True Crime Campfire - Chameleon: Bad Bitch Cindy McKay

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Chameleons are known for their ability to change color. Some species can achieve incredibly intricate, beautiful colors and patterns. Most people believe chameleons change color in order to blend in with their environments and make themselves less visible to predators, but that’s a misconception. In reality, they change their colors according to mood—reinventing themselves at their own whims. People like to do this too, every once in a while. Most of us have, at some point in our lives, played around with different looks, different hobbies, different friend groups. It’s fun. I mean, how many of us are on our third quarantine hairstyle by now? But some people are chameleons as a way of life. Lacking a strong, cohesive inner core, and lacking the emotional connection to other people that inspires us to make real commitments, they reinvent themselves in order to manipulate. To make people easier to fool, to use, to discard. We’re about to tell you the story of a woman like this. Who is she, in her deepest heart of hearts? By the end of the story, you might agree with us…that not even she really knows. Sources:Justin Fenton, 3-part series on Cindy McKay in The Baltimore Sun, 2008: Part 1, "A Trail of Deception;" Part 2, "For Police Detective, an Intriguing Suspect;" Part 3: "A Fatal Romance"Investigation Discovery's "Diabolical," Episode "Weeping Widow"Follow 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. Camillians are known for their ability to change color. Some species can achieve incredibly intricate, beautiful colors. and patterns. Most people believe chamellions change color in order to blend in with their environments and make themselves less visible to predators. But that's a misconception. In reality, they change their colors according to mood, reinventing themselves at their own whims. People like to do this too, every once in a while. Most of us have, at some point in our lives, played around with different looks, different hobbies, different friend groups. It's fun. I mean, how many of us are on our third quarantine hairstyle by now. But some people are chameleons as a way of life, lacking a strong

cohesive inner core and lacking the emotional connection to other people that inspires us to make real commitments. They reinvent themselves in order to manipulate, to make people easier to fool, to use, to discard. We're about to tell you the story of a woman like this. Who is she in her deepest heart of hearts? By the end of the story, you might agree with us. that not even she really knows. This is Chameleon. Bad Bitch, Cindy McKay. So, campers, we're in Ocean City, Maryland,

a beachy tourist town about 150 miles outside of Baltimore. April 15, 2003. An officer out on patrol pulled into a parking lot to investigate a suspicious car. The car, a Hyundai Santa Fe, was sitting facing the ocean. Its lights were on and the driver's side door was open. Inside, a purse lay on the seat, a set of keys next to it. A cell phone was plugged into a charger. There was an empty prescription bottle labeled hydrocodone, an opioid pain reliever.

The officer also noticed an empty box for an inflatable raft and a Walmart receipt that listed both the raft and a pair of oars. And lying next to the purse was a handwritten note. It read, David, leaving you all in the middle of the night was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. After meeting with my lawyer today, it's clear that Jessup is waiting for me. I can't and won't go back. Please understand and try to make the kids understand why I can't. I feel all alone and have decided to die rather than rot in prison. I'm sorry. Please love and take care of the children. They'll need you more than ever. Let them know that I love them very much, and couldn't put them through years of prison, too. All my love, Cindy.

So it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the obvious interpretation here. Cindy, whoever she may be, seem to have taken some pills and then rafted out into the ocean to commit suicide. Drowning isn't a common method for suicide, but it does happen, and it certainly seem to have happened here. But campers, as true crime shows never tire of telling us, things are not. always what they seem. And sometimes clues can just get in the way of the truth. Investigators quickly determined that Cindy was Cindy McKay. The David in the letter was Cindy's ex-husband, David Harhoff, and it didn't take long for them to find out that not only did Ms. Cindy have a history of embezzlement and fraud, not only had she served years in prison

for previous such crimes, but she was currently a suspect in a couple of pretty serious situations. In fact, she and her attorney were supposed to meet with Baltimore City detectives from two different divisions, financial crimes and homicide later that day. They had a few questions for her about $200,000 she'd admitted to embezzling from her former job. And even more pressing than that, they wanted to talk to her about a mysterious house fire that had recently claimed the life of her husband, Buddy Downs. Dang, right? That's a lot. It's a lot. So we've got a woman who's a suspect in a couple of times. different crimes due to get interviewed about said crimes that day. We've got a scene that looks pretty

obviously staged to tell a particular story. We don't have any reports of a body or a raft washing up anywhere nearby, and an aerial search of the area didn't turn up anything either. So the investigators were starting to feel pretty sure that this Cindy McKay was trying to pull something. Specifically, she was most likely trying to fake her own death to get the Baltimore PD off her back. and when they found out that Cindy had just bought a new house with her previous husband, David Harhoff, they figured this must be where she was hiding out. So they stormed over there, SWAT team and all, burst in on Cindy's poor teenage son Matthew, who was bewildered at why they were asking where his mom was.

As far as Matthew knew, she was at work. But Cindy McKay was not at work. She was in the wind. And the investigators didn't believe Cindy was dead. Not for a second. But let's put a pin in that for a bit. dive into Ms. Cindy's checkered past and why Detective Gibson had been so eager to talk to her before she disappeared. By all accounts except for her own, Cindy has sometimes said she was abused as a child,

Cindy had a happy, privileged childhood in Washington, D.C. She was a bright, hardworking kid, a cheerleader. Friends said she was charming, ingratiating. In fact, one friend said Cindy could charm a rattlesake. And she was fun to be. around with a mischievous streak. She was kind of the center of her social circle, the one who made all the plans. She graduated high school in 1974 and went straight into training as a police cadet, hoping to become an officer for the Prince George's County Police Department. Say that five times fast. It didn't take long for her to hit the skids, though. Just a couple years into her law enforcement career, internal affairs got wind that Cindy was harassing her boyfriend's ex.

Making threatening phone calls. Cindy left the department when she was only 20 years old. It's such a weird thing to do. Yeah, girl, you won. He's your boyfriend. No, leave the poor woman alone. She's not even dating him anymore. And shortly after she left the police department,

she got married to a cop named Alan Krevelling. But it didn't take long for her to start thinking about greener pastures. Less than a year into her brand new marriage, Cindy struck up an affair with a security guard she met at the hospital where she was working as a receptionist. This dude was married, too, by the way. That's nice. So charming. She cheated on poor Allen with the security guard for five years.

They even talked about leaving their spouses and getting married, despite the fact that Cindy also had a kid with her husband during this time. But it all came crashing down in 1983 when Cindy. Cindy got preggers again and told her security guard, Leva, that he was the father. Now, Loverboy didn't want to believe it, but Cindy got a paternity test and proved it. And Leverboy's response was to throw a hissy fit and tell Cindy he wanted nothing more to do with her. That's real nice, bro. Well, then you should have wrapped it up, shouldn't she?

Dude had to be court-ordered to pay child support. And that was that for his and Cindy's beautiful love story. I say again. Whomp, wamp, wamp. I've given up on hope and love. I know, right? Cindy and the unnamed security guard. Boo-hoo.

And unsurprisingly, this chapped her husband's ass pretty significantly. Alan filed for divorce and custody of the kids. In court papers, he said he was concerned about Cindy's influence on the kids because of, quote, serious emotional, moral, and financial difficulties. And lo and behold. he ended up getting full custody. It's pretty unusual for a court to take custody away from a mother, and it was especially unusual in the 1980s.

So what was the deal? And what were these serious, emotional, moral, and financial difficulties that Alan was so worried about? Was he just talking about the affair, or was there something more going on? Well, it seems Alan knew some things about his wife, and what was he? what she was capable of. Yeah. In February of 1985,

Cindy stole 10 grand from a construction company where she was working as a secretary. She claimed she did it out of desperation to pay the legal bills for her custody battle with Alan. I can practically hear the tiny violins now, can't you campers? Won't someone think of the children? Problem with that was, investigators found that Cindy had used a big old chunk of that money

to spruce up her house. She's got a hot tub. Ooh, fancy. Okay, for us millennials out there, a hot tub in the 80s is basically what getting, like, heated floors is now. And I'm saying this because to me, a hot tub just sounds like germy human soup, but, like, back in the day, it was something to dream about. They have chlorine. My grandma had one. It was pretty rad.

I don't know why it strikes me as grosser than a pool. Because, like, a pool, I'm like, oh, it's, like, refreshing. It's cleansing. Something about it being hot. Yeah, I can see that. I hate it. So that kind of screwed up her hole. I was desperate to keep my kids' narrative.

Nevertheless, it was her first offense in all, so all Cindy got was three years of probation. But only two months later, Ms. Cindy was in it up to her eyebrows yet again. She'd been working at a company called Midlantic Window in Annapolis for a few months when customers started calling up to complain. They were getting bills for windows they'd already paid for. Hmm. So the owners, a couple called the Wests, decided to start an audit to try to figure out what was going on. You're soon going to come to understand that Cindy McKay's least favorite word in the English language is audit, to strike's fear in her soul.

So this audit had barely begun when a huge fire broke out at Midlantic Window, broke out, oddly enough, in the records office. Hmm. And the fire was a rager with little explosions that broke out the windows. flames leaping up through the roof. Mr. West, who was away on a trip with his family at the time, later learned that witnesses had seen a woman leaving the building not long before the fire started. Investigators found traces of accelerant in the ruins. So, you know, arson. And soon, the investigators found out about those missing window payments and the audit that had just gotten underway before the fire. And when they looked into it, they discovered the bank account where those missing payments had ended up. An account set up

by Midlantic Windows's brand new office manager, Ms. Cindy McKay. Everyone she worked with was completely gobsmacked. She seemed so nice, she was so charming. In fact, she went out of her way to charm people. The more perceptive of her coworkers at various of her jobs throughout the years would notice that the charm sometimes seemed a little calculating, that Cindy seemed to be trying awfully hard to ingratiate herself, but to most people, she was just a super nice person.

But the evidence was undeniable. So the police put the habeas grab us on Cindy for theft And initially for the arson too Although they ended up dropping that charge later on Just for lack of evidence Cindy was convicted of theft And sentenced to six months in prison Wow, don't be too hard on her, Your Honor, right?

Six whole months But yet again, as we've seen With so many of the assholes we cover on this show These people just get away with murder Remember Dedy Moore from the Abraham Shakespeare case They get away with murder And I guarantee you if I did one thing wrong I'd get caught immediately and go to jail for like 15 years.

I just know it in my bones. Like, I would never be able to get away with this shit. I hate this bitch. And it's about to, I sound resentful. I mean, not that I want to do crimes. It's just, I just know that I would get caught immediately. And it's about to get so much worse, y'all. Just buckle the hell up.

So, anywho, Cindy got her six months in prison, and by the time she reported for her sentence, she'd gotten preggers again. Again by a police officer who yet again did not want to be involved with either her or the baby. Jesus, dude, pick better men. Do you think it was the uniform that did it for her? Like, so far we're at cop, security guard, cop. That's right, yep. Yeah, it might have been. So, she was pregnant in prison, which must have been super fun. And somehow, while she was locked up at

the Ann Arundle County Detention Center, and I'm not 100% clear on how this happened, like, whether this was like somehow a co-ed detention center or something, but Cindy got involved with the guy named David Harhoff. David was a drug addict in jail for burglary. Okay, maybe it wasn't the uniform after all. Maybe she just likes guys that wear the same color on the top as the bottom, like monochrome pallets. That's true. That would be true of security guard cop and prison inmate. Yeah, I mean, they don't get to mix and match their colors. You might be on to something here. I'm telling you. So they both got out of jail in 1987 and promptly got married. They had two kids in quick succession.

So this is six kids for Cindy so far, if you're counting. And she was only like 31 years old. It's just, that's like my idea of personal hell. But anyway, plus David had two kids of his own. So that is just a lot of kids. So many kids. So many kids. So Cindy's ex, the police officer Alan Krevling, told the family court that he was suspicious about Cindy and David's lifestyle.

They were always taken fancy trips to Disney World. They had the kids an expensive. of gymnastics and figure skating classes. He said there was no way in hell they could afford all that without doing something illegal. And he was right. Over the next few years, Cindy worked at various places, a cable company, a gift shop, and it goes on and on and on. And at every job, she was accused of either stealing product or embezzling money. She was fired every single time.

One of the more serious thefts was from the cable company. She stole the employee's holiday bonuses. The bitch, are you serious? That is so not cool. Oh, my God. Evil. That is a dick move right there. She ended up convicted of a slew of charges for the thefts, and the prosecutor argued for

hard time. He said, look, this woman is proven that she's not going to learn her lesson and stop stealing. So where the usual outcome for charges like this would be restitution, Cindy ended up with a 15-year prison sentence instead. The prosecutor was like, if you let her make restitution, she's just going to steal more to get the money for it. I mean, he was convinced of that.

I mean, it's true. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So Ms. Cindy headed to prison to begin serving this good, long stretch. Now, let's back up a sec. Shortly before Cindy's conviction, shortly before she headed off to prison, she'd engineered a nasty little fraud that the police didn't know about yet. This is off the chain.

This is bonkers. Cindy's dad, William McKay, had always been her biggest supporter. He'd paid off debts for her, let her stay with him, supported her in every way he possibly could. But none of that dumb stuff matters to a psychopath. Of course not. So in June of 1991, Cindy had phoned up a death certificate for her dad saying he died of acute coronary thornbosis. Good God.

She used this fake death certificate to transfer the deed of her family's vacation house to herself. Then she used the house as collateral for a five-figure, quote, home improvement loan. Coincidentally, right around the same time, Cindy posted her $25,000 bond to get herself out of jail awaiting trial for the theft charges. So I guess for Cindy, home improvement meant get my dumb ass out of jail so I can go home, which is rich because I very much doubt that any place on earth would be improved by Cindy's presence. So if anything, everybody in that neighborhood would see their property values drop for living

next to a psychopath. But anyway, yeah, she was like, well, technically, Your Honor, I was improving my home. Three years later, three years into Cindy's 15-year sentence for the thefts, the loan she'd taken out on the vacation house went into default. And when they went to foreclose on her dad's house, the insurance company learned, to their extreme surprise, that he wasn't, you know, dead. And presumably Mr. McKay learned what a complete piece of shit his daughter was, poor dude. A year later, he actually did die. Cindy couldn't go to his funeral because she was in prison, and I just bet she had the damn nerve to complain about that too.

Oh, you know she did. I wonder if her cruel fraud contributed to his death in any way. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, I mean, I don't believe in the idea of dying of a broken heart necessarily, but I know that stress is terrible for your health. So I'm sure it didn't do him any favors, bless his heart. I hate that he had to die knowing what his daughter had done to him. And it goes to show you that when you bail your kid out again and again and again

and support them no matter what they do, even when what they do is criminal and really shitty and unethical, you're not doing them any favors. No. You're really not. More parenting advice from Childless Whitney. So now a resident of the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women, Cindy busily set about trying to get herself out of prison.

She'd always been charming, and now she put that skill to work. She wrote multiple letters to the judge who had sentenced her, even though he actually had no authority to reduce her sentence, but I guess she didn't realize that. In one of the letters, she said, It is difficult to understand, but the majority of women appear to like it here. They have family and friends here.

This is also evidenced by their continual return to Jessup. My life holds so much more for me. Gross. Oh, what the hell are you talking about? Bitch, you've been back at Forth to prison so many times. You should call that your vacation home instead of committing insurance fraud. It's true. It's such like a gross, like, privileged position.

They must like it here. that he's keep coming back. I steal for funsies and to buy myself pretty toys. Like, just go fuck yourself. So she's got a nerve, right? So all these quotes, by the way, are from our main source for this case, which is a three-part article by Baltimore Sun

crime writer Justin Fenton, which is terrific. We can put it on our social media if you want to read the whole thing. There's a lot more detail in there. In another letter, she tried to guilt-trip the judge about her kids who were now growing up without their mother. She pulled out all the stops on this one. She did research.

she cited studies about the children of incarcerated parents, and she quoted Camus. Freedom is nothing else but a chance to do better. She wanted to do better, she said, for her babies. She said, my children need a supportive mother and someone they can rely on in times ahead. I really feel that parents are the single most important influence on their children. I may have failed them in the past, but I don't want them to fail in the future. they are my ultimate canvas, aren't they? Oh my God.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. So, you know, if your babies were so important to you, Sin, Sin, I would have thought you'd avoid going to prison for embezzlement in the first place, repeatedly. But, you know, what do I know about it? I guess I'm not a mom. And also, your children are your canvas? Okay, if that is not a narcissist outlook, I don't know what is. No, your kids are not your damn canvas. they're their own people. So heck off with that nonsense. Anyway, so Cindy bothered the crap out of this

poor judge and she wrote to other people she thought might have sway too. And here we go with that infamous charm again. She actually managed to get her hooks into a bishop of the Baltimore archdiocese. This guy wrote letters supporting Cindy to everybody you could think of, including the governor of Maryland. And oh my God, prepare for a rage stroke. She got her 11-year-old son, Ryan, to write a letter to the parole board. And I would love to know if she actually told him what to say. I would not be at all surprised,

especially since he ended his letter with this perfect little hallmark movie-style tear-jurker. If I promise to get better grades, will you let her come home soon? Oh, my God. Oh, God. And little third grade Christopher wrote one too.

He said, I promise, I'll make sure she doesn't do anything else wrong. Which is just so sad I can't freaking stand it. Oh, my God. What is wrong with this woman? But surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, I don't know, the powers that be were not persuaded. Cindy stayed right where she was.

And while she was there, whether out of a genuine desire to improve herself or a hope that it would impress someone enough to let her out of jail early, Cindy started getting involved in a ton of extracurricular activities. She took college courses. She went to church services. She worked with a fellow inmate to make public service announcements to help other inmates avoid ending up back in prison. Because you did such a good job of that yourself. The PSAs were played on local TV stations, and eventually she was asked to participate in advisory boards and panels. Cindy McKay was impressing the pants off, the prison officials.

And as she approached her release date, Cindy struck up a pen pal relationship with the brother, of one of her prison buddies, a guy named Clarence Buddy Downs. Buddy was a good guy. Divorced, two kids, worked for the Baltimore City Forestry Department. Whether he made a habit of writing to prisoners, I don't know. Maybe he only wrote to Cindy because his sister was one of her friends behind bars. I know he hadn't dated much since his divorce. So my guess is, Buddy was right for the picking for someone like Cindy.

Charming, pretty, articulate, good at talk in the talk. Buddy didn't judge her for her past mistakes. He believed her when she said she planned to make a better life for herself after her release. Now, keep in mind, campers, Cindy was already married to fellow inmate David Harhoff, so she had to divorce him to marry Buddy. And Mary, they did, only a few weeks after her parole in 1999. They moved in together, and four of Cindy's kids came along for the ride. And soon, Cindy got a job as an office manager at St. Mary's Seminary.

Oh, great. Now, let me think, what was her title at that window company where she embezzled a bunch of money and then probably set the place on fire? Was it office manager there, too? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. Great plan.

but apparently loads of people had written Cindy glowing references for this gig and none of them mentioned anything about Cindy being an ex-con. Cindy didn't bother mentioning that pesky little detail either. Yeah, and as I recall later on it turned out that at least like most of those letters were just fake. Yeah. Like there was like one real one. Like we're not saying that like people who have come out of prison don't deserve a second chance. I'm saying that.

don't give somebody who embezzled money the same fucking job. Yeah, but see, they didn't know. They didn't know she was an ex-con. No, they didn't know. But I'm just saying, I don't want to seem like, oh, she's an ex-con. She's worthless forever. No, no, no, no, no. No.

But Cindy was worthless forever, as you'll see. Yeah, maybe don't give her exactly the same job. She literally was the cookie monster. She could not keep her hands out of that goddamn jar. So everything chucked along nicely for a while for Cindy. and the kids. They opened a restaurant called On the Go Deli, for which Cindy kept the books. They had pets. They had a nice house. It was all good. But after a while, Buddy started to worry about Cindy's spending. It was really getting out of control. Money was good, but not this good.

But Cindy would just hand-wave him anytime he tried to talk to her about it. So their financial situation just got worse and worse, with Cindy doing her best to downplay how bad it really was. And then, in 2001, the shoe dropped. Buddy filed for bankruptcy. He had to shut down the deli, and to make matters worse, he started having heart trouble. Adding even more cherries on top of the shit Sunday was the fact that Buddy had started clashing with Cindy's teenage sons, Matthew and Christopher. So Buddy started thinking about an exit strategy.

He told a few friends he was probably going to leave Cindy after. the holidays. And then, a week before Christmas in 2002, as if things were not bad enough already, Cindy got laid off from her job at St. Mary's. The seminary was having money troubles, they told her, so they had to downsize. A week before Christmas. Ouch. Yeah. So, campers, it's Christmas night, 2002. Cindy, her son Matthew, and Buddy are all relaxing from all the Christmas activities. Buddy lays down on the couch, and Cindy goes up to in Matthew's room to watch him play his new PlayStation. And as they're sitting there, Matthew asks his mom,

Hey, where's buddy? What's he doing? Cindy says, I think he's passed out on the couch downstairs. He's been drinking a little too much. After a few moments, Cindy heard a noise from downstairs, and she said, you know what? Actually, we should probably go check on him. He could have knocked the Christmas tree over or something. He's so drunk. Plus, he's smoking. Come on, come help me get him to bed.

And when they opened Matthew's bedroom door, they were immediately forced back by a hallway full of smoke and leaping flames. The house was on fire. Cindy and Matt managed to escape out a back door, but there was no way they could get to Buddy, and by the time the firefighters arrived, everyone knew there was no way that they'd find Buddy alive. In fact, they found him still on the couch in the living room, dead and burned beyond recognition. The house was completely destroyed. Later that day, Cindy appeared on television crying.

They'd lost everything. She'd lost her life partner, her loving husband. The kids had lost their wonderful stepdad. It was heartbreaking. If you weren't paying super close attention, you probably wouldn't notice that although Cindy was making all the right weepy noises and saying all the right things, there were no tears rolling down her cheeks.

Oh, my God, it's so creepy, y'all. Mm-hmm, it is. I was like cooking or something while I was watching this. So I was facing away from this grain, and I heard all the right sounds. And this is before it was revealed that she was the horrible murderer. And so I was like, oh, that's so sad. And I looked back and I saw her face. And, like, the feeling in my stomach was terrified.

Like, I just knew something was wrong. Set off your spidey sense. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the community rallied around Cindy and her kids. People took up a collection and many, many people donated. A lot of them couldn't afford the generosity, but they did it anyway. In fact, even some of the other laid-off employees from St. Mary's gave her money.

It was a beautiful outpouring of kindness for this family who had lost at all. The fire was ruled accidental. The fire investigators believed Buddy had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette. Buddy's family didn't buy it for a hot second. They wanted the fire investigated more thoroughly. Meanwhile, back at St. Mary's, somebody noticed an accounting discrepancy. The amount of money donated to the church and the church, amount of money going into the church bank account didn't match.

So they started an investigation, and soon they discovered that almost $200,000 had been siphoned into a private, unauthorized bank account. As renowned detective, Scoopert Doe says, Rutrow. Somebody's been embezzling. Scoopert, do. So the leaders at St. Mary's brought in every employee who had worked for the seminary in the past year and question them one by one. And when it was Cindy's turn, she confessed.

She was the one who took the money. Cindy was contrite. She even pulled out a bankbook and showed them exactly what she had taken and when. She said, I'm so sorry. I was desperate. I had no choice. And then she unfolded quite a tale. She said her husband, Buddy, had been a gambler,

and he'd gotten on the wrong side of some loan sharks. One of these men had come to the house before Christmas and put a loaded gun in Matthew's mouth. He said, if Buddy didn't pay up, he'd come back and kill the kid. She said, I would never have taken the money otherwise, but I always plan on paying it back. That's why I kept such careful track. Please forgive me. She was so convincing with this little performance that the leaders of the seminary agreed to let her pay back the missing money, with police supervision.

So they called the cops to ensure that she would actually pay them back, which turned out to be a good move. And when Detective Richard Gibson of the Baltimore PD's Economic Crime Division stepped in, the seminary leadership actually took this man aside and asked him to be gentle with Cindy. They said, look, her husband just died in a house fire. She's been through a lot. Plus these kind people's hearts, they were trying to be true Christians and support their friend who they believed had fallen from grace under terrible pressure.

Remember, they still didn't know about Cindy's criminal past. But Detective Gibson had a... detective's suspicious mind. He heard embezzled, and then he heard house fire and dead husband, and his antennae started vibrating like an unbalanced washing machine. So Gibson started digging into Cindy McKay's life. First, he pulled up her name on an insurance database to see if she was the beneficiary of any life insurance claims. It turns out she was the sole beneficiary on Buddy Downs' $300,000 life insurance policy. His kid, kids didn't get one red scent.

Jeez. He also started hearing about how Cindy talked about Buddy around town. According to Cindy, Buddy was a monster. Alcoholic, abusive, temperamental, a gambling addict. But when he spoke to, you know, everyone else in Buddy's life, it was clear that she was the only person saying this stuff. Buddy was only a social drinker, not an alcoholic. Nobody knew him to have a temper.

He never gambled. He didn't hang around with, quote, unsavory people. He was easygoing, like a friendly dude. When asked about that terrifying story about the lone shark putting a gun in his mouth and threatening him, Cindy's son Matthew was like, uh, no, I've never had anybody put a gun in my mouth in my life. And this is particularly hilarious to me because narcissists do this shit all the time. Oh, yeah. They tell a story that is very easily.

corroborated by talking to their family member or friend or just anybody else. And they don't think for a second that the other person will contradict them. Oh yeah. We saw that so much in season one with Bill Bradfield. I mean, they do it all the time. Well, and it's just more proof that narcissists don't see other people as, you know, people. No, absolutely. With, you know, agency and feelings and motivations that are separate from the narcissist. And that they can only see things from their own point of view and that sometimes I think they believe their own bullshit. They genuinely they think they think it's true because you know they said it must be right they spoke it into existence yeah then gibson talked to b j downs one of buddies's grown sons apparently in march of that year

bj had called the police to report that somebody had used his name to get an american express card a card which listed cindy mackay as an authorized user american express had called b j out of the blue one day to demand payment of an $8,100 bill. Jeez, and crackers. Yeah, this is how the poor dude found out that his stepmother, allegedly, allegedly, we should say, had stolen his identity. What had that $8,100 gone for? Among other things, a deposit on a Chevy S-10 blazer.

So, BJ filled Gibson in about all of that. He also told him in no uncertain terms that he believed Cindy was, involved up to her eyelashes in his stepdad's death. Hmm. So Gibson was starting to think Cindy McKay had no intention of paying back the seminary for the money she stole. And when he looked into Cindy's past, he found out about the death certificate she'd forged for her dad, the scam with the vacation house, and Cindy's stint in prison for embezzlement. Most interesting of all, he found out about the previous suspicious fire at the window company where Cindy used to work. Now, as you can imagine, this, you know,

piqued his interest just a little bit. So he asked Cindy to come in for an interview. He didn't have jurisdiction himself to interview her about the house fire that killed Buddy, but he partnered up with the Baltimore County Homicide Division to make sure that they did. He called Cindy's lawyer to tell them that they wanted to interview her the next day in connection with the fire and the embezzlement. And the lawyer said, sure, she'll be there, we'll see you tomorrow. But when tomorrow came, Cindy was nowhere to be found, and all that was left was our SUV, an empty box for an inflatable raft and a quote-unquote suicide note. You remember all that, of course, from the beginning of the episode. So now we're back to the present. They've just stormed Cindy

and David's house and confronted poor Matthew who just thought his mom was at work. He said he had no idea why his mom would try to fake her own death. And when they told Matthew about the charges she was facing, he was surprised. He hadn't known anything about it. But it made sense that his mom wouldn't want to go back to prison. It wasn't too hard for Matthew to believe she might have run off. two weeks later at a church in delaware some volunteers were setting up a yard sale when a pretty dark-haired woman showed up asking for some help she introduced herself as annie pilar that's a romance novel name if i ever heard one the trials of annie pilar by rippley d bodice it does really so miss pilar said she used to be a nun but she'd had the terrible bad luck of falling

in love with a priest. That had to have gotten the church ladies' attention, right? So very thorn birds and romantic. But, of course, forbidden love and all, and it didn't work out. And now she said she needed a place to stay and a job. Cindy seems to have had a knack for finding truly kind and generous people, people who were just ripe for the pick-in for someone like her. And these church ladies were no exception. They welcomed her, sat her down, they listened to her sob story. I bet somebody brought her some tea and a cookie or something, and then they told her they just might be able to help her out with a place to stay and a job. They told her that one of the older members of the church, a woman named Shirley Bloom, was in the early stages of dementia. She was just now

getting to the point where she needed some live-in help. Shirley Bloom was a darling. Everybody in the church adored her. She was sweet and loving and generous, a great mom to her grown daughter, and probably most important to Cindy, aka Annie Pilar, she was trusting. Shirley's husband died in 1985, and she'd been living alone since then. Her daughter, Susan, was worried that she was going to fall or get lost or something. So Shirley was delighted to have Annie start working as her home health care worker. She let her live there rent-free. She liked her right away, and when Shirley told her daughter about Annie, Susan was thrilled too.

It seemed like a perfect arrangement. A former nun? I mean, what could go wrong? Shirley adored Annie. Annie took great care of her, and for the first time in a while, Shirley felt secure and looked after. And after a while, Shirley and Annie formed

an almost symbiotic relationship. Annie could anticipate what Shirley wanted or needed even before she knew it herself. And they seemed to genuinely enjoy each other's company. Annie even went with her to doctor's appointments. And because she was taking care of her, Annie had access to Shirley's credit cards and bank accounts. Side note, by the way, this scares the shit out of me.

My husband and I don't have kids, and although I'm happy with that choice, sometimes I just worry about what is going to be like when we're both old and maybe not in the best shape. Like, is some asshole like Cindy going to come along and, like, charm us into thinking she's God's gift and then steal the pants off us? I hope not. I can only hope that my lifelong true crime obsession

will give me the suspicious mind needed to ward off any potential vultures. but I'm not going to lie, it keeps me up sometimes. So I'm just wondering, campers, well, one of y'all take care of us? Like, one of you little babies who's still in your early 20s or maybe late teens, if you do, we'll put you in our will. So let me know here about 30 years, if you would. 30 years from now, have your people call my people.

And by my people, I mean, our cats, obviously. Okay, well, I'm not in my early 20s, so I may be too old for this position. But I will take care of you guys. I'll make sure you're both stock. up on mac and cheese and make sure you don't miss your stories. And by stories, of course, I mean new episodes of Snap and Lifetime Originals. Oh my God, that sounds perfect. Okay. So we got it sorted now. It's fine. Done. Katie's going to take care of it. Anyway, after a while, Susan started getting a little worried about how close Annie and her mother were becoming. She wasn't sure why,

but she didn't trust Annie at all. There was just something a little askew about her. There's the Spidey Sense campers. We should always, always, always listen to it. And then, when Annie had been living with Shirley for two months, Susan got a call from her mother's broker. He was concerned about some possible fraud on Shirley's accounts. When he'd done a review of her statements, he found hinky stuff going on back six weeks.

And the amount missing was staggering. $200,000. She didn't steal small amounts of money, does she? No. So worried, Susan called her mom. Annie answered the phone, chirpy as ever. Susan asked to speak to her mother and launched into an explanation about the conversation she'd just had with Shirley's financial advisor. And when she got about halfway into that sentence, it suddenly hit her. Oh my God, Annie stole the money. I shouldn't have told her all this. Now she knows she's going to get caught. And my elderly mom is alone in the house with her.

That is so creepy. I just got goosebumps thinking about that. It's terrifying. Susan got her mom off the phone as fast as possible and frantically called one of Shirley's friends to go over to the house and get her out of there. Then she called the police. When they got there, the house was empty. Luckily, Shirley had gotten out of the house safe and sound. Annie was nowhere to be found. It had only taken Cindy McKay six weeks to steal to.

$200,000 from Shirley Bloom, and she'd wasted no time spending the money. She bought a car, two motorcycles, and put a down payment on a beach house. She'd also gotten liposuction and some other cosmetic surgery. Okay, all of that, all of that really is super unnecessary, but why two motorcycles? Like, is she going to ride him with Shirley? Obviously not. Maybe she was dating some dude. I bet she bought it for some, like, dude she was seeing.

Ew. But now I'm picturing like Shirley in a sidecar with like a competent, yeah, with a competent caretaker and they go on little adventures together. How sweet is that? I'd write that screenplay. Yes. So in fact, when Annie got, or Cindy, Cindy Annie got the cosmetic surgery, some of the church ladies who had connected her with Shirley Bloom raised an eyebrow. When she got there, she was supposedly down on her luck financially. How could she suddenly afford plastic surgery? How could she suddenly afford plastic surgery? surgery. Some people had begun to have their suspicions about Miss Pilar, but they couldn't prove anything. And when Mrs. Bloom's daughter caught on to her, Cindy just bolted again. And on July 27th, Cindy sporting a black eye, most likely artfully achieved with makeup, and a tearful manner arrived at a battered women's shelter in Norfolk, Virginia. She spun a heartbreaking, infuriating story. Her husband was a cop, she said. He beat her, threatened to kill her.

She was terrified, and because he was a cop, she couldn't go to the authorities about him, which, by the way, this was genius, Cindy. Because of that little detail about her abuser being a cop, the people at the shelter also didn't pressure her to go to the police. Which obviously she did not want. But, unfortunately, for Sin Sen, the smart moves ended there. Cindy checked into the shelter under a fake name, but she used her real social security number.

Not bright. She also called her second husband, David, for help. She said she'd been in an accident. She was in the hospital, and she was scared she was going to get caught, and she begged him for help. But right after he hung up the phone, Cindy's ex, called the police instead. I guess he was sick of her shit. Good for him. Good for him.

So Detective Gibson and company hauled ass for all three hours of that drive down to the women's shelter in Norfolk, and immediately filled in the staff about our girl Cindy's colorful past. Oh, you know So yet another group of kind people Blasted in the ass by Cindy And her big bag of conscienceless bullshit So the staff led the detective to Cindy's room And oh my God

They found an escape kit That would be the envy of any spy Just left right out in the open For God's sake Cindy had a ton of maps With carefully plotted escape route She had IDs and money and the whole shebang Obviously she'd been planning to run

again before too long, and they had gotten to her just in the nick of time. And while the detectives were rifling through Cindy's meticulously put together little escape kit, Cindy came back to the room, which must have been hilarious. Wamp-wom. Must have felt like a wet rag to the

face to see those detectives in her room. And Gibson just grinned at her, like, hey, Cindy, how are you? And ever audacious, Cindy said, I'm not Cindy. I don't know what you're talking about. But then Detective Gibson waved a driver's license at her that he just found in her It was like obviously her picture, and it said Cynthia Downs, which was her married name.

And at that point, she realized the jig was pretty much up. So Cindy said to Gibson, well, you finally got what you wanted. Aren't you so happy? For God's sake. Just hush. Hush, Cindy. Hush. Like, yes, Cindy, I fucking am.

Yeah. What the fuck else? What the fuck else was you supposed to say that? Oh, no, Cindy. This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you. Nah. Screw that self-victimization nonsense. Cindy, you gargantuan bitch. She's such a classic narcissist, isn't she? Like, I'm the victim here. Oh, are you happy now? Now I have to go back to jail. Well, yeah. That's literally my job is to put assholes like you in jail. So, yes, I'm happy. I'm dancing a little happy jig. And on October 21st, 2003, Cindy pled guilty to embezzlement for the St. Mary's theft and the theft from Shirley Bloom. She got a seven-year-scent.

which, in my opinion, is really short. I don't know why it was so short. And once again, she became a model prisoner. She joined groups. She wrote and appeared in PSAs about domestic violence, which, as far as we know, she was not an actual victim of. She claimed she wanted to be an advocate for battered women. Once again, Cindy was on her best behavior.

And the parole board bought it. So far from serving her entire seven-year sentence, in 2005, which was less than two years after she went in, Cindy was released on parole. Oh my God, and she went back to Baltimore, which was her home turf. Fast forward to 3 a.m. February 22nd, 2006. A police officer responded to a report of a suspicious fire on the side of the road. And why was it suspicious?

Well, because what appeared to be on fire was a human body. At first, the officer thought it was a mannequin, But as he got closer, he realized that it was actually a corpse. So apparently even trained investigators do this. It's probably just a mannequin thing, which I think is fascinating. You'd think that anybody, you know, that a detective would at least be like, yeah, that's probably a body. But no, they do it too. I mean, teens these days, right?

Manikins setting on fire on the side of the road. Like you do. Detective Richard Albin came out to the scene to find the body badly burned, wrapped in a blue blanket. Both he and the medical examiner could see that the victim was male. He had tattoos on his arm, gold chains around his neck, and a hairpiece. And they knew he hadn't set himself on fire. This looked like a homicide. The next day, the investigators got a tip from someone who said he just found a trash bag in his driveway that wasn't his. Like it was trash day and somebody just left it there. When he heard about the dead body and the fire, which happened not far from his house,

he got suspicious about the mysterious trash bag and called it in. Smart, right? Definitely. Shout out to this guy who absolutely watches investigation discovery. He totally does. So Detective Albin hustled on over to take a look at this bag, and inside was a treasure trove of evidence. A wallet, a UPS jacket with a name tag,

a pay stub, unopened mail, a right aid bag, and an ID, all of which bore the name Anthony Frate. Tita. This was their victim. Tony's autopsy showed that he'd been stabbed to death, then sat on fire. The only tiny speck of comfort for his family was that he was dead before he was set ablaze. It's not much. No. Tony for Tita loved animals and the music of Elvis Presley. He loved his job at UPS, hated missing work, and his coworkers adored him. He loved his life. and he loved his close-knit family. But although he was basically a happy guy,

there was one area where Tony had always kind of struck out. He was unlucky in romance. So in 2005, when he called to say he'd met a great new woman, his friends were thrilled for him. She was pretty, fun to be with. She and Tony went to Ravens games together. He liked buying her gifts, little pieces of jewelry, stuff like that. Before long, they started talking to.

about moving in together. Tony showed them pictures of his new girlfriend on his phone, a pretty woman with piercing pale green eyes. Her name was Cindy McKay. And in fact, when investigators searched Tony's house after finding his body, they found a series of voice messages on his answering machine. They seemed to be from this girlfriend, and they were left the day Tony went missing. One said, hey, it's me. It's 904 and I haven't heard from you, so I don't know what's going on. I thought you were coming over. Give me a call. One said, hey, it's me. I don't know what's going on. Um, I haven't heard from you all day. I know work is kicking your butt right now, but, you know, there are good things in life, too. Call me. Love you, baby. Bye-bye. So, this sounded like someone

the investigator should talk to. A girlfriend might have some information about Tony's last movements, not to mention who might have a grudge against him. So they tracked Cindy down and asked her to come in for an interview. She came in, and there was nothing about her that immediately raised any red flags. But when they spoke to Tony's friends and family, their antennae went up. Apparently, things had begun to go south between Tony and Cindy recently. Tony suspected she was stealing from him. While he was in the shower on a trip they took to South Carolina, $2,500 had just gone missing from Tony's pocket. Later on, his credit card company had called to ask about a $6,000 furniture purchase. Tony knew nothing about it. He certainly wouldn't have

authorized an amount like that. When Tony confronted Cindy about it, the theft, she denied everything. How dare you accuse me, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, of course, Tony didn't have proof, and Cindy, as we all know, could charm a rattlesnake. So, he stayed with her, for the time being anyway. But he had a nagging feeling. As the investigators began looking into all this, they stumbled upon something even more compelling. They spoke to a friend of Cindy's son Christopher, and this dude spun quite a story. He said that in late 2005, Tony won $20,000 playing Kino, and Cindy wanted to get her little mittens on that money, badly. She knew Tony had a habit of carrying big wads of cash around.

She also knew he was already suspicious of her, so she probably shouldn't just try and, you know, snatch it out of his underwear drawer or whatever while he was in the bathroom this time. So she went to her 19-year-old son Christopher and his friend. Her plan, according to the friend, was a straight-up armed robbery. She handed them a gun, and she said, look, this is going to be easy. I'll call Christopher as soon as Tony leaves work. You can be waiting in the parking lot with ski masks and this gun, and he'll never know it's you and we'll all share the money. Holy absolute.

This is the man she's dating. Yeah. Oh, my God. Who does this? So Christopher and his friend had gotten, like, into position on the designated day. But right as Tony was about to come out of his building, Christopher's younger brother Matthew and, like, a carload of his friends just randomly drove by and spotted them. And of course, not knowing that his brother was waiting to rob Tony,

Matthew and his friends just pulled over to say hi and invite Chris and his friend to hang out with them. So the mission was aborted. And Cindy was flat out furious. She was like, well, now I'm probably going to have to marry him to get this money. Oh, the horror. Yeah. So with all this juicy intel in his pocket, Detective Albin was able to get a warrant to search Cindy's apartment. As soon as they walked in, the smell of bleach hit them like a punch in the face. How's that for a red flag? Mm-hmm. They immediately noticed that a big area of carpet had been bleached and was still damp.

When CSIs pulled back the carpet, they could see a huge amount of blood staining the padding underneath. I'm disappointed, Cindy. Campers. This is not for a murder tip. If you are going to bleach your, let's say, bloody carpet. Let's say you cut yourself and it's bloody. You've really got to think about the padding underneath. It's the same with cat pee, pretty much any, like, substance that's going to, like, sink in, like soda.

You've got to pull up and clean the padding, or you might as well not bother. Sloppy, Sinsen. Yep. Just sloppy. They also found bleach stains on one of Cindy's coats. Looking further, they noticed that a knife was missing from the knife block in the kitchen. and they found a bunch of right-aid bags like the one Tony's wallet and mail and the UPS jacket had been found in.

All very, very interesting. Even more interesting was Tony's abandoned car, which they found not far from the body dump site. There was blood all over, inside and outside. There was a knife under the front seat that, amazingly, and I know you're all shocked, matched the missing one from Cindy's knife block. It's like, did she even? try? Was she bored in missing her vacation home, aka prison? Was that it?

Very sloppy. As CSIs began a thorough search of Cindy's house, the investigators brought her and her son Matthew in for an interview. They both agreed to be interviewed, so they put them in separate interrogation rooms and got to work. And right away, Matthew let them know he was ready to tell them everything he knew. He said he'd seen the whole thing. His mom and Tony had started fighting, a violent physical fight. He was scared, he said, so he called his older brother Christopher to come and help their mom.

Minutes later, Christopher came blazing through the door, went after Tony with a pair of brass knuckles, then shot him with a revolver. Wow. Okay, well, that was very vivid, but as we told you earlier, Tony was stabbed to death, not shot. What the hell was going on here? Over in her interrogation room,

Cindy was singing a very different tune. She said that she and Tony had had a nice night together, the night of the murder. He'd left for work at 2.50 a.m. and that was the last time she saw him. As she told people years earlier about Buddy, Cindy said Tony had a gambling problem, and it put him in the crosshairs of some pretty scary people. That's what I'm looking at, she said. He probably owed somebody a lot of money. No creativity with this woman, huh?

She's such a woodhint of wonder. Yeah, she needs a few more tricks up her sleeve. So they're like, okay, well, what about that big old patch of bleached carpet in your house and the, you know, bloodstain underneath it? What about that missing knife? And when they brought that up, Cindy just buried her head in her hands and started crying. Gross. And as she wept softly into her hands, the investigators noticed that the back of them were covered in a little cut. and as all true crime obsessives know when you stab someone to death you tend to get cut yourself so all this was very interesting and damning but the DA wasn't quite ready to pull the trigger on an arrest just yet the investigators needed to regroup and see what all they had so they told Cindy and Matthew they could go and in the lobby as they were leaving an officer overheard Cindy quizzing Matthew about what he told them and she didn't seem happy with whatever he said she said all you had to do

was tell him you wanted to leave, which like the nerve, okay, you didn't lawyer up and leave, bitch. So if you're not going to take your own advice, why don't you just take a seat? Leave Matthew alone, dumbass. So anywho, the next day, the investigators decided that, yep, in fact, they did have enough to get an arrest warrant on Cindy. In addition to what they'd found at her house and in Tony's car, they'd also dug up some security footage from a local store on the night of the murder. There was Miss Cindy, buying bleach, and a gas can, shortly before the body was found. found. So that was it. It was time for the habeas grievous grievous. And when they showed up at Cindy's door, she was just cool as a fridge full of cucumbers. And she said, I was expecting you. Is

anybody else going to get arrested? Okay. So once Cindy was in jail, Matthew changed his story about the night of Tony's murder. Now he said he hadn't been there when Tony was killed at all. And that whole story about Christopher bursting in and shooting in was a lie. He said his mom, had put him up to it. She told him she'd been in jail long enough. She didn't want to go back. She said, look, if they ask you about Tony, lie on your brother. Lie on your brother.

I don't want to go back to jail. Just, Jesus, Murphy. This lady's a peach, ain't she? Those are her own kids. She's a sure as a Georgia peach. When they asked Matthew, who he thought killed Tony, he said, my mother. And he went further than that, too. Matthew said his mom had also killed her previous husband, Buddy Downs.

He told them about the house fire, said Cindy had stabbed Buddy to death, and then set the fire. When the investigator said, uh, how do you know this? Matthew said, she told me about three months after it happened. She said she needed to get it off her chest. And apparently, this wasn't the first time Matthew had said this. Over the years since Buddy's death, he'd told the same. story to several of the adults in his life. Why the hell? Nobody did anything about that, I can't imagine. Maybe because Cindy was already in jail? Of course, at the time, the fire had been ruled

accidental, and authorities hadn't been able to tell whether Buddy had been stabbed. His body was too badly burned. Through her lawyers, Cindy denied the charge. She said it was ridiculous, preposterous. The investigation rolled along. The state's theory was that Tony had figured out Cindy was stealing from him and threatened to turn her in. Cindy really did not want to go back to jail, so she killed him. This was bolstered when the investigators looked at Cindy's phone records and found a call to Christopher the night of the murder. When they spoke to Christopher, he admitted that his mom had called him that night, told him

she needed him urgently. When he got to her house, she was sitting on the steps covered in blood and Tony was lying dead on the floor. She said, I messed up. I had to do it. He found out about the credit cards. He said she'd initially planned to burn the house down around the body, but then she realized it would be too suspicious given what happened to Buddy in 2002. What did you say? One hit wonder? Yeah. So instead, Christopher said he helped her move Tony's body to the site where he was found. They poured gas all over him and they set him on fire. And Christopher, he just seemed like he just wanted to get this over with. He pled guilty to accessory after the fact of murder and drew a five-year sentence. And before long, Matthew ended up pleading guilty to the same charge. He didn't get as harsh as sentence as his brother, though. He got a suspended sentence plus three years of probation. So Cindy had used not one, but two of her own kids to help her get

away with murder. So where's that mom of the year award we keep around? Because we got to set it on fire and send her the pieces in jail. That's what I want to do with that. Oh, so good. As for Cindy herself, she ended up entering an Alford plea. In case you're not familiar, an Alford plea is basically a way for a defendant to say, I didn't do it, but I'm still kind of plead guilty because I acknowledge that the state has enough evidence to prove that I did do it. It's really kind of a bizarre idea, but there you go. We like to call it diet guilty. Yeah, guilty light.

Decaf guilty. Non-alcoholic guilty. It didn't help her too much, though, because she was sentenced to 30 years. The judge called her the most devious person the court had ever seen. I don't doubt it. You don't see people like Cindy very often. Thank God. Thank God, right? Cindy was attractive, and she was charming. And, in a psychopath, that's a deadly combination.

Everywhere she went, she convinced people that she was worth their time and kindness. And everywhere she went, she betrayed the people who. who cared for her. Yeah, even in prison. There's a story from her second time in prison that I think is really telling. So if you all recall, the first time she went to jail, she convinced everybody to go to bat for her, you know, get her paroled. She impressed the prison officials and volunteers and everybody with her apparent strong commitment to bettering herself and making a real life once she got out. So when she came back to prison again and bumped into one of those prison officials who had thought so highly of her before and rooted for her so much, this lady said

Cindy, what happened? You're the last person I thought I'd see back in here. I'm disappointed in you. And Cindy just snapped, get over it. And walked away. Wow, right? So in the words of the great Cindy Lopper, we see your true colors. Cindy, we see you. Oh, and by the way, when they were first investigating her for Tony's murder, they found out that after she got out of prison on parole, Cindy had gone to live with Christopher and his girlfriend. But the arrangement fell apart pretty fast when Cindy opened a credit card. card in the girlfriend's name. So this is her 19-year-old son who's kind enough to let her move in with him and his girlfriend when she gets out on parole and she commits identity theft on the girlfriend. Grown-ass woman. This is a 19-year-old young man in his girl. It's just crazy.

So clearly, this woman does not give two shits about anybody, including her own kids. It's all about money. And Matthew has actually said on true crime shows about this that she's addicted to money. Like that's all that matters to her. Even her own kids are nothing to her compared to money. Yeah. And I think that's why Christopher and Matthew got such relatively light sentences for their role. But I think the court just recognized that growing up with this woman, how could they possibly have a chance to not be warped in the head by what she, you know, by her influence on them? And she could be really fun.

Like she could be a fun mom. And Matthew has talked about how like, you know, she could be like tremendous fun to be around. but then she just would turn on you. Yeah. So it must have been really confusing to grow up with a parent like that. And of course, she was in prison for big chunks of their childhood too.

Definitely. So I hope, you hope, I'm sure that she never sees daylight again. And if you're listening to this and you ever come across a PSA featuring this bitch, like smiling for the camera and talking about how rehabilitated she is,

especially if you're on a parole board in Maryland, make sure you don't fall for it because she is a viper. and she will never be anything else. I feel completely confident in saying that. This woman is a viper. Close the book on her. Yep.

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 we want to send a grateful shout out to some of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Jessica, Alex, Lanakane, Ashton, and Stacey. We appreciate you all to the moon and back. And if you haven't yet become a patron, you're missing out.

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