True Crime Campfire - Breaking Dawn: The Murder of Susan Fassett

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Aung San Suu Kyi once said, “It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” In this episode, we’ll tell you the story of a man who was desperately afraid of losing the stranglehold he had on his little domain, and a woman who was afraid of what he’d do if she didn’t help him keep it. Sources:Deadly Secrets by M. William PhelpsFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes 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. Ong San Suu Kyi once said, it is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of the scourge of. power corrupts those who are subject to it. In this episode, we'll tell you the story of a man who was desperately afraid of losing the stranglehold he had on his little domain, and a woman who was afraid of what he'd do if she didn't help him keep it. This is Breaking Dawn, the murder of Susan Fassett. So, campers, we're in Pleasant Valley, New York, October 28, 1999. A woman sat in a car outside a church with her engine running and a gun on her lap.

Her heart was pounding. She didn't want to do this. She couldn't do this. There was no way. This wasn't her. But she had to. He'd told her his henchmen were waiting near her family's home. They'd move on his command if he didn't get confirmation that this thing was done in the next half hour.

Or maybe it was this way. A woman sat in a car outside a church with her engine running and a gun on her lap. Her heart was pounding. Part of her was terrified. The other part, exhilarated. She didn't want to do this. She couldn't wait to try it. This wasn't her, but it was.

Here is what we know for sure. Another woman was finishing up choir practice at her church. She sang the last few bars of the last song, said goodbye to her friends, grabbed her purse, started across the parking lot to her jeep. The woman in the idling car watched her coming across the lot. She was sweating. She thought about just peeling out of the parking lot and never looking back, but she didn't. She waited until her target started to climb inside her Jeep.

The door still open. She pulled alongside, rolled down her window. She fired twice. Then four more times. She smelled gunpowder. She caught a glimpse of blood in platinum blonde hair. saw the other woman slump against the steering wheel, then dropped to the ground beside the Jeep. She didn't move.

The shooter dropped the gun onto the passenger side floorboard and hit the gas. She sped off as fast as she could go, leaving her victim in the dirt. At first, the other choristers didn't realize what had happened. They heard the pops, but thought they might be fireworks going off. Then they saw their friend, Susan Fassett, lying in her own blood next to her Jeep. A frantic 911 call came in moment. and Slater and first responders arrived in minutes. What the hell just happened? Susan Fassett was an unlikely murder victim. She was a sweet woman, friendly, active in her church. She was the wife of a local

police lieutenant, Jeff Fassett. They had two teenage sons. Who would want to hurt her and why? In the first rush of questioning of the freaked out witnesses at the scene, cops ended up with the information that the victim's husband's car had been seen driving away from the scene. Now, it would later turn out to have been a miscommunication. The license plate they'd been given was actually the one from Susan's bloody Jeep, not her husband Jeff's car. But before that mistake was discovered, all the cops knew was that they had a hot lead on the most likely suspect in a murder like this, the victim's spouse.

And knowing Jeff was a cop and likely to be armed, they decided to play it safe and send the cavalry, a.k.a. the SWAT team. Susan Fassett's teenage son Jason and his girlfriend Sarah were at home watching TV when they heard an ambulance go screaming by, And a couple of minutes later, Jason's dad, Susan's husband, Jeff, walked in the door. He'd heard the ambulance, too. They were all sitting around talking about their day when they became aware of some activity outside the house.

And once they realized what was going on that there were police, armed police, outside, Jeff got a sinking feeling. He said, oh, I hope your mother's okay. So Jason called the church to check on her. And he got their run around for a couple of minutes until finally somebody said, Jason, your mom's been sure. shot. God. I know. I can't even

begin to imagine. And you've got armed cops outside your house, like a slot team. And that was all the voice on the phone knew right then.

So this poor kid, his girlfriend, and Jeff Fassett, had to be marched out in handcuffs. And it took what seemed like hours for them to get

final confirmation on what had happened to Susan, that she wasn't in the hospital, undergoing emergency surgery, she wasn't going to be okay.

She was dead, murdered. And at the police station, Jeff Fassett spoke with investigators he agreed to take a polygraph test that first night and the examiner felt like he was telling the truth that he hadn't killed Susan

and Jeff said look I will do whatever you need me to do you can investigate me put me under the hot lights do whatever you want but once you've ruled me out you need to look at Fred Andros Fred Andros Hmm well Fred Androses was unmistakably a cock

You have such a way with words, Whitney. Yeah, I think it's apt in this instance. Until recently, Andros had been the town water commissioner in neighboring Poughkeepsie, New York. He was currently in trouble with the feds over some racketeering slash bribery slash corruption charges. And Susan had just broken off a three-year affair with him. Fred Andros, campers, who boy. He's a fascinating character in a horrifying sort of way, like the way train wrecked. can be kind of grimly fascinating.

He was short, 5-7, and according to many people who knew him, he had that stereotypical, like, small-man Napoleon complex about it. Oh, my God. Okay, listen, I don't care if men are short. Right. But when they care, right. When they care, it makes it really hard not to bully them. Yes, exactly. It, like, sets off my predator instinct.

Because it's less about the high. height than their attitude. Yeah, totally. Okay, you absolute milksop, you tiny little manlet. You want to overcommoncate for your lack of height by making someone else feel bad. Yeah. What? You're going to get a step stool so you can get in my face.

You're going to stand on your tippy toes to tell me how tough you are. Damn. Campers. You might know this, but I am very tall. Yes. So I have spent feelings about this. too much time in my youth being pushed around by guys like this. And I have zero patience for these losers. Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. And I can feel the like years of rage that was

behind that little speech. And I agree. Like it's not like, who cares? Like if you're short, you're short, whatever. But then if you're going to act like a dick about it, then that's where we have the problem. Right. So Fred dressed flashily, definitely a dude who wanted to stand out. He was not going for inconspicuous. He wore Western style shirts. cowboy boots, bolo ties. Like, you know you're going the full nine when the bolo tie comes out. And slicked his hair back in a 1950s style pompadour, like Elvis. Oh, God.

Lord have mercy. And I imagine it was just dripping with, like, pomade or real brief or whatever. He tuled around in a car with a vanity plate that said, Freddie, two E's at the end. I mean, you know it killed him because Freddie with a Y and Freddie with an i.e. were both taken. Yeah, that's probably what it was. So Fred grew up in Poughkeepsie, which at that time was a pretty rough place with lots of small-time criminals throwing their weight around. And Fred aspired to be one of them. Or rather, he aspired to be a big-time criminal. His dream was to be like a mafia don. So aim high, sis, right? You know, that reminds me of John Edward Robinson,

actually. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Big time. And he got in trouble for burglary and other petty crimes in his teens, starting off young, and then starting in the mid-60s and continuing for several decades, Fred served as the town's water commissioner. And he actually reminds me a lot of BTK in that he seemed to really get off on the power that he had as like water boss, which, you know, settle down. It's not that big a deal, but it probably won't surprise you to hear that he took more of that power than his job entitled him to take, a lot more. And he was crooked as a paperclip and a shameless bully about it. He also used city employees on city time and city money to do work around his house.

So that's charming. Like he just have them over, like to wash his car and stuff. Oh, my God. And he'd hooked up his house illegally to get free water. I mean, he was a complete crooked piece of shit. And he would tell business owners, give me $500 or I'll shut off your water. And people did it, which astonishes me. Like, okay, maybe I'm just hopelessly naive.

But if I were a business owner in Poughkeepsie and some little forest troll like Fred Andros came up to me and said, give me $500, you're out, shut off your water. I'd be like, well, you just got to do what you got to do, bless your heart. And then the second he walked out the door, I'd be calling the cops. But he got away with this small town racketeering bullshit for some reason, at least for a while. And he also liked having people beholden to him so that he could like lord it over them and call in favors later on. author M. William Phelps wrote a book on this case called Deadly Secrets, which is quite good and is one of our sources for this episode. And one of Andros's friends told him that even with his friends and family, like even with the people that were closest to him in his life,

Fred Andros never did anything for free, for anyone. There was always a price to be paid, always a quid pro quo, no matter what. Remember campers, there's no such thing as a free lunch. None in Fred's world or wasn't. So as an employer, Fred was a mixed bag. On one hand, he didn't care if you bunked off work or slept in your truck for three hours in the middle of a job. As long as you made him look good, you were golden. He could be generous with overtime, but if something went wrong, he'd immediately look for somebody to pin the blame on. It could never be put on him. Oh, of course not.

He had a filthy mouth, and he'd bully and degrade you right in front of everybody if you crossed him. And that's us saying that. Yeah, like we like vulgarity. We're very big fans of filth, but we're like, I mean, with him, it was literally like every other word and it was just gross. Like, we're erudite vulgarians. Right, exactly. You know, we use it in combination with other vocabulary. For Fred, it was just pretty much a blunt tool. Right. Yeah, it's, for us, it's to prove a point. For him, it was. Also, because it's fun. Yeah, exactly. If you can't say fuck while dunking on a serial killer, what's the point? Exactly. There was a saying in the water department, nobody says no to Freddie. Don't even try. Oh, my God. I want to pound this little manlit into dust already.

Like, we're not even 10 minutes into this thing, and I already just want to, you know, launch him out of a Trebyshe, maybe. That's a new one. Now we need a true crime campfire Trebyshe. Oh, I would pay money for that. Okay. So not only was he just the worst kind of boss, but it gets better. He was incapable of talking to a woman without making a sexual comment or a pass.

Oh, God. He thought he was smooth, like Elvis, his idol, and apparently the inspiration for his look. Most people describe him as arrogant, unpleasant, bullying, self-centered, obnoxious, disgusting, and it goes on and on and on. And campers. We're not usually into picking on people's appearance. But I'm going to power through that for a minute in this case, because it actually has a bearing on the point I'm trying to make. It actually is relevant. Stay with us for a second. Which is, despite looking like a Xerox copy of his own mugshot, Fred Andros was apparently swimming in pussy.

He had some kind of animal magnetism. Yes, and the fact that the animal was clearly some kind of disappointed rodent didn't stop. him by all accounts. It must have been the swagger. You know, like, he definitely did have, like, a cocky confidence that women apparently, somehow in violation of all natural laws and common sense and human decency found attractive. Ugh. I'm going to throw up. Of course, some of it was the boomhauer method for all y'all, King of the Hill fans. If you hit on literally every woman you meet, some of them are bound to bite.

It's just the law of large numbers. I know male campers that are using Tinder that dudes on Tinder often swipe right on every single woman to get matched with one. So it must be really hard out there. Yeah. Fred had a wife, Diane, and three other wives before her.

And at least two mistresses at any given time. Plus, action with sex workers and one-night stands on the side. Jeez, and crackers. This, despite treating women like errand girls slash sex toys. For one thing, and this is the kind of thing that makes a girl feel real special. He was too much of a cheap ass to pay for motels for a lot of his trists. Oh, my God. Instead, he'd just spread a blanket on the basement floor of the freaking water pumping station

and have sex with his girlfriend's there. Hopefully nowhere near the actual water because, ew. Oh, my God. If I lived in Poughkeepsie and this was like decades ago, I would still be afraid to drink the water. Oh, God, no. Yeah, gross. One of Fred's longtime friends with benefits was a woman called Don Silvernail, which is just the raddest name. It sounds like a werewolf name.

It sounds like a character in like a, like a, like a. torrid romance novel totally like a werewolf romance novel yeah yeah he's gonna rip his his shirt with his claws it's very romantic you should write that stop on here so he'd known don for 20 years by the time our story begins in 1999 and he'd met her on CB radio back in the 70s if you're too young to know what that was it was basically like an animal analog version of a chat room. CB stands for Citizens Band. Yeah, my dad was super into CB

radio, and I can't remember what his handle was. I really wish I could. I'm going to have to ask my mom if she can ask him what his CB handle was. But I remember sitting on his lap and talking to strangers on it when I was little, like for hours and hours and it was fun. And you'd be like, Breaker 1-9, this here's Helter-Skelter,

it's a beautiful night out there, come back. And they'd be like, hey there, Helter-Skelter, you sure do have a nice voice. Stars are shining bright out here in Kansas City. Where are you at over? And, you know, it was fun. And people would get really, like, intimate with each other. And it was just, you know, kind of like when you talk online because you can't see each other.

So people would tell their deepest, darkest secrets. And it was fun stuff. I miss it. Dawn's handle was Delta Dawn after the country song. Awesome. She moonlighted as a country and western singer in local bars and clubs. Freddie Boys' handle was Neptune. Because, you know, water commissioner.

Oh, Lord. Fred and Don struck up a friendship over the airways and eventually took it IRL. And despite the fact that they were both married at the time, it quickly became sexual in a friends with benefits kind of way. Fred's wife at the time wasn't into experimenting sexually. But Fred was into sex toys and other such shenanigans. and Don was up for whatever. She indulged his wild side. Even though, according to her, she was never much into sex.

She just did it to please the men she was with. Dawn is a complicated character. She's an Amazon woman, a country girl. She grew up hunting and fishing and shooting. She's really tall and kind of brawny, with a more stereotypically masculine energy. Yeah. She's kind of like a frontier woman outdoorsy. She liked hanging out at rough bars. One friend of hers said the first time he met her, she was sitting at the bar having a farting contest with some of the men. Oh, my God. How does that even come up after like age nine? I have never participated in a farting contest. And also, I'm not sure I could do it on cue, to be perfectly honest with you.

That's exactly what I was just thinking. I don't know how to. That's so confusing. How would you manufacture a fart on cue? I don't know. Like, okay, campers poll. How many of you guys can fart on Q? Please let us know on our social media. I don't think I could do it if you gave me $500 right now. I have to assume that somebody hanging out in a rough bar regularly probably eats like garbage. So that might be it.

Yeah. It could be like the kind of, you know, truck stop cuisine. It's just a side effect. And they just decided to make a game out of it. I wonder if there was a cash prize. That might be an incentive to learn. No. You know there wasn't, Whitney.

Don't start a story that you know is not true. You know, I used to know this woman. And it's interesting that Don had an amazing singing voice because this woman that I knew also had an amazing singing voice. She was actually a professional soprano, okay? And she could burp anything. Like, it was unbelievable. It was so impressive. And she was this, like, beautiful, like, pre-Raphaelite painting-looking young woman.

And she would just blah. Like, it was unreal. She would do lines from Shakespeare. She did it on request. It was unbelievable. And I always thought that was just so impressive because I can't burp on cue. I mean, I lack these interesting superpowers. Disgusting superpowers.

Yeah, but still, like, oddly impressive. Also, just so, you know, growing up, my mom would use every swear word, not really, like, but farting? She does not like that phrase. She was going to text me. and then pull my dad into it probably about, like, using that word on the podcast. It's like the word fart. What is her preferred euphemism? Poot.

Tooting, which is so much worse than me for me. Toot is by far worse. I would much rather say fart than toot. So, despite her tooting contest, Don apparently had a great singing voice. In her day job, she worked with developmentally delayed folks. and her colleagues and clients pretty much thought of her as an angel. She's been married a couple times and had a son. When our story starts in the mid-90s,

she'd recently married for a second time and her son was a young adult out on his own. Fred had kids, too, by the way, with several different baby mamas. Wrap it up, Fred, Jesus Christ. A big part of Don and Fred's friendship was him giving her money when she needed it. But nothing was ever free with Fred. There was always a quid pro quo, Clarice. Sometimes it was sexual, either sex with Fred or sex with one of his friends. Ew, Fred, Jesus, dude.

Sometimes it was a non-sexual favor. And more often than not, that favor was delivering envelopes. She'd schlepped countless of these envelopes around town for Fred over the years. Huh. I wonder what was in those envelopes. Yeah, that's a thinker. Could it be cash? Hmm.

Kickbacks? Payments for nefarious corrupt nonsense? Why, yes. Yes, it could. part of the big bag racketeering bullshit he had going on with a handful of other town officials. Yep. And he thought nothing of dragging Don into it as his gopher girl. And also apparently of just sending her to have sex with his gross friends as like payment for favors, which is just astonishing.

Yeah, I just don't like this guy at all. Whitney, he's the worst. I'm not a huge fan of Fred. No. He's not really my kind of guy. We get the impression that Don didn't ask too many questions about any of it, but she must have known what was going on. Yeah, she must have. She and Fred established a dynamic early on where Fred ordered her around and she did what he told her to do. He most definitely led her to believe he was a tough guy, a gangster type, connected. I'm pretty sure that's what attracted her to him. What she saw in this little bridge troll, I can't imagine.

I think somehow he brought some excitement into her life or something. Yeah. God, I wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole that was on fire, but that's on me. Hell no. And Don didn't have a whole lot of self-confidence. And then there was the money. Fred lent her thousands of dollars over the years. She didn't make a whole lot of money at her job, and she needed it.

And of course, Fred needs. needed the control. He loved having people owe him. He'd always call on the debt. It almost seems to have been strategic for him. Like he sewed that like you'd sew a garden, you know, like you'd sow seeds just all over town. Make sure this person owes me something. This person owes me something. And in the mid-90s, a new player came into the game, a statuesque platinum blonde named Susan Fassett. Susan was the wife of a police officer in nearby Pleasant Valley and a mom of two teenage boys. She worked with Fred at the water department and human resources and everybody loved her.

She was your typical suburban church-going mom. She sang in the choir, the whole thing. But apparently, Susan also had a spicy side, because after dancing around it for a while, flirting and whatnot, she and Fred started up an affair in 1995. Now, according to Fred, he fell in love with Susan. I don't think this guy would know love if it's spit in his hair, so I raise an eyebrow at that, but okay, that's what he says. And she was obviously drawn to him for some reason.

because their affair would go on for the next four years. And I guess you're just, I don't know, drunk with powers. I was like, oh, the most powerful man in town, the water commissioner. I really, seriously, the whole thing just baffles me beyond my ability to express it, but whatever. I guess he must have had an aura about him. And then one day, Fred had called up Dawn and told her that a friend of his had a fantasy about having sex with another woman. And if she would oblige and help his friend fulfill this fantasy, he would be

pay her $350. Now, Don was not wild about the idea initially. She'd never done anything like that before, but at the end of the day, she needed the cash. It was $350. So she showed up, and lo and behold, it turned out that Fred's friend was none other than Susan Fassett. So the three of them had sex, probably in the basement of the water pumping plant again. And Don says that despite what Fred had told her about this being Susan's fantasy. It was very obvious that it was his fantasy, not Susan's. She could just tell from how shy Susan was

and how she wouldn't look her in the eyes and Fred kept having to like coax them together and, you know, come on, kiss her, do this. You know, Susan was clearly not into it. She was doing it just as Dawn usually was to please Fred. So it was awkward and everything. But, you know, once the two ladies got into it, it was okay. And after that, they did it five or six more times.

and one of those times Oh dear God Fred set up a video camera and filmed it at one of the water treatment plants where our water comes from Oh my God I just need to know how close they were to the actual water Okay

How close was that man's penis to the actual water supply Is what I need to know And if it occurred to either of these two women That this, the fact that he was videotaping them might give Fred Primo blackmail material over both of them. If he ever wanted to use it, it didn't stop them. Okay. I really hate thinking about all the places that gross people might have had sex in public, like fast food restaurants or in offices.

It's unpleasant. Or in sewage treatment plants or whatever. It's just a gross thought. And now, not only am I thinking about it, but I'm also thinking about. Fred doing it. So thank you for that. Happy you not. Yeah. We've all got a mental image now. Maybe you, maybe campers y'all should wait till after this episode to look at any pictures. I'm just saying, I don't know if that's an image that you want in your mind for the rest of your life, especially not in these

trying times when we all have more than enough to worry about already. Yeah, exactly. But yeah. So he was a fan of of saving that, however much it would cost to go to a damn motel six for the afternoon. And he'd just go right down in the basement of the water treatment plant and probably spread out like a moving blanket like a dirty dusty stained moving blanket like from a new hall you know because romance obviously and maybe he'd have like a can sterno there for mood lighting i don't know i'm having a big a vivid mental image and the floor is probably kind of damp i would imagine and it'd probably start to seep up through the blanket the damp after a while Just a damp, hard, shanky floor and a smelly moving blanket.

It's like stepping in a puddle of water in socks except it's your ass. That's the worst feeling in the world. Okay, so you can try this little experiment at home campers if you were so inclined to really get the full experience of what this must have been like for these four women to just lay like a thin threadbare towel in the bottom of your bathtub and then run some water and then just put your. bear body on it and as the water slowly starts to get freezing cold you know what these women for some reason we're willing to put up with for this man god and you're just going to not be able to understand it just like we can so anyway oh and by the way campers one of the reasons don don agreed to be involved sexually with fred at all over the years is that he had pretended to be really really concerned about STIs and being quote unquote clean which is a stupid way of looking

at it because if you have an STI, you're not clean, but anyway, that's the language he used. And they both had an agreement that they'd only sleep with each other, their spouses, and people they knew for sure were quote unquote clean. And only much later did Don

find out that Fred was sleeping with just scores of people that she never knew about. Plus, he was spending hundreds of dollars a day on sex with sex workers and not using protection very often with any of these people. So just bear back with like

God knows how many, I mean he was I think very clearly a sex addict hundreds of dollars a day okay and not wearing protection and he's telling her oh it's just you and my wife and people I know have been tested clean so God knows what he exposed her to

you know it's just oh so of course Susan was sneaking around behind her husband Jeff's back and he was suspicious but he couldn't prove anything just yet and of course their marriage suffer hugely as a result of that, and distance was growing between them. And also, while this affair was going on, Fred Andros was still neck-deep in his corruption racket. Specifically, he was

hooked up with this guy named Bill Paroli Sr. Now, this guy was the town Republican Party leader, and he, Andros, and some other players were shaking down vendors and other business owners for bribes and kickbacks, both for themselves personally and for the local Republican party. So what they call pay-to-play politics, right? And, right around the time that he took up with Susan Fassett, the federal government finally started paying attention to the complaints that they were getting from local business owners about parolee and Andros and their buddies. So people were doing what I said I would do, say, all right, you go right ahead and cut off my water and then they would call the police. And finally, that happened

enough times that the, you know, investigators were starting to get wise to the corruption in their midst. So they began an investigation, you know, but quietly behind the scenes. And it would be a while before that got on Fred's radar that he was being investigated. And in the meantime, Fred liked to talk. And he was not always particularly discreet about what he said, especially when he was lying in bed or on his filthy threadbare blanket in the basement of the water treatment plant, for God's sake, with one of his sex partners. And Susan, of course, was no exception. She was the one he quote unquote loved, so I'm sure he talked to her a lot. And in the four years that she was involved with Fred, she heard things, both from him and from

others at the water department. Now, if those things troubled her, she didn't mention it to anyone, though, certainly not to her husband, who was a cop and who, by all accounts, was the last to know about his wife's affair, which makes me so sad. You know, like, that's so not cool to make a fool out of your spouse like that. No. When everybody knows but him and people are probably whispering about it behind his back, like that would hurt so badly. Just, Oh my God, don't do that. So granted Jeff lived and worked a town over in Pleasant Valley, and most of the people who knew about it were in Poughkeepsie, but still.

But Jeff had suspected that Susan was cheating on him for a while now. He just didn't have any proof. But finally, one afternoon, he caught her red-handed. He'd rigged up a tape recorder to the phone and finally managed to record Susan talking to Fred. And from the conversation, it was very obvious that there was a lot more going on than work talk or casual friendship. So when Susan got home that night

He told her, you're busted And she just broke down crying She admitted it And she admitted that it had been going on For several years, too Which I can only imagine the slap in the face that that is Like you maybe thought it had been going on for like months Oh no, no, it's been years

Years now I've been sleeping with this guy And they were just a few days away From their 24th anniversary So just bless Jeff's heart It's not great So Susan moved into another bedroom that night And for a while, she and Jeff just kind of existed in this sort of uneasy limbo, just not sure what they were going to do, which just sounds miserable. But then one night, Susan obviously had some kind of an epiphany, and she crawled into bed with Jeff in the middle of the night and asked him if he would be willing to consider reconciling.

She handed over the pager that she had used to communicate with Fred. She swore she'd break it off 100%, no more secrets. and, you know, she and Jeff used to be happy together. They were one of those lovey-dovey soulmate type of couples, and they wanted to get that back, obviously. So Jeff told her, all right, I'm willing to try, but you've got to cut it off. And soon, he believed that she really had cut it off.

You know, things were sort of starting to get back to normal, and Susan was seemingly falling back in love with him. They'd been talking a lot and cuddling on the couch, and they'd ordered new wedding bands to kind of symbolize their recommitment to each other. And meanwhile, I know this is going to shock you, Fred, not taking it so well. I know you're surprised to hear that, but remember, nobody says no to Fred. Freddy. Can't handle that.

And I'm not sure whether it was this that motivated him more or the fact that he finally got wind that the feds were talking to Susan about the corruptions stuff, and he knew that she knew where at least some of the bodies were buried, so to speak. I suspect it was probably a little bit of both. But whatever the reason or reasons, it was around this time, while Susan was trying to reconnect with her husband, Jeff, that Fred started telling Don Silvernail that Susan needed to die. He said, this woman is going to bury me. She's going to talk to the feds. She has to go. And Don's reaction to this initially was just to try to get him off.

a subject. But again, shocking. Fred was like a damn dog with the bone. He would not let it go. He was not going to be diverted. So he just getting it up and bringing it up and bringing it up. And one afternoon, Fred invited Don over to his house while his wife, Diane, wasn't home. He laid out some photographs all over the dining room table and he gestured for Don to come look at them. Dawn was confused at first. And then her stomach just sank. They were surveillance photos. of her son and other members of her family. Yikes. In one picture, her son was standing on the loading dock at the factory where he worked, smoking a cigarette.

He obviously had no idea he was being watched and photographed. There were dozens of these pictures. Fred must have seen it in her face that his message had landed. And just like a mafadon in a movie, he said, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to him or to someone else in your family. Oh, my God. For God's sakes. Could you chew the scenery anymore, Fred?

Yeah, he laid it on thick. But Don was terrified. This was ice water in her veins. She loved her son. She loved her family. She knew Fred was connected. He'd planted that idea in her head for years. He had a whole army of henchmen he could call up at home.

any time, who'd do anything he told him to. To Don, this was not an empty threat. In fact, there was a rumor that surfaced about Fred Andros while the corruption investigation was going on. Some people said that he and one of his co-conspirators in the federal corruption investigation had had a witness in the case killed some time ago. It was utter nonsense, no truth to it whatsoever, but it added to Fred's mystique around town. In actuality, the guy in question had jumped off a bridge and killed himself once he found out he was being investigated. But the rumor persisted. Yeah, and the thing is perception is reality.

I mean, if everybody thinks you're dangerous, they're going to act like you're dangerous. Even if you'd probably wet your pants if somebody threatened to hit you like I suspect Fred Andros would. Oh, 100%. In fact, investigators suspected Fred started the rumor himself as part of his pathetic Mafia Don fantasy. see. The fact that this worked on a lot of people makes me despair for humanity. But there you go. Don believed it. Fred had told Don a story once that really stuck with her. One day after they divorced, Fred's first wife was driving down the road when a truck swerved over the center line and almost hit her head on. Fred had arranged it as a little message to his ex. And Fred

had more to say to Don. He told her, in addition to keeping your family healthy, I'll exonerate that debt you owe me. She owed him a few thousand. Well, okay, best of your heart, honey. That's not what exonerate means, but okay, exonerate your debt. So he was really sweetened in the pot here, huh? Offering to you exonerate, which I'm sure he just means forgive her debt. Oh my God, I don't know. Why didn't it occur to Don that if Fred had all these hit men on speed dial, ready and willing to kill members of her family for him, why didn't he just have one of them kill Susan? Right. This is the part I can't understand. Don was by all accounts an intelligent person.

Maybe he just had her in a panic and she wasn't thinking straight. That is a definite possibility, but I think it's also a possibility that there was something else going on here. And it could be like an anonymous family member of Don said to M. William Phelps in his book about this case. This person thought Don got into this because she craved excitement. And they wondered if maybe Don kind of wanted to see what it was like to kill someone. And this family member wasn't the only person to say something like this to Phelps, by the way. A longtime acquaintance told him that there was always something about Don they didn't like. And I will say that one person is a coincidence.

But when multiple people are saying it, that's a pattern. Especially when, you know, there's family members involved. I mean, if your family thinks you're a wrong and that's, you know, possibly a red flag. That's heavy. This acquaintance said, there's something about her that's cold. With most people, you can make some sort of connection. But with Don, no way. There was no way to connect.

Very weird person, quiet and cold. Like a sociopath, actually. No feeling behind her eyes. Yikes. And another friend said she could turn tears on and off as needed, and she could be manipulative. Don did have an edge on her. If she didn't, she never would have stayed friends with Fred Andros all those years. And she'd always liked hanging out at dive bars and around what one family member called

Disreputable People. The Farters. Tudors, Tudors. Sorry, Katie's mom. It's possible that Fred could sense this and used it to his advantage. She says now that it was the threats to her family that drove her. We can't know for sure what her motives were, I guess. People seem to describe her really differently. Two opposite extremes, almost.

It's really interesting. And you do see this a lot in a lot of murder cases where, like, half the people will be like, really don't like her and the other half are like she's an angel she could never hurt anybody yeah i mean because i think people who commit these kinds of crimes do often have pretty convincing masks that they keep in place a lot of the time or it could just be that these are people who are complicated and have very different sides to their personalities yeah that they let different people see for different reasons good point anyway fred really amped up the pressure after this conversation constant constant pressure.

I will have them killed. I will send somebody on a drive-by to shoot your son. Nobody will hear it with all that factory noise in the background. He'll bleed out right there on the loading dock before anybody can get to him. In an interview with Paula Zahn in 2009, Don said, that's where the threat became real and palpable, and I could taste it. He also told her that if he went down on these charges, so would she. He reminded her about all those envelopes she'd carried for him over the years.

He'd make sure she went down with him. Don didn't have any doubt that he'd follow through on his threats. She didn't think much about the fact that she had no right to take another person's life. She says she just thought about saving her family. Why she didn't take any of the many other options available to her, I can't imagine. For example, she could have gone to the police. gone to the feds investigating Fred right gone to Susan and warned her right at least right gone on the run with her son or my favorite shot Fred instead yeah I vote for that last one

but any one of those would have worked I mean at the very least anonymously call a not you can do it without even giving your name you can call the police or just tell Susan her husband's a cop yeah You know, like he'll make sure she's protected. It's just, ugh. But alas, she didn't. She told Paula Zahn she was running on fear and adrenaline. She and Fred met up for several planning sessions, and they stalked Susan all over town to scout out the best place to do it.

They settled on getting her on the way to her car after choir practice. And of course, Fred made sure he had an airtight alibi for the night of the murder. Oh, of course. He and Diane had plans to hang out with the birds. Friends of theirs from a model airplane club, Fred ran. Mr. Bird just happened to be a former cop. Not bad if you need an alibi. Yeah, that was really well chosen.

Fred told her to drop off a bag with the gun, the mask, and the gloves behind a particular tree. So he could retrieve it later and drill out the gun barrel so cops couldn't get a ballistics match on it later with the bullets from Susan's body. Yeah, make sure you hand over the bag. bag of evidence with your DNA and fingerprints all over it to this asshole who's threatening to have your kid killed. That's a great idea. Yeah, good job, Don. So, telling Paul is on about the murder in 2009, Dawn cried. She said, I left her in the dirt, and I ran away like a coward. Despite their sexual encounters, which they'd really just done to please Fred, they barely knew each other. So, as we know, Jeff Fassett was very cooperative with police after his wife's

murder. He took in past a polygraph, answered all the questions they asked him, told him he'd do whatever he needed to do to cooperate, as long as they would also take a hard look at Fred Andros. Jeff told cops the last time he'd had sex with Susan was four or five days earlier, but when they did the autopsy, they found semen that indicated she'd had sex in the last 24 hours of her life. Fred Andros told him he hadn't seen Susan since late September. Hmm. So who's semen was this. When police spoke with him, Fred seemed broken up about Susan's death. He told the investigators they'd broken off their relationship about a year and a half before, but he still loved her a lot, and they still spoke sometimes as friends, blah, blah, blah.

And he was initially really cooperative, so much so that the detective assigned to talk to him, Detective Boiko, didn't get a bad feeling about him at all at first. Not until several interviews in when Fred balked at giving a DNA sample to compare against the semen that they found in Susan's body. Now, this is a testament to how good a liar and manipulator this guy was. It was basically the one thing that this sad little wannabe gangster had going for him was that he was a really damn good liar and he could manipulate people. But Fred really didn't want to give that DNA sample. So he'd have to talk to his lawyer and hemmed and hawed.

And then he also lied about having guns in the house. So because of this federal investigation and the fact that he was in the midst of working out a plea agreement with the feds, he wasn't allowed to have guns in the house. But I guess his wife, Diane, didn't get the memo on that and just innocently, like, gave him away when they asked her about it. So here's a good little piece of advice from True Crime Camp Fire. If you're going to lie to the police, make sure that your significant other has the story straight. Okay? So they don't just accidentally give you away.

Because Diane was like, yeah, yeah, he's got a gun collection. You want to see it? Good job, Diane. I love it. So the gun thing was a little bit more under. understandable, given the federal investigation and Fred's plea agreement and all, but the DNA, that bothered Detective Boyko, the fact that he didn't want to give that sample. Jeff Fassett had agreed to that right away, and the results had ruled him out as the donor.

And after he talked to his attorney, Fred outright refused to give a sample. He also wouldn't tell him who his attorney was, which was weird. Like, when you're represented by counsel, you just say, direct any questions to my attorney, whoever, whoever, right? You don't say, no, I don't want to tell you, I'm not telling you my lawyer is. That's weird. And also makes me strongly suspect he didn't really have one. No, no, he did not.

He's probably just making that up. So, Investigator Boyko took a greater interest in Mr. Fred after that, unsurprisingly. So good job staying off the radar, my dude, right? And over the course of the next couple of months, he talked to him 19 times and caught him in just a whole plethora of lies. So, for example, Fred had said he'd been married three times. he'd been married four. He said he had four kids. He actually had seven.

Both of which are just dumb fuck things to lie about. But this guy seems to lie as easily as most of us breathe. So what can I tell you? There was zero reason to lie about that stuff too. I know. It's so weird. Besides trying to like manipulate the cops, I guess. Like it's not just, oh, I forgot.

I also ran to the store that day around X time. That's, I neglected to mention three whole. last kids. It was probably to make him seem like a better person maybe. He wasn't a flusy running around town with all his baby mamas. But like with most pathological liars, there also doesn't need to be a reason or a goal. It's just lying to lie. Yeah, they just lie because they enjoy it a lot of the times, I think. It could have had something to do with the fact that he didn't want them speaking to one of his sons in particular who was a teenager and who probably knew a little more than Fred would have liked

to be known about all of this. But then even so, I mean, you're lying out three. You're not mentioning three of your kids. I don't know. It's just bizarre. He also said his relationship with Susan had been over for a year and a half, and he said they hadn't been intimate in all that time because he was impotent.

Okay. Weird for the town ladies' man to admit that so cheerfully, but there you go. And Boyko very quickly found out that this was, forgive the choice of words, total bollocks. because Fred was still picking up sex workers on a daily basis, which I doubt you would be doing if you were impotent. So finally, Boyko came up with a plan to get Fred's DNA whether he liked it or not.

And this was a genius plan that he came up with for this. He met up with Fred in a parking lot, had Fred sit in his car, and he handed him like a cold soda that he'd picked up at a fast food place right before the meeting. And then as they sat in the car and talked, Boyko just kept turning up the heat in the car, just a little bit in a time higher and higher and higher until they were both just sweating bullets and finally Fred took the bait

and drank from the soda cup and then was dumb enough to leave it in the cup holder when the meeting was over so Boyko after I'm sure dancing a little happy dance internally sent it off to the lab

and guess whose DNA was inside Susan's body was it Fred's? Why yes it was so this pretty much cleared Jeff Fassett once and for all and, of course, zeroed them in on Fred Andros as the prime suspect. But there was a wrinkle.

Because Fred was set to testify in the federal corruption case against his co-conspirator William Perroly, Sr. In exchange for testimony, Fred would get lesser extortion and bribery charges. So Susan's murder was a problem for the feds. If he was going to be any use to them at all, they needed to be able to present him as a truthful witness. So they needed to figure out, if he was involved in this murder case and fast.

So they hauled him in, they questioned him, and because they had this leverage of the plea deal to lord over him, because it's standard in a plea agreement that the subject has to cooperate fully in any other investigation that they happen to be involved in or the deal's off, right? So they had this leverage over him, and they were able to really ramp up the pressure because of that. And after a few hours of interrogation by the feds, Fred admitted, okay, okay, I had sex with Susan a few days before the murder.

not a year and a half earlier, as he'd previously said, just a few days earlier. In fact, he said, and I quote, she begged me to have sex with her one last time. Oh, my God. Ugh. Yeah, no, she didn't. I just refused to believe that. That's gross. Nobody's begging you for sex, you little forest troll.

Anyway. And also during this interrogation, he tried to convince the feds that Jeff Fassett had killed Susan in a rage when he'd found out about the affair, which was, of course, a conclusion. that they'd already ruled out. And then, when he saw that they weren't buying that, he'd tried to throw his poor wife under the bus, who didn't do anything in all of this. She was just being cheated on,

and she didn't know anything about anything. When one of the investigators asked if he thought his wife could have slipped out while Mr. and Mrs. Bird were over there that night and killed Susan, because he had told them that he and Mr. and Mrs. Bird had gone out into the garage and that they were working on a model plane out there for a while, and Diane had stayed inside and everything,

and Fred said, no, I wouldn't have thought so, but, you know, now you're really making me think about it. Fred, you absolute piece of shit. Just throwing Diane right under the butt. Yeah, she might have done it, sure. Then he changed his tack again and tried to say he was sure that it was Bill Peroli Sr. who'd had Susan killed, so his co-conspirator in the corruption charge thing. So he's just all over the place, and the feds weren't buying any of it. Because the thing is, if you thought that, why the hell wouldn't you have said that,

the first place. We've talked to you 19 times. So Fred, unsurprisingly, didn't have an answer to that. But he continued to deny that he'd add any involvement in her murder and finally he came out with this extraordinary statement. So campers buckle up for this shit. He said, I think a lesbian killed Susan Fassett. I think a lesbian killed Susan Fassett. Okay. Oh my God. Okay, detective. It was just the local lesbian. I thought it might have been the town bisexual, but they were doing karaoke with the other LGBTs that night. Jesus Christ. I can't with this guy.

So, yeah, I guess he had decided it was time to throw his puppet under the bus. Poor Don. And, of course, he dropped his head all hang dog-like and gave the name Don Silvernail. She killed Susan, he said. She shot her six times with a 45 caliber. She'd been involved in a lesbian relationship with Susan. and when Susan broke it off she was enraged and she killed her and I had nothing to do with it

blah blah blah blah and he said I should have told you but I was protecting an old friend and here's the thing y'all the police hadn't released the number of shots or the caliber of the weapon so this was legit not necessarily the specific story he was telling but he knew details about this crime

that had not been released to the public right and this was the first time Don's name had surfaced in the investigation and on December 23rd, the cop showed up at Don's house with a search warrant. They told her they were looking at all owners of 45 caliber weapons. Don was cooperative. She emphatically denied killing Susan. She denied having a lesbian affair with Susan, too.

She said the whole idea was disgusting. Right. This story is just rife with homophobia, I guess. It's like, you're the one rolling around on the floor of the water treatment plant with her. What do you mean? But she sure as hell didn't seem like a killer to the cops. They thought this might just be total bullshit, just Fred trying to divert attention from what was really going on. But then, Don turned over her 45.

And ballistics discover that the barrel had been altered, drilled to disguise the lands and grooves that allow for a forensic match to a particular spent bullet. now that campers was suspicious and a few days after christmas they brought her in again this time she started to pour out the whole story the whole 20-year saga fred's threats his hold over her she dropped her head and just kept repeating i shot that poor woman i shot that poor woman Investigator said later that they were stunned by the level of control Fred Andros had overdone, despite the fact that she was clearly intelligent and articulate. Oh, man, it'll never stop blowing my mind. Just how much influence one person can have over another. It's just, it's terrifying. Especially when you don't have somebody to spot check you. Yeah, absolutely. In an affair where, you know, it's a secret, so you can't, like, just go talk to your friends about it.

You can't be like, so Fred says this and Fred says that because you're keeping it a secret. So it creates the same kind of dynamic that you can get in a really toxic or abusive relationship where you're isolated from other people and the only voice in your ears theirs. So you don't have a frame of reference anymore. So now they had what they needed to put the habeas grabbis on Freddie Fuckface. They headed over to Fred's house. They knocked. Fred's teenage son answered the door. and said his dad was around the house somewhere. He wasn't sure where. They called out to Fred.

Hey, Fred, come on out. We need to talk to you. But they got no answer. And they were starting to get that eerie feeling that experienced cops get when there's something bad going down. So they split up and searched the house. Detective Boyko noticed the door to the attic was ajar. So he called out, Fred, I'm coming up. And right as he finished that sentence, he heard a gunshot. He ran up the attic stairs and found Fred Andros lying in a pool of blood, a handgun on the floor next to him. He'd shot himself in the head. Shit.

The detective moved closer to take Fred's pulse and saw his chest move slightly. He wasn't dead. They called an ambulance and they rushed him to the hospital. And Fred survived his suicide attempt, albeit with some significant facial disfigurement and went to trial anyway. Fred, you asshole. Nice try, buddy. I'm sorry. I just hate this guy so much. It's like he's absolutely one of those guys that would, you know? Oh, absolutely. You're not going to take control. The pure narcissism and, uh, nope. I'm so glad it didn't work, so he had to go to prison. So Don took a plea deal, 18 years to life, and of course she was the star witness at Fred's trial.

As he had in his last interview with the detectives, Fred tried to claim that Don had killed Susan on her own because Susan had rejected her. The jury didn't buy it. Fred Andros was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Unfortunately, he only served two of those years before he died of a heart attack. Man, I hate when that happens. It's like with that massive asshole David Parker Ray, he never had to serve the time that he so richly deserved because he ended up like stroking out or having a heart attack or something. I forget which it was. And I think it was even during the trial. It was before his trial.

Yeah, he didn't even go to prison. Oh, I hate that so much. But I mean, I guess the good news is they're no longer polluting the planet. So there's that. But you want to see him suffer, you know, these guys that really, you know, they're guilty as sin. have really destroyed people's lives. He deserved a rot in prison. The fact that a molecule of air that I breathe could have potentially touched these losers

is enough to put me off my dinner. Fred's daughter, Eva, has said that she believes in his guilt 100%. And she deeply regrets being nice to him in his last two years of life. Damn, Eva, savage. I love it. You know your garbage when your own family thinks you're guilty. and feels bad for being nice to you while you're in prison. Yeah, that's what she said.

As for Don, she has expressed strong remorse for killing Susan. She says she lives with it every day, as well she should. I mean, she was used. Absolutely. She was manipulated and threatened for sure. But she had options that didn't involve taking an innocent human life and robbing a family of their wife, mother, and daughter. Yeah.

I have some sympathy for Don, but not a whole lot. I don't think she worked nearly hard enough to try to get her way out of that situation. And I think she's right where she belongs. Yeah, I feel the same way. Her last parole hearing was in 2017, and she was denied. So, campers, what do we think of Dawn? Do we think she was a pawn in the hands of a master manipulator? Or do we agree with some of her anonymous family members and friends that there was a part of her that enjoyed the excitement of being involved in a murder plot?

Do we really think she's remorseful? I think she regrets what she did. I do. I do think she regrets it in retrospect. I think the way I feel about it is, A, she did have, it seems, very low self-esteem. She was being manipulated. And Fred had, I think, genuinely convinced her that he was connected. So do I think there was a chance that she thought that he might act on his threats?

Yeah, I do. But like he said, there were so many other things that she could have done and the fact that she didn't take any of those other actions. Even though they had multiple planning sessions, it wasn't like he came to her and said, you have to do it tonight. And I've got a guy already sitting outside your son's work. It wasn't like that. It was days and days and days. So at any time, she could have gone to the police. She could have warned Susan.

She could have done any number of things, and she didn't do that. So I think, you know, to me, it's telling when multiple people who know you say, well, I think there was a part of her that got off on it. And I think there was a part of her that was drawn to the drama of this and the excitement of it. I just find that difficult to discount. If it was just one person saying it, but it wasn't. I mean, in that Phelps book, it was multiple people saying the same kinds of things. So I do think that there is probably a dark streak running through Dawn and that she probably did on some level do it because she wanted to.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you on that. I think I do think maybe she regretted that it went down like it did. I think she regrets it for sure. I just think at the time there was a part of her, yeah. She jumped in with two feet. Right. I don't think it was any hesitation on her part. she didn't think about the person I'm killing is a person. No, absolutely not. And, you know,

I don't think she deserves parole. I don't think, I think she's exactly where she deserves to be. I think, I think there's a lot of weight put into, oh, well, he was a manipulative person. He could get anyone to do anything. But you can't just remove the responsibility from someone else just because, oh, well, he was really convincing. Absolutely. He's not magic. He's not a Fengali, you still have free will. And again, like, he wasn't standing over her for the entire time. She went home and went to bed in her own bed at night, in her own house. He wasn't looming over her. She could have made a phone call at any time. And it's interesting what you said before about toxic relationships, because when you're in a toxic relationship, you are trapped in a house

with that person. Yeah. You are, they are your, you're breathing their air. You are up in their face all the time. Exactly. That was not the case here. Yeah, you can't breathe. And she was able to able to go about her life exactly so there are elements of of that and i think elements of him being you know a very manipulative person and a scary person in a lot of ways but at the same time i i just feel like if she really wanted to get out of doing this she would have 100% yeah and i'd also like to touch on just how bonkers it is that fred andros let the tiny little amount of power that he had as you know water commissioner just completely eat him alive I mean, they say power corrupts, but damn, dude.

Yeah, like, a freaking water commissioner. Settle down, for God's sake. I'm the town's comptroller, so. I know. You need to settle down. You are not the president of the United States. He acted like he was a flipping mafia don, like Tony Soprano over here. It's just ridiculous.

Like, dude. Wow. Yeah, I think that, really, it sums it up Napoleon complex with this guy, big time. Which I've known lots of short men who are beautifully confident and do not have that remotely. So it's certainly not necessary to behave like this ass hat. For God's sake. So that was a wild one, right, campers? And you know we'll have another one for you next week.

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