True Crime Campfire - Bad, Bad Choices: Dipshits Grab Bag

Episode Date: January 1, 2021

The movie “The Room” is an interesting study. If you’ve never seen it, you should. Director (and I put that in air quotes) Tommy Wiseau, who may actually be an alien or some kind of undead creature from a parallel universe, managed to create a movie so bad it’s almost good. Or at least, it’s so bad it’s vastly entertaining, and not like any other movie you’ve seen. You could probably say the same about the famously bad Hollywood filmmaker Ed Wood. Some people are just dipshits—but once in a while, somebody comes along who elevates dipshittery to a whole new level. And all we can do is marvel at the spectacular, flaming train wreck they created. Sources:Oxygen's "Snapped," episode "Heather Miller"Oxygen's "Snapped," episode "Teresa Stone"https://people.com/archive/love-her-to-death-vol-54-no-22/?xid=popsugar&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=feed&utm_content=link_2https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-2000-11-14-3332610-story.htmlhttps://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Practical-Magic-Inspires-Real-Murder-Plot-43463671https://abcnews.go.com/US/marines-murder-exposes-wifes-affair-pastor/story?id=20373010https://www.examiner.net/article/20120621/NEWS/306219710Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. The movie The Room is an interesting study. If you've never seen it, you should. director Tommy Wazot, and I put that in air quotes, who may actually be an alien or some kind of undead creature from a parallel universe, managed to create a movie so bad it's almost good. Or at least it's so bad it's vastly entertaining, and not like any other movie you've seen.

You could probably say the same about the famously bad Hollywood filmmaker Ed Wood. Some people are just dipshits, but once in a while somebody comes along who elevates dipshittery to a whole new level. and all we can do is marvel at the spectacular flaming train wreck they created. This is Bad, Bad Choices, Your Dipschitz Grab Bag Case One Impractical Magic The Almost Murder of Kevin Miller

So campers, we're in the picturesque little town of Richlandtown, Pennsylvania, about an hour outside Philly. April 2, 2000. Marine Corps reservist and father of four Kevin Miller answered the phone at his job. The voice on the other end said, Mr. Miller, this is the Bucks County Sheriff's Office. Sir, we have your wife Heather in custody. We're going to need you to come home right away. Uh, what? Kevin couldn't imagine what the hell this was all about, and the voice on the phone,

Wouldn't give him any more details than that. Just Heather's been arrested, they need you to come home. And when he got there, what they had to tell him was so unthinkable that at first, it must have seemed like an elaborate joke. Mr. Miller, your wife has been planning to kill you. Just imagine that, campers, you're going about your ordinary day, and suddenly, this bizarre shit hits you right smack in the gob with no warning whatsoever. Kevin had to be thinking, how did we get here?

Kevin and Heather had been married for six years by this point. They'd met in the early 90s working at a seafood restaurant. Heather was a single mom then, and she'd had it kind of rough. She'd had some problems with depression in high school, dropped out, then got pregnant at 17 by an abusive asshole boyfriend who promptly left the scene once there was a baby in the picture. So when she met Kevin Miller, six years older than she was, a college graduate and military reservist,

with a good job at a bank and a moonlight gig as a restaurant manager, he seemed like a major catch. They moved in together early on, and Kevin worked hard to support Heather and her baby daughter. He treated the little girl like she was his own. He'd eventually end up adopting her. In 1995, they got married in a gorgeous fairy tale wedding. Heather looked like a Disney princess in her dress,

and Kevin was her prince. Soon they had a baby of their own and bought a house in Richlandtown. They were really getting the ball rolling on their brand new family, and by all accounts, it was a happy time for both of them. They like playing mini-golf, going to movies, just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. They found out quickly that their new neighborhood was one of those Melrose Place-type neighborhoods where everybody got together for coffee and drinks and barbecues and block parties, otherwise known as Whitney and Katie's personal hell, as I think we discussed in another episode.

Heck off, Charlene, remember? But Heather liked it, and she soon befriended one of her neighbors, Mindy Robbins. Mindy was close to Heather's age, and she was a stay-at-home mom, too. And as they got to know each other, they found they had a lot in common. They were besties in no time, and Mindy introduced Heather to some of the other moms in the neighborhood, too. They got together for what Mindy called their coffee clatches almost every day, had wine together in the evenings, good times. Nothing good happens at a coffee clutch.

This is the second case that has featured a coffee clutch. You're absolutely right. It just inevitably ends up where when a bunch of women get together and start talking about their husbands, one of the husbands is going to end up murdered. It's just absolutely 100% of the time going to happen. So avoid the coffee clutches. So everything would have been peachy, except that Kevin lost his job as a computer consultant. By now, they had three kids to support, and Heather was a stay-at-home mom. So Kevin had to get two jobs to keep the family afloat financially, adding up to about 80 hours a week, which is just brutal.

And then Heather found out she was pregnant again. Ugh, it needed but that, right? Yeah, as it turns out, adding a creature that knows only screaming and fear to an already unstable relationship might just add a little smidgen of stress in the household. It's not exactly going to calm things down. No. Kevin was working all the time. And when he was home, he was so exhausted that all of that all. he wanted to do was collapse into a bed like a down tree. As for Heather, her old depression demon

decided to pick this time to rear its nasty little snout. Yeah, as depression demons often do. They love nothing more than to pounce at the worst possible times. Little shits. Yeah, I think they like compete with each other to see who can make their humans the most miserable. So because she was depressed, Heather started letting stuff slide around the house. As Kevin Kevin told People magazine later on, she became basically a zombie. Yeah, depression will do that. And Kevin didn't take it well. He'd come home from work, find the house a huge mess, and basically throw a tantrum like a toddler.

Because, you know, what a depressed person really needs is a spit-flect red-faced rage gremlin screaming in their face about the housework. That'll help the situation. Yeah, for the record, Kevin now recognizes that that did not help. So, anyway, surprise, surprise, their marriage started to suffer pretty badly around this point, and Heather started hanging out more and more with her bestie Mindy Robbins. Mindy told the TV show snapped that she was, quote, going through a bad girl phase at the time, and she brought Heather along for the ride.

One evening, over a bottle of wine, one thing led to another until Heather and Mindy ended up in bed together. and from there, with Kevin working 80 hours a week and hardly ever home to notice, things got a little bit Cinemax after dark, if you know what I mean. I do. Heather and Mindy started inviting some of the neighborhood guys to the party. Younger guys, too, according to Mindy. Anyway, they were bad growing it up, something fierce. And if Kevin had a gnawing sense that something was wrong, he was working way too much to really focus on it. When he was home, the atmosphere was tense. They fought all the time.

Big rip-roar in fights that were so loud the neighbors could hear them. Heather started telling people she wanted out. At one point, she tried to get some counseling from a woman's shelter, but she says they turned her away because Kevin wasn't physically abusive. Which is fucking awful, if it's true.

She can still need help for God's sakes. and she said she couldn't hire a divorce lawyer because she didn't have any money. Okay. So part of Mindy's bad girl phase, as she put it, was an interest in witchcraft. Specifically, Mindy was into Wicca. Which scares a lot of people because they associate it with Satan worship and whatnot, but actually it's not like that at all. It's very pro-nature, very anti-harm.

Wiccans aren't devil worshippers and they have rules against hurting anybody. Right. And as Besties tend to do, Mindy shared. her interest with Heather, and Heather started getting really interested in Wicca, especially the idea of casting spells. One day, she told Mindy, she just attempted a banishment spell to try to get rid of Kevin, and quote, shield her from his wrath. Yeah, she was starting to worry about what would happen if Kevin found out about her and Mindy's Real Housewives of Richlandtown Adventures, both with each other and with the neighborhood hunks. She wouldn't fare too well in a divorce if he did,

So she went and bought all the spell materials at a shop a couple towns over. I guess they had a spell store out there or whatever. And then she waited for a full moon, went out to the lake, did a whole big ritual she'd found in a book about witchcraft and nothing. When she got home, there was Kevin, home from his night job at Walmart and grumpy as usual. Not even a little bit banished? Like no toenails sent to the nether realms? Just one butt cheek is gone. And he's like, what is happening?

I just suddenly there was just one butchie. She told Mindy it was a huge disappointment. Mindy told her she really ought to have read the book a little more carefully. The banishment spell was intended for ghosts, not living, breathing husbands. Fun fact about this, by the way, the lake where she attempted the spell was Lake Nakamixen. Now, if that rings a bell with you, it might be because that St. Lake showed up in another one of our cases. Remember Mary Jane Fonder, the church lady who murdered another church lady out of jealousy over the handsome, young pastor. Remember how she tossed

the gun into Lake Nakamixen? I'm telling you some places just to have bad vibes. Anywho, so Heather's spirit was willing, but apparently her reading comprehension was weak. And because Kevin wasn't a ghost, her first attempt at ridding herself of him, fell flat on its face. And Mindy, who seems like a sensible sort,

based on what I saw of her on Snap, said, look, you want to banish him? Get a divorce. Get a restraining order if you want to. That'll banish him. Just fine. But Heather, and see, that's a practical witch right there. Exactly. That's a granny weatherwax type. But Heather didn't want to talk about divorce. She couldn't afford a lawyer. She had no way of supporting herself and the kids without Kevin. You know, she'd dropped out of high school and it had been years since she'd worked. And beyond

that, she was worried that if Kevin found out about her affairs, he'd end up with full custody of kids. So there it sat for a little while. Heather seemed to be getting more and more preoccupied with the idea of making Kevin disappear. She once told the kids babysitter, He's worth more to me dead than alive. Smart move. Always make sure to involve the babysitter in your murder plots. Sure. Here, she was referring to the fact that they had about $750,000 worth of life insurance on Kevin,

which is just a bonkers amount of coverage. Like, I guess it's because they had four kids, but for their income, that is a lot of coverage, which makes me wonder, you know, if this was maybe a little more premeditated even than we know. And I'm sure all that money looked pretty scrumptious to Heather Who had gotten a taste of the single life With Mindy in the neighborhood Studs And wanted to keep on tasting So all this was percolating

When Mindy took Heather to see the movie Practical Magic And Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman Now it's been years since I've seen it But I remember I liked it at the time It was fun It's about a pair of sisters who are both witches Like the kind of actual powers Like they can move stuff around with their minds and stuff

one of the sisters is in an abusive relationship, and in Dixie Chick's fashion, they decide to poison the bastard with deadly Bella Donna. Now, in movie land, where nobody's actually getting hurt, this is a good-for-her kind of moment. And of course, because it's a movie, it all works out swimmingly for the witches. Mindy liked the movie because she felt it portrayed witches in a positive light. Heather liked it for a different reason altogether. And not long after that movie night, Heather started looking around for a store that sold Bella Donna. Now, as anyone who has been to a witch store knows, they don't just carry that at witchcraft stores.

They don't carry Belladonna. And yes, I am admitting that I've been to a witch store. That's fine. Of course you have. Right. On brand. She did finally find it at the health food store. And by find it, I mean, she found.

a homeopathic sleep aid that contained Belladonna. Now, Camper's, y'all know what homeopathy is, right? Basically, it uses what they call the law of minimum dose, meaning that the smaller the amount of the medicinal substance, the more effective it will be. That just doesn't seem logical in any way to me. Okay. So illogical it curves back around to logic, Whitney.

Don't question it. So what that means is homeopathic remedies tend to use tiny amounts of the substance in question. This, by the way, is not supported by much, if any, evidence. And many consider homeopathy a pseudoscience. Like me, I consider homeopathy a pseudoscience. They took the concept of less as more and turned it into an entire, like, multimillion dollar industry. Here's water. Here's some water that has occasionally thought about. Belladonna. It's like, that's like saying Laquois is just like eating a pineapple. Yeah, exactly. It might

have been near one at some point in its life. It looked at a scantz at a pineapple. Right. That is what that stuff tastes like. I don't understand that stuff. It's, it's a really good mixer. That's all it's good for. Okay. Sometimes the doses are so tiny that a lab test can't even detect the medicine. Oh boy. So a homeopathic preparation of Belladonna would contain almost no belladonna. You'd probably have to eat like pounds and pounds of the stuff to even cause a slight tummy ache, and I think you'd be in trouble with nausea before that. Yeah, you'd barf all that stuff up.

She might as well have tried to poison the poor bastard with water, which is a thing you can do. Yeah, you can actually do that. You can just drink a shitload of water and makes you super sick. But it's important to understand campers that Heather did not. not grasp this. Heather went to fucking GNC and thought she was buying a powerful poison.

Yep, and bless her heart. She wasted no time in sharing her plan, not only with Mindy, but with several other of her neighborhood friends, most of whom didn't take her seriously because people never flip and do in these cases. Oh my God. It's just another one of the tropes.

I feel like if one of of us were to try to commit murder and we talked about on the podcast. Like, you would do something, right? I hope. Campers. Somebody for it already called the cops. There's a file. There's a file on us in Quantico.

They're bullshit. You know, if you want to make sure your murder plot is a success, you really got to workshop it around first. Absolutely. Like run up by your friends and family members. You don't see what the babysitter thinks. If two heads are better than one, then logically, we're back to logic. Yeah, yeah.

Imagine how much better three or four would be. So we said most people didn't take her seriously at first, but Mindy wasn't one of those. Mindy knew Heather was dead serious and she was desperate to talk her out of it. She said, listen, divorce. That works. Do that. You cannot go through with a murder. but Heather was matter of fact. Divorce simply wasn't an option for her. I mean, okay, run the math. She divorces Kevin. He gets wind of her multiple affairs, including a lesbian one, which wouldn't go over well in their conservative town, especially in 2000. He has his lawyer tell the court all about it. She looks like a bad mother. Kevin gets the kids, and she probably doesn't get much in the way of alimony either. Plus, no 750 grand in life insurance. She'd have to go back to waitressing.

Hell no, no deal. It had to be poison. Bella Donna to the rescue. Sounds like a kid's book. About like a ballerina mouse who also solves mysteries or something. Come on, camper. Somebody write that. It sounds like something my niece would like.

If somebody writes me a Bella Donna to the rescue book about a ballerina mouse, I'm going to lose my mind. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Please. Please. Somebody's going to do it. I guarantee somebody's going to do it.

So, no matter how much Mindy tried to talk Heather out of this cockamamie nonsense, Heather made it clear she was sticking to the plan. Apparently, Mindy, was also unaware of how woozy homeopathic remedies are and thought this Whole Foods belladonna or whatever would be lethal. On the episode of Snapd about this case, somebody mentions that the Belladonna is very diluted, and I thought, yeah, it's diluted, and she's deluded. Because I'm a comedian. That's good. It's good. Did other poisons just not fit her aesthetics? Like, God, I'd love to use rat poison, but it's just too pedestrian, not spiritual enough.

I have to use a poison that the witches from hocus pocus would use, or I'm not a real witch. Absolutely. Had to have the cachet, the drama. So here was the situation Mindy found herself in. She takes her best friend to see a movie, and said friend gets inspired. by said movie to murder her husband. Mindy didn't want to see Kevin dead. He wasn't her favorite person.

She didn't like the way he treated Heather. But this was murder. Kevin didn't deserve that. This was something she knew Heather would regret for the rest of her life if she went through with it. Although, I'm not so sure about that, to be honest. I mean neither. Heather doesn't strike me as the regretful type.

She strikes me as the type who take her 750 grand and flounce off into the sunset. But Mindy felt like she'd regretted if she went through with it. Mindy was worried for Heather's soul, and what killing her children's father would do to it. So she agonized. What could she do? She didn't want to turn her best friend into the police.

She told Snap, I didn't feel like I could just walk into the police station like, hey, my best friend is planning on killing her husband. Well, why the hell not? Is my question. They're going to look at you funny, sure, but just tell them the truth. You know, and they'll listen. But Mindy didn't know what her best course

of action was. She thought about leaving an anonymous note on Kevin's car. She thought about trying harder to talk Heather out of going through with it. She hemmed. She hawed. And the long and short of it is she did nothing. And while she sat on her hands, Heather refined her plan. She was going to put the Bella Donna and Kevin's mashed potatoes, she said, and pack it in his lunchbox for dinner at his night job. She said she'd researched it. It would look like a heart attack. She said she knew they'd do an autopsy. Men Kevin's age didn't just drop dead very often. So she questioned the guy at the health food store about whether Bella Donna would show up on a drug screen. She told him, I'm starting a new job and I need to know if this will pop on a drug test.

Like, okay, first of all, why would the, like, dude with dreds that whole foods freaking know in the first place? He's just going to be like, ooh, nah, it'll be fine, dude, you know? Like, he doesn't fucking know. No. And also, why would your boss care, like, if you have If you have belladonna in your system, yeah. They'd be like, maybe don't take that. This is why we're in the dipshit grab bag. It's just a whole series of very baffling choices being made here. So add that to our running list of dipshit moves.

I think we're up to about a dozen by now. So many. Maybe more. Fortunately for Kevin and for Heather, too, Heather finally made one boneheaded move too many. One evening in April, she knocked on the door of one of the wine moms in the neighborhood, a woman named Diane. Now picture this from Diane's perspective campers, you're getting dinner ready, it's a normal evening, and suddenly here's your friend Heather at the door.

Actually, they weren't even good friends, just kind of friendly acquaintances. And instead of like trying to sell you some wrapping paper for her kids' school fundraiser or something, Heather presses a little vial marked Bella Donna into your hands and says, hey, I'm going to poison my husband with this, but I'm not quite ready to do it yet. Would you mind to hold on to this for me for a couple days? I don't want Kevin to find it and get suspicious. I'll come get it when I'm ready for it. I should you not, she actually did this. And I can imagine the looks on your faces right now, and I am right there with you. I swear we're not making this up.

Now, later on, Heather would claim that this was a cry for help, that she wanted the neighbor to stop her. Now, you can make of that what you will. I think it smacks more of A, arrogance and B, extreme dipshittery, but you may disagree. After all, Heather had been telling all her coffee buddies for quite some time about how badly Kevin treated her and how much she wanted out. So I think it's quite possible that she thought all her friends would just be on board with the plot. Diane, as you can imagine, was just knocked flat on her ass. Heather stood on her front porch and laid out the whole story, mashed potatoes and all.

She'd ground up 100 pills worth of the Velodonna into powder. That's what was in the vial. And Diane said she seemed almost giddy like a kid waiting for Christmas morning, just super excited. And once she dropped this extraordinary bombshell on this woman, and she hardly knew, Heather just bounced off home, just as merry and bright as damn it. And Diane stood there for a moment, just holding the little viola Bella Donna, probably hearing the Apocalypse Now music start up in her head and like looking off into the distance with the thousand yards there.

And then finally she went to the phone and dialed Mindy Robbins. And after a couple minutes of conversation, she was shocked to realize that Mindy wasn't surprised by her story. Like Mindy already knew all about it. Diane said she seemed really reluctant to involve the police. Why didn't they just leave Kevin a note instead? But Diane, bless her, wouldn't budge. She had a relative in law enforcement, and she said, Mindy, we have to tell them.

And campers, we know as true crime aficionados, they never listen to the note. They don't. No one ever reads a note and is like, this is complete truth. No, nobody can listen to a note. Call the fucking cops. Yeah. Call the cops. So that's what they did.

They called the fucking cops. Next thing she knew, Mindy was getting fitted with a body wire and asked to get Heather talking about the murder plot. And if the cops had any doubts about what Diane and Mindy were telling them, the recording Mindy made put those to bed in no uncertain terms. As she and Mindy sat at her kitchen table with Mindy's body mic picking up every word. Heather laid out her plan. She was going to make the Belladonna laced mashed potatoes the next night. for Kevin to eat at work the following day. He'd eat them for dinner at his evening gig and keel over.

Then, at around 2 a.m., she'd call him at work. And when she couldn't get a hold of him, she'd drive over to his job and find him, slumped over at his desk. She said, I'm going to call the cops and tell them I just went out looking for my husband, found his car at the office, the door was unlocked, and I found him at his desk.

She painted quite the vivid picture. You could tell she'd really thought it through. Oh, and by the way, on the recording, you can hear Heather's kids milling around, occasionally interrupting to ask for cookies and stuff like that. Yeah, she had this conversation with their flipping kids in the room, y'all. At one point a kid says something to her, and Heather says, okay, now can you go in the other room so Mama can finish talking to Aunt Mindy? Talking, let's be clear, about killing their father.

Just good googly-moogly. Yeah, it's awful. So here are a couple more quotes from the recording. You can find more of these on the Oxygen Show snapped and in various news articles about the case. As always, you can find all our sources for the episode in the show notes. At one point, Mindy says, you don't think he's going to taste it? Heather says, nope, not with the eastern turmeric in the mashed potatoes. Super casual.

And this is creepy. Later, Mindy says, are you going to try again if it doesn't? doesn't work? And Heather says, yeah, in a tone like, well, obviously. So as you can imagine, this was all the investigators needed to hear. They put the grab-us on Heather the next morning as she came back from taking her kids to school and charged her with the attempted murder and other things. Yeah, and just a few minutes before she got arrested, Heather had called neighbor lady Diane to tell her she'd be over that afternoon to pick up the belladonna. So the plan was obviously in full swing.

The most shocking thing about Heather's trial was not her absurd defense that all the talk about killing Kevin was just a fun little fantasy, kind of like a role play. And that if she had been thinking about killing Kevin, it was all Mindy's idea anyway and she was just going along. Or the fact that she took the stand in her own defense. Right. The most shocking thing was that Heather, who had gotten out on bail pending trial, showed up every day. hand in hand with Kevin. Oh, my God. This poor bugger had decided to stand by his woman. He said he forgave her.

He knew he was a grump. He yelled too much and he hadn't been the best husband to her. I shit you not unsnapped. He says, all marriages go through difficulties. I mean, fair enough, bro. But seriously, she was going to kill you, man. Just Kevin. Wow, man.

I think that's probably a deal breaker for me. Yeah, yeah. Like, you're right. You're right, Kevin. All marriages do go through some difficulties. But most of the time, it's like, how are we going to divide the chores? Or you didn't call me to tell me you'd be late and not, I only tried to kill you a little. Heather was facing up to 80 years in prison. The defense tried to convince the jury that because the belladonna wouldn't have actually hurt Kevin, Heather didn't really deserve to be punished, which is just about the most ridiculous. argument I've ever heard. Like, just because you suck at murder doesn't mean you shouldn't be punished for trying it. Yeah, let's by all means reward her for being a massive dip shit. That's great. And remember, she told Mindy that if the first attempt didn't work, she was going to try again. So the Belladonna wouldn't have phased him, but rat poison sure his shit would have, or antifreeze, or a gun, or whatever Heather decided to try next. And as you can imagine,

that argument didn't end up holding water. At least, it didn't get a acquitted. Heather was convicted, but her sentence is going to piss y'all right off. She got 10 years in prison, and she was out in less than five. She and Kevin are divorced now, shocker, and Heather still lives in the same town. Yeah, and she had the nerve to be pissed about that five years, too. She's in that episode of Snapped herself, and you can tell she considers herself the main victim in the case. It's really something else. And this is a fun little detail. According to an article in the newspaper The Morning Call, Heather also got some time added on for an unrelated fraud case. In 1999, she faked a burglary at her in Kevin's house, claimed almost $6,200 worth of stuff was stolen and got a nice fat insurance payout.

Now, to me, this is important, because I think it shows that the murder plot was not some kind of random anomaly for Heather. To me, this shows that she has it in her to be devious and greedy and to think, the rules don't apply to her and to try shady shit like this. So I just think she had Kevin totally snowed and he is damn lucky he's still here. So we're starting strong with our first tip shit. That was bonkers, right? Holy shit, what a doofus. All right, so campers moving on to Case 2 and Ho Boy is this one for the books.

We're calling this one Tainted Love, the murder of Randy Stone. So for this one, campers, we're in Independence, Missouri. March 31, 2010. A 911 call came in from a woman named Teresa Stone. She was calling from the farmer's insurance office where she and her husband Randy worked and she was sobbing. She'd just gotten back from some errands and found her husband on the floor with blood coming out of his ear. He wasn't breathing. When the first responders got there, they found 42-year-old husband, father, and former Marine Randy Stone line crumpled on the ground, dead of a single gunshot wound to the head. Stippling indicated he'd been shot at close range. On the carpet near Randy's body,

officers found a single 40-caliber bullet casing. No gun. There was no sign of forced entry at the scene. In fact, Teresa said she'd had to unlock the door to get into the office, which was unusual during business hours. Nothing seemed to be missing from the office. In fact, Randy had $150 in cash just sitting right out on the open on his desk. Now, the killer hadn't taken that, and they hadn't taken his wallet either. So obviously robbery wasn't the motive. And there were no signs of a struggle. Randy had been shot at close range and he didn't seem to have seen it coming. So what does all this point to in terms of motive campers? It means it's personal. And it suggests that Randy may have known and trusted his killer. The shooter was able to get right up next to him and shoot him in

the head. Yeah, exactly. So they brought Teresa down to the police station to give a statement of course, and oddly, when they first put her into the squad car back at the insurance office, this dude suddenly popped up out of the crowd and tried to go with her. Now, it turns out this was Teresa and Randy's pastor and close friend David Love. And he was pretty insistent. Don't you think she needs me there? Could I be in the interview room with her? And of course, the cops were like, uh, no, but it took a very firm hand to get past her love to back off. When the car started to pull away, he actually grabbed at the back door handle and tried to open the door. Weird, right?

As for Teresa, she seemed remarkably composed for somebody who had just found her husband murdered. In the interview room, except for a few tears here and there, Teresa was calm, almost casual. She said she'd been at the insurance office most of the day, but then she left to run some errands around town. And when she got back to the office, she found Randy lying bloody on the floor. And her first move struck detectives as a little bit odd. She called several people, including her parents, before she dialed 911. Um, the hell? And her explanation for it was vague. She was just upset.

She didn't know what to do. Which, I guess, is plausible. I mean, people do weird shit under extreme stress. And the detectives noted that in order to get to the phone that she'd used, Teresa would have had to step over Randy's body. Huh. So did Teresa have an alibi for the time Randy was shot? Oh boy, did she ever?

Teresa laid out every part of her day for the investigators, and what you might call excrued. Grusciating detail. Down to the minute. Now, let's see. I left Dress Barn at about 241. I'm sorry? 41.

Bless your heart, honey. Okay, who does that? Unless you've got like a photographic memory. You're not going to say you left someplace at 632 or at 849, for God's sake. You'll say, it was around 630? So this was just a huge red flag. It seemed to detectives that Teresa must have had some reason for remembering the precise timing of each of her errands that day.

Almost as if she thought she might need to account for her movements later on. She had receipts for everything, too, neatly folded up in her wallet. Hmm, I wonder why. Boy, that's a thinker in it. It's a toughie. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have tons of receipts in my purse, too, but they're all crumpled up with old gum stuck in them the way good Lord intended. Yeah, I know people that keep receipts, like, really organized, and, like, one of them is one of my closest friends, and I think she's a freak. I call her a freak every time she does it, too. It's weird.

Maybe she's just a serial killer. Oh, man. I hope not. I really like her. After all that precision, it was surprising to the investigators when they asked, has Randy ever own a gun? And Teresa suddenly went all vague and clueless. Oh, I think he had one at one point. Well, did she know where it was?

Oh, um, he sold it. Oh, okay. When did he sell it? Who did he sell it to? Oh, Teresa had no idea. She said, he never tells me when he does stuff like that. Well, all righty, could be true, but the red flags were starting to flutter a bit in the wind. And now, campers, the investigators decided to play a juicy

little card they'd been saving for just the right moment. See, back at the crime scene, Tex had discovered a torn up piece of yellow legal paper in the bottom of the waste basket near Randy's desk. It had been ripped into about a dozen different pieces, but it was easy enough to piece them back together. And when they did, oh my. It was a lot of. It was a lot of love letter. Unsigned, but chock full of sugar and spice. In the interview room, they brought this up to Teresa, sort of nonchalantly, like an afterthought. Oh, yeah, we meant to ask you about this letter we found in the trash. It was all torn up, said happy birthday. Teresa sort of furrowed her brow inside. Like, she couldn't

imagine what in the heck they were talking about. So the detectives left the room to go get the letter for her. And I guess Miss Teresa has never watched any true crime shows and didn't realize she was being recorded by the surveillance camera that was clearly visible in the room. Because as soon as they were out the door, she heaved a huge sigh and said, oh, great. I forgot about that. Oh, Teresa, you sad little circus peanut. Blast your little heart, honey. Yeah, she looked like the world.

had just crashed down around her, too. And I'm not surprised because that letter was bombshell stuff. It opened with, Happy birthday, love. You are so very precious to my heart. You possess the most tender spot in my heart. Ew, it sounds like he's describing a cut of meat. Also, that's redundant as hell.

Tighten up your writing guy. A few lines down, it said, I remember nine years ago telling you I had something for you in my office. it was me I wanted to give you me that kiss you took and then you gave me one back I felt like it was my birthday

hmm nine years ago years ago years interesting despite her oh great when the detectives were out of the room Teresa now tried to play the letter office no big deal

she launched into an explanation oh that right that was from a secret admirer, she said. Somebody had sent it to her anonymously like two years ago, and she just stuffed it in her purse and forgotten all about it until yesterday when she had to go rooting around in there for something to write on.

See, she was trying to get her daughter scheduled to get her wisdom teeth out, and now, Cambers, I bet some of y'all are already yelling at your phones, because here our Teresa is demonstrating a common boneheaded move, giving away too much information during an interrogation. We see it a lot of 911 calls, too.

Most people will just say, come quick, my girlfriend's bleeding. But a guilty person will launch into the flippant Iliad and give 50 zillion details before giving the salient facts, i.e. that their girlfriend is lying on the floor bleeding and they need an ambulance. Red flag. She said she'd just come across it the day before and she didn't want Randy to see it, obviously, so she tore it up and threw it away. Now, that's quite a coincidence that she'd hold on to this letter for years and then just happened to throw it out the day before her husband is murdered.

And can I just ask, girl, why in the flippity flap did you throw it in the trash can at y'all's office? For God's sake, in the trash can right next to Randy's desk. And it's like a little trash can. For God's sake, they don't have dumpsters in your town? You can burn the damn thing in your fireplace, put it in the trash at McDonald's, like literally anything that isn't put it in my husband's small trash can at work? Did you want to get caught? I'm just so confused. Ugh, whatever.

Anyway, it was very clear to detectives that this letter had not come from any secret admirer. I mean, come on, remember nine years ago when we kissed in my office? Unless Teresa had a busier love life than John Mayer, she wasn't likely to be confused about who this was. And the letter had a line toward the end that said something like, When we're together for real someday, your birthday will always be special. That's awfully familiar for a secret admirer, and it implies that the letter writer and Teresa have had conversations about being together

someday. And Katie, you're going to laugh your ass off, because at the bottom of the letter was a line or two of coded language, initials that meant who knew what? GDR, MMT, etc. Now, how many cases that we had now where some chucklehead writes a letter in code? Just so many. They love their cipher codes. We're going to have to add it to the drinking game, along with the bloodletting. So what do you think GDR stood for, by the way? I've really been racking my brain. Got dang raccoons? Greg dumped Rhonda? I don't know. What about MMT?

Mothman Truthers? Mad Monkey Train? Minty Moist Towelette? My money's on Godzilla digs Rick Astley and Mothra's Mother's Toolips. They're big Japanese monster flick fans, I think. Mothra's Mother's Tollips. That's got to be it. Anywho, point is Bish was clearly lying her ass off about that letter.

And the detectives didn't have enough evidence to arrest her that day, but they were suspicious. at this point. And they soon discovered that despite what Teresa had told them, Randy had not sold his gun. In fact, he'd been showing off a 40 caliber to some friends within a couple weeks of his murder. Better than that, he'd gone target shooting. So the investigators went out to the range, and lo and behold, there were some of those 40 caliber casings, just like the one they'd found at the scene. I doubt it's going to surprise any of you to learn that they soon came back as a perfect ballistics match to the bullet that killed Randy. This poor guy was shot to death with own gun.

The next step for investigators, obviously, was to figure out who authored that syrupy, happy birthday letter to Teresa. They quickly determined that outside of work, both Teresa and Randy's lives pretty much revolved around the New Hope Baptist Church. They were both heavily involved in church stuff. Teresa taught Sunday school and was always front and center for activities. And Randy was the church's financial officer. He had to an eye on the books.

and Randy was best friends with the popular charismatic pastor David Love. Pastor Love had delivered the eulogy at Randy's funeral, in fact. It was very moving. But as the investigators worked their way through the congregation of New Hope Baptist, talking to people who knew Randy and Teresa, they heard the same rumor again and again and again. Pastor Love was getting a little bit too much love. And not from his wife, Kim.

It seemed to be an open secret that the pastor and Teresa Stone had been having an affair for years, almost as long as the pastor had been at New Hope. He'd made a hell of a splash when he first got there, and right away he let the congregation know that his office door was always open if anybody needed him. Yeah, and apparently Teresa did, because she started showing up for Pastor Love's office hours on a very regular basis. so regular that people started to notice, and tongues started to wag. Even when Pastor Love befriended Randy, too, and the two guys started spending time together outside church. When they searched Teresa's computer, the detectives uncovered a whole slew of gross emails back and forth between her and Pastor Love.

In one, written the year before, Pastor Feel Good wrote, I cannot wait to watch you walk to me knowing that we are officially about to be married publicly. I love your ideas. Keep gathering ideas and dreams. Baby, dream. It is coming. I love your plants. I think you can collect wedding info and file it as if you are planning for your daughter, you know? So again, Camper's, as a writing instructor, I have to point out the poor quality of these letters. We're chugging along nicely about a wedding, a future together, blah, blah, blah, and suddenly, out of nowhere, we get, I love your plants. Bro, what? Where do flipping plants enter the equation here? Were you having a stroke? I mean, I like to scope out. the size of a potential romantic partner's ficus just as much as the next guy, but you've got to have

some kind of internal logic to your writing, man. Speaking of showing off your fikis, by the way, apparently, Pastor Love was also fond of sending Teresa tasteful self-portraits. Oh, that's nice. And by tasteful self-portraits, obviously, I mean gross pictures of his dick. Oh, no. At one point, a few years before his murder, Randy found him. one of Teresa's letters to David.

And somehow, by some dark sorcery or other, Teresa was able to pass it off as an exercise she'd read about in a woman's magazine. Do what? Yeah, yeah. She told him the magazine had said to write a letter to an imaginary lover to spice up your marriage.

I don't know what you're confused about, Whitney. It makes perfect sense to me to write a fake letter to a fake other man. I mean, why wouldn't that make your husband more attractive to you? Well, women's magazines do recommend some pretty stupid stuff. Y'all Cosmo readers, remember the donut thing? Anybody ever actually tried that? I hope not. Write us. Please, write us.

Write us about all your experiences with the donut trick. I just don't Google it at work. And I guess the fact that the imaginary lovers, name was David, and he knew Teresa spent a lot of time with their Pastor David didn't trouble Randy. Good gravy. So Randy, bless his heart, bought this big bag of bollocks, and then in 2006, Teresa handed him an even bigger one. She sat him down and said, I'm pregnant. Now, why was this a big deal? Well, you see, Campers, Randy had a vasectomy after the birth of their last child. Now, you'd think that this would be the last straw, wouldn't you? That Randy would finally realize what had been going on with

Teresa and take steps accordingly. But that is not what happened. Because Teresa, who I really wish had used these persuasive powers for good, because if she had, we might have world peace by now, managed to convince Randy that vasectomy or not, this baby was his. A miracle. A semi-immaculate conception. God's will. Whatever. I mean, it's true, I guess, that a vasectomy doesn't always, always take, but Randy, come on, honey, the whole thing might have been resolved once and for all when the new baby came out looking like David Love, but Teresa miscarried the baby. And Randy went right on thinking it had been his. Now, in addition to this red-hot intel, the detectives also heard some unsettling things about Teresa's behavior in the days immediately following Randy's

murder. Y'all buckle up for this, I swear to God, you're going to fall out of your chair. On the day of the funeral, as people stopped by the house to pay their respects, Teresa approached one of their colleagues at the insurance company to ask a whole bunch of questions about Randy's life insurance. When would she get her money? How would it be paid? And when Teresa asked the guy to come downstairs to her study to look at some paperwork, he was shocked. She had neatly laid out all the info on Randy's various policies and totaled up all the amounts. All told, Randy's life insurance added up to $800,000. That's a whole lot of motive all by itself, even with the affair, and her mind was on it even before Randy was laid to rest.

Now, what Teresa didn't find out until a week after the murder was that Randy had changed the beneficiary on those policies. The money was to go to his kids now. Teresa wouldn't get a dime of it. And when she finally did find out, she said to a friend, well, if the police are thinking I killed Randy for the life insurance money, they can just drop that because I'm not even getting anything. Yeah, darling, but you didn't know that before now, did you? So it seems like maybe Randy had finally started having doubts about his wife, huh, to change the insurance like that? Yeah, I think that's exactly what that means. Another church member said that he and his wife had gone to the reception at Teresa's house after the funeral,

and Teresa had taken him aside and said, Campers, I shit you not. Whoever did this really inconvenienced my life. And it gets better. Then she leaned over, smelled his neck. No. And said he smelled good. What?

Way to fly under the radar there, sis. Good job. That's some Hannibal shit right there. You know what? I wouldn't have thought we would need to cover this. But don't sniff people, okay? That's damn good advice. Even at the best of times, really, but especially not your husband's funeral.

Also, probably don't refer to your husband's murder as an incandum. Convenience. Doesn't quite hit the ear right, Teresa, honey. Feels a tad ask you. And then there was the phone call Teresa had made very soon after the murder to another pastor friend of hers in West Virginia. This guy was shocked at how casual she sounded and he got steadily more uneasy as Teresa started laying out her entire schedule on the day of the murder, just as she had with the police, place by place, precise time by precise time. He thought she's establishing an alibi. He gave him the creeps. And then, not long after that phone conversation, guess who else called the pastor? David Love. The West Virginia pastor said David Love seemed cold and indifferent about Randy's murder. And just like Teresa, he laid out his entire alibi point by point. He also said Pastor Love didn't have a nice word to say about Randy, which was weird,

given that the two guys were supposed to be so close. And then he said something baffling. He said that if police called to talk to him, he'd have a stack of dirt on Randy to tell them about. Huh? What? Yeah. Pastor, that would definitely make you look less suspicious.

Telling the cops all of the murder victims dirty laundry. Jesus Christ. Do they not teach common sense at seminary school? So the West Virginia pastor hung up feeling pretty sure that both Teresa and David Love were involved in Randy's murder. And as the investigation continued, the police soon realized. realize that the affair between Teresa and Pastor Love might not be the whole story in terms of the motive for Randy's murder. There were wheels within wheels, campers. Remember we told you Randy was the church's financial officer? Well, apparently in the months before Randy's

death, he'd uncovered evidence that Pastor Love had been misusing church funds for some time. He'd used the church's money to pay some of his own personal bills, and he'd been paying his wife, Kim, despite the fact that she wasn't doing anything whatsoever to earn it. And two weeks before he was murdered, Randy confronted David Love about all of this. Love, as you can imagine, didn't take it well. So Randy told him he and his family were going to be leaving the church. Investigators wondered if the good reverend was afraid Randy might be getting ready to expose his theft to the whole congregation, or even the police. So they hauled Teresa in for another interview and confronted her with everything they'd learned,

including the fact that cell phone records placed the track phone David Love used to communicate with Teresa near the crime scene at the time of the murder. The records also showed how much talking and texting they'd been doing right around that time, including one from David to Teresa right before she'd headed back to the insurance office and found Randy's body. and after hours of pressure, Teresa cracked. She said, I'm not going to protect him anymore. For God's sake. The hymn in question, of course, Pastor Love. She agreed to cut a deal, part of which was that she had to spill the whole sordid tail

and help put David Love in prison. The murder had been his idea, Teresa said. They were going to kill Randy, collect the wife insurance, and then kill David's wife, Kim, later on. The plan there was for Pastor Love to break Kim's neck, put her in her car, and roll her down a hill to simulate a fatal crash. Yeah, because he figured that's what Jesus would do, I guess. Good Lord, that poor woman dodged a bullet, didn't she? Super hardcore Jesus.

And then I guess they'd figured they'd ride off into the sunset and have a happy life together. Just two killers in love. Aw, it's like the Hallmark movie from hell. They're all from hell. Yeah, you know what, Fair Point. Hellmark channel. In fact, I think I'm going to write that script, working title, Loveless Pastor. Oh, I like it, yeah.

Pretty much writes itself. Exactly. Teresa told the prosecutors that when David Love came to the crime scene on the day of Randy's murder, ostensibly to offer comfort to Teresa in this trying time, he took her aside and told her to flush her track phone down the toilet so police couldn't look through it. He told her, this could put me away for life. You have to get rid of it. Teresa did as she was told.

He also told her to tell the police that Randy had sold that 40-caliber handgun months ago. The investigators later found the empty box for that gun in Teresa's closet. Now, initially, Pastor Love was smart. He asked for an attorney and kept his mouth shut. But when he got a look at the evidence the prosecution had against him and realized that Teresa was going to get up on that stand and spew the whole ugly story, he finally caved. He pled guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action for a sentence of life in prison. Teresa got eight years. She got all weepy at her sentencing, but the judge

wasn't impressed. He pointed out that she allowed her husband's killer to give the eulogy at his funeral, which is just an obscene amount of disrespect for the man who'd loved her so much. Here's a quote from that eulogy, by the way. You see, there's nothing more that we can do for Randy Stone. He'll never have another thought in this body. He'll never be able to sign another policy or kiss his wife. It's real different when you know it's his murderer saying it, doesn't it? It's almost like he's gloating. So, Camper's yet another case where, let's say, mistakes were made. And I really thought their love was eternal. I'm very disappointed that they turned on each other there at the end. God. What a bummer. Yeah, it's sad. So, listen, dispose of those incriminating love letters.

And for God's sake, don't give your alibi down to the nanosecond, because that looks suspic. All righty? So those, as I think you will agree, were wild ones. Right, campers? Oh, this one, just both of them. I mean, they're terrible tragedies, but just the level of dip shittery is, it's impressive is what it is.

It's like they made the wrong choice at every turn. Yeah. It was almost talented the how bad they were at it. Yeah, exactly. Like Tommy, it was the Tommy Wazzo or Ed Wood of murder, or attempted murder in Heather's case. And just two mega-dip shits who really should have reevaluated those best laid plans that they thought so hard about. You know, it's a good thing so many killers are careless or arrogant or clueless or just dumb as a bag of hair. Yep.

So, you know, we're going to have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our new. patrons. Thank you so much to Tilea Cherry Assassin, awesome name, Anunziata, also an awesome name, and Hardbop, so many cool little usernames this time. We appreciate you all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free at least a day early, sometimes more, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while

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