants and never look back. Still kind of exciting. So I think what we've done here or attempted to do is paint a picture of Stuart Hazel, a man who had a terrible childhood, chose really what you would have to say is the worst path at every turn as a teenager

and then became an adult with this really long rap sheet. But like I said, you know, really none of those offenses were even remotely sexual in nature. Now, you have to ask the question. Does that mean that he wasn't doing anything illegal of a sexual nature or that he was never caught doing it? Well, we've done enough of these. We know these individuals get away with a lot of things. Yeah, he was caught for a lot of things. Maybe he got away with the things that were.

sexual in nature, you know, crimes that were sexual in nature. I don't know. But we do have to back up a little bit. You know, so I wanted to kind of run through the highlights of Stewart's criminal career. But we're backing up to 2002. That was when Stewart met a woman named Christine Bicknell. And this was a very strange thing. Gibb. So I want to kind of talk about it. I want to kind of flesh it out. At some point, Stewart had a two-week fling with a woman named Natalie Sharp.

What is strange about it is Natalie Sharp is also Christine Bicknell's daughter. And that's why I say it gets a little fuzzy here. He has a fling with this woman's daughter. And then later on, they're going to become a couple. So it's not until about two, 2007. Remember, he's in and out of prison during this whole time. But it's 2007 when Stuart and

Christine finally become a couple. I just think it's so strange that you've had a, you know, you've dated a woman and then you end up dating her mother. I think that would be odd sitting around the family dinner table. But that's what happened in this case. And, you know, he moved in with Christine in the home that she had in New Addington, South London. And really, when you read about this area, it was said to have been an area heavily infested by drugs. Many of the people that lived in the community were on welfare, especially where, I guess, where her house was. But it was really with Christine that Stuart Hazel found his first real, semblance of family life. I just don't think before this time he had it. Anything, you know,

that even remotely resembled a family unit. And we talked about Stewart's in and out of prison, but when he's out, he's living with Christine, but he's also living around Christine's 12-year-old granddaughter, Tia Sharp. That's Natalie's daughter. And apparently, Tia even called Stuart Granddad. You know, he had been in the picture for a while now. I think he, when he entered this family's life, Tia Sharp was about two years old. So essentially he has been around when he's not in jail. He's been around for, you know, almost her entire life to the point that she knows him,

she loves him. she calls him granddad. Now, Tia Sharp was a firecracker. That's what everyone said about her. She stood four feet five inches tall. She was said to have been a very happy and also a very confident girl. She had an amazing personality. She was one of those magnetic people, people that you like to be around.

You enjoyed being around. For one thing, she wasn't shy at all. she made friends very easily. She could walk right up to, you know, a new person in school and just start talking to them. And the next thing you know, she would have a new friend. She had two younger brothers, but Tia did very well in school when she attended school. And that was one of the issues that, you know, I read quite a bit about. There were reports that she had attendance issues, which raised some concerns with the

authorities, there were also reports that on more than one occasion, marijuana was found at Natalie's house when Tia was there. But there were no reports. And really, people said the, you know, said the opposite of this that Natalie was neglecting or abusing her daughter. I just don't think that was happening in any way. Now, not making sure that your daughter goes to school every day, smoking marijuana around your 12 year old daughter, those are not good things. things. No. If that's what happened, but I don't want to paint the picture that she was a horrible mother because I did not get that sense at all. All right, Gibbs, let's take a quick break. Let's first talk about our sponsor, Bolin Branch. There is nothing like getting a great

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Stewart's been in Tia's life. for a good amount of time. He watched her on many occasions when Christine was at work, but Stuart Hazel had a darker side than what we've talked about so far, right, with his convictions and what he went to jail for. Over the years, he developed a fascination with child pornography. And it was described Gibbs as very violent. child pornography, which he often viewed on his computer. He looked at it on his cell phone.

You know, I think at a certain point, this became an obsession. It became a compulsion for him. And by 2012, this fascination that he had with viewing incredibly sick images on his computer on his phone, it wasn't enough. It's going to morph into something more. It is. that's where I kind of was saying earlier, with this guy, you don't really see the progression in his crimes. What you see is a progression in his behavior. The problem is nobody else sees it.

This is a secret thing, right? This is hidden. He's not displaying this to Christine or Natalie or Tia. This is one of those things that you do by yourself in the dark corner of the basement or whatever. Right. It's something that he's hiding from the rest of the world. We'll be able to see it because we know and are telling the story of what this guy does. But as he's progressing, right, he began to think about Tia, this 12-year-old little girl in a sexual way. Sickening, man. Very sickening.

Yeah. Disturbed. Sickening. It's going to get worse. I'm just throwing that out there right now. because just like a serial killer, you and I talk about it all the time, right? They may start with, I don't know, stealing women's underwear. Right.

As a, as a juvenile, you know, progressing to, you know, think about Jerry Brutus, wearing women's shoes, fascination fetish with shoes. The next thing you know, he's got to start cutting, killing women and cutting off their feet. There's, there's just always this progression because it's never enough. the sexual gratification that you're getting from whatever you're doing is kind of like a drug, right? At a certain point, you don't get the same high. You have to find some other way.

You either have to do more or you have to do something that creates more of a high. Yeah. So what Stewart chooses to do is he starts filming her, Tia, this little girl, without her not. obviously. This is, you know, voyeuristic type of stuff. The police would later come out and say that he created a number of secret spots in her room where he could hide a camera. I think he created some peep holes as well where he could watch her directly. He's progressing quickly and he's not going to stop. Unfortunately, it's on August 2nd, 2012. Tia called up her grandmother, Christine, right? This is Stewart's girlfriend, partner, whatever you want to call her. She wanted to stay all night. I think she did that quite a bit. Stayed all night with her grandmother, as most kids do. But she found out that her grandmother had to work. But she said she wanted to come anyway. She wanted to come hang out with Stewart.

it, I don't think this was out of the ordinary in any way. I think this had happened hundreds of times before. Just a normal, going to be a normal night. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Christine, it sounded like she worked a third shift type job. I believe that over the years, Stuart watched Tia many, many times. But one thing gives that is evident from the research is that Tia really liked Stewart.

You know, she thought of him as a grandfatherly figure, even though really the guy was only 36, 37 years old. So fairly young. Yeah, he was, I mean, fairly young to be a grandfather. Yeah. Now, he, he was dating Christine, who was, you know, somewhat older than him. So they make plans. Tia is going to come. She's going to stay the night.

Stewart will be there. Christine will work and then they'll all see each other when she gets off work or, you know, however they're going to do it. So Tia takes the train and she gets off at the stop for her grandmother's house. There is CCTV video that shows Stuart at the stop to pick her up. But this is the last time that anyone other than Stuart Hazel would see Tia Sharp alive. So they go back to the house to hang out, they play some games. I think one of the big problems is Stuart's drinking, he's smoking weed. That's not going to help things. No, because at that point, reality is not going to be in his realm. Yeah. And I think his inhibitions are going to be lowered,

right, by the alcohol and the drugs. He makes the decision that he's ready to act out on his fantasy. This fantasy's been filling his head for whatever period of time. And now he's ready to take the next step. And what a next step it's going to be? It is. But again, progression, right? Nasty thoughts, nasty images to now actual physical contact. There's a big difference there.

Huge difference there. I mean, I think there are a lot of people in this world. correct me if you think I'm wrong, that think a lot of things, that if you knew what they were thinking, sitting across from you, you would be disgusted. Yeah.

The difference is they don't act on them. They don't say them out loud and they don't do anything criminal about whatever it is they're thinking, right? I think about that a lot. If you had a superpower, that gave you the ability to read minds, I think I would give it back. I think it would be very tough to have that. After the first

week, it'd be like, that's, that's TMI. I don't want, I don't, I don't, I can't handle all this. I think you'd be really disappointed in humanity. Well, that, that for sure. Yeah. I already am, because I just assume everybody's either thinking or doing bad things. But if I could read your mind and then I had to see all the pictures of you in this brony outfit, galloping around in your horse costume, I don't, I just I don't think I could handle it. Why you bring up that again? Because you knew the word brony. Because I knew the word what a brony.

It's because I have to know things around you. We're in the furry costume. You got to come up with something else, man. Roll into the brony. That's not going to work forever. People know it's not real. It's not something that has to work when it's reality. No, you've got to come up with better comebacks.

Giddy up. So we're back to Stewart. And this decision that he's made, he's drunk, he's high, That night, he makes some sexual advances towards Tia. This is a 37-year-old making sexual advances towards a 12-year-old. She's repulsed. And she threatens Stewart that she's going to tell her mother. I mean, if you think about it, this is a man that she thinks of as her granddad.

Yeah. You know, going through her mind has to be. What is this guy doing? Why is he doing this to me? Why would he do this to me? Yeah, why would, you know, I, I've never thought of him as anything other than, you know, this great guy. He's taking care of me. And now he's doing things that I find nasty.

Nobody should be doing. I can't imagine that feeling that first time that somebody that you trust with all your life, everything, you know, crosses that line in a way like that. how how that must feel i can't even i well yeah neither neither you nor i can relate for sure can relate to that unfortunately there are too many people that can and i bet you a lot of people listening and it makes me sad that they that they they actually know what that feeling is like that betrayal and it's probably worse than betrayal but well i think i'm assuming there's a couple parts to it right there is there has to be a part like this where you're shocked and you just can't believe that somebody you have trusted all these years would do something like that and then there's there's got to be a

whole bunch of other feelings that i'm not even going to try to you know talk about just because i don't have that yeah we're not going to pretend we know some expertise that yeah but i will but again what i will say is i just wish that so many people didn't have to go through it but i think there's no doubt right here Gibbs that this whole thing that Stewart has done it didn't work out the way that he had planned it out in his head. I mean, I'm sure in his twisted mind, he probably thought he would make his sexual overture. He would find out that Tia was secretly in love with him. I'm just assuming that this is what is going on in his mind, but that didn't happen. And now he is left in a very dangerous position in his mind. Right. He's, he's kind of cornered a little bit.

He can't have Tia tell her mom, Natalie, about what happened. That's eventually going to get back to Christine and then this family. The only real family that he's ever had, they're going to be done with him. He can't lose that. So what? does Stuart Hazel decide to do? He follows up what was a horrible decision with the worst possible decision that he could make. He makes the decision to murder Tia. There is going to be information that comes out from Stewart later about everything that happened. But the one thing that he was never very specific on was how he killed her. You know, the authorities believe that, you know, he suffocated her, but he doesn't stop there.

He violated Tia with an object, a sex object. Okay. After she was deceased. And he also took pictures of her after she was dead. And we've, this is a 12 year old girl. Yes, it's terrible. It's disturbing. And, but we've heard other, uh, bad individuals do similar things.

No, we have. And unfortunately, we will hear it again. again. Stuart then moved her body to the bathtub and he sawed the body up into pieces. He wrapped Tia's body parts in sheets, then put them in black plastic bags. He also wrapped up her clothes. He wrapped up her glasses. Put those in black plastic bags. And he takes all of the bags. And he puts them between the rafters in the loft, the attic, of, where they live, then he just throws a bunch of junk on top of the bags to hide them and he goes aback about his daily routine. So Christine returned home from work the next day. It's now Friday,

August 3rd, and she asked Stewart where Tia was and he told her that she'd gone out shopping for shoes. Now right off the back gives this to me sounds very strange that a 12 year old girl, would be allowed to go to a shopping center by herself. No way, no how would I have ever let either of my girls at the age of 12 walk down to a store, to a shopping center. I wouldn't let my kids do that either, man.

And we're not talking about the 1950s, right? Maybe that was allowed in the 1950s. This is 2012. Wouldn't do it, man. It's also in what was described, like I said earlier, as a pretty rough area of London. But I will say, several papers talked about the fact that this was something that Tia did quite often.

I think they gave her a lot of freedom, not just Christine and Stewart, but her mom, Natalie, as well. There were stories about the fact that she was allowed to ride the train, the tram, whatever it is, ride buses. you know, on her own to get from one place to another. So because of all that, I don't believe that Christine was overly worried in the beginning. But that all changed when Tia hadn't returned by 6 p.m. that night. Christine became very worried. She called Tia's mother Natalie. And the two of them went out searching for Tia. And they searched for, you know, some people.

period of time. And then they made the decision that they had to go to the police station. So all three of them went, Christine, Natalie, and Stewart. Now, I do think in reading some of the articles, both Natalie and Christine later on, they're, they're really going to have some doubts about how long they waited. You know, I think they thought that, you know, they could just go out and find her. Yeah. But you know how it is later on. Once we find out what happened, what happened, they're going to have, they're going to have some doubts. Although I don't know what it would have done. I don't think it would have done anything.

Maybe it would have helped the police and we're getting ready to talk about the investigation. Maybe it would have sped some of that up, but it would not have saved Tia's life. No. Because she was already, you know, deceased. Right. So they're at the police station. and Stuart told police that Tia left around noon that day. She was going to buy shoes at the shopping center.

But other than that, he had very little information. A local paper ran a small article about Tia's disappearance. It said that she left her grandmother's home in New Addington, South London, heading for the Witt Gift Shopping Center in Croydon Town Center. in Croydon Town Center. Police said she only has a small amount of money and did not take her travel card or her mobile phone. They added that her disappearance was out of character,

but they also gave what she was wearing. They said it was a yellow top, light gray leopard print leggings and black and pink Nike high top trainer shoes. So now the police will begin their investigation. on this. I mean, they got articles out in the paper, so I'm sure they're getting some leads coming in or at least some hits on something about, oh, I think I've seen this girl over here. I think the black and pink Nike's is probably pretty helpful. It's not something

you're going to see every day. No, I think you're right. It's all good information, but the initial investigation really turned up nothing. You know, they made a search of the flat that Stuart and Christine shared. They didn't find anything there. which is not good because we know Tia is there. Yeah. This is going to be a huge part of this story. To make matters even worse, they receive some information from a neighbor that basically corroborated what Stuart Haseel had told them at the station, that this man saw Tia go off about noon. That's strange.

It is strange. We know she couldn't have left at noon. Right. So what it did was, you know, it really made the beginning of this investigation. And this is not going to be a long, drawn out months, years type of thing. But it made the very first few days really a disappearance type investigation. The authorities weren't thinking foul play at all because of the facts that they had. You know, they had Stewart saying this.

They had a neighbor corroborating it. there really wasn't anything to indicate that something bad had happened to her at the home. But Tia's disappearance happened during a very strange new cycle in England. This is the summer of 2012. In the summer of 2012, London held the Summer Olympics. Oh, yeah. That's right. So they ran from July 27th to August 12th.

And you know, I mean, gives the Olympics. huge news, right? When they're here, when they're in a big city, even when they're in the states. Yeah. It dominates the news coverage for that period of time. Heck, even if it's not in the states, right? It's in the newspapers. It's all over the TV. That Olympics type coverage, normally upbeat, right? You have those feel good stories of the athletes. Some have triumphed over this or they went through this to get here. you always have the medal counts, that sort of thing. I mean, there's really not a whole lot of negative when it comes to the Olympics,

unless somebody gets really hurt or... Yeah. I mean, obviously, we had the 72 Olympics in Munich. That was very negative. That was very, yeah. But that's way out of the norm. But Tia's disappearance comes smack dab in the middle of the Olympics in London. It's very strange.

And obviously, her family was besides them. themselves. They're, they're out looking for her. They're on television, making pleas for her return. There's video of them, you know, holding candlelight vigils. They're walking through the streets looking for her. And eventually this broke through the Olympic coverage. It became a big new story. You know, the sun paper even offered up close to 25,000 pounds. back then that was 40,000 U.S. Some big money. That's a lot of money for a reward.

That's a healthy, I think we've talked about that. That's a good dollar amount. It is. It is. I'm not sure what that would be in today's rates. That Brexit thing puts a hurt on the, uh, you think that would change it quite a bit. Yeah. But the key is the media coverage heats up.

Like I said, families all over the television. They're wearing shirts with Tia. picture on them. They're doing tons of interviews. But what is really odd is, is who is in the middle of most of this. It's none other than Stuart Hazel. So let's hear a tiny bit of an interview that Stewart did with a local news station. He wasn't the only one there, but he's really the only one that you hear talking. Tell me a little bit about Tears life. I mean, is she a happy girl? Is she jolly? Has she got any problem? No, she's got no problems at all.

She's happy, like a golden angel. You know, she's perfect. There's no arguments, no nothing, no, nothing we can think of, absolutely nothing. And tell me about the Thursday night, because obviously there was just a two of you. Did you have a meal? Did you talk? Did you, was there any particular conversations? Yeah, we had meal that night because when we went to co-op, we bought these things, I bought them for Chris, but then teary-rette-three of these lollies, like nobly bobblies, and she was

going to make the last one. I said, no, I'll leave that for your name because I'll wish he'd come back with an empty box in the bin and then he'd go mad. But now, we had munchies. We had like paint show. All right. A little hard to understand. I swear at one point he said we had lollies. We had nobly-bobblies. I swear that's what he said. Nauly-bblis. So we'll post pictures, right, of Stuart Hazel. My description, if I, if you're the sketch artist, Gibbs, I'm the person. I'm the person. who has seen Stuart Hazel, and I'm going to tell you what he looks like, and you're going to make a composite. Okay.

I would say he looks like Jack's Teller from Sons of Anarchy in the season where Jack's had cut his hair real short. Now, for those that haven't watched Sons of Anarchy, they're not going to know anything I'm talking about, but they may know Charlie Hunnam, the actor. Oh, sure. He looks like that. if he fell down the largest ugly tree in the world and hit every branch. I know it's a weird description, but it's what comes to mind.

He has the blonde hair of Jacks. He kind of has a similar build. He is just, he looks like he's been punched in the face repeatedly. Okay. And maybe he has. But yeah, he's supposed to look like Charlie. No. He looks like Charlie if he fell down.

the world's biggest ugly tree. I said that. Yeah. It's kind of a weird. What does it say? It's ugly? Well, because that's not descriptive at all. Well, it's a false description when you bring in Charlie. No, you take Charlie. That's your starting point. You can take anybody at this point. No. No, you got to take Charlie on them as your starting point. Yeah. Anyway. I got you. All right, Gibbs. Let's take our last quick break. Hey, folks, if there's something out there, that's interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals. Better help online counseling is there for you. They offer licensed professional counselors specialized in a wide array of issues. You can connect with a professional counselor in a safe and private online environment.

So they make it easy for you to get help at your own time and at your own pace. And you can do it using secure video, phone sessions, even have chat and text options. And if you're not happy with your counselor, you can request a new one at any time for no additional charge. But best of all, this is a truly affordable option. And TCAT listeners get 10% off your first month by going to BetterHelp.com slash TCAT. Just fill out a quick questionnaire and get matched with a counselor you'll love. That's betterhelp.com slash TCAT. So as the authorities began sifting through more evidence, they began to doubt, right, that Stuart Hazel was telling the truth. They analyzed over 800 hours of CCTV footage.

They couldn't find a single image of Tia Sharp. Now, there were a number of people that came forward and reported seeing her. You're always going to have that, right? You're going to have sightings. But the police were unable to confirm any of the sightings with the video evidence they had. So we have to talk about that, right? How does this little girl go out shopping in 2012 with all of the cameras that are out there pointed at the public and not be picked up on a single video camera? So London has a lot of surveillance cameras.

So the fact that they don't pick her up going anywhere is enough that should tell them something's wrong here. Yeah, that's a good point. I've never actually been to London, but I have heard that they're pretty, what's the word, free with the, with the security cameras over there. Yeah. Like you can't take too many steps and not be caught on a security camera. Yeah, you'll be seen somewhere. But as these things start to come out, right, the media picks up on some of this,

they start pointing towards the family, making some, I guess you'd have to call them accusatory statements, asking some questions that, you know, they're not making the family look good. Stewart has to come out and react to that. Well, if they believe what they read in the papers, they can do whatever they like, because I know deep down in my heart that she walked out my house. She walked out there. I know damn well because she was seen walking down the pathway. I know she made that track down to that way.

What happened after that is I don't know. I just, and I wasn't the last person to see her because the last. person to see her was the one walking down the pathway. That's tomorrow is going to be a week that she's been missing. How do you move forward from here? I don't know. I just got to keep hoping that it doesn't last till tomorrow. We don't want her now, want it found now.

We don't want it to last till we don't want another week. We don't want no more days. It's not the way it's got to be. She's got to come home now. I feel they're pointing the finger at me because till the other day it was known that I was the last person to see her, but I wasn't the last person to see her. I mean they've gone on hearsay, everything like that.

But it's not about me, it's about tear. This is all about here. And we've got to get her own, man. We've got to get her own. I'm just don't know what more to do. Teer, come on, babe. Come on, come and eat dinner. I want me 10 pound back from my garden.

Want my 10 pound back from my garden? Yeah, I don't know what that means. No either. But the reason why I wanted to play this, specific part. They said it was about seven days, about a week after she disappeared. You hear a couple of things from Stewart there. Number one, you hear him talk about how he's not the last person to have seen her because you have this neighbor, right? I mentioned it up front who called in and said that he saw her as well. But you also hear Stewart talking about what they're printing in the papers

and that he's starting to feel like they're pointing the finger at him. But it's the end, right? When he says, you know, we just wanted to come home. Come home, Tia. We just want you to come home. I mean, how could somebody do that? We've heard it before, right? In other cases where we know someone is the killer, but yet they're doing interviews.

You know, you can think of Steve McDaniel. You can think of Scott Peters. And gosh, there's so many of them. But he has to, he's sitting on a couch, right? So let me paint a picture for you. He's sitting on a couch. This guy's interviewing him the whole time. He has to be thinking in his head, I'm the one that did this and her body is still in the house.

Now, the police searched the flat a couple more times. They still didn't find her body. They just can't find it. They cannot find her body. But they did detect a foul odor, which Christine said was probably the cat. But then it's on August 10th. They came back for a fourth search. By this point, Tia has been dead for a full week plus.

Right. So this happened right after this interview took place. And it had been a very hot August. when the police finally discovered her body in the loft of the house, it was very badly decomposed. It took dental records to confirm that it was even Tia. The decomp was so bad, Gibbs, that at autopsy, there would be no conclusive cause of death. They just, they, they didn't know. And this is one thing I really want to talk about.

I don't think Stewart's plan was to leave her body. up in that law forever or really for as long as it was there. Do you just think because the police got involved so fast? Yeah, I think what he didn't plan on was the media circus that happened. News vans were camped outside of the property. And then on top of that, like you said, the police kept coming around to the flat. I just don't think there was ever a chance for him to move the body. I don't think he ever had a moment where somebody was not watching or where there was a really good chance he would be seen.

And then you get so far along, the smell just, it became too much. And I really think that's how police found her body. You know, the last time they came, they knew what that smell was. And they finally, you know, they just followed that smell. And they knew what they were looking for then. So police arrested both Stuart and Christine, believing that they both must have had something to do with Tia's death. They also arrested the neighbor who gave the information about Stewart's story that corroborated it. This was a man by the name of Paul Meehan.

But Christine gets out on bail the next day. And eventually months later, they're going to figure out that she didn't have anything to do with the murder. and they dropped all charges against her. But still, for a number of months, she was at least in some way suspected of killing her granddaughter or helping or covering it up or something. But obviously not the same for Stewart. When they interviewed him after the arrest, he came up with a story saying that

Tia fell down the stairs. They were playing games. They were horsing around. she fell down the stairs, but he thought she was okay, just hurt. But remember, he was drinking, he was doing drugs. So Sturt says he passed out. And when he woke up, he found her dead. And he panicked.

He cut up her body and he hit it. It's disgusting. Yeah, it's disgusting what he did. Is that a believable story? No. If you really thought that somebody fell, down the stairs accidentally hit their head and died, why would there be the need to cut the body up, hide the body? Other than the fact that you're drunk, you got drugs, okay, you've been arrested

for that stuff many times. It just doesn't hold water. I had to get a cousin Vinnie reference in there. Just lit it in there like that. I had to slide it in. But it's the papers in the UK. They were brutal towards the police in the way that they handled this case. So the Daily Mirror posted this big front page thing asking the question, why did it take cops eight days? They ran a huge bold headline one day that read shambles. And underneath it, it said, despite a week-long hunt by 100 police officers with dogs,

Tia has found dead in her grahambles. grandmother's house, which officers searched three times. And the word three is in capital letters, essentially shouting it out. Yeah. I mean, they're really calling them out for jacking this up. There's a lot of scrutiny, you know, coming down on the police. But I think you can easily make the argument that it's pretty well deserved. Yeah. It's a, it's a mess up, you know? Yeah, it's a blunder for sure. Even Scotland Yard came out and a policy. for failing to find the little girl's body the first three times they searched the flat. They blamed it on human error, which I don't know what else it can be. You're not using a computer

to try to find her. Yeah, I mean, it's not anything that it can be. It's human error. You have people that are searching. And this is not a 23 room mansion. Right. With nine bathrooms. And I mean, this is a flat in South London. Yeah. I mean, you're in and out pretty fast, so why wouldn't you check every possibility in there? Well, and that's why they got hammered. But the police do find some good evidence in the property that connects Stewart to the murder of Tia. They found some very carefully hidden memory cart. And when I say carefully hidden, I mean, I think he tucked one of them behind like a door frame frame yeah he went to great lengths to hide these memory cards and for good reason because they were filled with you know child pornography pictures of tia including at least one

picture of her after she was dead i don't know why he knew the house was going to be searched or has been searched why didn't you just flush that shit down the toilet you can't he can't let go can't. No, he can't. That's, that's a souvenir. He cannot let that go. I just, uh, why, why does Jerry Brutus keep a woman severed foot in his freezer? Yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, it's just, why, why do these serial killers keep, you know, ID cards and rings and, and things that they know can be easily traced back to their victims? they need them Gibbs they they need those to be able to relive what they've done over and over and over and do all the sick things that they do as they're reliving what they did in their head in their

head yeah so i mean i think it's a great question that that you ask but i believe that's the answer the prudent thing to do would be to take all of that get rid of it right away and memory cards are so small you're right you could flush them down the toilet Right. But I think then for him, that would be lost forever. And he would rather take the chance of someone finding it than know that he could never relive it again. That's what I believe. But again, these people's minds, they're not working like your mind and my mind would work in a situation. No. No. Well, and they also think that, you know, and you said it before, they're invincible. Yeah, they're smarter than the police.

Yeah. Heck, nobody's going to look behind this, this door frame. Well, yeah, they did. We're molding. I think it was molding or whatever it is. It was a good place. It was a good hiding spot, actually. They found the sex toy that we talked about.

And after it was analyzed, it came back that some blood on it was Tia's. They also found the videos that Stewart had taken of Tia while she was alive. videos that were obviously voyeuristic, taken without her knowledge. I mean, it said that, you know, these videos, some of them, she was sleeping, he was standing over her. Some of these she was putting on moisturized. I mean, they were just, you know, sick voyeuristic type of stuff. Yeah, the guy definitely has problems.

Yeah, I think that's, that might be the understatement of the year. But no, you're right. He had a lot of issues. And we're going to talk about, you know, maybe tying some of those back to his childhood. I don't know. You know, the other thing they found was his search history. And it was horrible. I mean, it was nothing but extremely violent child pornography.

Some on his computer. I guess he looked at it a lot on his cell phone. Really? And they were able to pull, pulled off his little smartphone thing. So he had kitty porn on his computer, kitty porn on his cell phone. Yes. That's not good. It's not good.

It's not good. That alone, though, does not tie him to Tia, right? The sex toy definitely does. The videos of her definitely do. And I think above and beyond all of that is the one picture that was taken of her postmower. No way that this guy's getting out of this, right, Gibbs? I mean, with all that evidence? Doesn't seem like it's possible.

But even faced with all of this evidence, Stewart says that he's innocent. He did not murder Tia. Didn't do it. Didn't do it. His trial began in May of 2013. He pleaded not guilty. So he goes to trial.

The trial starts and the prosecution laid out. out this mountain of evidence against him that we've talked about. Like in whale barrels. Yeah. And I'm sure they had even more than what we've talked about. But the search history, the videos, the pictures, the sex toy with her blood on it. They go through four days of this laying out all of this stuff against him. But on the fourth day of the trial, everything changed.

So what can you tell me about the murder of T.S. Sharp, Stuart? He told them nothing. Well, cut the minister, you must listen to please. But today, Stuart Hazel finally admitted a sexual and sadistic murder of a 12-year-old girl who trusted and idolised him. On trial, he claimed she died after falling down the stairs until today, when his legal team asked for the charge of murder to be put to him again.

He paused and then said guilty. it was the one true word he's spoken since he murdered Tia Sharp. Apparently he felt her family had suffered enough. Or did he just realize the evidence against him was too strong? I think she said it perfectly in that newscast. You know, he finally admits that he killed Tia. Probably the first true thing that he has said since her murder.

Yeah. But what I really want to dive into is, So why the switch? You know, the newscaster says maybe he just didn't want to put the family through it. Maybe he finally realized how much evidence was really against him. It could have been a little bit of both. Could have been. But I guess what I was thinking is if he really wanted to spare the family, wouldn't he have admitted to the murder before the trial started?

because they're four days in and Tia's mother and grandmother have had to sit through four days of testimony and the presentation of the evidence, the pictures, the sex toy, the videos. they had to sit in that courtroom and see all of that. So how did he spare them? Yeah, I guess he spared them the rest of the trial. But I think by that point, a lot of the big ammunition, the things that really would have caused them the most pain, had probably already come out. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think he was just, he knew he was screwed.

He knew he had no way out. But I think he was trying to be like, well, I'll be the good guy. I'm going to make it sound more like I'm doing it for the family. You weren't doing anything for the family. Yeah. He just knew he had no other choice. I think you're right. So in a way, it is a little bit of both.

both, but in a way it's really all about the fact that he knew he was going away. And now I'm going to play Mr. Good Guy. Yeah, by proxy. I like that word. Is that on your calendar, Word of the Day calendar? Yeah, I know it proxy. I've used that before. Come on now.

It was reported in the paper that, you know, some of the things that, we've already mentioned them, but some of the things that Natalie and Christine witnessed in that courtroom were so horrible that they at times ran out crying. That's how bad the evidence was and, you know, how badly it hurt them. So after changing his plea to guilty, Stuart was sentenced to life with parole eligibility after 38 years. So by the time he's eligible, he would be 75 years old. Well, I mean, if he doesn't get parole, which I don't think he should, but you never know, right?

I mean, that's up to the parole board. But, I mean, to get out at 75 years old, I mean, that's... What's he going to do? He's just not going to have much to do at that point because he's not going to have a way to have a living. No, no, 75 years old, no family. He's not going to go work construction at 75 years old. What kind of jobs are he going to get? Now, the one thing I will say, and I haven't talked about yet,

obviously there was a lot of reaction to this sentence. Some people felt like he should have gotten more. Some people felt like he should have been hung. I don't even know if that was an option. I doubt it was. But anyway, they thought he should be hung anyway. Some people said that he should serve as 38 years and then be hung. So they wanted it done in that order.

Yeah. But I think what you said is correct. I think even if he gets to the 38 years, they will look back on this case and the particulars and say, we can't let this guy out. Now, I mentioned that neighbor Paul Meehan. He was charged and convicted of wasting police time.

That's a new one. That is it. We don't hear that often. But I think it could be handy in some circumstances. Yeah. He actually got five months, which, you know,

we, you and I kind of talk about in other countries, they're maybe a little more lenient than we are in the U.S. but we also talk about some of these serial killers in the U.S. getting, you know, slaps on the wrist. I don't know what the hell wasting police time is. I feel like there's probably a lot of people here that do that messing with police. But that's no joke to get five months.

Now, what he did, I think was much more serious than what his charge is labeled as. You know, this guy essentially called. And I couldn't, it was fuzzy. You know, he called the police or he talked to the police and said that he saw Tia, right? This is the guy that corroborated Stewart's statement. Right. But he didn't have anything to do with the murder. And I'm not really sure why he did it.

Maybe he thought he saw her. I don't know. I mean, I couldn't find much on that. So that, that could be a problem too, right? I mean, if you're going to charge people because they report somebody that they thought they seen and they hold heartily believe they seen this person. Yeah, that's why I think there was more to it. Yeah, there had to be more to it because otherwise, you just couldn't find it. You'd have people saying, well, I'm not going to tell you nothing. I don't tell you anything. Yeah. The home that Stuart and

Christine shared, where Tia was murdered and kept, was demolished the year after her murder, 2013. The other thing that happened after her murder was that there was a huge push by lawmakers to get these big search engines. So, you know, your Googles, your bangs, your, your, your things like that. Yeah. To do something about the ability for people to search for child pornography. Yeah. Good.

So they did that in 2013. They made it so that, you know, those types of searches just wouldn't show any, there would be no results. What shocked me was that that hadn't already been done. You with, 2013, that's like. six years ago. Yeah. You think somebody would have said, hey, let's put a filter, a block. Yeah, some type of logic built into this that says if they search for these key words, nothing pulls up. Yeah. Because it's not appropriate. I don't care about freedom of speech on, you know,

that's just not appropriate to search for that item. Well, it's illegal for one. But it's illegal. Yeah. Exactly. So I guess the part that shocked me was the, you know, the internet's been around for quite a while now. Google's been around, Bing's been around, all these other search engines have been around. Yeah. Just a little shocking that something like that wasn't put in place, you know, earlier on. What took them so long, you know? But I mean, I kind of understand it too because, I mean, you could dive into, um, not Craig's List, but the other one, the underground. What's it called?

Tell me like the dark web or something? Yeah. I mean, there's another site out there. It's kind of like Craigslist. but that's where a lot of the sex traffic trade of underage... Oh, you and I've talked about it before you're talking about back pages? Back pages, yeah. Yeah, they shut that down.

Yeah, but it took them forever to shut it down because they would cite, you know, freedom of speech and all this, but I just think when it deals with underage... That's true. You know, it shouldn't be a... Just logic should kick in and say, it's just not right. We're helping promote something very dangerous here. And very, very, very... legal. Very, very illegal. So we shouldn't have it. So I was surprised it took as long as it did to shut it down.

Yep. No, I agree. So that's it. That's the story of Stuart Hazel, the murder of Tia Sharp. This one kind of got me. I mean, it hooked me in because of the fact that, you know, here's a guy that by all counts was not a good guy. I mean, had a horrible childhood, you know, claimed that he was raped at the age of 16 had a litany of convictions, then all of a sudden kind of finds this family, right? With with this older woman, Christine, Tia's grandmother, finds this family that he's never had before, but yet allows this fantasy life of child pornography, viewing images to spiral to the point that he is going to physically assault this 12-year-old girl that looks up to him, that calls him granddad.

I just, it blew me away because number one, how did he think he was going to get away with it? Because I'm not sure that he had murder on his mind to start with. I think he had sex. I think the murder came in when she rebuffed his advances and said, what are you doing? I'm going to tell on you. I think at that point, he had no choice. Well, I think at that point in his mind, he had no choice but to kill her because he couldn't have that come out. His life would be ruined. Yeah, well, and I also hate how he acted on his

interviews, you know, all sincere and oh, we need to get her back and get my 10 pound back on the garden or whatever the heck he said. Yeah, I don't know what that means. Yeah, but I'm just, you know, the fact that he knew what happened and he was acting all emotional about it. And could have saved the family a lot of pain and heartache from the very beginning, but, you know, he wasn't going to do that. No, he's not going to be a man. All right, we got some voicemails Gibbs. You want to check those out? Yeah.

Hi, this is Renee from Binghamton, New York. Just listening to episode 108, and I just heard the mother Kathleen talking about her son, Patrick Purdy, about something must have. have happened at the school that made him become what he has become. She didn't happen to mention that she was a bad mother, that she neglected her children, that maybe she was at fault. It just really pissed me off. But all right, you guys, good job. Keep your own time ticking.

Oh, great voicemail. I mean, it's a great observation. Patrick Purdy was the school shooter. I remember some of it. You have some of these run together. but if I remember correctly, this was another case where neighbor said, you know,

the mom didn't take care of him or the kids. They went without coats, you know, proper clothing, all of that. So she's going to say that, yeah,

something bad must have happened at that school to him. Not, it wasn't me. Couldn't have been, couldn't have been me. Neglecting him for his entire childhood. Right. Somebody else's fault.

Hey, Mike and Gibby. This is Cassie. calling from Indiana. I just wanted to let you guys know I love your podcast. I listen to it all the way on my way to work. I'm a night shift nurse here in Indiana. And fun fact, I was just listening to the Larry Eiler podcast. And I live very, very close to the Lowell-Belsha area where he jumped on body. So kind of creepy. So thank you guys. Keep up the good work. I love your stuff. And make sure to always keep your own time ticking. Bye. All right. Love it. Love it. I have a soft spot in my heart for

nurses. Everybody knows that. My mom's a nurse. Yeah. So she She's going back a ways to Larry Eiler. But here's what I always think about, Gives. It's the people that call in that live in the area where the episode takes place. Right. People are literally driving down back roads and can look over and say, that's where Larry Eiler buried. Such and such. You know, a dead body.

Yeah. Or he dumped bodies over here. I mean, you could do like a little mini tour. of some of these areas if you that you, when you live in an area where, you know, one of these really bad serial killers has operated. And we know some of the listeners do that exactly what you just said. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we had the one guy that was listening to the yogurt shop murders as he was running and he could see, you know, he was literally right by the place where it took place. Hey, Mike. Hey, Gibby. My name is Lou. see I'm from Las Vegas. I just wanted to say thank you so much for getting me through my workday.

I'm a housekeeper at one of the hotels here in Las Vegas. And as you know, it can be a very hard job, but listening to your podcast gets me through the day, makes it a lot better. I just wanted to suggest Yolanda Saldivar, the murderer of Selena. It's recently the anniversary of the 24 years of Selena's death. And I always thought it was an interesting case for someone. who claimed to be such a big fan. I'm actually the president of her fan club to then murder her idols. I always thought that was very interesting. So, yeah, I just think to do that.

That would be really cool. Thank you. Yeah, that is a great suggestion. We actually do have that on the list. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember Selena? I do. I really do.

I don't really remember her music. I think the majority of it was in Spanish, but she did cross over and did some English stuff. I think she had some hits in English as well. And I remember the movie that J-Lo, you know, played her in. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. But it's a, it is a very interesting case. It's hard.

It, it touched a lot of people. Yeah. Because she had so many fans. She was young. She was on the rise. I was a good person. She was just getting ready to really break through. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, she was a, she was a big star, I think, a pretty big star outside of the U.S. Yeah. But her star was. exploding about ready to explode she was ready to go mainstream yeah as well I could be wrong in everything I just said because I haven't researched the case so but that's what I remember anything you're you're you're yeah you're good hey Gibby my name's Chuck I'm from Springfield Ohio I was wondering if you guys that ever considered the case of the murders of Free Morrow

and Martha Leach they were 12 and 11 years old and they were killed by a man named William Sapp in 1992. It's a case that's always fascinated me, but I've never been able to find much information on it myself. And if it's something that was on your radar or not. By the way, I love the show. I finally had to binge listen for a while to get caught up on everything. And I'm a true crime nerd, and you guys have become my favorite show.

I love the cases you pick and the chemistry you guys have. And I really appreciate it. So, anyway, keep your own time. time checking. Well, he's really close. Springfield is not very far from us at all. No, he's just 30 miles up the road. So I will say I'm not familiar with that case. I don't believe I have it on the list. He kind of maybe tipped it off a little bit by saying he's not been able to find much. Right. A lot of times when people say that, it's because there's not that much out there. Now, we may have some avenues that most people don't have. Sources. Some sources. Some sources.

subscriptions and things like that. But, you know, even you and I start down a path and realize, man, there's just not much on here. Right. But it makes it, makes it tough. But we definitely look into it and see what we can discover. And we will. We will. All right, we had mailbag. Okay. Jerry from Scotland. It's in Scotland. Scotland. He sent me a Harley Chip from Edinburgh. Oh, really? Which is really cool. It's a Scottish chip. Scottish chip, which means it's not crap because it is Scottish. All right, crap, I'm a Scottish chip. Kelly Hurst, big fan.

Kelly Hurst is. She sent me a bunch of chips from Arizona, including one of those big heavy challenge coins that I love. Yeah. The bigger than normal ones are metal. You always say the bigger, the better for you. That's what I say. But she sent you a huge thing of red vines, which I know you love.

Yeah, I like licorice. I did open them. I see. Early in the week and I had some. but like half the bag. No, I had a couple. Like half the bag. And she sent some Duke sausages as well.

So Kelly's a big fan. We appreciate that. Yeah, thank you for that. We had something that came in the mail. I think it came from Amazon. But I couldn't figure out who it came from. Oh. But it is a rubber frog demon, I guess.

What we're calling the studio frog demon now. It's a rubber frog. But it's red. It's red. Like a demon. So thank you. Whoever you are, thank you. The person to sit that.

Maybe you message and let us know. Yeah, yeah, definitely. All right. That is it for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gabi. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.