True Crime Campfire - Bad Neighbors: The Murder of Kay Parsons

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Becky Sears and Kay Parsons were not only next door neighbors, but best friends, too. Their sons were in Little League together, and their husbands liked to join them both for dinner, drinks, and games of mixed doubles tennis. But secrets and lies would soon rip their friendship apart, and the consequences would reverberate throughout their small Georgia community for years to come. Join us for one of the twisty-turniest murder cases we've ever covered, a story of sex, lies, and stunning personal betrayal of the very deadliest kind.Sources:NBC's "Dateline," episode "Murder on Hot Springs Drive"ABC's "20/20"Investigation Discovery's "Evil Kin," episode "For Sale by Owner"https://www.monstersandcritics.com/tv/becky-sears-had-her-son-christopher-bowers-beat-neighbor-kay-parsons-to-death-with-a-hammer/https://murderpedia.org/female.S/s/sears-rebecca.htmFollow 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. Good fences make good neighbors, Robert Frost once told us. Make friends, absolutely, but keep some boundaries too. The people in today, story would have done well to get the memo on this, but unfortunately they missed it. And the result was a stunning series of betrayals that rocked a small town and resulted in one of the most

twisty-turning murder cases we've ever seen. This is Bad Neighbors, the murder of Kay Parsons. So, campers, for this one, we're in Grovetown, Georgia, a peaceful little town just outside Augusta, the kind of place that could have been put together by a film crew for a movie about the suburban American dream. Leafy streets, friendly neighbors, good schools, kids on bikes, you look at this town and you can practically hear the cicadas in the trees and smell the backyard barbecues. March 25th, 2009, started out like a normal day for contractor Mitch Cozart. At 8.45 a.m., he showed up to do some outside work for one of his regular customers, Kay Parsons. When he went around back to get started, he was shocked to find the back door wide open, with the glass in it shattered all over the ground.

Mitch's heart practically leapt out of his chest. It looked like a break-in. Now, he was expecting Kay to be home today while he worked, so he was really worried. He stuck his head in the busted door and called out for her, but no answer. He went back out front and tried calling her phone, but still couldn't get hold of her. So he left her a voice message, and while he was doing that, he noticed a young man sitting on a rock by the side of the road. When the kid overheard Mitch's voice message to Kay, he stood up and walked over. Did the Parsons' house just get broken into, he said, because my mom's house was, too.

I just found it. This was Michael, the oldest son of the Parsons' next-door neighbors, and Kay's best friend Becky Sears. Two houses, side by side, both broken into in the early morning. Scary. And it made contractor Mitch worry that the burglar could still be around. He had a gun in his truck, which he got out just in case, and then he called the police. In a small, low-crime town like Grove Town, an apparent double burglary like this was a big deal, and investigators rolled up on the scene within a few minutes.

But as soon as they went through the broken back door, they realized they were dealing with a lot more than theft. there was blood on the floor. It was on the walls, too, and on the couch, the spray and spatter of a violent struggle. With their hearts and their throats, the investigators followed a trail of blood to the garage, and there they found Kay Parsons, lying still on the concrete floor in a pool of blood

with terrible wounds to her head. Close by was what looked to be the weapon used against her, an aluminum baseball bat stained with blood. And a few moments later, they found another weapon under the car, a claw hammer, also bloody. Understandably, the investigators assumed they were looking at a woman who had just been beaten to death, but surprisingly, Kay Parsons was still alive. Just barely.

As an ambulance rushed her to the hospital, investigators swarmed all over the neighborhood, and in particular rushed over to the Sears house next door where they'd been told there was another break-in. They'd gotten to the scene so fast that there was a chance the suspect might still be close by. It turned out that the back door of the Sears' house had been broken into just like the Parsons' place, but right away the investigators noticed a difference. A bloody streak on the white-painted doorframe. The implications of that were chilling. Whoever had attacked Kay Parsons was apparently so unaffected by what they'd done

that they'd come out of her house, covered in blood, and just mooseed over to break into the house next door. Ging yikes. That suggested a very scary individual, and the investigators were on. on high alert as they searched the house. They didn't find the attacker in there, but they did find plenty of evidence of burglary. The whole place had been turned upside down and ransacked for easy-to-carry valuables.

The same was true of Kay Parson's house. So the first explanation to come to mind was the obvious one, the infamous robbery gone wrong, T.M. Either Kay had come home and interrupted a burglar in mid-burgle or somebody had broken in while she was there, and things got nasty. There were a couple of odd things about the break-ins, though. For one thing, it's practically unheard of for a burglar to break into one house, rob it,

then break into the one next door two minutes later. Hang around the scene of the crime and your odds of getting caught spike dramatically. The idea is to get away as fast as possible with your bag of ill-gotten gains. Which isn't to say that double break-ins like this don't happen, of course. God knows criminals do some dumb shit. And said shit is our bread and butter here at TCC. So does it happen sometimes? Sure.

But it's not normal. Not at all. Also, the vast majority of burglaries aren't violent. Of the ones that are, only a tiny percentage feature anything close to the kind of beating poor Kate Parsons God. So while burglary gone wrong, TM was immediately at the forefront of the investigator's minds, This case was already weird and shocking enough to force them to consider other possibilities. Feeling confident that Kay Parsons attacker wasn't still lurking around, investigators had to move on to their next task, and it was a grim one, letting Kay's husband know what had happened to her.

This was David Parsons, a former army man who still worked as a contractor at Fort Gordon, just down the road from Grovetown. Right now, though, he was all the way out in San Francisco on a work trip. When the lead detective told him what had happened, David sounded totally distraught and promised to take the first flight home. Now the police moved on to the next heart-wrenching job, pulling Kay and David's 12-year-old son Derek out of school. Oh, poor kid, God. So these were the Parsons, Kay, David, and Derek. A family whose quiet lives had just been shattered. David was making frantic arrangements to fly home.

Derek must have been terrified. and Kay was in the hospital, barely clinging to life. Who was this family? And was this just a terrible coincidence, a random act of violence, or had it been caused by something closer to home? The Parsons fam had moved to their home on Hot Springs Drive four years earlier in 2005, and they fit in right away. Neighbors remembered Kay as a sweetheart, the kind of person who was always smiling.

She was a happy, sunny person, the kind who could brighten up your mom. mood just by chatting with you for a few minutes at the grocery store. Kay was totally devoted to her family. She spent a lot of time taking care of the house and cheering on Derek at his little league games. He was big into baseball, and Kay encouraged him all the way. Kay and David made friends in the neighborhood right away, especially with her new next-door neighbors, Becky and Tony Sears. The two couples hit it off, Kay and Becky especially. Like Kay, Becky was gregarious and chatty and she seemed genuinely interested in other people, always ready to stop and ask you how you were doing. Before long, she and Kay were practically joined at the hip. You know how sometimes you meet

somebody and you just click for a minute one? And it feels like you've known them forever. That's what it was like for Kay and Becky. No, I've never experienced that ever in my life. I'm laughing because that's exactly what it was like for Katie and me. Like I never had anybody. go from the new friend category to like basically family category, just lightning fast like that. Aw, buddy. I'm getting misty-eyed over here. You know it's true. So Kay and Becky became best buds, sisters from other ministers. And when Becky helped Kay get a job with her at Healing Hands physical therapy, they spent even more time together, joking around, talking about their husbands and their kids. Becky had five of them, three with her husband, Tony, and two grown boys from a previous

marriage. One of our younger boys was also in Little League and good friends with Kay's son Derek, so the two moms also spend a lot of time talking baseball. The two couples went out for meals together, played tennis together, even went on vacations together. And that is a serious expression of friendship there. If you're willing to hang out with somebody 24-7 and risk beer burps and yoga farts, there's got to be a lot of trust. Becky's oldest son Michael remember was the guy sitting on a rock by the side of the road when the contractor came out from behind Kay Parsons' house, the one who told him that his mom's house had also been broken into. Michael had called his mom, and Becky and her other grown son, Christopher, showed up right as the

first investigators were rolling up. They hurried around to the back of the Parsons' house, and when she saw the smashed-in door, Becky was really shaken up, yelling out her friend's name and wanting to go inside and look for her until the police moved everybody back out of the street. Kay was a popular lady, and a whole posse of friends descended on the hospital when they heard she'd been attacked, including Becky, who kept demanding and demanding to be let through to her bedside. Everybody was waiting for David to get back from California, especially the doctors. Kay's condition was not looking good, and they knew they were probably going to need some end-of-life care decisions made soon. When David finally got there, he was a devastated wreck.

Kay's friends in the waiting room could hear him crying and saying, oh, God, no, it was just heartbreaking. One of the investigators was at the hospital, too, talking to. talking to Kay's friends and waiting to talk to David, and he had a little bit of a different take on David's loud grief. He just felt kind of weird about it. It seemed a little overdone to him. Was it real or was it a performance? Now, anybody who follows true crime knows that people can express grief really differently. And sometimes it honestly seems like you can't win with detectives. It's like if you don't seem to show much emotion, that means you're guilty. If you show a lot of emotion, that means you're guilty. So I don't know where you're

like the Goldilocks zone for grief is for these folks, but the fact is that grief is not one size fits all. One person might be in a puddle on the floor and another might seem almost normal because they're the type to keep their feelings all damned up until they can be alone. Sometimes detectives will pay lip service to understanding that, like I know people grieve differently, but then in the same breath they'll say, but it just seemed like an act to me. So take it with a grain of salt, okay? But at the same time, I do think there is some value in the gut reactions of an experienced homicide detective. Because outside of the medical field, there aren't that many people who've seen more raw grief up close and personal than they have. So if a veteran detective's spidey sense is

tingling, obviously it's not proof of anything, but it's also not nothing. It's just kind of one more little tool in the toolbox. Yeah, I think it's important to trust your gut. I mean, that's one of the pillars we've built TCC on. But like, there's a difference between Charlene from next door proclaiming someone's guilt and a seasoned professional saying, huh, something ain't right. Right. But, you know, God knows, they're wrong sometimes, too. It's like a delicate game of Djanga. Right. And, I mean, police were going to be keeping an eye on David, regardless. With a violent attack like this, even if it appears random at first glance, the spouse is going to get looked at hard. Even if he was on the other side of the

country at the time. So Kay was unconscious and on life support. Investigators had the grim task of examining her injuries, while their colleagues continued to examine the two invaded homes. Together, they quickly pieced together a rough outline of the attack, and it was pretty much a nightmare come to life. Kay's attacker had gone after her with the hammer first, smashing at her while she backed away through the house trying to defend herself with her arms and hands. When they got to the garage, the hammer, slick with blood at that point, had slipped out of the attacker's hands and fallen under the car. So the attacker had grabbed the closest likely-looking weapon, an aluminum baseball bat belonging to 12-year-old baseball fan Derek. And with that,

the attacker finished the job, or so they must have thought anyway. Back on Hot Springs Drive, police laid down a dragnet. Everyone coming in or going out of the neighborhood was questioned about anything they might have seen and any suspicions they might have about who was responsible. There was a real sense of urgency. Somebody who could commit a violent act and two burglaries in quick succession was an obvious danger and quite possibly unhinged. The fear of further attacks was real and there was an air of panic all across the neighborhood. I bet. There was certainly plenty for the investigators to look into. Some of the neighbors told them about a strange man who'd supposedly been living in the woods nearby. Now, these were dense woods, a few hundred

acres wide, exactly the kind of place that locals, especially kids, might imagine to be full of boogeymen and slender men, and hook-handed slashers and all kinds of creepy stuff. After a pretty thorough search, police didn't find any evidence of a weird man living in the woods, so that lead dried up fast. And then investigators realized that there was a frequent flyer living nearby, a petty criminal who had done a lot of burglaries in the past. This, of course, was a dude they had to check out. But the frequent flyer had a rock-solid alibi, and yet another lead bit the dust. It didn't take long, though, for their intensive canvassing of the neighborhood to enter

another possible suspect, somebody who knew both the Parsons and the Searses really well. Becky Sears' son, Michael, had been at the scene when the break-ins were discovered. He was well-known to Kay, obviously, so if she'd caught him in the act of robbing her, she would have been able to ID him to the police. That right there is a pretty strong potential motive. When he had supposedly discovered that his mom's house had been broken into, 22-year-old Michael had called Becky, but not the police. And he had something of a troubled past, mainly involving drugs.

At the time of the attack on Kay Parsons, his family were actually worried he was using again. Anyway, you show a criminal investigator, a burglary, and a family member with a drug problem, and his nose is going to start twitching like a cartoon dog smelling an unguarded pie on a window cell. They were definitely going to want to have a chat with Michael. And the stakes had just gotten higher. After hearing from doctors that Kay had no chance of recovery, her family made the heart-wrenching decision to take her off life support. She was dead, and this had just become a murder investigation.

During his interview with the investigators, Michael didn't do a lot to quell their suspicion. On the day of the murder, he said his mom had dropped him off at work at 7 a.m. He had a temporary job doing some house painting. Or at least, that was what he had told Becky. But as it turned out, that was a lie. Becky had been writing him to find work, so Michael had just made up a job to get his mom off of his back. After she'd dropped him off, he'd gone over to his friend Anthony's place to hang out and watch TV.

The old made-up jaw bruise. Add that to your TCC bingo card, y'all. So in addition to their existing suspicions about Michael, add in a lie and a shaky alibi. And although he had no evidence of blood or injuries on him, investigators did find something. When they asked to see the souls of his sneakers, they found small pieces of glass stuck in there. Glass, just like what was all over the ground around K. Parsons shattered glass. back door. Michael had no explanation for how that glass got there. He literally just said, I guess I don't know, several times. So Michael was making rapid progress from somebody we need to talk to through person of interest to prime suspect. But when investigators spoke to Michael's brother

Chris, he told him in no uncertain terms that Michael couldn't have killed Kay, said he just didn't have it in his heart and stuck to that no matter how hard the cops pressed him. But Chris did admit to Michael's drug problems. Actually, what he said was, quote, he's back on the methadones, which is really sad, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to lie, the methadones got me. I can't quite decide if it's the name

for like an edgy New York punk band or like the backup group for some 60s Detroit Soul Diva. And now here's Valerie Dumont and the methadones with their breakout hit, I just can't quit your love. I like where your head's at, but it also could be a terrible disease

contracted by licking doorks or something. Did you hear about old Frank? He's got a case of the methadones. So Chris said that along with the drug use, Michael hung out with a pretty sketchy crowd, and while he was confident his brother could never kill anybody, those people he hung around with, he was a lot less sure about. Chris was 19 at this point and seemed to have his life a lot more together than his older

brother did. Chris had a house, a car, and a job, working with his mom at the physical therapy center. Of Becky's two grown boys, there was no doubt about which one was the black sheep of the family. My brother and I take turns in case y'all are curious. We've each had our go. So police brought in Michael's buddy and alibi Anthony, making sure that he and Michael had no chance to compare notes beforehand. Now, Anthony was a trip, a gregarious, high-octane dude with tats and a bullshit smile. The kind of guy you meet and immediately think, he's a little bit dodgy. He's a giza. He'll nick anything. Sorry. Sorry to our American listeners there. That's for our British folks. It's a sketch comedy show called The Fast Show from the 90s. Look it up. That's a

recurring character. He's like, I'm a little bit weird, a little bit dodgy. Anywho, what I mean is he came across as sketchy as fuck. Anthony backed up Michael's story pretty closely, though, and said he was sure of the time Michael was at his place because they'd watched the show Angel on TV. Ooh, David Boreannis. You are not wrong. So by now, investigators believed Kay had been attacked in the brief window of time between 710 and 7.20 a.m. Anthony said he was absolutely certain that Michael had been at his place at that time. But how reliable was our boy Anthony?

Investigators gave him a polygraph to try and find out, and bless his heart, Anthony flunk that thing like a Starfleet cadet in the Kobayashi-Maru. He swore up and down he was telling the truth, though, offered to retake the test and got all offended at the suggestion that he might have been involved in Kay's murder. He was like, look, if it was a dude who got murdered, that'd be one thing, but a lady? Somebody's mom? How dare you, sir?

Anthony has standards. Anthony has a coat. Now, there are reasons why polygraphs aren't admissible in court, and they are very good reasons. and Anthony's flunk test wasn't evidence so much as it was just encouragement to keep looking at Michael. And that scrutiny soon turned up some recent evidence of sticky fingers. Michael had previously done some odd jobs at Healing Hands Physical Therapy, where Becky and Kay both worked, and one day their boss discovered that some blank checks had been stolen

and converted to cash, about $800 worth. The checks had gone missing while Michael was cleaning the office. The boss told Becky about this, so she went and confronted Michael and got him to confess. Becky, distraught and embarrassed, as any mom would be, told her boss about it. He agreed not to press charges just as long as Michael never set foot in the place again. So things weren't looking so good for Michael. He was number one on the suspect board, and nobody else was even close. But then, out of nowhere, the investigation got turned upside down.

The day after Kay's murder, in the gloom of early evening, 911 got a frantic call from a woman saying somebody had come out of the trees as she was leaving work and shot her in the leg. When the dispatcher asked her name and where she worked, the answers would send an earthquake through the ongoing murder investigation. She worked at Healing Hands Physical Therapy,

and her name was Becky Sears. Holy shitsnacks, what the hell was this? Becky's best friend is murdered, her son is hauled in for questioning as the main suspect in the case, and the next day, somebody pops out of the shadows and shoots her in the leg. Bizarre. When responding officers pulled up behind healing hands, they learned that Becky had been working late. She said that when she'd left and gone toward her car, a black man she didn't know had rushed out of the bushes and threatened her with a gun. He said something like, give me my money or next time it'll be your face.

then shot her in the leg and ran back into the bushes. So this was just seven different shades of weird. And surely it wasn't a coincidence. One neighbor gets violently murdered one day, another neighbor gets shot the next, and their best friends and work in the same place. Even in Old West Tombstone, that would be a stretch. And this was a sleepy little suburban grove town. These two crimes had to be related somehow.

So, what in the world was going on? EMTs took Becky to the hospital, where she told investigators she had no idea what money her attacker was referring to, no idea what any of this was about. A canvas of the area didn't dig up any witnesses, but investigators did pick up two pieces of forensic evidence from the scene, both the shell casing of the 25 caliber slug and the projectile itself. But the attacker had vanished without a trace. Becky's injury turned out to be pretty superficial, not much more than a scratch. Still, just getting grazed by a gunshot is pretty scary. And Becky sounded pretty shaken up when the police interviewed her. To investigators, this attack didn't do anything to lessen the heat on Becky's son, Michael.

If the Sears and Parsons houses had been robbed for money, maybe one of Michael's shady drug buddy still needed more. Becky claimed Michael didn't have any debts that he was trying to move past the troubles of his past, but parents aren't exactly the best judges of their kids' propensity for crime. Becky might just be in denial about Michael, or she might be trying to cover for him. The investigator interviewing Becky was determined not to get tunnel vision about this case, though. If they focused exclusively on Michael, they might miss something important. So he asked Becky if she personally had any problems with anyone. And even though she answered, no, something in the way she said it tickled the part of his brain

labeled hunch. He asked whether she'd been having any family problems or problems with her marriage. I don't know if whatever medication the hospital gave her loosened up her tongue, or if she was just such a chatty Kathy that she couldn't help spilling her own personal tea. But Becky told the investigators that, yes, as a matter of fact, she and her husband Tony had been going through a rough patch. but they were trying to work things out. Well, this was promising.

The investigator asked the next logical question. Have either of you been seeing anybody on the side? And to his surprise, Becky fessed up. Yes, she said, I had an affair. But the second it was out of her mouth, she started backpedaling. It only lasted two months, she said, and it had been over for more than three. And that was all Becky would say. She flat out refused to say who her lover was, and given

where they were, a hospital room right after Becky had been shot, the investigator didn't press her too hard. But this juicy little revelation added a whole new aspect to the investigation. I mean, we have a murder, two burglaries, a shooting, drugs, a black sheep's son, and now an affair? This case was turning into a mashup of Law & Order and Jerry Springer. No joke, right? Now, the mystery of Becky's sidepiece didn't last long. The next morning, deputies got a call from someone close to the family, spilling the beans on the guy's identity. Becky's lover was none other than David Parsons, her next-door neighbor and the husband of her murdered

best friend. So, as if this soap opera of a case needed more complication, now you have the two recent victims of violent attacks involved in a love triangle. Or wait, is it a love triangle? I mean, both cheaters were married. Is that a love rectangle? Two separate yet intersecting triangles? I don't know. I'm bad at math. Yeah, a triangle insinuates, like, reciprocity between all three people, a thruple, if you will. This is more like a love, acute angle. I'll take your word on that. But however complicated the geometry, infidelity is always grist for the homicide investigators' mill,

and their focus started to shift away from Michael and onto Becky and her allegedly ex-lover David. News of the affair didn't hit the public consciousness until after Kay's funeral, but when it did, whew lord. It spread like wildfire through the little city of Grovetown. Small towns and juicy gossip go together like peanut butter and chocolate. And when Kay's friends heard about it, they were shocked and, of course, furious at this awful betrayal of their friend. One friend remembered an incident at the memorial service that had struck her as weird at the time and now seemed kind of creepy. David had come up to her crying and hugged her, and he said, I'm sorry, I never meant for this to happen. I'm sorry, I never meant for this to happen? Huh. It wasn't only the police who were

starting to wonder if David was involved in his wife's murder, especially since Kay had told several of her friends that if she ever found out David was cheating, she'd take Derek and leave, getting as much of his money and retirement assets as she could. Kay's murder may have spared David, an expensive, messy divorce. As far as motives for spousal murder go, that one's about as common as dirt. But wait. Just as investigators were getting their heads

around this new development, another curveball of a twist came right at him. They got a call from the county jail, saying an inmate wanted to talk with the detectives on the K. Parsons case. This inmate's name was Jerry Jacobs, and he was in jail for misdemeanor parole violation. When investigators got him in an interview room,

he told him he'd seen the news story about K. Parsons. murder on TV, and he thought his sister might have something to do with it. And who, pray tell, was his sister? None other than Becky goddamn Sears. This bitch is the bad penny, and she just keeps popping up like a whack-a-mole every time you turn around. Jerry, it turned out, knew all about the affair between Becky and David. He'd met his sister in a parking lot one day, and she'd been crying in the car. When he asked her what was wrong, she spilled her guts about David.

She was crying because David was trying to end their affair and wouldn't leave Kay to be with her. And as she and her brother talked, Becky got more and more upset and worked up, eventually asking Jerry if he or anyone he knew would be able to arrange an accident for Kay, some way that she could die without it looking suspicious, like cutting the brake lines on her car or something. Jerry was completely stunned. Now, he'd been in some small potatoes trouble with the law from time to time, sure, but nothing even remotely close to murder, which is weird.

It's like this is often the way it is, people try to find a killer, it's like anybody that has the slightest sketchiness, they just assume that they'll make the jump to murder, no problem. It's like, it's just one small step from parking violation to professional hitman, right? What? But that's how people think. It's bizarre. So Jerry thought at the time, like, surely she's kidding and tried to kind of lighten things up, but Ms. Becky wasn't having it. She said, no, I really want her dead. Can we do this? Becky Sears wanted her best friend dead, so she could have David all to herself, and she was actively seeking somebody to do the job for her. Now, Jerry told investigators that he gave Becky a firm refusal. Uh-uh. Nope. No way, sis. And they knew he hadn't attacked Kay Parsons because he had pretty much the best alibi you can possibly have. He was in their own jail at the time. Great alibi. But Jerry did suggest another family member investigator.

might want to take a look at. Becky's son? No, not Black Sheep Michael, but good boy Christopher, the shiny, red delicious apple of his mama's eye. Before his incarceration, Jerry had been staying at Chris's house. Pretty much every single night, Chris would get at least one phone call from Mama Becky, crying and bend in his ear about how unhappy she was. When the call was finally over, Jerry would say, David again. Chris would say, yep, David again. So Chris also knew all about Becky's affair with David and how upset she was about an ending. Was it too much of a leap to think she might have tried to convince him to help Kay have an accident? Jerry clearly thought she might have done just that.

That said, investigators wanted to take a last run at Michael. He was the one with the troubled past and the connections to shady people. If Becky Sears was going to drag a son into a murder scheme, it made sense that she might go for her oldest boy. His rep was already tarnished. They brought him in for more questioning, and this time they really went after him hard, getting right up in his face and telling him it was his last chance to help himself out and come clean,

promising all kinds of dire consequences if they found out he'd been holding out on them. And Michael stuck to his story. He'd spent the morning of the murder hanging out with his buddy Anthony. When the interviewer brought up Becky's affair with David, Michael was baffled. This might have been an open secret to other members of his family, but Michael apparently had no idea. Yeah, and unless you're a really good actor, that shit's hard to fake. Like that genuine bewilderment when it's fake, it's usually really obvious.

And when they asked him if Becky had ever tried to get him to hurt Kay, Michael said, hell no. His mom had never asked him to hurt Kay or anybody else. Over three hours of intensive questioning, Michael never once cracked. and investigators started to get the feeling that he was telling the truth. They'd even figured out how those incriminating pieces of glass had gotten into Michael's sneakers. When Becky had first shown up at the scene of the crime, Michael had gone with her to the back door at Parsons' house before the police shoot them away. There was one thing Michael said that the investigators weren't buying, though. He said there was no way his mom could have anything to do with Kay's death, that she just wasn't capable of it.

That? they didn't believe at all. There were still more wrinkles to iron out, though. For one thing, how did Becky's shooting fit into all this? And what about David, Mr. I never meant for this to happen? Was he tied in with all of this? I mean, other than being the possible motive? It was certainly time to get David in for a formal interview.

Right away, the interviewer pressed him about the affair with Becky, and David came clean, explaining how the whole thing got started. The two couples, David and Kay, Tony and Becky, played tennis together and would sometimes switch up the team so that David would partner Becky and Tony would partner Kay. Oh, shit. Well, there's your problem right there. It's like a gateway drug to the swinger lifestyle. So many gateways in this episode, traffic tickets to hits, tennis to swing in? Switching those tennis partners.

That's a dangerous, slippery slope. And the slipperiness is baby oil. I hate you. Disgusting. I'm so sorry. After one game, Becky leaned in to David and whispered, You know why I suck so bad at tennis? It's because you distract me out there.

Not a super great pickup line, but David is only in man. And campers, we've brought this up before. If you were a man and a woman comes on to you, it's actually illegal for you to just blow her off. You have to flirt back. If she wants to get naked with you, you have to do that too, or there could be heavy

fines. And even jail time, okay? I'm sorry, we don't make the rules. God forbid, you tell her to fuck off. Right, exactly. So anyway, soon after that flirty game of mixed doubles, David and Kay were bump and uglies on the regular. In

David's house, in their cars, one time at Becky's mom's house. They wrote love letters to each other, sappy little notes about how hard it was to be away from each other. Gross. They kept up this neighborly groping and grinding for six months.

Becky, you might remember, had told investigators her affair lasted for two, so clearly trying to downplay the whole thing. And then, David started to get cold feet. One month before Kay's murder, he told Becky he wanted to break things off. He didn't want

Kay to find out, and he wasn't willing to sacrifice his relationship with her for Becky. But, champ that he was, he didn't exactly break things off cleanly. He said he just wanted to stay with Kay for Derek's sake. Now, who knows whether that was true? He might have just been trying to let Becky down easy, you know, so he didn't have to just come right out and say, actually, I prefer my wife. Whatever the real truth, David told Becky that when Derek went away to college, things might be different. Now, remember, Derek was 12 years old at the time, so college was a long way off. I think most people, if you told him you might possibly maybe kind of sort of want to get together with him in six years, would just be like, yeah, this is over. But what Becky

heard was that David was still into her, that it was just his domestic circumstances keeping him away. So I don't know if you should call it love or obsession, but Becky was seriously into David. This was tearing her up, and it was after he broke things off that she started her weepy, bitter conversations with her brother and good son Chris. Can you imagine what a nightmare mother-in-law this bitch would be? Oh, Jesus. She calls her son every night to cry not about his father. No, no, cry about her affair partner.

Jesus Christ, lady, go to therapy. I got to be honest, I don't think that's going to help Ms. Becky. I really don't. I think, no. So then she did something that would rattle the living hell out of the fence between the two houses on Hot Springs Drive. One evening, she sat her husband Tony down and confessed about the affair. Tony, of course, was hurt and furious, and the first thing he did was pick up the phone and call Kay. The cat, campers, was out of the bag, and it was a mean, spittin wild cat.

David literally got down on his knees and apologized to Kay and Tim. tears. And after some long hours together, Kay and David decided they were going to try to work things out. She would try to forgive him. They'd sell their house and move away. Start again somewhere far away from Becky Sears. Which is really kind of a good plan. Can you imagine trying to stay in that house and like seeing your husband's ex-mistress at the mailbox every day? Sweet Moses, no. Plus, ex-best friend. Boy. Now this obviously was not music to Ms. Becky's hopeful little old earballs. She'd heard Kay say in the past that if she ever found out David had cheated on her, she'd be out the door. Seems like a pretty good bet that Becky was hoping Kay

Kay would put her money where her mouth was and leave David so Becky could just swoop in and scoop him up. But the next day, David and Kay put up a for sale sign on their front lawn. Kay quit her job at Healing Hands and iced out Becky altogether. Her quote unquote best friend might as well have been a ghost to her. And you know, who can blame her? I mean, What an awful double whammy of a betrayal from the two people she was closest to in the world other than her son. Why do people do this? It seems to happen all the time. It's like, y'all, if you must have an affair, could you maybe just make sure it's not with your spouse's best friend or sister or freaking mom or whatever?

Jeez. But for real, keep your genitals to yourself. Cheating is so fucking scummy. So Kay iced out her best friend and was trying to move on with her life. David, though, was quite a bit less frosty with Becky. In fact, he stayed pretty warm. They still emailed, texted, talked on the phone, and met up for cozy little five-minute chats. David, bless him, claimed these communications were all above board, which dude, no. Just no. You don't get to have intimate little chats with the woman you've been cheating with and have it be all above

board. Unless you told your wife where you were going and she waved you out the door with the cheery little have fun, honey, try not stick your dick in her, and then you're just continuing the affair, bro. Yeah. Hate to burst your bubble. And a little later into David's interview with detectives, it became clear just how warm things still were between David and Becky. The night before Kay's murder, he'd called Becky from his hotel room out in California, just to check in on how she was doing. Just checking in, quickly turned into an hour of phone sex. Ew.

So, so much for David's teary apology to Kay. The next morning, right around the time investigators thought Kay was being savagely beaten, David called Becky again. He said he couldn't get hold of Kay, and he was worried she'd been in an accident. Like the good husband he was pretending to be, he called her every morning, so it was jarring that she wouldn't pick up. The idea of calling your mistress to check up on your wife and make sure she's okay is just surreal. Of course, given the phone sex and the timing of the second call, investigators were one of the first. wondering if David was actually calling to check on whether the deed was done. If he and Becky had planned Kay's murder together, that phone call made a lot of sense.

When they put this to him, David weeply denied having anything to do with his wife's murder. The interview went on for hours, and after a while, investigators started to think David was telling the truth. Remember when David first came back from California to see Kay in the hospital, and the detective thought his grief seemed overdone? Well, now in the interview room, they realized that David was just a naturally emotional, demonstrative guy. They had no real evidence connecting him to Kay's death. David did give them something, though. He said he'd once asked Becky if anybody knew about their affair, and she told him, yes, one person did. Her son, Christopher.

One of the investigators in the case described the mother-son relationship between Becky and Chris as real, real strange. He was at her beck and call no matter where he was or what he was doing. If Mama called, he'd go racing to her like a well-trained pup. Becky bought Chris a house when he was 18. She bought him a car too and gave him money on the regular. Yeah. You heard that right, Campers. She bought him a house when he was 18 years old. Can you imagine? When I was 18, I was living in a dorm that was most renowned for the size and courage of its rats. I'm actually pretty sure they escaped from some science lab and were like super intelligent. They were definitely super huge. I certainly didn't own my own house until I was like

well into my 30s. We still don't. Mama, papa, please gift me a house at your earliest convenience, but just because you buy me a house doesn't mean I'm your Erin girl. But between Becky and Chris, as is so often the case, there was a transactional element to these lavish gifts. Becky always made it clear that Chris owed her. If she needed something and he showed the slightest reluctance to deliver, it would be like, I bought you a house, Christopher. And as we've already seen, she'd call him up and bitch about the messy details of her affair with David, which, come on, gross, please don't do that.

It's good to be friends with your adult children. Not that kind of friend. God, no. If you need to vent about your sex life, as I said before, go to therapy. That's not what your kid is for. That's called emotional incest, and it's hugely damaging to your kids, you monster. Mm-hmm. So Becky and Chris had a close relationship.

Christopher was a mama's boy, squared, cubed even. Investigators had actually already interviewed him back when they were trying to dig up some dirt on his older brother, Michael. And that interview had stayed in their minds because right from the start, Chris was trembling and shivering. Oh, yes. One of the detectives actually told him, son, you're sitting here shaking like a dog trying to crap out for semen seeds. We've got to use that one sometime. I don't, I know. I don't even know what that means.

Southern phrases are the best. I know. These are my people. Chris's explanation was that he was always shaking, that he thought he might have Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's disease? This was a healthy 19-year-old man. That was a shovel full of bullshit. And it stuck in the investigators' minds.

That is a new one, man. You know, at least he's good at coming up with lies on the fly, but like, not good ones, apparently. No, because if you thought you had Parkinson's disease, even if you were 19, you'd go to the doctor. Because by the time you're shaking, like, by the time you're having severe enough tremors for people to notice, wouldn't you think, like, oh, shit. I got to get this. taken care of. One would assume, yes. They were already well on their way to deciding that Chris was probably a lot worse than just a weird kid when, in a follow-up interview at the county jail, Becky's brother Jerry gave them

another valuable tidbit. From a photograph, he was able to identify the hammer used in the attack on Kay. He'd seen it several times in a toolbox in Becky's garage, where Chris often went to borrow tools. Momp, ma'am. So they hauled in Mama's little man for another interview. And this time, he was not shaking. In fact, he was downright defiant.

And as soon as he saw the direction the questions were heading, he lawyered up. The detective in the interview room arrested him for murder right then and there, while others put the grab-us on Becky at the Holiday Inn where she was staying. So for the first time, Becky Sears was in

an official police interview, and boy, was it a doozy. Bish could not shut up. It went on for five hours, mostly with very little prompting from the interviewers. She admitted to the affair with David, but swore up and down it was over, and they were both moving on and trying to fix their respective marriages and blah, blah, bullshit, blah. Sure, sure, they had phone sex now and then. Ew, but that, you know, just happened. It didn't mean anything. Just happened. Oopsie. I accidentally spent an hour of verbally jacking off my ex. I hate when that happens. It just happened. When questioned whether she'd ever asked someone to kill Kay, Becky said, no, of course not. And then, well, maybe actually

she did, you know, just joking around with her brother. You know, those murder jokes you tell about your closest friends, those ones. I mean, I know I'm always asking people to kill my best friends for me. It's just a joke. Everybody knows that. And then she told them that around Chris, she had been talking an awful lot about how much she wanted Kay gone and how happy it would make her to have David all to herself. And, you know, she knew how important it was to Chris to make her happy. That sound, you hear there, campers, is the double-decker bus, our girl Becky, just hurled her son underneath and then drove back and forth over the body. She was trying to pin the whole thing on him. And not very well, I might add.

She seems to have decided that she could avoid all culpability as long as she didn't specifically, admit to telling Chris, I want you to go to the home of Cape Parsons of Hot Springs Drive and hit her in the head with a hammer until she is dipped. She even admitted to driving Chris to her own house and dropping him off, fully expecting him to go next door. And what did she think he was going to do over there? Whatever it took to make me happy, she told the detectives. Wow. Wow. A little later, Becky told the investigators, Chris had called her to come pick him up. As he got in the car, Becky saw blood all over his face. She was shocked, she said. She asked him, Oh my God, what did you do? Chris said, I beat the fuck out of her.

In the interrogation room, Becky professed absolute horror and astonishment that Christopher had done this, thinking that it was what she wanted. Nobody bought this for a hot second, of course. It was perfectly clear who was the puppet and who was the one pull in the strings. But the interviewers just nodded along to keep her talking, and Becky delivered like dominoes. She claimed she wanted to protect Chris, so the two of them concocted a plan to throw the police off their trail after the murder. They'd fake another attack, this time with Becky as the target. Chris was the gunman who had leapt out of the darkened bushes outside healing hands that night, brandishing the gun. He was the one who shot Becky in the leg, and that was a mistake.

He was only supposed to shoot close to her, but he biffed it big time and shot her in the leg instead. And then he took off. now exactly how these two geniuses thought this would throw police off their trail completely eludes me but I guess people's brains just get weird when they're in panic mode or maybe they're just both dumber in a bag of bricks I don't know and just as an additional insight into what kind of person we're dealing with with Becky Sears remember that she a white lady had originally told the cops her attacker was a black man which was just so unnecessary and gross gross Becky and if we had to

a nickel for every time we've seen that over the years, we would have a damn lot of nickel. Stop doing it. People, it's gross. Cripes. Racial hoaxes make me so goddamn mad. Stop putting marginalized people at risk just because your imagination sucks. Fuck you, Sherry Poppini. For God's sakes. Yeah, agreed. So, anywho, this hours-long ramble from Becky Sears was just a hair shy of being a full confession. She might have thought she was throwing Chris under the bus, but really she was crawling right under there with him. They were both in a lot of trouble, soon to be tried separately in a death penalty case. Becky, desperate for anything that might improve her standing at sentencing, gave investigators

exactly what they'd been lacking so far, which was some solid physical evidence. Chris, she told them, had put his bloody clothes in a black backpack after the attack on Kay. Becky had stashed this backpack in her mom's attic, because apparently they don't have flipping rivers where these people live. And when investigators went over there, they found the backpack right where Becky said it would be. Inside were Christopher's clothes, bloody with Kay Parson's blood, as well as jewelry taken from both houses. God dang, Becky, mom of the year over here. Yikes. Becky would have to wait till she was in front of a judge to find out whether giving up this evidence had in fact helped her.

It certainly didn't help Christopher. Any chance he had of a successful defense at trial immediately, went up and spoke. And as it turns out, there wouldn't be any trials in this case. Both Becky and Chris pled guilty to Kay Parsons' murder. And did Becky get any special treatment for her last-minute revelation? Nope. They were both sentenced to life in prison without parole. Yep. Apparently, betrayal came easy to Becky Sears, whether you were her husband, her best friend, or her son. And after the trial, another couple of betrayals would come to light. In the years she worked at Healing Hands Physical Therapy, Becky had stolen around $250,000 from their account.

So if you've been thinking, wow, how could she afford to buy a house and a nice car for her teenage son? Well, there's your answer. The DA declined to charge Becky with this theft, figuring she was already in prison for life. And remember when her son Michael had been fired from Healing Hands for stealing blank checks? That, it turned out, had also been Becky's work. work. When the theft was discovered, she'd browbeaten Michael into taking the heat so she could keep the job. So Michael, the black sheep son, turned out to be completely innocent in this case. Yeah, Michael did nothing. He didn't even know about the affair. Like, he was supposedly like the

bad kid or whatever because he had a drug problem. He was the one that was completely innocent in the whole thing. So he was completely cleared. So Becky and her husband, Tony, are now divorced. I know that's going to shock you, right? Can't believe you let that precious little blossom go, Tony. I really thought you two crazy kids were going to make it. As for Kay's husband David, he eventually married again. We hope he and Derek are doing well and that seeing Kay's killers brought to justice gave them some degree of closure. And I wasn't sure where to put this information, okay, so I'm just sticking it on at the end, but I really feel you all need to know it. Grovetown, Georgia has a fast food chicken place called Wifesaver, which somehow was

transported here from 1950, and I think we can just all agree that that's very important information. Oh, yes. I actually used to live. Yeah. I used to live by a laundromat by that name. Wifesaver, except it was. So it's a thing. It was saver with an O, like, oh, wifes are going to savor this laundromat. Why? Oh, that's even worse. That's so much worse. I just felt you all needed to know that. Anyway. So that was a wild one, right?

Campers, 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 I want to say a very special happy birthday to my mom whose birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday, mommy. Happy birthday. I love you. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Carrie Joe, Stephanie, Meredith, Mary, Alexis, Satan's mom. Do us a favor and have a chat with your boy, okay?

Shelly, Toby, Kelly, and Jocelyn. We appreciate you 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 two, 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 supplies last at 10 virtual events with Katie and me I just recently read our patrons an entire book on like live stream it was super fun and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you so if you can come join us