True Crime Campfire - Bad Bitches 2-Pack

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Women, campers. Make no mistake about it—we can be assholes too. And when women kill, we tend to get creative about it. Today’s episode is a two-pack of stories. Stories about women who seemed to have it together—loving husbands, great kids, beautiful homes. But underneath that “Live Laugh Love” exterior, storms were a-brewin’. Jealousy. Resentment. Greed. A lust for freedom. Both of these women sought a quick, elegant solution to their problems. Both women chose murder. This is your Bad Bitches 2-Pack: Double the Trouble.Case 1 - Liar, Liar: The Murder of Michael Giles. A bizarre, twisting story of shifting identities, betrayed loyalties, and murder. Case 2 - In Sickness: The Murder of David Mueller. A disturbing story that shows how the people closest to us can be our deadliest enemies.Sources:Investigation Discovery, "Diabolical," episode "Lie for Me"Oxygen, "Snapped," episode "Kwaneta Harris"Oxygen, "Snapped," episode "Cynthia Mueller"https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/04/15/killer-who-had-lover-buried-in-backyard-tried-to-flee-prison-by-forging-dallas-judge-s-signature/https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2015/05/23/prescott-woman-trial-husband/27847971/https://www.azfamily.com/arizona-co-defendant-in-husband-murder-case-sentenced-to-prison/article_ec25018a-598e-532a-93bc-47efa73df069.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, a free sticker and more!): 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. Women, campers, make no mistake about it. We can be assholes too. And when women kill, we tend to get creative about it. Today's episode, is a two pack of stories. Stories about women who seem to have it together. Loving husbands, great kids, beautiful homes, but underneath that live, laugh, love exterior storms were a ruin. Jealousy, resentment, greed, a lust for freedom. Both of these women sought a quick, elegant solution to their problems. Both women chose murder. This is your bad bitches two pack, double the trouble. Case 1. Liar, Liar, the murder of Michael Giles. So, campers, we're in Garland, Texas, which is about a half-hour's drive from Dallas, a nice, low-crime area.

October 12, 2007. Detective Gary's Sweet was on his way home for the day when his partner stopped him. There were some investigators from the Veterans Affairs office who needed to see them about something. They were investigating a foreclosure on a house, and it was getting a little weird. The owner of the house was a 48-year-old Air Force vet named Michael Giles. The VA had given him the loan to pay for the house, and he'd never paid late, never missed a payment, until about a year earlier in July of 2006, when his payments just suddenly stopped cold. And the thing was, the VA hadn't been able to reach Michael to ask what was up.

He was suddenly just impossible to get a hold of. They had to foreclose on the home, but because this was so out of character, the VA office decided to investigate a little, too. So a couple of investigators went to the house to check it out, and something struck them as off right away. Along one side of the house in the backyard was a seemingly random slab of cement. It was about four feet wide and six or seven feet long. It wasn't attached to anything.

It didn't have any obvious purpose whatsoever. What is this? for ants? Yeah, something like that. It was pretty much suspicious as hell. So the VA folks decided it might be time to involve detectives. And as soon as Detective Sweet and his partner saw the slab, alarm bell started clanging. Sweet's first thought was, that's a grave. So to say the least, this piqued the detective's interest, as it would, right? Mm-hmm. They discovered there was actually a guy living in Michael Giles's house, like leasing it. He'd been there for like five to six months now or so, so the detectives decided to start their investigation by talking to him.

His name was Mr. Austin. Mr. Austin told him he didn't know Michael Giles, never met him. He only knew the name because when he moved into the house, there was a big stack of unclaimed mail in the mailbox with Michael Giles on it. The tenant said he'd originally rented the house from a woman named Quenetta Harris, but a few months after he moved in, he got a shocking note saying Quenetta had been killed in a car accident. The note said that a lady named Treesie Knight was taking over the lease for the house, so he should address his payments to her from now on. Huh. So there was a tenant in the house, making monthly rent payments, first to this Quenetta Harris, then to Tracy Knight, but obviously the VA wasn't seeing any of that money, and they hadn't heard

anything from Michael Giles. So what the hell? So the detectives obviously needed to dig into all this. Who and where was Michael Giles, and who were Quenetta Harris and Tracy Knight? When they spoke to Michael's family, they'd never heard of either of these women. None of them had been in contact with Michael for over a year. His sister told him that the last time anyone in the family had spoken to him was July 4, 2006. Their mom was having a barbecue that day, and they were expecting him to be there, as usual. But Michael had called at the last minute and said he wasn't coming. He was just going to stay home and cook there instead. And this was pretty weird. I mean, he would usually be at family functions, but they just figured, you know, maybe he doesn't feel well, maybe he just doesn't feel like

being social today, whatever, no big deal. But then he dropped off the radar. The detectives knew that this July of the previous year was right around the time when he stopped making his mortgage payments. And on July 19th of that year, 2006, his sister had stopped by his house. When Michael didn't answer the door, she'd peered in through the windows and gotten a shock. All the furniture was gone. And even weirder, there was a sign in the front window that said, for released with Michael's cell phone number. So Michael's sister, whose name is Gwen, was completely astonished. He left him a voicemail like, what the fuck? You moved out of your house? Like, why wouldn't you tell us this? Michael texted her back before long. He said, I'm okay. I just

needed time away. He was a poet, and he didn't even know it. His family knew Michael was in a transitional period in his life. He wasn't in the Air Force anymore. He'd just been laid off. So they thought, all right, you know what? Let's just give him some space. They didn't feel like they had any reason to be suspicious. Michael was a laid-back guy, independent. He was adventurous, too. He'd been all over the world in his 20 years with the Air Force, working on helicopter engines. His siblings all looked up to him. You could see how much they adored him in interviews. Definitely, yeah. They were a close family. Over the past year, they got the occasional text or email from Michael, he said he was traveling, having a good time, figuring out what he wanted

to do with the next phase of his life now that he was out of the Air Force. He was exploring all over the world. His siblings were happy for him. They weren't worried. But now, when they learned that Michael hadn't been making his mortgage payments for over a year, his family was stunned. Michael was the type to pay extra every month so that he could get his house paid off faster, and none of the family had ever heard of Quenetta Harris or Tracy Knight. So the plot thickens, right? The investigators started digging out around a little more, and soon they came up with something interesting. There had been a 911 call about Michael's address that previous July, right around the time Michael went missing. One of the neighbors had noticed that a one of the neighbors had noticed that a

woman and two men were moving furniture out of Michael's house and into a truck at night. It struck her as suspic, so she called 911. But as she was waiting for the police to arrive, she actually went over herself and talked to the woman who seemed to be direct from the movers. And the woman was like, oh, hi, yeah, I'm the new owner of the house, so I'm just selling some of the furniture to these gentlemen. The neighbor had no idea that Michael had sold the house, but this woman was casual, friendly, smiley, not at all nervous or defensive.

And she did a great job of putting Michael's neighbor and the patrol officers who showed up at ease. Everything was fine. Yeah, false alarm, right? So obviously, this was why all the furniture was gone when Michael's family went over to his house on that July 19th. But clearly, Michael had not been the one moving the furniture out. Because if he'd been there, his neighbor wouldn't have felt the need to call the police. Hmm. Even more worrying, a quick records check revealed that Michael had never sold his house, not to this mystery woman or anybody else. Who the hell was she? And who were these two guys

moving the furniture out that night? Well, fortunately for the investigators, the officers who responded had noted the license plate number of the truck. It belonged to a guy named Francisco Vycuna, who worked for a lawn care company. So Francisco willingly came in to talk to the detectives, and he told him that he and his nephew, also named Francisco, interestingly enough, had been loading up after finishing some work in the neighborhood that night when a woman just randomly came up to them and asked if they'd be interested in buying some furniture. She said she was selling it for her godfather who was traveling, and she said, look, everything has to go tonight. And Francisco said, you know, it was really nice furniture, and the lady was

asking practically nothing for it. He got almost every stick of furniture in that house for $300. Just a bonkers good deal. Like, who could turn that down, right? The only thing he hadn't bought was the couch. That had a big red stain on it. The lady said she'd spilled some wine. A lot of wine, by the look of it. It's never wine, y'all, ever.

No, and it's never a mannequin. It's a dead body. Go ahead and call. And once they finished loading up their truck, the woman had said, hey, would you guys be interested in making some quick cash? she said she needed a hold hug in her backyard so Francisco the younger was like yeah I can do that when the woman told him the dimensions she wanted four feet deep and six feet long he joked

he was like oh I wonder whose grave I'm going to be digging now I find that fascinating because it goes to show you right there that our instincts do not lie to us we say that all the time right and our boy Gavin de Becker who we talk about in many episodes the former secret service agent and security expert who wrote the gift of fear, he says that our intuition will often bubble up in a jokey way just like this. It's like, ah, I kind of know something's off here,

but I'm working really hard to convince myself I'm wrong because it's so crazy, right? Mm-hmm. So the vicunias knew on some level what was up, but like we tend to do, they talk themselves out of it. So now we know where that ridiculous slab in the backyard came from, right? Campers, this mystery woman, whoever she may be, hired these guys to do it. and this was interesting too Michael's sister Gwen

told the detectives that in September of 2006 so a few months after Michael dropped off the family's radar and all the furniture disappeared from his house she got a phone call from a woman she didn't know and this lady told her that she'd just gotten back from a cruise and she said Michael and his beautiful bride

had been on the cruise with her and then Michael had dropped his cell phone as they were all disembarking off the boat so she'd picked it up and she wanted Gwen to tell Michael that she was turning the phone into the cruise ship so he could come back and get it anytime. And she was like, Michael and his wife were so nice and I want to make sure he gets his phone back. So Gwen was like, Michael and his beautiful what? What? So her feeling was, okay, so he's gone and gotten married without telling anybody in the family. And I mean, of course she was

completely shocked. But then again, Michael had always been a private guy and especially they hardly ever got to hear about his love life. So it really wasn't that surprising that he would do a thing like this. Annoying, yes, and she was very irritated with him, but not entirely out of character. But now, it was a little over a year later, Michael's straight up missing, not paying his bills, and detectives are at their door. So Michael's family was starting to realize that something sinister was going on. So they filed an official missing person's report, and then that freed up the detectives to start digging into Michael's financial records. And despite the sporadic emails and texts that Michael's family had gotten over the past year or so, telling them all about his travels

all over the world, Michael's money was telling a totally different story. The records showed that one Quenetta Harris was listed on all his accounts, so his checking account, savings account, credit cards, car loan. She'd apparently transferred the title of his car back to her residence in Detroit, Michigan. So this woman is controlling all of his finances. Now, if you think back to a minute or two ago, Quenetta Harris, wasn't that the one that was supposed to have died in a car wreck? That's what the guy who was now leasing Michael's house had been told, right? But apparently, Michael Giles' various accounts had been hemorrhaging money over the past year or so, and it had all been going directly into Quenetta Harris's pocket. So it appeared that Ms. Harris was a live

and well after all. And when they got hold of her driver's license picture in the state database and put it in a photo lineup for the Vicunias, Francisco, and Francisco, they picked her out right away as the woman who'd sold them the furniture and hired them to dig the hole. So who the hell was this woman? Michael's family had no idea. So the detectives needed to talk to this woman, ASAP. And the other thing they needed to do as soon as possible was excavate that suspicious as hell concrete slab in Michael's backyard. So they got a warrant for that, and the CSIs got to work. Meanwhile, Detective Sweet flew up to Detroit to try and find Quenetta Harris. His partner stayed behind and drew up an arrest warrant for Quenetta, just in case. If they found Michael's body, a judge could sign it and Detective

Sweet could arrest her up in Detroit. Michael's family went out to watch the CSI's work, which I can't even... I know, isn't that sad? Gwen says she wanted so much for them not to find anything, but she knew they would. She knew in her bones that her brother's body was under that slab. As the excavation began, Sweet landed in Detroit and found Quenetta Harris's house, and as he sat in his rental car, staking it out, waiting for the go-ahead from Texas to grab her up. Quenetta suddenly came strolling out the front door.

So, of course, this was a, oh, shit, moment for Detective Sweet. I bet. Does he let her go and possibly lose her? Could she have gotten tipped off that they were excavating at Michael's property? Might she be about to bolt? There was no word from the CSI team, so Detective Sweet decided to finesse it. he just walked right on up to quenetta all smiles and gave her the old southern charm no big deal but we're looking into this missing person's case and she just seemed shocked and appalled

that michael was missing oh no michael's missing he's one of my best friends and blah blah blah yeah quenna acted just as you'd expect someone to act if they had just been told that one of their best friends was missing she seemed deeply concerned and as the Detective Sweet continued to explain the situation, basically trying to stall to give the CSIs back in Texas more time to find Michael's body under that slab. Detective Sweet's partner called, and with Quenetta standing there, waiting politely for him to finish his conversation, Sweet Heard, we got a body, grab her up. The CSIs had found Michael Giles, curled into a fetal position, wrapped in a blanket under four feet of dirt and concrete. Right there, in the backyard of the house, he'd been so proud to buy. Oh, man.

He'd been shot in the head at point-blank range with a nine-millimeter. By now, Sweet had built something of a friendly rapport with Quenetta, so instead of telling her to turn around and put her hands behind her back, he continued the finesse approach by asking her if she'd be willing to come down to the station and talk a little more. Now, this might be the Yankee and me, But this is why I don't trust that Southern Charm. I always think there's something more going on behind the scenes.

That could also be because I watched too much Dallas on late-night TV as a kid. But in my head, you're being sweet-talked by some sweet soccer mom one moment. And the next thing you know, you're in an interrogation room. Yeah, you definitely should not trust Southern Charm. Certainly not mine. It's a weapon. It's a weapon. So Quenetta balked it going down to the station.

Very clearly did not like that idea. But when Sweet said, hey, look, if you come down, we'll have a short conversation, and then we won't have to bother you ever again. And that did it. She liked that idea. So she agreed to come down. And despite his suspicions, Detective Sweet noticed that Quenetta seemed very open. She said she'd met Michael Giles in England,

where Michael was her ex-husband's superior officer in the Air Force. And after her marriage fell apart, Michael had let her and her son stay with him for a few months. They dated a little bit off and on, but their relationship ended when she moved back to Detroit in 1996 to go to nursing school. And after that, Quenetta drifted a bit. She finished nursing school, became an RN. She dated various men. She added a daughter to her family in 2001, but none of those relationships stuck. And in 2002, she realized that she wasn't where she wanted to be in her life and wanted a fresh start. She felt like she hadn't had a chance to be a free young woman since she had had children so young.

So it was around that time when she reached back out to Michael. The way a lot of us tend to do when we're in between things, you know, we'll do that sometimes a good idea, sometimes really not a good idea, call or text to the X, right? Sometimes it works out great, sometimes not so much. By then, Michael was out of the Air Force. He was working for Southwestern Bell in Dallas. He was working on his master's degree. He was getting a pension from the military, making a really good salary on top of it. So Michael was living well.

He took out that VA loan and bought a nice four-bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood in Garland. He was dating a little bit, but he felt like a lot of the women he met were more interested in his money than they were in him. But then, Quenetta came back into his life, and it didn't take long for them to rekindle their romance. Michael would pay for her to come down to Dallas, put her up in a hotel room, whiner and diner, the whole nine yards. Yeah, and they texted even when she wasn't in Dallas. And the prosecutor on this case, or one of them, a guy named Josh Healy, could barely contain his glee when he talked about their racy texts. Gross, Josh. Yeah, well, I imagine it's been a while for Josh or something.

Bless his heart. So, anywho, they were dating again. But it wasn't an exclusive relationship or anything. It was long distance. And Quenetta also had a boyfriend in Detroit, a guy named D'Andre Knight that she'd been to high school with. So Quenetta said they'd had a long-distance relationship. She and Michael for about five years, and she had a ready explanation for why she had access to Michael's money. She told them her youngest daughter was Michael's. Now this is unverified,

so we don't know if this is true. And she said Michael had put her on his accounts as child support so she could take what she needed. So Sweet's listening to all this and he thinks, you know, these are fairly believable answers. Like you could see perhaps a man doing that if he had fathered a child, you know, giving the mother of his child access to his bank accounts or whatever. But then there was that whole pesky thing where, you know, his body had just been discovered in a hole in his backyard, a hole that she had hired two guys to dig. So, when he dropped that bombshell on her that they had found him, Quenetta first loudly denied involvement. She didn't kill anybody. She didn't hire anybody to dig any holes. No, no, no. And then

she lawyered up. But because they'd already done the preliminary work on the arrest warrant in Texas, Sweet went ahead and arrested Quenetta for first-degree murder. At first glance, she seemed like an unlikely killer. She was pretty, she was smart, she was well-educated. She came from a nice middle-class family, but one thing true crime teaches as campers is you can never tell. Sure can't. The investigators also had a warrant to search Quenetta's house in Detroit. They found Michael's credit card checkbook, and social security card. They found his cell phone. Which I assume means that she must have actually gone back and gotten that phone from the cruise ship.

Yeah. Like, I bet the guy she was with who the lady thought was Michael was her boyfriend D'Andre Knight, don't you bet? Oh, I sure do. Yeah. They also found Michael's computer and a little notebook full of all his login info for his various accounts. The computer was full of little gems. specifically Google searches for stuff like

how to bury a body how to get away with murder how to clean blood off of a couch smart yeah yeah smart quinetti make sure you always use your home computer for those kinds of searches they'll never look there they'll never think to check that

okay don't murder anybody but just put on a hood put on some sunglasses and go to the fucking library. It's not hard. Don't use your home computer for God's sake. God. And the computer showed that, all told, Quenada had taken over $200,000 from Michael's accounts. Yikes.

Apparently, Quenetta had done most of her conning on the phone or via email, convincing banks and other financial institutions to add her to his accounts. but as they continued to dig into the case, the detectives made a disturbing discovery. One bank had demanded an in-person visit from Michael because the form had to be signed with a bank employee as a witness. This campers was after Michael Giles had gone missing. So Quenetta told the bank, fine, okay, I can do that, but Michael's been having some serious health problems, so he can't come in. Can you bring the form to us? The bank agreed, and they sent an associate to visit Quenetta's house in Detroit.

She ushered the banker into the living room where the man she introduced as Michael Giles lay in a hospital bed. The room was darkened, and he was all bundled up in blankets with some bandages on his face. He seemed to be in a bad way. And Quenetta was like, oh, he's not feeling well today. Let's make this quick. So, of course, the bankrupt wanted to be polite and compassionate, and he handed Michael the papers to sign. Campers, at this point, we know Michael was already buried under that concrete slab back in Texas. So just who the hell was this guy?

Remember Quenetta's boyfriend, D'Andre Knight? The detectives did. And they figured it was time to have a chat with him. So Detective Sweet brought him in for an interview. And D'Andre broke like a skyscraper and a Michael Bay movie. He said he pulled all sorts of cons with Quenetta in the past, so he had no hesitation to do this one with her, too. But he swore he didn't know she'd killed Michael.

He just thought it was a straight-up identity theft. Do we believe him? Eh, I don't know. I don't know. It's hard. Yeah, whatever. So as prosecutors were putting the finishing touches on this case, Quenetta got out in bail. The prosecutors were supremely confident that they got their woman. It was circumstantial, but it doesn't get much stronger than what they had.

And they were just a few months from trial when the Garland Police Department's hotline started getting lit up with calls telling them that they had the wrong person. They ought to be looking at the vicunias. not Quinetta Harris. Now the Vicunias, if you recall, were the ones that she sold Michael's furniture to and the ones that she hired to dig Michael's grave. Somebody was really determined to get the detectives looking at them. And then on April 24, 2008, the judge who was scheduled to preside over Quenetta's trial was in the middle of a different case when a young woman just barged into the courtroom and kept trying to get the bailiff to let her talk to the judge. So first of all, rude, wait your turn, unless the flipping buildings on fire, geez.

So the judge asked her, like, what the hell she wanted? And she said, do you know Quintetta Harris? And the judge was like, yes, I do. And the young woman blurted out, well, you have the wrong person. She didn't kill that man. I did. So, whoa, right? Awkward.

Everybody was just stunned. I mean, it was like some law and order shit or something, like from a TV show. It was like, tongue, tongue. So, of course, they whisked this young woman away for questioning. She said her name was Erica Flores, she was 19 years old. Detective Sweet described her as very, very quiet and very, very meek, definitely not coming across as a cold-blooded killer. And in her soft little voice, Erica told them that on the night of Michael's murder, she and

the two vicunias, Francisco and Francisco, were out looking to rob someone. She said they went to a shopping center and they were kind of scanning around looking for a target, and they had zeroed in on who turned out to be Michael Giles as he was getting into his car. She said they followed him home. They waited until he was at his front door with his grocery bags, and they just pushed their way in. Now, that's just bad robbery technique, my dudes. Right? Like, you don't want the homeowner there when you rob the house. Ideally, no. No, that's what they call a robbery gone bad. Yeah. I don't know how they go good, but I guess they're good if nobody dies.

Yeah. So she said she'd shot and killed the man who turned out to be Michael Giles in the heat of the moment. And the detectives are sitting there thinking, as he was lying down on the couch, because Michael's autopsy had showed that that was how he'd been killed. They'd even found a sofa cushion with a bullet hole through it thrown into the grave alongside him. So the theory was that he had actually been probably asleep on the couch when he was killed. So Detective Sweet didn't really believe her story. His first impression of her was that she couldn't have.

to fly, but the thing was, Erica knew exactly what the murder weapon was. She knew it was a nine millimeter. She knew the circumstances of the murder. She knew details of the crime scene. She had a lot of information, in other words, that only the killer would have. But when they pushed her for details about the men that she was allegedly with, that was where Erica slipped up. She got their ages and descriptions wrong, like drastically, drastically wrong. And that did it for Sweet, who just told her he flat out didn't believe her. And Erica was quiet for a minute, and

then she kind of hung her head and looked kind of defeated and admitted that, all right, okay, she'd been lying. She said, someone paid me to come in and tell you all this story. Do what? Yeah. I'm sorry, what?

You got to emphasize the at the beginning of that what. What? What? So apparently, Finally, Erica had been looking for work, and she applied online for a job as a private investigator. Her first red flag probably should have been that the listing said, no experience needed, but whatever. We've all been 19.

Yeah, we've all been 19. Oh, Erica, honey. I mean, it sounds like a dope job, but whatever, I digress. Shortly after she submitted her application, she got a call from a lady with a thick Jamaican accent, asking her to come in for an interview in a college library. Oh, in a library. Yeah, that sounds legit. I'm sure all the best PI firms hold interviews in the stacks. Why not, right?

Now, the Jamaican lady told Erica that she was on a special assignment for the Texas Attorney General trying to suss out racism in the Dallas prosecutor's office. They wanted to see if the Dallas DA treated black defendants differently than white defendants. Okay, that's a worthwhile thing to investigate. I mean, spoiler alert, the answer is yes, obviously, but, you know, good to get that on paper. Yeah, yeah, just check it off. Check it off your list. Right. The woman gave Erica a script, including details of Michael Giles's murder. She told her, it'll be better if you cry when you make your confession. Oh my God. Oh, my God. She told her, don't worry. None of this is real.

You'll only be in jail for a few days and then we'll come get you out. Oh, is that all? Yeah, By the way, if this were me, because every job interview was a negotiation, I'd say, excuse me no, a few days? Please come get me immediately. I'm going to pass on the strip search portion of the job. Thank you. No. But she was offered $1,200 for a job that was supposed to take a week.

Which is a lot when you're 19. Yeah. Yeah. So holy shitballs, right? I mean, if this ain't the ballziest move, I've ever seen somebody make to try and get out of a murder wrap, Good grave. He's just astonishing. And so the detectives, who I'm sure, were just knocked flat by this entire thing, showed Erica a photo lineup and asked her if she recognized the woman who hired her. And of course, it didn't take her long to pick out Quenetta.

She'd been wearing a wig, but it was her. And I got to say, the Jamaican accent, nice touch, Quenetta, I got to give you that. That was a nice touch. So, unsurprisingly, this little stunt got Quenetta's. bail revoked, thank God, because God knows what else she would get up to while she was out free. And as usual, bless her heart, Ms. Quenetta

apparently had decided that the evidence of her crime had sentimental value or something. So when the detective searched her apartment, they found a copy of the script that she'd given Erica. They found the Crime Stopper's phone number written down and a list of all of the tips that the Garland PD

had been receiving about the Vicunias. So, nice try, darling. Good ideas. Very very poor execution of those ideas. I'm just waiting for the day that one of these dumbasses just straight up makes a scrapbook of the evidence of the crime and committed. Actually, I know of a case where somebody did do this. Of course you do. Of course you do.

Because all I'm saying, and I'm sure you agree now that you know a case, is that if you're going to leave evidence lying around, the least you can do is spruce it up with some washy tape and edge scissors. Maybe some glitter. Some kind of bedazzling. Yeah, because if you use glitter, you're immediately a monster because that shit never comes out. Yeah, exactly. So on October 6, 2009, the trial began.

The prosecution, like I said, was confident in their case. But they were slightly concerned that they were never able to find the murder weapon or any blood evidence, anything to really link Quinetta to the crime. The defense acknowledged that Quenetta was guilty of stealing and fraud. but insisted that the state couldn't prove that she'd murdered Michael beyond a reasonable doubt. They even offered an alternative suspect, D'Andre Knight. There was a tainty problem with that, though. D'Andre had an alibi for Michael's murder. Oh, darn.

Yeah, he was working that entire weekend. Yeah, well, shoot. So Quenetta's defense team saw the writing on the wall. They asked the DA's office if they could consider offering a deal if she would plead guilty immediately. So the DA's office said, you know, sure, because they like a sure thing, right? And they gave her a 50-year sentence with the possibility of parole in 233. So for Quenetta, better than life without parole, I guess. But typically, inmates in Texas serve 80% of their sentence before they're released. So Quenetta must have

realized that she was going away for a good long time. And just in case you didn't think this story could get any weirder? In September of 2015, the Texas Department of Corrections received a court order signed by a judge regarding the case of Ms. Quenetta Harris. The order reduced her sentence from 50 years to just eight, qualifying her for immediate release.

Wow, right? What was that judge thinking? Well, the problem with that is that it was a forgery. Campers, this woman somehow got her greasy little hands on the correct form and forged a judge's signature. And y'all,

it almost worked. Like, close. God, this was so dumb. This whole thing. It really was very dumb. But damn, it almost worked, though. Yeah. Yeah. I think, like, what would give me pause is that 50 to 8. 50 to 8. Yeah. Like, it's like the kid who changes the D on their report card to an A. No, dumbass. Change it to a B or a C, not an A. It's too much. You're going to get caught. You flew too close to the sun, Katie. This is, that is the story of Quenada Harris. It is.

It is. Because she just got too greedy, too brave. If she had just kept making payments on Michael's house, it would have taken forever for anyone to notice he was missing. Yeah, that's true. This, like, his family would have believed, hey, I decided I'm going to live in England. It's very possible because, I mean, obviously she was contacting them with his cell phone, his email and everything.

So she could have at least drug it out. for a good long while. Too greedy. Yeah, she got greedy. She didn't want to have to make those house payments. Like, this woman is just bananas. She's crazy like a fox. She's very cunning and I think very arrogant as well.

And that's a common theme in cases like this where the person that's doing these elaborate cons and, you know, they often end in murder. They're the smartest person in the room. She reminds me a lot of Tracy Richter, actually. Oh, yes. If you guys remember Tracy Richter. So, clever plans, or at least audacious ones, but poor execution seems to be Quenetta's fatal flaw. But something tells me, we have not seen the last of her, and I feel the same way about Tracy Richter, like I said in that episode.

Yeah. Because a mind like that does not stop ticking over. So I'm sure she's got something else in the works, and we can only hope that whatever her new little diabolical plan is, it's going to fail just as spectacularly as the last one did, right? and I feel horrible for Michael and I mean it sounds like he was just an amazing person his family miss him so much and he did not deserve this bullshit so shame on you, Quenetta, you dumb bitch

Okay, campers, moving on now to case two, in sickness, the murder of David Mueller. So, we're in Prescott, Arizona, November 16th, 2012. It was a little over a week before things. Thanksgiving, when the Prescott non-emergency call center received a call from a 19-year-old in-home health care worker named Angel Batrez. Angel told them that his patient, 52-year-old David Mueller, seemed to have passed away in his sleep. Side note, by the way, Angel referred to his patient as an elderly man, and I would like to just take a moment to say that that is some bullish, thank you very much, because this man was 52 for God's sake, Angel.

jeez i know you're 19 but 52 just a little tip is not elderly sir yeah he's basically an ancient decrepit corpse basically the cryptkeeper at 52 so i don't know what you're talking about yes apparently you're the cryptkeeper so i'm well on my way to being the cryptkeeper so angel was calm he said mr miller had a ls which is lu gerrigg's disease and i don't know how familiar y'all are with ALS, but it's, you know, a really terrible illness, and there is no known cure at the moment. It's the disease that the ice bucket challenge was in aid of a few years ago. So, police came out to the scene, as they generally do when someone dies, and that doesn't mean they think anything fishy is going on. It just means that they have to make sure everything

is on the up and up, which, you know, I think is good and makes sense. Most of the time, that's completely routine. So the dead man, David Mueller, had a gorgeous house in an upscale neighborhood Prescott is an upscale town in general. He lived there with his wife Cynthia, their kids, and a family friend named Chuck Todd, who had moved in to take care of David at night when his daytime health care workers, Angel and Juan, went home. People with ALS typically need help with just about everything because it causes progressive muscle weakness. So David and Cynthia had set it up for David to have around-the-clock care. So anywho, when the police got there, they found David Mueller in bed, cold to the touch and not breathing,

and it was clear right away that he'd been dead a while and couldn't be resuscitated. David's wife was sitting on the floor by his bed and she was a mess. She was completely inconsolable, just sobbing like that hard kind of sobbing when you just can't get a hold of it. Chuck Todd, the family friend slash caregiver, was trying to comfort her. Her name was Cynthia, but not having much luck. She seemed totally devastated, just completely broken at the loss of her husband, as, you know, most of us would be. So checking out the scene, police noted that David seemed clean, well cared for, there were no obvious signs of neglect, there were no signs of trauma, there was no sign of an injury, there was no blood, no signs of a struggle. They could see lividity on the body, and that's when the blood pools after death and turns the skin kind of a purpley red color, and the forensic folks can use that to tell if a body's been moved after death.

And in David's case, the lividity was fixed, so that means his body hadn't been moved. So, you know, nothing to set off the alarm bells in, you know, their minds at all. Everything seemed to be in order. This guy was terminally ill. It looked like a natural death. His caregiver, Angel Batrez, told them he'd gone into check on David a little while earlier and found him unresponsive and cold. So the police figured, okay, this is an easy one. Sad, but easy.

They called David Mueller's doctor to ask him to sign off on David's death certificate. but then they got a little bit of a surprise. David's doctor seemed completely stunned that David had died. He was sick, this is true. I mean, he did have ALS, but it had been under control, and David's doctor hadn't expected him to pass away from it any time soon. So David's doctor actually refused to sign off on the death certificate. He wanted more investigation first.

So they weren't expecting that. This meant that they now had to call in detectives, and an investigation would have to happen after all. So a little bit of a curveball. So one of the officers left the room to call in detectives as David's wife, Cynthia, lay on the floor at the foot of his bed and just sobbed. Very sad. So let's put a pin in that for just a minute, though, and talk a little bit about Cynthia and David. Yeah, so Cynthia Mueller grew up in a military family moving around from place to place.

Moving around a lot in childhood tends to teach people how to make friends quickly. But often these aren't very deep friendships. They don't have time to be. Yeah. This can be a valuable skill to learn to be a social butterfly, like I was. But for some people, it can teach them to view people as easily replaceable. Yeah, and obviously we're not saying that, you know, if you moved around a lot as a kid, you're a bad friend or you view people as expendable. Of course not.

Most people wouldn't. But for the wrong kind of personality, it can make the kinds of problems that they're already likely to have. relating to other people a little bit worse because they just don't have time like you said to form close bonds with people when she graduated high school cynthia got a degree in public programming from arizona state university she really blossomed in college she was independent driven ambitious and super outgoing and charming people loved being around her and she seemed to feed off being around people very extroverted she was a bombshell too blonde tall, leggy. By the way, that word makes me think of spiders, but whatever, she had human

legs. Good to know. Yeah, and they were nice ones. She had a big, bright smile. After college, she got her career going and had a succession of relationships with different guys. None of them lasted super long. But then, in 1999, when Cynthia was 35, she started to work at Arizona Public Service electric. And it was at APS that she met David. He was working as an engineer and he caught her eye right away. David was good looking and very smart, a natural-born engineer. They quickly became friends and Cynthia developed a crush on David. He wasn't super interested in her at first. She kind of had to pursue him pretty hard. And that was a new thing for Cynthia. She was used to having men fall all over her. She never had to try hard to land one, and I suspect that made David significantly more attractive to her than he might have otherwise been.

I guarantee it. I guarantee it. If you've never had to try hard to win somebody and you're used to just people throwing themselves at you all the time and then somebody seems disinterested, it's like, well, I would imagine. I mean, I'm certainly not in that position myself. I've been rejected plenty, but I would imagine that that would be like a blow to the ego and would probably make somebody like Cynthia obsessed with. well, I'm going to get you to want me no matter what. Yeah, she kind of saw him as a challenge. Exactly, yeah.

And Cynthia was always determined to rise to any challenge. But eventually, he agreed to a date. And after that, it was all over for David. He fell for her hard. This was a wild development for David. He was one of those people who sort of lived a life of the mind. He was really smart, and he could, kind of lived in his own head. He loved talking shop with other engineers and technical-minded

people, but according to his brother, he wasn't a social guy. He dated a little bit, but not really seriously. He was 38, and his friends and family had begun to think he'd probably never marry or have a family. He thought so, too, until he met Cynthia. Now, the future was opening up for David in ways he'd never planned. Now, APS had a hard rule against employee fraternization. I know for Pete's sake. I know. And they've both gotten massive trouble when their relationship came to light.

David got demoted and Cynthia got fired. Guys, so stupid. You cannot put people together all day, every day, working together and not expect, like, some of them might occasionally start to like each other and want to date. I mean, what? I just don't get that. I've never understood those policies. It seems like that kind of mindset fell to the wayside in the 90s.

Yeah, I hope so because it's stupid. Now, as far as I know with the jobs I've had, as long as you're not in a direct line of leadership with that person, like they're not like your boss or whatever. Yeah, I can understand if it's your boss. Like that I get because then there's a power differential. You know, that's why like even if the student is 18, a high school teacher cannot date a student because the power differential is off. But, you know, it's otherwise, like, why the hell not? Where are you supposed to meet people? The club, Whitney.

The club. Yeah, I'm going to take a pass on that. Thanks. But despite the troubles at work, within a few months of their first date, David proposed to Cynthia and she said yes. You guys, you know where this is going to go. Yeah, you know where we're going. What was the rush, for God's sakes? I don't know. You can wait to get married, you know. Very few people.

are out there clutching their pearls at the idea of people living in sin anymore, just hang out, save some money. Don't jump headlong into a relationship that will tie you together financially with someone who doesn't know your deepest darkest secrets. Not just financially, but you know, it's like you knit your entire life together. I always say like, don't do anything you can't easily undo until you're past that honeymoon face. And I want to say, we've heard from some of you who are exceptions to this rule. We know, of course, there are exceptions. And God bless you, we're glad that you found love and that you found it quickly. But I think that even you guys will probably agree that most of the time, you probably shouldn't marry somebody you just met. If it works out,

awesome. But you guys are the exception, not the wrong. Yeah, we know. We know you're out there. We get it. Of course. But we're not talking about your relationship. We're talking about, you're all for your relationship. We're talking about David and Cynthia right now. We're talking about David and Cynthia. Exactly. And we're going to see how that worked out. Exactly. Anyway, David immediately said about looking for a new job because he rightly thought it was a bunch of bullshit to get demoted for falling in love with a co-worker. Damn right. He found a new, better-paying job quickly, which, ha-ha, APS.

Ha-ha! And it paid so well that he and Cynthia decided she could stop working and focus on planning their wedding, keeping their house and eventually being a stay-at-home mom to any kids they might have. Within six months of that first date, David and Cynthia were married. Their first child, a daughter, was born not long after. And soon, they bought their gorgeous dream house and Prescott. In addition to making a lot of money, David was a smart financial planner, so they didn't have to worry about money. They had pretty much everything they wanted.

It was a pretty sweet life. and five years after their daughter was born, they added a son to the mix. They were that true crime trope, the family that had everything. They were active in their church, lived in a beautiful home, two great kids. Cynthia was a devoted mom, David, the provider, and on and on and on. The American Dream and all its glory. And then, in 2009, 10 years after David and Cynthia first met, David started having weird symptoms.

Muscle weakness, clumsiness, stumbling around, numbness in his arms and legs. His hands wouldn't work sometimes. They went to the doctor and got a battery of tests and the diagnosis totally came out of left field. Early ALS. Luke Garrick's disease. Oh my God, it's horrible. This was a serious neurological illness that causes muscle degeneration. It's what Stephen Hawking had.

And eventually it becomes debilitating. And as of now, there's no cure. Man, so awful. Needless to say, this was devastating. Here's a man in the prime of his life, and he's hit with a terminal debilitating illness. One in which your mind remains alert and alive, but your body starts betraying you in all kinds of horrible ways.

I can't even imagine. I really can't. I can't imagine. ALS is progressive. and in David's case, it moved fast. Within a year, he was wheelchair-bound, and he couldn't work. Cynthia had to give up her stay-at-home mom status to pick up the financial slack. She got her realtor's license and started selling houses. And she was really good at it.

It didn't take long for her to get the family back up to speed money-wise, so that was good. But there were also two kids to take care of, and David was needing more and more care, too. It was a lot. so in 2012 she decided to hire some help first she got a nanny for the kids a young woman called Natalie then David hired Angel Betrez as his in-home caregiver David met Angel while he was spending some time in a caregiving facility called Granite Gate they developed a bit of a friendship while David was there

they liked talking about life the universe and everything and when David left Granite Gate he asked Angel to come with him. And then that fall of 2012, Cynthia told David that her father had offered to send them some more help. Her dad was good friends with a 61-year-old guy named Chuck Todd. He was a fellow vet. Somebody Cynthia's dad trusted a lot, and he had recently been through a divorce and was looking for a new start. Chuck also had some health issues, so made it better for him to live in a hot, dry climate. So he was looking to move to Arizona. Chuck was offering to take care of David at night for free in exchange for room and board. So it was pretty good.

much a perfect setup, right? Somebody that you know you can trust because they're a friend of the family and, you know, they don't really want any pay. They just want to live there and they had this huge house. They had a finished basement, in fact, that was like a separate apartment. So it was just perfect. So Chuck agreed to move in. And according to Angel Betrez, he swept in just like Santa Claus. He drove up in a hot little convertible and handed out presents to everybody in the house, you know, so it was just like Santa Claus showing up. So the deal was that Angel would be David's primary caregiver during the day. and then Chuck would look after him at night. Angel and David had become really good friends by this point, despite the age difference between them. Angel really looked up to David, thought he was brilliant. They talked just about all kinds of stuff, like philosophy and religion and politics and stuff. And Angel really enjoyed helping him out. He just thought he was a great man. And then came November 12th when Angel found him cold and unresponsive.

So as we said earlier, Cynthia was inconsolable when the police got to. there that day. She was on the floor. She was sobbing with Chuck trying to comfort her. And at one point, Angel and Chuck actually had to hold Cynthia back because she kept trying to get to David's body, like throw herself on to him. It was a really, really just heartbreaking and awful to watch. And when the detectives got there and tried to talk to her, she was so upset that she was just pretty much unintelligible. So they really quickly realized, like, we're not getting anything out of this poor woman today. So instead they, you know, they let her go and grieve. And then they decided to focus.

on the other two people who had been in the house that day. So we have Angel Betrez, the full-time day caregiver, and then Chuck Todd, who described himself to the investigators as a long-time family friend and a caregiver of sorts. Since Angel was the one to find David's body, they started with him. Angel told him he'd gone into check on David around 11 that morning because he was a little bit concerned. David normally woke up around 9.30 or 10, and, you know, he hadn't woke up yet. He hadn't called for help or anything. So Angel just wanted to make sure he was okay and he'd found him dead and angel just completely seemed shell-shocked by this he was really sad i mean this was a friend it wasn't just a patient and a client so he was really sad yeah

it was you can tell i mean i've seen him do an interview about this and he really seems lost still about it just really sad cynthia david's wife she wasn't home at the time she was out running errands and dropping the nanny off at college so when chuck called her to tell her to come home she tried to get him to tell her what was going on over the phone, but all he would tell her is she needed to get home right away, which is just pretty much my idea of an anxiety nightmare. Like, I can understand the motivation for doing that because you don't want somebody to, like, run off the road or something, but at the same time, like, holy shit, don't just tell me you need to come home right away. You got to tell me something. Right. Because I'll be in more danger from speeding

over there, probably, you know, just come get me or something. Anyway, so when Cynthia had gotten home and Angel and Chuck had shown her David's body she flipped out she ran over to him she started beating on his chest and screaming wake up wake up and Angel and Chuck had to like physically pull her away oh my god yeah and then she just fell on the floor and cried which is where the police had found her when they got there so she completely flipped out so the conversation with Angel and Chuck didn't raise any red flags for the detectives and they had confirmation of David's terminal illness. So they made the determination that they didn't need an autopsy. This was a natural death, most likely. They turned David's body over to his family. And David had expressed a wish

that his body be donated to a medical research facility after he died, because ALS is a pretty rare disease, thank God. So he was thinking, you know, maybe they can learn something for, you know, hopefully the pursuit of a cure. Yeah. Which was a really cool thing to do. So on November 16th, His body was transported to a facility in Phoenix, and his family began the process of mourning his death. David would never see his kids grow up. It was just tremendously sad. Not a huge surprise to his family, given the ALS, but horrible, obviously. His brother said it took him way too young, but, you know, bad things do happen to good people.

And that's true. And whatever doubts David's doctor might have had, it all seemed pretty cut and dried. But then the story got a whole lot weirder real quick. So buckle up for this cameras. On the morning of November 24th, so this is a little over week after David's death, a 911 call center in Henderson, Nevada, a couple hundred miles from Prescott, Arizona, got a call from a terrified, hysterical-sounding woman. She was like, I'm being stalked and harassed by a crazy man.

And the 911 dispatcher could tell that the woman was driving like she could hear the car noises, and she said the man was in his own car following her and pulling up beside her car. So they're like in an active car chase. So the dispatcher heard the woman and her stalker like yelling at each other a couple of times as the woman would slow down and the man would pull up next to her. She was trying to lose him and he kept just following her at every turn. She was yelling, leave me alone, stop following me and blah, blah, blah. So really dramatic stuff, like something out of a movie.

And eventually the woman gave her name. Cynthia Mueller. She also gave the name of the man following her. His name was Chuck Todd. It was a dangerous, volatile situation. I mean, Cynthia had her two kids in the car. She and Chuck Todd were both driving way, way above the speed limit. Chuck kept trying to run her off the road.

I mean, he was completely, like, lost his mind. And finally, still on the phone with 911 and keeping them kind of apprised of everything that's unfolding, Cynthia was finally able to pull off the road into a gas station parking lot. And she, like, grabbed her kids, ran inside. She told the clerk a crazy person was trying to kill her. And Chuck Todd had actually pulled into the parking lot behind her, which is terrifying. But before he could do anything else, the Henderson, Nevada police showed up and arrested him.

So that was a quick response. Thank God. They hauled him in for questioning. And holy shit, did it not go the way they were expecting it to? Let's just put it that way. It was a little bit strange. An hour later, the Prescott, Arizona detectives who had been called in on the David Mueller death, got a call from the Henderson police. Chuck Todd had been telling a very interesting little story.

The Henderson police had asked Chuck what brought Cynthia and her kids to Henderson, you know, and Chuck had said, well, you know, she thought it was a good way to help the kids deal with their dad's death, like a little holiday, a change of scene. She, you know, brought the kids up to visit him. And Chuck was staying at an RV park in Henderson by then, and, you know, he'd invited him up there. They could take the kids to a water park and go sightseeing, et cetera, et cetera. And Chuck said that he and Cynthia had gotten into an argument during their visit, and Cynthia had just packed up and taken the kids and left. And he said, look, I wasn't following her at all. I was just out running errands, and she just happened to see me, and she saw my car, and she just freaked out and made all kinds of stupid assumptions.

She just blew the whole thing out of proportion the way women tended to do. do. Am I right? Guys, right? Women, right? Women always be overreacting. Oh, don't you know it. Bitches, man. So the cops kept asking questions. They weren't really buying it. And Chuck was getting more and more annoyed that they weren't taking him at his word. And finally, he just blurted out, okay, okay, you want to know what's really going on? I'll tell you. She and I just committed a murder in Prescott. Okay, what the hell? So that was a little bit of a bombshell. And the police, just sitting there totally stunned knew right away that they either

had a complete lunatic in custody or that they had just stumbled upon something really big and they weren't sure which. So the first thing that they did of course was call the Prescott detectives in Arizona and tell them about this. And the first thing that the Prescott detectives

did after getting that banana pants phone call was to frantically try to hunt down David Mueller's body. And the feeling immediately was like shit, shit, we didn't do an autopsy. Oh, my God, my God, what are we going to do? And they called David's doctor, who I'm sure wanted to say, I fucking told you hosebags, for God's sake.

Oh, God. But who, in fact, just was really cool about it and very helpfully told them which medical research facility David's body had been donated to and the cops hauled ass over there. I'm sure it was like lights and sirens and they were like sweating bullets the entire time. And they got David's body just in the nick of time. It turned out he had a condition that made his body unusable for research. So he had been scheduled for cremation that day.

Oh, that day, y'all, that day. I mean, they, like, slipped it in right under the wire. That dude would have been cremated, and this would never have been able to be resolved. Few. They got him back in the nick of time. The detectives scrambled around to get the body transported back to the medical examiner's office and get Chuck Todd extradited back to Arizona. The big question, of course, was this.

Was Chuck telling the truth? Did he and Cynthia work together to kill David Mueller? Or was he lying to cover up some hidden motive of his own? To try and figure this out, detectives came up with a sting operation of sorts. They had a detective call Cynthia at home and pretend to be a tech from the medical research facility that got David's body. The undercover officer told her that when he was working on David's body to determine its usefulness for research, he'd realize that something didn't seem right and that David hadn't died from his ALS. It looked like he may have been asphyxiated, murdered by you, I assume.

This is so clever. I love this idea for the sting. I know. The research tech was crooked. As crooked as a Halloween witch's nose, though. And he offered Cynthia a deal. If you give me some hush money, we can forget about this whole thing. If not, I'm a half to call the police and tell them what I discovered. That's so funny. Specifically what he said, in part, was this. I'm in charge of the dissemination of the body parts, organs and tissue.

And I was doing the preliminary checks on your late husband and some of the stuff's just not adding up. Later, he said, you need to do something for me in return. We can have this whole thing cleared up tonight. Good fake out, right? It really is. But unfortunately for the Prescott PD, Cynthia was either innocent or cleverer than the average killer. Because she played confused and innocent on the phone,

she said, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Why would I admit to something I didn't do? Murder, what? What's a murder? Exfixie, what? I have no idea. Yeah. So damn it, it didn't work.

Nope, it didn't. Soon after, though, detectives got a warrant to search Cynthia's house. And interestingly, the second they hit her doorstep, she told them about this really weird phone call. This was the sting call, of course. Was Cynthia trying to beat the detectives at their own game? Cool as ice and keeping her poker face intact? Or was she innocent? They brought her down to the station for an interview, and they told her,

Look, Cynthia, we got a phone call from the police in Phoenix where this medical research facility is. That place? Biological Services, contacted them and let them know that David's death wasn't natural. It looks like he was murdered. Do you know something about that? After brief silence, Cynthia said, okay, here's what I think happened. She just launched right into it, didn't she? She didn't even try to say, I don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah, and talk she did. about Chuck Todd? According to Cynthia,

she'd met Chuck at the same RV park in Nevada, quite a while before Chuck moved in to take care of David. Chuck was married when he and Cynthia met, 13 years older than Cynthia, a retired Marine. She thought he was nice, but she claimed she hadn't given him much thought over the next several months until her dad suggested he move in

and help her take care of David. But once he moved in, Cynthia claimed Chuck Chuck started showing a clear romantic interest in her. She sounded grossed out by the idea. She said, in a voice like someone who just swallowed a bad clam, he kept insinuating that we could be like a couple or something. Ew.

As if. Detectives asked her, well, do you think he might have killed David to have you all to himself? But they couldn't get a straight answer out of her. she kept rambling from topic to topic. They couldn't keep her focused. Finally, a couple hours into the interview, Cynthia suddenly blurted out that she'd heard Chuck say he'd strangled someone. He said he strangled somebody? Yeah, I think he said he strangled David. I mean, why do you think Chuck did it? Because he loves me, he said it. I think he said he strangled David. I'm such a weird way to put it. Yeah. But before the detectives could get any more details out of her, Cynthia stood up and said she wanted to leave. She wasn't under arrest, so they had to let her. This doesn't really answer the key question. Did Chuck kill David on his own, or did they do it

together? But they hoped maybe the autopsy would. That happened on November 25th. And unfortunately, it didn't produce any definitive answers. The end. The end of the end. Demi basically said, look, I can't tell you what killed this guy. However, I can tell you what didn't. And that's ALS. He did not die of this disease. So that was something. And the investigation moved forward. Prescott PD motored over to Henderson, Nevada to talk to Chuck, who promptly said, I made the whole thing up. Nobody murdered anybody. I was just trying to get back at Cynthia for saying I was stalking her. Ha, ha, ho, ho. Great joke. Right guys? hilarious. He really ought to go on the road to Jost like that. Bless his heart. Move over, John Mullaney. Chuck claimed that he and Cynthia had begun the affair when they met at the RV park six months before he moved in to help care for David. He said during those six months, Cynthia often left David with Angel to travel up to Henderson and have sex with him. And he tells them that a couple of weeks before David's death, Cynthia asked him to move in with her. So it turns out it wasn't Cynthia's father who had recommended Chuck as a nighttime caregiver for David.

It was Cynthia. But once David was dead, Cynthia had pretty much lost all interest in their relationship. And soon dropped him like a bad habit. And then claimed he was harassing her and got him arrested. And he was so mad and heard about it that he decided to make up this story that the two of them had conspired to kill David. It wasn't true, he said. Yeah. Well, bless your heart, honey. The cops weren't buying it, obviously.

And when Chuck realized that, he said, like, okay, okay, fine, I did it. Let's just get this over with. He was such a crotchety dude. Like, you can see little bits and pieces of this interview. And he seemed just exasperated. He's like, fine, fine, I did it. And for the next few hours, Chuck spun out the whole thing. He said that Cynthia had brought up the idea of killing David on November 15th.

They'd been sitting out on chairs in the garage, drinking wine and smoking, which was a habit of theirs and she said he's going to die anyway what can we do to make it quicker just just oh that's so despicable i know chuck said he'd seen in a movie once where somebody smothered a guy with a pillow and a plastic bag so he's just throwing that out there helpful right he said he hadn't taken it super seriously until they went into david's room at two a m to check on him so we're talking the same night this was so fast the way this happened apparently and cynthia had pulled out a plastic bag and slipped it over David's head. And then she picked up a pillow and held it over his face. And bless his heart, David had woken up and started to fight back as weak as he

was. And Chuck had held David's arm down while Cynthia held the pillow over his face until he stopped moving. And I want to point out that smothering, by the way, takes minutes. It's not like it is on TV and in the movies where it's just like 30 seconds and you're done. The average is four minutes. So I want you to just imagine for a minute how long four minutes is and imagine these two assholes, you know, his wife, the mother of his children, holding that pillow over his face while his friend and caretaker held his arm down so he couldn't fight. I can't stand these people. I know. It's horrifying for four minutes. Chuck had been given the impression, he said,

that there would be quite a few juicy little benefits to doing this despicable thing. money from David's life insurance, that nice house, having Cynthia all to himself, all good things for Chuck. She told him, this is going to be the best relationship you've ever had. But once the death had been ruled natural and there was no danger of a murder charge, Cynthia had lost interest in him. Didn't need him anymore. She dumped him on their six-month anniversary. Damn, Cynthia, that's cold, baby girl. I can't believe I'm about to say this. I feel like, first of all, don't fuck your hitman.

Bad plan. Second, never fuck over your hitman. Really don't. That's like murder for hire 101. Yeah, I'm sorry, girl, but if you're going to use this man to kill your husband for you, you either got to kill him next or you're going to be bumping butts with that man for the rest of your life. Ain't no way around it, baby. I don't make the rules.

You can't be doing this. And if you kill him next, are you going to do that one yourself? or are you going to need another hitman, in which case you're right back to square one. It's like one of those elevators where they're just mirrors on both sides, just an infinity of hitmen that you have to either bang or eliminate.

Best just to do it yourself, really. Save yourself the headache. Otherwise, it's just hitman all the way down. It's hit men all the way down. That's right. And nobody wants that. And while we're at it, damn, Chuck, like imagine being so pissed off at your ex

that you would implicate yourself in a murder just to take them down with you. These people do not. not mess around. Hardcore, both of them. So the police arrested Chuck, charged him with first-degree murder, but they couldn't charge Cynthia yet, which must have been infuriating. Detectives needed to figure out whose version of events was the truth, and they needed to do it fast. So they started digging into Cynthia and David's life and finances, and they reached out to Angel Batraz again, the daytime caregiver and David's friend. Angel and his

sometime helper Juan said they could tell Cynthia and David's marriage was toxic. early on. Lots of fights, mostly about money, lots of tension. And it got darker than that. Both Angel and Juan said David had expressed fear of Cynthia, like more than once. He said, I think she's trying to poison me. And they're going to kill me in this house. He was terrified, which is heartbreaking. And Angel and Juan didn't know how seriously to take this, given his really serious illness. I mean, he could just be having delusions or, you know, his, I mean, obviously his brain might not be funky. He's on a ton of meds and everything.

So they didn't really know what to make of it. But David was definitely scared. And in March of 2012, while Cynthia was out of town on a trip to visit some family, David had actually checked himself into a care facility. He fled his own house, basically, and really enjoyed it there. And when Cynthia got home and found out, she was furious. She said it cost too much money. They couldn't afford it.

She pitched a fit. And she, like, stormed into that place and moved him out. immediately and moved him back home, which is just a nightmare. It's like a horror movie. You know, you're under this person's power because you can't physically fight them off. Just horrifying. And I don't think there's anything more despicable than somebody that would take advantage of somebody with a disability. Like, it's just nauseating this woman. Anyway, so of course, at that point, he's more afraid than ever. And Angel said once Chuck Todd moved in, it became pretty obvious pretty fast that their relationship was as he put it crossing the boundaries they were

handsy with each other inappropriate david must have noticed it and angel said that one afternoon not long before david's death Cynthia had just out of the blue one day asked him angel if you were going to commit a murder how would you do it and get away with it oh god smart and angel was like uh and Cynthia said well what about smothering yikes heck and yikes. Is 2D and bad people never seem to take this kind of thing seriously at the time? Like, damn, people, I'm not blaming Angel and Wan. I'm really not.

But it's like red flags. Like, no, the red flags. That's seriously, legitimately one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast. Because I feel like if people hear enough stories like this, then if this kind of stuff starts to happen in their own lives, they'll be able to see these red flags and take that shit seriously. And once they started looking into the finances, the picture got even clear. despite appearances, you know, beautiful big house and everything, David and Cynthia had been really

struggling. They were behind on their mortgage and a lot of credit card debt. And their primary source of income was a life insurance policy of David's that he'd been actually drawing money from for his care, a big chunk of money he'd arranged for Cynthia to not have access to. And he could do this because of his terminal illness. So basically, Cynthia was losing money on this policy every day he was alive. And he'd been trying to get her to sign an agreement to set aside a hefty chunk nearly half a million dollars of his life insurance policy over to a trust fund for the kids if he passed.

She'd repeatedly refused. Disgusting. Then they found out that Cynthia had been online dating, going out with men and telling them that her husband had died and she was a grieving widow. Oh, my God. Wow. Wonder if Chuck knew about end. any of that.

Oh, mm-mm. I'd bet not. No, surely not. And for the cherry on top, she'd been researching euthanasia and Dr. Kavorkian on her computer. Her computer. Farming. Wow. And also smart using your home computer there, Cynthia. Yikes. Good job.

They had enough now. They arrested her for first-degree murder, misuse of power of attorney, and several types of fraud for shenanigans with David's money. Her defense at trial, of course, was that Chuck had done this out of his obsession with her. The nanny got up on the stand and claimed that she had to put Cynthia to bed at night, falling down drunk, and she swore she'd slept in the room with her to keep an eye on her. But the prosecutors did a pretty good job of shooting that one down on cross. And to the jury, lots and lots of money seemed like a better motive than love.

and she was convicted of every charge she was up on. She was sentenced to life in prison. Chuck got 16 years for second-degree murder and died of natural causes in prison a year later. Damn it. Oh, I hate when that happens. We hate it when that happens. For her part, old Cynthia still maintains your innocence, don't they all? Don't they all?

So that's infuriating, and I hope she's miserable, literally. every second of every day for the rest of her miserable life because how could you possibly do that to someone that you once loved and who is the father of your children who is already suffering enough just for money for God's sake terminally ill terminally he was already going to die like she said well what can we do to make it quicker what is wrong with you and she was stealing money from her kids yeah she wouldn't even let him set up a trust fund for her own children like that's a that is somebody who has absolutely zero attachments to any other people. Looking up Dr. Kavorky and what a bitch.

Anyway, I can't stand this woman. So, take a breath. That was a wild one on campers. And you know we'll 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 our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Lynn, Heidi, Abigail, Kristen, and Shireston.

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