True Crime All The Time - Suzanne Basso

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Suzanne Basso lured a mentally impaired man named Buddy Musso to Texas with the promise of marriage. What Basso was really after was money and she saw her way to get it in the form of Buddy Musso's social security and life insurance that she took out on him. Basso enlisted her family and friends to help torture and ultimately murder Buddy.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss this almost unbelievable story of a woman so evil she was willing to kill a man whose intelligence was on a 2nd grade level just to get her hands on his money. Suzanne had bad childhood, and many of the things she experienced she levied on her own kids. This woman was a con artist who preyed on a vulnerable man and his desire to find a companion. You can support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit 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 155 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. Give me how are you, man? I'm good, man. How about you? I'm doing good. Good. Had a good week. Ready to start the recording. Yeah. It's always a fun time for us. It's good, man. You get to hang out. We get to go back and forth. Love it. T-cat. T-cat style. T-cat style. So I say we jump right in. We had some new Patreon supporters. Let's give some shoutouts. We had M.K. Hey, M. Benny C.O. Beny C.O. Okay. He's in charge. He's definitely in charge. Nicole Simon. Hey, Nicole. Mark better. What's up? Mark. Mary Smith. Hey, Mary. Jack Jack. Jack. Debbie Gall. Hey, Debbie. Sarah Donner, party of two. Donner party or two. All right.

Did you get that? I got that. Tiffany. Hey, Tiffany. Megan Crowder. What's up, Megan? Karen Strowse. Hey, Karen. Julie Bishop jumped out at our highest level. The Bishop is in the house. Morwina Ferrari. Ooh, Molina. We've had a couple of Morwina's here back to back. We have. Tasha Smith. Hey, Tasha. Tanya. What's up, Tanya? Sonia, Cooke. Hey, Sonia. Michael Paul Thomas. Hey, Michael. Eric Altman. Hey, Eric. Batina. Bata. B. Bata. B. Susan Bue. Hey, Susan. Karen Riegel. What's going on, you Regal person? and you. She's very regal. Sherry Anderson jumped out to our highest level. What's up, S.A? Then we had some Ferguson. We had Nancy Ferguson and Taylor Ferguson. Really? Yeah. Nancy and

Taylor. No relation. Okay. But I'm sure they're great people, as all Ferguson's are. Maybe they relate to each other, not you. Well, that could be, but not me. And then last but not least, we had Roxanne. Just like the song, Roxanne. Roxanne. Why don't, I knew you were going to do that. Because I like to. I know. I get a kick out of it. Although it's rough on the voice, man. I don't, I don't know how, you know, a Stephen Tyler or these people that have these really have to really belt it out, screech it. I don't know how they do it night in, night out. Maybe they don't really do it. Maybe they lip sync it. You think? And if we go back into the vault Gibbs, okay. This week we selected Robert L.P. Long playing. I don't know. Long playing. I don't know.

long playing. I don't know what the LP stands for, but... Is that what the LP stands for in record? I think so. Long playing? I don't know. Yeah, an LP. I think it stands for long playing. Yeah, I just called the LP. So we appreciate that. We appreciate all the new support, the continued support. We also had some support on PayPal. Ophelia. O'Hahlia. Galaher.

Gallagher or Galaher? No, Galaher. Galaher. There's no G. There's no other G. Second G. Jennifer Wormuth. Hey, what up? Jennifer. Dominique Balsoma. Hey, Balzama. And Jordan Anusowitz. Anutzowitz. Yeah. So that's what I'm going with. Appreciate all that. All right. Gibbs, right now we have an episode out on True Crime All Time Unsolved. We're talking about some mysterious deaths at a VA hospital in Michigan. There's actually another episode where we have two cases, two unsolved cases. And then the second one is actually a Halloween unsolved. case, guy goes missing on Halloween goes to a party. Bodies found later, identified as this

gentleman. He's an 18 year old kid, really. Right. And then it goes from there. So definitely make sure you check that out. Also check out our reviews are in podcast. And the last episode, we talked about the keyboard waffle maker. Yeah. Which actually makes a waffle shape like a keyboard. Tasty keyboard. And then we talked about a 12th. foot beach ball. We did, man. And when you have a 12 foot beach ball, hilarity is going to ensue. I'm going to blow that up. I got one. I'm going to blow it up during our next recording of reviews are in. In my house, knowing that you will never get it out of the studio. But it will fill up this room. Yeah. It definitely will. You know. And I wanted to tell everybody, our good friend Lana Hyatt,

now McCall, because she recently got married. Yes. She's helped us out so much over the past few months with writing and research, she actually took a new job with a newer podcast. It's a true crime podcast called True Crime Horror Story. So check that out. We just want to wish Lana all the best. We do. We really, really did a lot for us over, you know, the last part of this year. And she'll do a good job there as well.

Yeah. So stay in touch, Lada. Yeah. All right, Gaby, are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime all the time? I'm ready, man. We are talking about one Suzanne Basso. This is a lowly woman who orchestrated, along with five other people, the murder of a mentally impaired man so that she could get her hands on his money and benefits. So there's six people in total responsible for this crime.

We're going to talk about all six, but we're focusing on Suzanne in this episode. It was Suzanne based on all of the evidence that was the ringleader. She was the brains of the operation. She put basically everything into motion that led to the death of Buddy Musso. And I'm telling you right now, Gibbs, this is one of those stories, that if you read it in a fictional book or a fictional short story, you would scoff and say, that's way too far-fetched. Could never happen. It's unbelievable.

Right. That's how strange this story is. Let's get into a little background on this saint of a woman. Suzanne Margaret Basso, her maiden name was Burns, was born on May 15th, 1954 in Schenectady, New York. That's just a fun town name to say. Schenectady. It's even more fun when you say it.

I know, because I, you know. Schenectady. Yeah. Suzanne was the youngest of eight children, so pretty large family. The problem was both of her parents were raging. alcoholics. Both of them. You often see, let's say, the dad's an alcoholic, sometimes the mom, but when you have both parents described as raging, when you use that descriptive word, you know you've got problems. Yeah, absolutely. Her siblings later recounted that there was a lot of

both physical and sexual abuse in the household. So we know we're not starting out on a good footing here. Suzanne was sent to reform school as a, you. As a. You know, youngster, although I can never figure out the exact reason or reasons behind it. Obviously, she was doing something that she wasn't supposed to be doing. Probably wasn't refilling the drinks fast enough. Maybe. You know? I was thinking maybe a little worse than that to get sent to reform school.

But I don't know. I don't know what constituted a reason to be sent to reform school back in the 50-60s. Yeah, probably an attitude adjustment thing. But, I mean, living in a house like that, growing up in a house like that. you'd have to have an attitude. Well, she definitely didn't have good role models. And unfortunately, as we see with a lot of the bad people that we profile, she's going to carry that tradition on, some of those traditions on.

Sure. Of, you know, the behavior that she saw when she was a kid, she's going to do some of those same thing. This was something that she learned growing up that she thought was the normalcy. So she got out of reform school. She later married a Marine named James Peake and the pair had two children together. They had a boy and a girl. Suzanne's own daughter later came out and said that her mother was very promiscuous.

She had a number of lovers all with her husband's permission. So the daughter saying, my dad was okay with this. The daughter literally describes seeing these men, hearing the sounds. of her mother being with these men in the other room while her father's sitting there. Okay. So there's a lot going on. Okay, kids, you eat your TV dinner. Don't pay attention to mom and her friend.

Her special friend. Yeah. They're just giving each other massages. The family moved around quite a bit. They lived in North Carolina. They lived in Texas. They lived in a few states. In 1982, James was arrested for sexually abuse.

using his daughter. He was convicted of taking indecent liberties with a child and sent off to prison. Indecent liberties. Yeah. That's one way to say it. That's one way to say it. That's the euphemistic way of saying it. The children were put into the foster care system. Now, you would think, Gibbs, that something like this would put an end to a marriage real fast. You would think, but this is a unique marriage. This is a very unique marriage. Your husband was convicted for sexually abusing your daughter, and it ended up with both of your kids being sent to foster homes. But that wasn't the end. James eventually got out sometime in the early 90s, and the family got back together in Houston, Texas. Everyone, Suzanne, James, and the kids. Honey, I'm home, and I'm sorry.

Let's restart this family again. Now, I'm all for trying to keep a family together. I think that's important where you can. But you have to question everything under the circumstances that we've just talked about. Right. Is this a family that we should keep together? I mean, the relationship between the mom and the dad. Yeah, I mean, just the dynamics behind it all just doesn't make sense that you would want to continue to foster this environment.

Well, things are going to come out later that help shed, light. You know, in the trial of Suzanne Basso, there's some things that'll come out that'll help explain maybe why this relationship continued. The other thing that happened was they changed their last name from Pete to O'Malley. You don't hear about that a lot. No. Actually changing your entire last name. Just wanted to be Irish. There was a lot about the fact that this was probably Suzanne's idea. Apparently, she became fascinating. with everything Irish. It was said that she had the walls in the house, Gibbs, painted green.

Shamrocks, leprechauns, the whole thing. Did she have like a fake Barney Stone? I think it's a Blarney Stone. Or Blarnie Stone? Yeah. Yeah. There's a Barney Stone like the pink, the purple dinosaur. Yeah.

I didn't hear anything about the Blarney Stone. But I did think it was interesting, right? All of a sudden, we're going to change our name to O'Malley. Irish last name. We're going complete Irish. We're not Irish at all. But for some reason, that's what we want to be. Yeah. You know what? As of right now, I am 100% Irish. I actually going to change my last name from Gibson to Gibboni. Oh, because you're going to go Italian. I'm going to go to Italian. Which everybody knows if you were going to change. That's where you would. Exactly. It's a lot. So there's a lot going on, right? They're trying to put the family back

together. They're going full-blown Irish. While this is happening, Suzanne met another man. This was in 1995. Suzanne met Carmine Basso. Basso owned his own private security company, and it's from Carmine that she got her last name, but there's some strange things of Bruin that we have to break down. There's going to be a lot of strange things. In this case, sometime after Suzanne met Carmine, that's when James finally left the family. He finally had enough. He finally had enough. That was the last draw.

Yeah. Tired of listening to you and Carmine back in the bedroom. Why you keep saying he's better than anything you've ever been with. Boy, you're really going out there. You're just making stuff up. But the problem is Suzanne and James didn't divorce, which what makes everything that really happens later with Carmine a little odd because they were going to get made.

married. Legally, they couldn't, right? Because she never divorced James. People said that Carmine and Suzanne made a very strange pair. So apparently Carmine was described as rail thin, very, very skinny. Suzanne was five foot two. I've seen estimates ranging from 300 to 350 pounds. Okay. So I think when people talked about the couple later, they said, well, you looked at them. and they just made a strange dichotomy. Yeah. You know, rail thin. She's on the bigger side.

Obviously not weight shaming at all, but it becomes important later on in this story. It's a noticeable difference. Well, that's a notable difference for sure between the two. But Suzanne's size in particular is a very important aspect of this story. But back to these two lovebirds. So Gibbs, what do many people do when they are about? to get married. Well, they tell everybody about it. They do. You know, you're excited. Yeah. Hey, we're getting married. Most people put an announcement in their local paper. Well, that's what they did.

I finally found somebody. Somebody will put up with my, you know what. Yeah. They put an announcement in the local paper. It was a very big announcement in the Houston Chronicle. Now, how much do you think, Gibbs back in 1995, it would cost to, you know, put a normal wedding announcement in a paper. I don't know, 30, 50 bucks. That's what I was thinking. 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 70 maybe max. Maybe. I really don't know.

I got married in 96. I have no idea. I don't remember. Obviously today it would cost more. I don't know what the amount would be. Right. You know, one of the reasons it would probably cost more is because circulation is down. That's true. In newspapers big time. So it costs more money to do things. I would think. I mean,

I'm, I'm guessing because I really have no idea. But I do know how much it cost for Carmine and Suzanne to put out their announcement. It was about $1,400. Oh my gosh, man. In 1995. Wow, it must have been like a major display. This was a monster. It was huge. And apparently the announcement just went on and on about these two individuals. The problem is, at least as it pertained to Suzanne, none of the information was accurate. So just right off the back, it listed her name as Suzanne Margaret, Anne, Cassandra, Lynn, Sue Burns, Stanlon Slowsky. Okay. That is a lot of name. That's a lot of, and none of them match up to what she's gone by. Well, the first two, Suzanne Margaret. But the endings. Yeah. And Burns, her maiden name was.

in there somewhere, but she added like four or five other names that, for whatever reason, didn't make any sense. None of them were her first married name or even her second Irish married name. So can I go out as Michael Gibby, Rex West, Allen? Exactly. You can do whatever you want. I mean, people must have read this and thought, what, this guy's marrying like quintuplets or something. On top of that, it was said that Suzanne was the heiress to a Nova Scotia oil fortune. Oh, well. Much like yourself. I know you've told me many times that you are the heir to a number of things.

For some reason, it changes from story to story. Right now it's the gas line. Yeah. Down in that little tiny corner of the property, we smell something. And I'm sure that's going to result in a Jed clampet-like discovery. I think so. And it's going to net you big bucks. Yeah, I think I could probably give my two-week notice now, but I'd just want to make sure.

I'd hold off. I'd hold off on it just for a little bit. Yeah. I mean, when you think about wedding announcements, right, most people just make it short and sweet. Mike and Gibby are getting married. I better not use that as an example. Yeah, that's a really... That's how rumors get started.

But it doesn't stop there. This thing went on to say how Suzanne was educated at the finest schools all over the world. She volunteered for countless charities. Gibbs, she had been a world-class gymnast. Oh, I'm just letting you know that. She seemed flexible. She was also a nun at one point in her life. So she's just making all of this stuff up.

And to top it all off, they never paid for the announcement. They never paid the $1,400. We're good. Our credit's good, because I am royalty. I'm an heiress to this oil fortune. So when the paper tried to, contact them for payment, they realized that the information they gave was fake. Not only was everything pretty much in the announcement fake, the contact information they gave was fake. A few days later,

the paper had to print a retraction with a statement that said they were looking into the validity of the announcement. What else were they going to do? And by the way, the salesperson that was fired as well as the person that edited this story. They're going to take the loss and move on, it would be years down the road before people at the paper would again recognize the name Suzanne Basso, but this time it would be associated with the man's murder. So Carmine and Susan never got married, but she took his name and she told everyone that they were married. Two years later on May 21st, 1997, Carmine Basso died. The circumstances is around his death are a little hazy. I imagine so. You would imagine so even more, right? After we get

through this story, one report I found said he died in New Jersey on a trip with Suzanne to see his mother. It said that officials ruled his cause of death malnutrition. Wow. Now, he was super, super thin. Sure. All the articles talked about that. But one obituary said he died. in Houston, he was definitely from New Jersey and was listed as being in a New Jersey funeral home, but malnutrition. That seems like a strange cause of death for a grown man who owns his own business seemingly has enough money to feed himself. He's not destitute or homeless and can't get enough food to eat. And you would think that there could have been some reports about some previous medical history that would have caused it.

Right. Didn't see anything about that. So there may have been something else going on. You know, I mentioned rail thin. Some reports said that. There were some reports that said stick then. Stick. When you hear those kinds of descriptions, you probably think, well, that's just hyperbole.

Maybe in this case, it was not. He was super thin. The question is what was making him malnourished. I'm sure his family thought later, right? Once everything came out about Suzanne Basso and what she had done, right? Well, maybe his death was a little more sinister than originally thought. But as far as I know, nothing has really come out of it. I never, I did see that after Suzanne was convicted and we're going to get into that. Police reopened his death. Sure. investigation, but I couldn't find anything out after that. There just was no reporting on it. That happens a lot, right? When you're looking into the kind of offshoots of these cases.

In 1998, Suzanne found herself back in New Jersey again. By this time she was 43, 44 years old, she met a 59-year-old man named Lewis Musso, who went by the name Buddy. I think that's a great nickname. Buddy? Yeah. Or I probably should say that Buddy had the misfortune of meeting Suzanne because it's not going to turn out well for him. No. We know that. We set it up front. They met at a church carnival in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Buddy Musso was mentally impaired. Gibbs, it was reported that his intellect was on the level of maybe a seven or eight year old. Okay. So like for a second grader. Yeah. Yeah. He was. He was. very low intellectually, but he lived in an assisted care facility. He had a job as a bagger at a local grocery store. You know, he was talked about fondly. People said that he was warm, he was gentle. He was a very caring person. You know who was not warm, gentle and a caring person? Suzanne Basso. Or as I call her Suzanne, asshole. I like that. That's actually really good. I think everybody's going to be calling her that by the end of this episode.

Suzanne Saw and Buddy, I believe Gibbs, an easy mark, right? A target. Someone off whom she could make some money. That's it. Plain and simple. Yeah. That's the way I look at it. It was stressed in reporting as well as some of the court documents that Buddy handled

his own financial affairs. I'm sure it didn't take long for Basso to. suss out the information she needed to size him up as a target. So they had this initial meeting at the church carnival and then Susan went back home to Houston, but they kept in contact with each other. They wrote letters. They talked on the phone. They were in pretty constant communication. I don't know the exact content of the communication gives, but I can speculate that like any good con artist, she was reeling this man in. Oh, for sure. She would say whatever she needed to to keep him enticed. And again, she had sized him up, right? So she knew what he was looking for.

Well, she just needed to provide him things that he probably hasn't had. The thing was, the conversations had to at some point, probably pretty quickly, turn towards the romantic end of the spectrum. It said, Buddy Musso was 59 years old. He had the intelligence of roughly a second grader. He most likely would have been more trusting and less suspicious than most guys his age. Right. You would say that's probably a valid statement. Sure. I think it was backed up by people that knew him. They said he was very trusting. According to the New Jersey paper, the record, Buddy was married when he was younger and actually had a son. His first wife died of cancer in 1972 when his son was only two years old.

He never remarried. But friends said that he had waited all of those years since his wife died to find the right person to marry. They also said that he was fixated. People used that word fixated on finding a woman to marry. He wanted that comfort. comfort of, you know, having the relationship, having somebody to come home to. Sure. Yeah. He hadn't found it yet. But he wanted it. He missed it. He wanted it. Very badly.

And then here comes this woman who begins to show interest on a romantic level. Finally, Suzanne lowered the boom. She told Buddy that she would marry him if he moved to Houston with her. And that's exactly what he did. He packed up his things in June 1998. He left the assisted living facility where he had been living. He bought a wedding ring for Suzanne and he boarded a greyhound

bus to Texas. He went all out, man. He did. When he arrived, he made his way to Suzanne's home in Jacinto City, Texas. It's a little suburb of Houston, east of Houston. And he moved in with Suzanne. People

back home that new buddy said he was so excited he talked about it now there were people that tried to talk him out of it including his son who by this time was an adult right saying hey you really need to think this through how well do you really know this exactly but i think because of what we talked about buddy's fixation on wanting to find someone to share his life with he was hearing everything he wanted to hear, Gibbs. Yeah, and it's probably hit him right in the heart, you know, and the, sometimes the heart overrules the head. It does. It does. And with Buddy, I mean, we, you know, I don't want to harp on it, but because of his intellectual level, right, even a greater chance that his heart

is going to overrule his head. And, and to be fair, really, you know, there's some educated men out there that would have the same problem anyway. People get duped by Connors as, every day. Yeah. You don't have to have a low intellect to be the victim of a car artist at all. You just have to be. Yeah, these people are so good at figuring out what you want and tailoring their pitch. Yeah. Reeling you in. They're just telling you everything that you already want to hear. Hook, line, and sinker. I like that. Yeah. Now, I mentioned that Buddy handled his own finances, but he did have a longtime friend, guy by the name of, of Al Becker that served as his social security program representative.

So I think he would get the checks and put him in Buddy's account. I don't know exactly how it worked, but Buddy and Al had been friends for 20 years. And Al was definitely concerned about his friend's sudden move to Texas. He became even more concerned when after Buddy got to Texas, he couldn't get a hold of it. He wanted to talk to him. He wanted to see how things were going.

Every time he would call, he would have to talk to Suzanne. Suzanne wouldn't let him talk to Buddy. Which should be alarming to anybody. And it was for him. She always had a reason, right? It was this reason. It was that reason. Buddy wasn't around.

Not long after Buddy got to Texas, Suzanne basically told Al Becker, you know what? Stop calling. I'm not going to let you talk to Buddy. He doesn't need to talk to you. We're done with you. Which right there tells you, if you're on the other side, you know she's a bad person because why would you keep a lifelong friend that helped him away from him at this point? Now, why would a con artist do it? Well, we know why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's different. But you're right. Why would a genuine person do that? They wouldn't. Right. And I think that makes people close to Buddy on the other side wonder, what did he get himself into? They thought about it before he left. Now people are really. worried. I think the level of concern goes through the roof at that point, at least for Al. You know, he started calling different agencies in Texas. He was trying to get some help for his friend, but it all proved to be unsuccessful. It's not always the easiest thing in the world to start making calls. First of all, you got to know who to call. And then, you know, even then, what are they going to do? What proof do you have that this person's in danger? This person is at risk

for this or that, but it didn't take long for Suzanne to start to go after Buddy's money. You know, the month after he moved in, she made an attempt to make herself Buddy's Social Security Representative payee. She wanted to take Al Becker's place, right? She wanted the money coming straight to her. She'll handle it. Right. And give it to Buddy. She wants control. She wants control. Obviously, we know she, if she got to, got control, she wouldn't give it to Buddy. On top of that, she took out some life insurance policies on Buddy naming herself as the beneficiary. One in particular Gibbs had this escalation clause. I don't know if that's the right word to use, but it had a clause that paid out more money

if Buddy was the victim of a violent crime. That's a strange clause. It is, especially in hindsight, because we know he's going to be the victim of a violent crime, I think we can all see where this is headed. All right, Gibbs, let's take a quick break to talk about our sponsors. And the first one up is policy genius. It's about that time that a lot of people at work are going to have open enrollment to elect their benefits. But this is also the perfect time to reassess your life insurance needs. Most people need about 10 times the amount of life insurance coverage. Then they get through their jobs. That's where PolicyGenius can help. PolicyGenius is the easy way to shop for a life insurance plan that's not tied to your job.

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They even have an unscented formula and baking soda, formula for those with sensitivity. Our listeners even get 20% off their first purchase. Just visit native deodorant.com and use the promo code true crime during checkout. That's nativedeodorant.com promo code true crime. What are you waiting on? Suzanne didn't wait long. Two months after buddy Musso made his way to Texas, he was dead. So Gibbs, now we have to introduce some other players into this story. One is Suzanne's son, James O'Malley, who live with her and therefore live with Buddy for the short time that he was there.

Bernice Arons was a friend of Suzanne's. Also involved in this murder of Buddy Musso was Bernice's son, Craig Arons, her daughter, Hope Arons, and Hope's fiancee, Terence Singleton. Man, that's a lot of people. There's a lot of people. So in addition to Suzanne, there are going to be five other co-defendants. I just named them. They're really banking on this life insurance policy, I'm guessing, because I can't imagine the Social Security check being that much to share between that many people. Well, this is a big question in the case. We'll save it for a little later, maybe towards the end of the episode, but it's the question of, I get why Suzanne wanted to do what she had planned. She was after the money. The question is, how did she get all these other people to go with her? We'll talk about it.

At some point in the days leading up to the murder, Suzanne's son James took Buddy to an apartment, shared by Bernice, Craig, and Hope Arons, as well as Terrence Singleton. So four people living in this apartment. Essentially, what these individuals did was make Buddy do their chores. And they tortured him for weeks. leading up to his death. Suzanne and James would stop by regularly to make sure things were going as planned. And they also joined in and gives the details of what they did to this guy.

They are horrific. They forced Buddy to kneel on a plastic mat for hours at a time. When he tried to get up, James, Terrence, Bernice, Craig, they would beat him at the direction of Suzanne. They stomped him with steel-toed boots. They hit him with baseball bats. They even used the belt. Yeah, with the buckle. And you know from being a kid, I mean, that was like a weapon that brothers used to use against

each other. Oh, yeah. And it was all fun in games. Now, it hurt. It was all fun in games, though, until you got hit with the buckle. Right. And then it was game over. Especially if that buckle hit your head.

It can do some serious damage. Court documents reveal that the day Buddy was killed, Suzanne came to the apartment and was told by the others there that Buddy was, quote, misbehaving, right? Wouldn't stay on the mat, wouldn't do what they wanted him to do. So he was made to get down on his hands and knees. So he's down on all fours. Suzanne Basso jumped on him, landing on Buddy's back with her.

300 plus pound frame throwing her weight around she was throwing her weight around she crushed him flat to the ground remember he's on his hands and knees sure 300 350 pounds coming down on you full weight like that it's brutal yeah i'm just thinking how rough it would be just to be on your knees for that long period of time at that age and it was hours yeah at a time you know when they weren't making him do chores and making him do things, he was basically relegated to either sitting, sometimes just sit, you know, on his knees on this mat for hours at a time. So the beatings and the torture, they occurred over a period of weeks. But it was this day that they hurt buddy muscle very badly. You know, the kicking, the stomping, Suzanne jumping on him. Yeah, the W.WE body slams. Yeah.

it caused devastating injuries. At one point, Buddy told the group that he needed an ambulance. He needed to go to the hospital. He knew it. He was hurt very badly. But they weren't about to call an ambulance because this is what Suzanne Basso wanted from the very beginning. She knew that it was all leading up to this day.

This just happened to be the day. So this group is there at the apartment. they know that Buddy is most likely about Ray to Doc. Right. They stripped him. They poured bleach. They poured pine saw on his body. And they used very rough wire brushes to scrub him.

Man, you have to be kidding me. How rough. Wow. I mean, we'll talk about the autopsy in a minute, but he had abrasions. I mean, just from these wire brushes alone,

all over his body. Yeah. Yeah, between that and the power of the bleach and the pine salt mix. And that seeping into cuts caused by the wire brushes, which you know would happen, this had to be very painful. And at some point that day, Buddy Dot, James O'Malley, Terrence Singleton, and Craig Arons dumped his body on the side of a road in Galena Park. A jogger found his clothed body a few days later and alerted police.

Now, one thing I definitely want to talk about, there were reports that multiple people saw Buddy in the weeks leading up to his death. When they saw him, he was bruised up. He had black eyes. He looked like he had been beaten. And of course, we know he was. He was being beaten on a daily basis. Right.

One of these individuals was a police officer. And the way that I read the story was that. was that obviously the police officer questioned them as to what was going on. It was James O'Malley who jumped in and said, you know what? Buddy was jumped and beaten by some unknown Mexicans. That was his story. So the police officer actually put them in his car and his squad car and took them back to the apartment. Oh, man.

The place where Buddy was being beaten and tortured. Right. Now, of course he didn't know, but. So police begin their investigation. The autopsy comes out and it revealed the extent of Buddy's injuries. He had suffered a broken neck, 14 broken ribs, two dislocated vertebrae. When you have 300 pounds jumping on top of you. It's going to cause major damage.

He had 17 cuts to the head. So again, we're talking baseball bats. We're talking belt buckles. He had a large number of lacerations on his back. Some most likely caused by the wire brush. but many they believed were caused by him being whipped with something like a belt. He also had a very large skull fracture, which was believed to be his ultimate cause of death. You know how you can get a very large skull fracture?

When a 300 plus pound person jumps on your back and slams you down. His body was covered in bruises. It was also covered in cigarette burns. So think about that. They're torturing this guy. They're beating him. Yes. And they're putting their cigarettes out on him.

Well, they're using him as a human ashtray. It's sickening. Extremely sickening. That people can do this to another human being. Gibbs, the medical examiner said that Buddy's body had so many bruises on it that they couldn't be counted. There was too many. Investigators could tell that Buddy Musso had been dressed after he died.

And they used a couple of things to determine that. One was that there was no blood on his clothing. He had one shoe on, but it was on the wrong foot. So the Einstein's that did all this couldn't even figure out how to put bloody shoes on right. Yeah. And I think very easy to tell with the injuries that he sustained, right? These were lacerations.

These were injuries that many of them would have caused bleeding. So how is he found wearing clothing without any blood on them? Right. Doesn't make any sense. We're also not talking about Mensa level people here. I think that's pretty safe to say. Right. And it really didn't take long for investigators to zero in on Suzanne Basso.

For one thing, the night before Buddy's body was found, Suzanne went into full cover-up mode. As a con artist, what are you going to do? You're going to try to control the situation, the scenario. So what she chose to do was to start making phone calls. To make it seem as though Buddy had left, he had disappeared, and she was extremely worried about him. We've got to cover this up somehow. It wasn't like no one knew Buddy was headed her way.

That wasn't a secret. So there has to be an explanation as to. why nobody knows where buddy is. Nobody can find him. She even called Buddy's friend Al Becker, the guy that she had cut off communications with months earlier. Right. She called a niece of buddies,

but she also called the police with her concerns. Hey, my soon-to-be husband is missing. I can't find him anywhere. I have no idea where he is. court documents state that Suzanne told police that Buddy had probably run away with a Mexican woman that he met at a laundromat. Oh, he fell in love with somebody at a laundromat.

That's her story. Well, the next day, when police learned about the body, right, when the body was found, who do you think they're going to want to talk to first? Obviously, Suzanne Basso. You mean asshole? Asso. That ultimately led police to talk to not only Suzanne, but these other individuals involved as well.

It sounds like, to me, Gibbs, they broke pretty easily. They didn't seem like they would be the most mentally strong individuals. Yeah, I mean, they weren't going up against Al Capone. Right. James confessed to his role in Buddy's murder and implicated others. He also led police to find a dumpster where they discarded Buddy's bloody clothes and the rubber gloves. they used when they scrubbed his body. Suzanne Basso admitted in a written statement that she drove her friend Bernice Aaron's car

with Buddy's body in the trunk to the location where his body was ultimately left. She also admitted driving the car to the dumpster to dispose of the clothes and the gloves. So police know, right? They know everything. Sure. Pretty much at this point. They know who was involved. They've got all the different parts of the story that they could weave.

together. Yep. They got everything they need. Now, they did obtain a search warrant for Basso's home, and this is where the last piece of the puzzle was put into place, because they found the life insurance policies. They found a handmade will that stated Suzanne Basso was to get all of Buddy's money when he died. At the end, Gibbs is specifically said, quote, no one else was to get nothing, not a cent. Sounds legal. Yeah, it sounds, it's very legalese.

But obviously, this was something that Suzanne wrote. Right. And either had buddy sign or, you know, forged his signature either way. To police, it was the motive.

It was everything they needed. They already had the confessions. They had all that. Now they have the reason behind it. Well, she wanted to get his. is money. Plain and simple. Yeah. It was all done for greed. It was. In June 1999, a grand jury indicted all six individuals with capital murder. So you had 44-year-old Suzanne Basso,

her 23-year-old son, James O'Malley, 54-year-old Bernice Arons, her son, 25-year-old Craig, her 22-year-old daughter Hope and Hope's 26-year-old fiancé Terrence Singleton. This was the group. I call it the ASO group. The ASO group. Some of the papers called it the Jacinto City Six. I saw that. Yeah, they don't even deserve that name, man.

No, that's too cool for them. Yes. I like the ASHO group. I think we'll go with that. James O'Malley went on trial first. He testified that Buddy was beaten, made to do chores pretty quickly after his arrival in Texas. He also testified that it was his mother, Suzanne Basso, that pressured him into helping to kill Buddy Musso.

So I just wonder how you get pressured into killing somebody. What are the pressure points for, because he was a 20-some-year-old man. He was. So what point do you feel the pressure that you need to kill somebody that you can't even say, hey, this is wrong. What we're doing here is not right, mom. I'm out. Well, I think to you and I, even as 24, 25 year old guys, makes perfect sense that we would have said, no way in hell. Am I doing this? This is wrong. I don't want anything to do with it. Yeah, I love my mom. Right. Don't get me wrong. But she's not going to be able to pressure me into doing something that is illegal, that I know.

know I'm going to go to jail for. It's just not going to happen. Yeah, I mean, there's wrong and there's right. Yeah. Back off, Mom. Don't ask me to do stuff that you know is illegal. I know is illegal. Now, we'll talk about some things in a minute that came out, some revelations in the testimony at Suzanne's trial that maybe contributed to Suzanne's ability to pressure her son. But James O'Malley was convicted by a jury. And, you know, and, you know, and sentenced to life in prison. Everyone involved in this case, Gibbs, was convicted. We're not going to go into the specifics in each and every trial.

Bernice Arons received 80 years. Her son Craig received 60 years. Terrence Singleton got a life sentence. Bernice's daughter, Hope Aaron's pleaded guilty. And she received a sentence of 20 years. As far as I could tell from the research, Hope was not thought to have inflicted any of the injuries. I couldn't find where police thought that she was really involved in the beatings and some of these things.

Right. But she was there the whole time as it was happening. And she admitted to authorities later that she knew. Sure. How badly Buddy was hurt. And she didn't do anything. She didn't call for help. she did nothing. But she knew he was kept against his free will. Like you said, just the torture that

was given to him day in and day out. She had obligation. And I think when you talk specifically about the day that Buddy died, right? There was beatings and torture in the weeks leading up to it. But it's really that day when things culminated with even more massive beatings and things like that, Hope said, I knew that he was in very bad shape. And I chose not to call anyone, not to call the ambulance. She admitted it. And for that, she deserves the time that she got. Yeah. I agree. Prosecutor saved Suzanne Basso for last. And unlike the others, they sought the death penalty in her case. But Gibbs, by the time her trial started, Suzanne had lost over 200 pounds. Some newspapers referred to it as the jail diet poking fun at the fact that she had lost so much weight in jail. But she still had over 300 pounds of guilt on her shoulder. She better have. Yeah, I don't know if she did.

It's a great question. Do people like this carry around the same type of guilt that you and I would or that our listeners would? I don't know if they do. I know serial killers don't. I think that's pretty much proven out. Most of them have no empathy. They don't look back on their crimes and say, I really feel guilty about that.

What I do hope is that once she lost all that weight, her cellmate, Big Bertha, said, get on all fours and did her own body slam off the top. I'm going to jump off your back from the top of the ropes. Yeah, I know we joke around, but I do not feel bad for this woman. at all. I mean, what she did was horrible. So she showed up in the courtroom in a wheelchair.

She claimed that she was paralyzed. At certain times, she acted like she was blind. She's just a con artist, man. She also talked in a little girl voice for some reason at different points in time. But all the doctors who examined her said she's faking. This is all an act. she's trying to garner sympathy because she doesn't want to get the death sentence. Yeah. I mean, you've talked to like a little boy a few times. And I'm like,

I don't know what that's about, man, but please stop. Well, the spirit sometimes takes control. You and I were playing with that Ouija board the other day and things got out of hand, man. And why is there a red tricycle down here that kind of goes in its own circle? Red rum, red rum.

The prosecution came out and said that, that Suzanne Basso was the mastermind behind this whole thing. It was Basso that tried to take control of buddies' social security. It was Basso that took out the life insurance policies on his life. And it was Basso who got her son, her friend, and her friend's family to help her carry out his murder. The prosecutor Carlene Barnett said, Suzanne ran the show for sure. She was the one in charge. She directed them.

She wanted the money. She's a heinous killer. And they had some evidence, right? They had the life insurance policies. They had the will. They had the testimony of individuals involved. And in the end, the jury convicted Suzanne Bassow for the murder of Buddy Musso. At the sentencing hearing, Suzanne's own daughter testified against her.

She said that her mother abused both she and her brother. emotionally, physically, and sexually. And I think this is what I was referring to earlier. To me, this sheds a lot of light on her father's conviction for sexual abuse and the ultimate reconciliation that we talked about. Right. We wondered. Right. Why would that happen? Well, then you find out later that Suzanne was much more of a participant than people believe. Her daughter said that Suzanne not only condoned what her father did to her, she participated. She had her own role in it. She did. Yeah, which not surprised, though.

I'm not surprised, but it definitely sheds more light on why she would allow this man back into her home that had been in prison for sexually abusing her daughter. Well, it's because she was involved too. Yeah. And she was okay with it. That's the revelation that really, you know, jumps out at me, both of those. She was okay with it and she participated. I don't think she had an issue with it because I think it's how she grew up.

Yeah, I think you can draw something from her childhood like we do with many killers and say she witnessed some very bad things growing up. There's no doubt about that. She witnessed not only the alcoholism, but the sexual abuse. And she grew up to be a sexual abuser herself. It happened so many times. Yeah. Now, that being said, it happens to a very specific type of person, it seems, right? There are millions of people that go through traumatic childhoods, many go through sexual abuse.

I wish it didn't happen. Right. And they learn to cope with it, maybe through therapy or whatever. They go on to lead extremely productive lives, have their own families, be great. parents, all of that. But some people don't. And they choose a different path, one that involves maybe like we said, mimicking some of the behavior they saw as a child, but usually taking it even further and committing murders and things like that. But I think what this also does is it speaks to maybe the hold that Suzanne may have had over her son James and how she was able to get him to go along with her plan. Yeah, for sure. I mean, she probably at an early age manipulated him. And at that point, he probably didn't know how to say no to his mom. He may have been fearful of her.

And in some respects, you know, if she had sexually abused him, right, which is the allegation that was made by her daughter, he may have had a hard time saying no to her. So Suzanne's convicted, goes to prison has her normal appeals as every death row inmate does, the date of her execution was set for February 5th, 2014. Right before it was about ready to take place. As often happens, her attorney appealed to the Supreme Court on the grounds that Suzanne Basso should not be executed due to her limited mental capacity. He was trying to save her life.

That's what defense attorneys do. Sure. In one report, I read Gibbs, it said that Basso's IQ in 2014, when she was 59 years old by that time, was 55. 55 is extremely low. At one point in her life, it was apparently documented as 82. So did it diminish significantly over the years? Or was she putting on an act to make it seem? as though her IQ was lower than what it really was. I don't know. I think she could have done that easily.

It's not hard to diminish your IQ. A good car artist can do anything. Yeah. They really can. They know how to manipulate people. It's their their skill set. But her attorney argued that because of her low mental capacity, she was not actually able to understand. She wasn't capable of understanding all of the reasons behind why she was being put to death. But she was capable of orchestrating this plot to kill Buddy the way that she did. Sure. And to receive the benefits of life insurance and Social Security based off of that. She said she had that capacity.

Well, I think the key is now her IQ is only 55, right? So it's diminished so much that she can no longer understand. understand why she is about ready to be put to death, that's the argument. Well, I think it could be dropped to zero. Can it? No. Is that a real thing? No, what I'm saying.

Can you have a zero IQ? It doesn't, to me, it doesn't matter. I've known some people that I've thought maybe had a zero IQ. Or negative? Or negative. Yeah. But I'm just saying she did what she did at the time that she did it. That's where she should be judged at. I think there are people that are opposed to the death penalty.

and maybe even some that are for it that would make the argument that there are some people with such a limited mental capacity that they don't understand what's going on. And therefore, should they be put to death? Should they not be put to death? It's an argument that is often made. It was made to the Supreme Court. It was rejected. So I mentioned that she was 59 years old at the time of her.

execution, it just happened to be the exact same age that Buddy was when they had their fatal encounter in New Jersey and when he moved in with her. By 2014, Gibbs, Texas had gone the way of some other states and they no longer offered a special meal to inmates before their execution. I'm all for that. Same here. So what Suzanne Bassow ate for her last meal was baked chicken, fish, boiled eggs, carrots, green beans, and some slices of bread. That sounds horrible to me. That's not a meal that I would want to eat unless that was the only thing I had available, but it also should be the exact meal that everyone eats before they're executed. I'm totally fine with that. No more of this steak, KFC, shrimp, cake, Pepsi. I don't like it. You know what I think

the last meal should be. Mush. Mush. Yeah. Gruel. Can we call it gruel? Yeah. Just some blended up,

something thrown in a, not even a nice dish. It's like a paper bowl. No seasoning. You'll eat your gruel and you'll like it. If you want it, here you go. Yeah, again,

taking out how you feel about the death penalty. The fact is, a jury said that this woman should die. So she's going to get a last meal. When that happens, I just don't feel like these individuals deserve this massive, extravagant meal.

I just don't think it's right. Not at all, man. I don't even eat that well on my birthday. Not as well as some of these people do that we've talked about. Now, again, a lot of that has changed. In the older cases, that's where you get the, you know, 48 chicken wings and strawberry shortcake and, you know, makes your mouth water. Yeah, a full Thanksgiving turkey dinner.

Boiled chicken, carrots and green beans, I can do without. That's the meal that my wife makes when she knows that I need to, you know, slim down a little bit. Yeah. Cut back on the Chipotle. That's kind of her go-to thing, just some chickens, some light vegetables. Just in case she's listening, she does it really well. Yeah, she does a great job. Yeah, very, very tasty.

So they strapped Suzanne Basso to the table. And like they do with everyone, they asked her if she had any last words. She told the warden, no sir. It was reported that she had a couple of friends in the gallery. I don't know if that's the right word to use. They injected the drugs. And it was reported that she began to snore. And then the snoring got softer and softer until it finally stopped.

Suzanne Basso was pronounced. dead at 6.26 p.m. It took about 11 minutes for these drugs to end her life. She was the 14th woman executed in the United States since 1976. At the same time, Gibbs, during that same time frame, there were about 1,400 men executed. It just shows you the difference, right, between violent crimes committed by men and violent crimes committed by women, for which they ultimately, get the death penalty. And this is Texas. Don't forget. I think much more than any other state, they are more likely to hand down and carry out a death sentence against a woman. We've seen it. Carla Faye Tucker. Right. I think if you look at the statistics, Texas is up there. Very consistent.

And especially death sentences carried out against women. Well, I think when you look at the criminal justice system and as a whole, no matter where you live in the United States, I think you pretty much know where Texas stands on their convictions. Yeah, and they don't make any bones about it. No. They don't apologize for it. And they don't shy away from the fact that they're known as this. Yeah.

I think if you choose... Among other things. It's not the only thing they're known for, but... But if you choose to live there and you decide to do a horrendous crime, you know that's going to come down on you. Yeah. They have those laws in place because they're trying to keep people from doing those horrendous crimes. They're like, hey, you do this here, you're going to get the death penalty to the fullest extent.

Isn't the death penalty the fullest extent you can get? Yes. Okay. I'm just making sure if there's something fuller, I'd be interested to know what that is. Well, there's that one state. We won't say what it is, but after you die, then they actually go after your spirits and stuff. and like, you know, my family members and things like, yeah.

I just had to give you a little hard time. We haven't had a good gibbism. Yeah. In a while. It's going to happen now and then. It does. So one thing that I found interesting about Suzanne Basso is that unlike a lot of the perpetrators that we talk about,

she had no criminal record before the murder of Buddy Musso. We are used to detailing out these long rap sheets of criminals. She didn't have that. But I still have that one glaring question that to me is unanswered. And that is how did Basso get these other five individuals to go along with her plan? Now, we might have shed some light on how she was able to pressure her son. Maybe we don't know that for a fact. This plan to murder a man for, you know,

what was going to amount to, I saw varying numbers on what's, the life insurance policies were, I'm going to guess that all in it was less than $100,000. Yeah. Doesn't seem like enough to take somebody's life, especially if you got to split it up between that many people. That's the thing. You and I say all the time, right?

There's no amount of money worth taking someone's life. I never saw the exact amounts of the policies, but we know people have killed for much less than that. Yeah. I just never could find out definitively. what was in it for these other five people. I assume they were promised some type of money. But again,

the pool was not going to be that large. No. So when you think about the promise of, let's say, $5,000 or less, it's hard for me to believe that people would do something like this as a group. Yeah.

This wasn't just one person. This was a group of five for what really is a small, amount of money. Maybe they did all have low IQs, you know? I mean, not to figure that part out. And to the point that she didn't even marry buddy, so even if she pulled this off, she would never would have received his social security benefit on a monthly basis as a spouse. He would have thought that she would have married him, knowing that once he passed away, she could pick up his social security checks continuing until she passed on. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point. It's a good I mean, if you're going to go after 100, why wouldn't you go after the continuation of a monthly check?

But again, like we say a lot of times, we're trying to make sense of what people who really make no sense have, you know, have done. What was going on in their head at the time? It's one of those places that you don't want to spend a lot of time in because it will mess you up. Yeah. You don't want to get into these people's heads too much because a lot of it just. doesn't make sense. James, Bernice, Craig, and Terrence are still in prison serving their sentences. Hope Aaron should either be out or about ready to get out, but I could not find a single article about her, about her release or upcoming release. I just couldn't find it. She got a 20-year

sentence in the late 90s. Right. So it's been 20 years. I'm sure she's changed your name. That could be. Or was she just such a small part of this that nobody thought we need to write something about it? I think that happens a lot of times. That's true. It could have been just something that not newsworthy enough to write some big article about the fact that she was released. It's not like Carla Hamulka got released. And it's big difference. Front page news on every paper.

But that's it, Gibbs. That's the case of Suzanne Basso. and the murder of Buddy Musso, I found it to be a very interesting case. Heartbreaking. Yeah. You know, when you think about this 59-year-old man with the intellect of a second, third-grader,

seven, eight-year-old, somewhere around that range, this is a guy that was making the best of his life. He had a little job. He, you know, had some friends. But he longed for. a companion. He wanted to get married again. Yeah. And he met the wrong person because I, I truly believe Suzanne Basso size this guy up in a second, found out his financial situation. She found out what he was looking for romantically. Yeah. And she used that to her advantage to get him to Texas all the time,

knowing that her ultimate goal was to figure out a way to either get his social security, which she tried to, or take out some life insurance policies and ultimately kill him and try to cash in on those. Scary woman. Very scary a woman. I mean, that's the Tinder profile that you do not want to swipe the wrong way on. I don't know anything about Tinder. Well, I was just getting right to say.

I don't know if it's left or right. I've never used Tinder, I've heard, but I don't know if it's left if you like or right if you like. It's a swipe one way or the other. One way or the other. I think actually at that point, if you see that profile,

you just shut down the app immediately. Yeah, you delete it. It's probably infected your whole phone somehow, just the profile itself. All right, Gibbs, we have some voicemails. You want to check those out? Yeah, let's hear him.

Okay, listen. This is a boy to the middle. You know, he always used to kind of give me the rabs about, oh, mom, wants it with what is it about a 40-something year old white woman who likes true crime and now I'll think he says hey mom you know this podcast text is pretty interesting so you might have two new and thanks for putting out a great show well I love that voicemail gibbs so first of all you can never have enough mics that's that's just a given I think when you get into the area of why do you like true

crime so much a lot of us get that right a lot of us true crime officiados get that from people that don't understand be kind of fascination with true crime. What I will say is that my daughter, my oldest daughter, who's now off at college, she started listening to the podcast for whatever reason. We've been doing this for how long, Gibbs. We're coming up on our three year anniversary. We are. She's never, she's never listened to it.

She's off at college. She started listening and she's like, dad, you know what? This is pretty good. I like it. And you're like, yeah, I try to tell you that. Thanks, son. I appreciate it. Did she say, I really like that Gibby.

Yeah, she said she's Team Gibby. Yeah. The money I paid her is going good. Hi, guys. My name is Wendy, and I'm calling for now. And I just want to let you know that I really enjoy your podcast. I listen to it all the time. I love the banter.

My favorite part of the whole show is when Mike, when you do the Patreon shoutouts and Gibby does this little shoutouts. They make me laugh. Every week is very clever with what he says. Thank you for playing that. such a high quality respectful podcast and congratulations on 102 episodes and I'll keep listening as long as you keep making them thanks bye um we'll keep making them as long as people keep listening to them yeah so it's a good plan we both have in store yeah i like it so that's a new one right

i don't know if we've ever heard that people get a kick out of your patreon shoutouts you are very imaginative sometimes with your retorts sometimes not Depends on the day. We're all kind of day to day, you know, how we're feeling. It just depends where my wit is. How good our riffing is. It varies from episode to episode. Hey, Mike and Gibby. I am someone from Alaska. And I have to say, I started at like number 149 and I'm working backwards. And I think I'm on 85. So I've gone through a lot of episodes and I have not replied or left a voice message, even though everyone I have a hysterical, you guys crack me up.

But when you were talking about the moose poop ring that you got from Alaska and you're like, and Gibby's like, what, do they just go out and pick up dried moose and then make stuff out of it? If you really only knew, Gibby, if you only knew how much dried moose poop we have and how much dried moose poop we sell, you would just be shocked. It is incredible. So honor your moose poopering, Gibby. All right.

Have a great day, guys. Well, I do have it in a special spot. In a protective case. Yes. You know, and it has a shining light on it at all times. So I got a kick out of that one because she said I'm someone from Alaska. She doesn't want to put too much information out there. She might be in the witness protection program.

Right. I don't know. But I have learned over the years how much moose poop comes out of Alaska. I've seen people make all types of different products. out of it for sale, I think probably behind oil, moose poop might be their biggest export out of Alaska. No, I don't know. I'm making that out. That's a lot of poof, man. They got, she just said there's a ton of poop. Moose poop a lot. Just say that. And they have a lot of them. So there you go. Moose poop everywhere. Enjoy it. Moose poop for everyone. Morning, Mike. Morning

givy. It's Rosie and Sydney. It's just about 10 to 7 in the morning. I'm getting ready for work. and I'm just sitting listening to your most recent podcast. I'm a long-time listener of true crime all the time and unsolved and also criminology. So I've been listening over a number of years and thinking about you guys and all that you do and how grateful we all are for it. But I was wondering, you sometimes joke about things like having extra security at your houses and being very paranoid about looking after your family members and worrying about them and stuff like that. And I guess I was just wondering, after all this time,

Has it been any impact, guys, from doing the podcast? Has it increased your paranoia? Has it made you more worried? Are you more cautious? Have you increased your security? I was just wondering, really, how much of our need for your content has taken out of your lives. I hope not too much, because I absolutely love what you do. So please do keep doing it.

Take care of yourselves. And as always, keep your own time ticking. Good-die, Rosie. Yeah, I take a different route to Fergie's house every time I come here just in case. Well, and when you get out of the car, you zigzag like serpentine to the front door. I think people think it's funny when you're, you know, especially when your kids are standing at the door. Watch me like, what's Gibby doing? Now, in all seriousness, I don't know that doing the show has made me more paranoid.

I've always been extremely concerned with safety. even before I started doing the podcast. Right. Home security, safety, things like that. I don't think the show has made me more paranoid. And you have better equipment now because when I used to come here, you would do these full body searches on me. Now you just do full body scans.

And I want to say, I appreciate that. Yeah, the scanning machine works really good. Now, what I will say is, what does it take away? It's a lot of time. Right. I think everybody knows that. Right. Sometimes there are events.

family events that you can't go to because you have to do X. But that comes with the territory. And if you're going to do a podcast, you kind of know that going in. Yeah. Or if you don't, you'll learn very quickly. Real fast. All right, Gibbs, that's it. That's it for another episode of True Crime All the Time.

So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.