True Crime Campfire - Check Mate: The Murder of Bill Stout

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

The longest tournament chess match ever recorded happened in Belgrade in 1989. It lasted 269 moves and took over 20 hours to complete. Strategy can take time. Some killers lash out in the heat of passion, but others take their time. They may want to toy with their victim for a while first, ratcheting up the torment bit by bit until finally it’s time to pounce. Or they may be biding their time to make sure every game piece is perfectly placed before they make their final move. Whatever the reasons, sometimes murder is a long game. Sometimes all this strategizing pays off, and the killers walk away free. But other times, a player might be supremely confident that she’s made all the right moves, but overlook something crucial and end up losing big. Join us for a bizarre story of stalking and murder. Sources:https://murderpedia.org/female.S/s/stout-anne.htm#:~:text=Supreme%20Court%20upholds%20Stout%20murder%20conviction&text=Stout%20was%20convicted%20following%20a,term%20later%20that%20same%20year.https://missoulian.com/news/local/darby-woman-charged-with-murder-takes-the-stand/article_1f5286ef-913f-5969-ba4a-7a0763ccc66d.htmlNBC's "Dateline," Episode "The Box"Oxygen's "Snapped," Episode "Anne Stout"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]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. The longest tournament chess match ever recorded happened in Belgrade in 1989. It lasted 269 moves and took over 20 hours. to complete. Strategy can take time. Some killers lash out in the heat of passion, but others take their time. They may want to toy with their victim for a while first, ratcheting up the torment bit by bit until finally it's time to pounce. Or they may be biding their time to make sure every game piece is perfectly placed before they make their final move. Whatever the reasons, sometimes murder is a long game. Sometimes all the strategizing pays off and the killers walk away free. But other times, a player might be supremely confident that she's made all the right moves, but overlook something crucial and

end up losing big. This is Checkmate, the murder of Bill Stout. So, campers, we're in rural Montana. the 10th, 2007. It's 4.30 in the afternoon when a 911 call came into the local dispatch from a rural area outside Darby. The caller was a 42-year-old woman named Ann Stout. She was crying. She said, I just got home and there's something wrong with my husband. His eyes are open and there's blood and his eyes are all bruised and he's cold. She'd been out shopping all day in Missoula with one of her two teenage sons and they had just gotten home and she'd walked back

into the bedroom and found her husband Bill this way, which must have been horrific. the worst. Yeah. The dispatcher sent help, of course, and first responders quickly realized that 50-year-old Bill Stout was dead, shot once in the head. His head was partially covered by a pillow, and he was in a pool of blood. It was awful. So their first thought was suicide. But then as they looked around the room, it became obvious really quickly that that wasn't the case, because crime scene texts recovered the bullet that had killed Bill and the spent shell casing from the bed, but there was no gun anywhere in the room. now clearly if you shoot yourself in the head and die immediately from your wound you're not going to be able to get back up again and put the gun somewhere else so this was looking like a murder but who the hell would want to kill bill stout he didn't seem like a typical murder target he was a well-liked guy a successful builder an average dude who liked to go hunting and fishing on his off time and hang out with his family and they were a close family they had a beautiful big dream house with a fantastic view of the montana countryside which must have been gorgeous bill and anne had been

married for over two decades. One of those touchy-feely, lovey-dovey soulmate kind of couples. They had two boys, Noah and Matt. So this was a tragedy. Anyway, slice it. So naturally detectives started their investigation by talking to Bill's new widow Anne at a neighbor's house. Anne told them Bill got along with everybody except one person. She said he'd had a brief affair a couple of years ago with a woman named Barbara Miller. And when she'd found out about it and he'd broken it off, this woman had started harassing Bill and the rest of their family. In fact, Barbara had been terrorizing the family for the past two years. And when they talked to Ann and Bill's teenage sons, they verified this. The whole family was scared to death of Barbara Miller. The past two years

had been a barrage of threats and harassment, much of it by email, but some of it closer to home, like the time she'd egged Bill's truck. Like a grown-ass woman egging a truck. She sent the emails daily for some stretches of time, sometimes even multiple emails daily, under the username Freak of Arc. Presumably, Arc meant Arkansas, because that's where Barbara lived. So police had a great suspect to investigate right out of the gate. But, for the moment, let's put a pin in that and get a little background on our victim and his family. I always want to do the Wayne's World. time. Back in time. So Bill and Ann Stout met in the mid-80s when Anne served Bill as a waitress

at a diner in their hometown in California, which just sounds to me like a romantic comedy meat cute, doesn't it? She was his waitress, and he probably said, I come in here every day, not just for the great cherry pie, but also for your smile, you know? Like, it's just cute. It's a cute way to meet. He liked her smile and her bubbly positive spirit, and she liked his strong kind of manly man energy, and the fact that he was great with her three-year-old. son from a previous relationship, a kid named Ben. Bill treated Ben like his own. He eventually

ended up adopting him officially, which not every guy would do by any stretch of the imagination, and soon they got married and added two new boys to the family, first Noah and then Matt. And in 1995, they decided to follow a long-time dream and move to Montana to build their dream house.

Builder Bill was involved in every tiny little detail and the end result was just absolutely spectacular. They loved it out there. Bill got to live out all his outdoorsy Marlboro Man dreams of hunting and fishing with his kids, and he continued to grow his business as a builder, and threw herself into the kids' school and activities. She was a great mom. They were a great couple, always holding hands and kissing and grossing out their kids, you know, because you never want to see that, right?

It all just seemed to be going great. But even the most successful people can get blindsided, and in 2000s, it's very sad on New Year's Eve, their oldest son Ben committed suicide. So take a moment with that. He had just finished his first semester of college. It was just completely out of left field for his parents, and it was obviously a devastating blow to the whole family, as of course it would be.

And as often happens in these situations, sadly, it created kind of a fracture in Anne and Bill's marriage. And I think that happens because people grieve really differently. So, you know, Bill didn't want to talk about it, couldn't talk about it and needed to talk about it. And so it creates this constant tension because you're making things worse for each other when you try to grieve the way that you need to grieve, right? Right. But Anne was a person who was always proactive. So she went out, she sought out a grief counselor, she got on some medication. And after a year or so, you know, certainly she was still

grieving, but she began to crawl out of it. She crawled out of that abyss that Ben's death had thrown her into a little bit. Bill spent more and more time out in the woods alone or riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle. That seemed to be the way that he coped with his pain was just to kind of isolate himself. And they were managing. But Anne and Bill's son, Noah says that even though his mom and dad seemed to be handling things better, after Ben's death, he says, quote, there was a lot more sniping back and forth. So just tension. Noah's take on it is that his dad blamed Ann for Ben's suicide, though he doesn't seem to have elaborated on why, but that is an intense thing. Like, I am not sure that you could come back from that.

No. If you blamed your spouse for your kid's suicide or if you knew that your spouse blamed you on the other side of it, that might actually be insurmountable. Because that goes deep, you know? And I don't know. I mean, could you forgive somebody if you genuinely thought, and also that's like bogus as hell. Like, how are you blaming somebody for their child's suicide?

Like, unless there's some heavy to. abuse going on, which definitely doesn't seem to be the case in this situation. That seems to be just toweringly unfair for one parent to blame another. So it's awful, but this kind of stuff happens a lot after a tragedy like this. And it's just really sad because you'd think people would reach out and get closer, but often it just seems to go the other way. Especially when it's a situation where somebody takes their own life, which by the way, campers, if you are feeling any type of way like you want to hurt yourself, please reach out and get help. It gets better.

But I think you feel the need to blame somebody and you need to lash out somehow. And unfortunately, that's how a lot of people deal with it. Yeah, anger is a really common component of grief for understandable reasons. Even really unfair, unfounded, irrational anger. I mean, it's just part of the grief process. So their communication went from good to abysmal. and that crack that Ben's suicide had made in the foundation of their marriage

just expanded and expanded until it became a gulf. A major problem and one that they don't seem to have dealt with very well during that time if they did anything to deal with it at all. And then in 2005, Bill went on a trip to Arkansas to attend a friend's wedding, and Barbara Miller was the old high school flame he ran into there. So they started talking about old time.

She dumped him years ago, and it always regretted it. and he'd always had fond memories of her and yada yada yada and they ended up shame on you bill spending the weekend together in bill's hotel room while ann and the kids waited for him back in montana they talked about old times you know the regrets that they had about the way their lives had gone old feelings started kind of bubbling up to the surface and they talked about the fact that although they could never of course go back to their high school days they could potentially start fresh and make a new future

This is all based on a brief encounter at a high school reunion. Not great. Not great, Bill. Not great. Yeah, speaking of not great. Bill told Barbara he was separated. Oh. He told her his marriage had been falling apart for a long time.

He told her he'd already spoken to a lawyer. Barbara's impression was that his connection to his wife was completely severed. or at least very much in the process of severing. Okay, little tip, campers, don't mess around with somebody else until the divorce is final, or at least until it's well underway. And you're like actually separated because that's just asking for just a world to hurt. Yeah. Yep.

So in reality, Bill and Ann were still very much married. Yep. Living under the same roof and not talking divorce or separation. Yeah, that was all news. That would have all been news to Anne. When Bill got back to Montana, they continued communicating. Bill gave her the address to a post office box that Anne knew nothing about. And they exchanged googie-eyed letters.

They talked about a future together, getting married, Barbara moving to Montana to be with him. Eventually, they planned a trip. Barbara was going to come out to Montana and stay in a hotel and spend time with Bill again. How he was planning on slipping away without Anne suspecting anything? I don't know. But there you go. And in the midst of all this, Anne was, understandably, getting suspicious, as spouses usually do in these situations. She knew damn well that something was off, but Bill kept denying it and denying it like a giant man baby. Then one afternoon, while Bill was at work, Anne got a phone call. The caller was a woman, someone Anne didn't recognize, and the woman said, I think you should know that your husband is having an affair. Oh, my God, nightmare.

Anne wasn't surprised, but she was still shocked and betrayed. She confronted Bill. At first, he continued his gaslighty bullshit and denied it. But eventually, he realized she wasn't having it, and he admitted it. They had to come to Jesus talk. And once the cat was out of the unfaithful bag, Bill realized he didn't want to lose his family. He still loved Anne, allegedly. Mm-hmm.

And seeing how devastated she was by his betrayal of her made him feel awful. So he wrote Barbara a short, well, more terse than short, actually, email. It said, Barb, please do not ever write or call me again. I was wrong for what happened. It never should have happened. I love my wife, Anne, and would never want to lose her. I'm sorry that what I did hurt her and my kids, you know they are the world to me. I did forget what was important, but I know now it's not too late. I've canceled your plane ticket already. You can tell Bob whatever you want. I'm not calling him. I'm sorry for all the problems, Bill. Presumably Bob was Barbara's husband, which, you know, that's nice, Barbara. Yeah. Well, this went over like a lead balloon with Barbara, as you can imagine. Oh, yeah.

Not only had he led her to believe he already had one foot out the door of his marriage, but he'd talked about marrying her. He'd bought her a plane ticket to Montana for fuck's sake. And now this chicken shit email? not even a phone call? Hell to the no. Barbara fired back an email of her own. I bet she did. Think again. I reinstated the ticket. I better have a room reserved or I'm going to show up on your doorstep and camp out in your front yard. Oh, boy. Now, okay, Barbara did not show up. I'm sure Bill had his head on a swivel that entire week. I bet. But after.

that initial, I'm a show up in camp on your front lawn message, Bill and their kids and even Bill's family members and friends began to receive a barrage of harassing letters and emails from Freak of Arc. Oh, my Lord. So here's an example of one of these Freak of Arc emails, and I want to make it clear that I got this actually from an episode of Snap, and I had to extrapolate a couple of words because the shot that they had it in actually cut off a couple of words. So I did the best that I could in finishing out, I think, one of the sentences. But who knows if it's absolutely accurate? I think it is.

But I had to guess on a couple of words because the screen kind of cut them off, if that makes any sense. You used context clues, just like your first. Yeah, exactly. I'm fairly certain. I'm correct about what it said. Now, all caps. Dear family and friends of Bill Stout. I am writing to let you know of Bill's

problem. Please read the letter I wrote to Anne because if you love him, you will help do anything you can for him. I love him. He is afraid of being a two-timing husband, but he is not happy with her. I know he would want his kids to support him. Thank you for helping, Barb England Miller. Dear God, that's bonkers. Dear family and friends of Bill Stout, like what are you doing? writing to his friends, his family and his friends. Please read the letter I wrote to Anne. So she wrote to Anne too, which is bat-shit crazy. And please convince your loved one that... Yeah. To leave his wife and family for me. That a woman you do not know is better for him. That's bananas beyond belief. What the hell was she thinking? That is like a bouquet of red flags.

Just that one email. Oh, and there are more. There are many more over years, yes. Other emails begged family for help convincing Bill to come back to her. Oh, my Lord. I wrote Anne begging her for help, which, delusional much. Why would you write to his wife that he's cheating on you with? And she's misspelling Anne, by the way. Anne has an E on the end of it.

She's spelled at A&N. Please let your husband go, because I know you keep him chained up in the basement. Yeah. God. I did not drag him away from his family. He is a loser in marriage. A loser in marriage. So you want to marry him? And the subject lines were usually in screaming all caps. Stuff like, for Bill only. No other eyes, please. Bill, I'm sick. I need you to call right now. Oh, boy. Thank you for the call. I love you too. Happy Father's Day, Daddy. I can't wait to see you. Ew. Daddy, what? Oh, no. Now we've got that in the mix, too. Uh-uh. I love you so much more every day. Oh, my God. Please call me. I am sorry.

Anne is having an affair. I have proof. Oh, my God. I got tickets to Missoula, Montana. I have reservation at Hertz. Stuff about Ann. You don't know. I think that might be my favorite one. Stuff about Anne, you don't know. And I want to make this clear. Every single one of those is in all caps.

And like a couple of them have like a million exclamation points. So, you know, I love to quote Sir Terry Pratchett, that British author who's hilarious and very perceptive. And he said that if there's a bunch of exclamation points at the end of a sentence, that it's a sign of an unsound mind. And I think especially if you add to that the screaming all caps, we've got, again, red flags yeah i think my neighbors would call the cops if i was screaming all those so yeah because you got to just imagine that she's just shrieking stuff about it you don't know like that's what that's supposed to sound like that's a red flag that's a massive red flag and we laugh because it's so ridiculous but that's scary i can you imagine like constantly getting just a barrage of those kinds

of emails i would be like sleeping with one eye open every night and you don't want to block them because like she's yeah because then you don't know where their mental state is and if they're getting ready to come over and kill you yeah so scary these emails went on and on and on and reported getting several calls from a woman she believed was barbara and the scary thing was that they came from a local montana area code oh shit non-arkansas one oh no that's a long way to travel to mess with somebody just for shits and giggles. Yep. This was scary.

Fatal attraction bunny boiling stuff. Mm-hmm. It reminded me of Dante Satorius. Oh, totally. Yep. So, Anne fought back. Good for her. She contacted Barbara Miller's company

to let them know she was using her work computer to send harassing emails to Anne and her family. Mm-hmm. Now, Barbara categorically denied this to HR. But emails and snail

letters continued to arrive. Nastyer and nastier. They put down Anne in the ugliest terms. They said the affair was still going on. He loves me, not Anne. And that Anne was stupid for believing Bill was being faithful to her. Anne and Bill were freaked out. Noah and Matt were terrified. Oh, poor kids, God. I know. And Bill was just mortified, as he should be, the cheating ass hat, because now a whole bunch of people knew he'd cheated on Ann and picked up a crazy stalker lady. That's one very good reason not to cheat in the first place, right? So after months of this harassment, Bill went to the county sheriff. This was August 12, 2005. He made a report about the stalking, and then the next morning, he went outside

to find his truck covered in broken eggs. Again, grown-ass woman, egg and a man. Egan man's car. So he called 911 and the cops came out to search around the property, but, you know, they didn't find Barbara. Obviously, she was long gone. Bill Stalker had egged and run. Yikes. But our stalking laws weren't great at the time. They're still not great. They're better now, though they still certainly do lack in some important areas, but at the time they were just sucky. And there wasn't enough there for police to launch into a full investigation. So they just advise Bill, look, lay low, document everything. Call me if she shows upon your doorstep, basically. So thanks another time oh my god y'all i can't even with this he and anne found a bunch of potted plants smashed around their property

and then another time they found oh god feces smeared all over the truck no yeah m'n't-mm-n barbara dude no that is so disgusting like that is some commitment right there to take really anybody's poo but I'm assuming your own unless maybe you've somehow managed to source some dog poo or something maybe I don't know dude but the most likely thing to me is that

this is your own poo so that's some commitment you know like you've got time to think about it while you're sitting there you know on the toilet like yeah I'm not really like doesn't it at some point hit you like what in the living hell am I doing I am a grown ass woman

but apparently not Barbara. Barbara. Oh my God. So there were loads of hang-up calls to just constant harassment of Bill and Anne and the kids and Bill's family and several of his friends, which just takes it to the stratosphere as far as I'm concerned. And then a letter arrived that dropped a nuclear bomb. Barbara said she was pregnant with Bill's child. And she was going to expect him to be involved. She was going to move to Montana full time. She was going to take Anne's place in Bill's life. She was going to be a mother to Noah and Matt because she knew Bill's kids were the world to him. Heckin' yikes. So, of course, Bill was horrified. They'd only spent that one weekend together. And, you know, he was mortified at how this was affecting Anne and the kids. And now he was faced with the possibility of having to deal with this baby.

But the police had told him, do not contact Barbara, because it would most likely escalate the situation. And Anne was talking about maybe filing a restraining order against Barbara if they could get one. the fact that she lived in Arkansas was kind of a complicating factor for that and the fact that they had no absolute proof of her trips to Montana to vandalize their stuff which again it's like well if the police would investigate maybe you could get some but they don't want to investigate

because they don't have proof it's like this catch 22 thing that stalking victims so often face and sucks so at some point in all this Bill discovered one of his credit cards and some bank statements missing from his home office which that is creepy as hell now she's been in your house and of course he suspected it was Barbara who had broken in and taken them

and one night he saw a car pull into their driveway and just sit there and he couldn't see who was at the wheel because it was dark and the car's headlights were really bright but I mean of course he figured it was Barbara now nothing ever came of this alleged baby as far as

Bill and Ann knew he never responded to any of the harassing emails or letters or calls and Barbara didn't show up on his doorstep with a baby I mean obviously she was making it up. Right. And Anne called Barbara a few times to tell her to back to fuck off because Anne's style of dealing with this was a lot more confrontational than Bill's. And honestly, I don't blame her, although the best thing to do probably in that situation is completely disengage and not interact with the stalker at all. But Anne was, like I said earlier, she was a proactive person. So she's like,

you need to leave me and Bill and our family the hell alone. And Barbara never said anything during that conversation with Anne about the baby either. So they figured, you know, this was a ploy. She was just trying to lure Bill back into a relationship. Y'all, this shit went on for two years. Two years. And Noah, one of their kids, has described what it was like living with this, just relentless stress.

He said they were all just jumpy and paranoid all the time and not knowing what somebody like this woman might be capable of. The boys were in their teens, and, you know, they worried that this crazy lady was going to try to hurt their parents or them. And on top of that, they were mad at their dad because, you know, he cheated on their mom. So this was hard on them

Really, really hard And obviously Barbara didn't give a shit And then about a week before Bill's murder Bill filed another report with the local police Prepare for goosebumps His 9mmmm burretta handgun Had disappeared from the house And there were some little subtle signs

That someone may have been in the house And I just got goosebumps saying that It was Barbara Bill knew it in his gut And when the police spoke to Anne right after Bill's death, she told them about this gun disappearing, and it got their attention big time. Yeah, I would think that gun disappearing while you're being stalked is like DefCon

won in levels of fear. Yeah. Yeah, that's freaking terrifying. So, Anne said that Bill had spent most of the Saturday before his death riding his motorcycle. He'd gotten home late, and she'd grilled steaks and made steam broccoli for the family, and now I'm hungry, damn it. and then Matt went to a bonfire with friends and she and Bill had had a quiet evening just the two of them she said it was nice just the two of us it was nice they'd made love she said and I apologize for using that icky phrase come on just say bump butts it's much better fighting crime fighting crying that's a great euphemism for sex made love is just the next morning bill hadn't felt well so he wanted to stay in bed and rest so Anne and Matt went without

him on the shopping trip to Missoula that they had had planned. And when they'd gotten home at 4.30, that was when she found his body in the bed and called the police. The son, Matt, verified every aspect of this story, the steak dinner, the bonfire, the shopping trip, everything. He said the last time that he had seen his dad alive was at dinner, because Bill had already been in bed when he got home that night and he'd stayed in bed that morning. And he and his mom had left the house really, really early around like eight in the morning. So Matt and Ann had been together all that day, police were able to quickly verify their alibi by checking receipts and security footage in Missoula, so everything was checking out. And while detective spoke to Ann and Matt, a search was going on

at the stout house. And in the garage, one detective noticed something a little bit odd. The saddlebag of Bill's Harley-Davidson motorcycle was unlatched. Now, this detective was a motorcycle enthusiast, and it just struck him as a little bit strange, like something a fellow writer probably wouldn't do, so he looked inside. And what did he find in there? A gun. In fact, a 9mm barretta, the same type as the one Bill had reported stolen a week earlier. So police were hopeful.

Maybe they would find fingerprints or DNA so they could, you know, pin down the shooter. Yeah, so my dad rides a motorcycle. My mom does too, but my dad's more of the enthusiast. But I asked him specifically about whether this would like set off red flags for him. And he said he leaves his saddlebags unlatched all the time when he's at home because he's like, it's a pain in the ass to lock it and unlock it. But either way, I'm really glad this cop trusted his gut and was like, that's not right. I should have asked my brother.

He's like a huge enthusiast. So, bro, if you're listening, maybe post on our social media. Do you always latch your saddleback? He probably does. He's like super inordinate around his bike. Maybe your dad's just Lucy Goosey about his saddlebags, Katie. My dad has never been Lucy Goosey a day in his life. He's so detail-oriented, like, you should have seen him, like, trying to fix my car growing up.

He'd be like, look at this. Look at this. You've got to turn it a little bit. It's just crazy. All righty. Well, who knows. But, yeah, like you say, it's good that the guy trusted his gut on that. But their hopes for finding DNA, fingerprints, whatever on the gun were dampened when in a laundry hamper.

Under a pile of damp clothes, CSIs found a single latex glove. weird right and they bagged it to test for gunshot residue outside and DNA inside did barbara miller shoot bill with his own gun and hide both it and the latex glove in his house before fleeing why wouldn't she take those things with her weird so police sent both the gun and the latex glove off to be tested police had been hopeful about the barber miller lead initially but now they wondered if miller had killed bill would she have left the gun and glove there maybe if she were trying to frame Anne or one of the kids, but they also noted there were no signs of forced entry, no sign of a struggle. Bill seemed to have been shot in his sleep. Was Bill actually still involved with Barbara? Had he let her in? Had they had sex? And then Bill fell asleep and Barbara shot him? Seemed plausible, but they weren't sure. Medical examiner took Bill's body to the morgue for an autopsy and cops hoped it might shed some light on the situation. Ballistics testing quickly revealed the 9mm barretta found in the saddlebag was the murder weapon.

So that just underlined all their questions about if Barbara had stolen the thing, why the hell she'd have left it at the house after shooting Bill? Yeah, I mean, on one hand, it would make sense for a murderer to, like, leave a murder weapon in panic because they don't want to get caught with it. Yeah, that's true. But it seems weird that it was hidden, right? Yeah, it is. I mean, like, you think you'd just drop it and run. I mean, on the one hand, like, obviously the killer is wearing latex gloves, so there's no worry about, well, maybe I left my fingerprint, so I've got to take this with me and dispose of it somewhere. I guess it doesn't really matter. She probably knew she'd be the first suspect. So, yeah, I mean,

she obviously wouldn't want to be caught with it on her. But yeah, I mean, it is weird for sure, and that's what they thought too. So, you know, they're thinking maybe the stalking theory isn't the only angle to consider here. Maybe somebody was trying to pin this on Barbara because she made a likely target. Yeah, there was one way to dig deeper into this. And that was by following the trail of emails and phone calls that had come in from Barbara over the past. two years. They seized all the stout's computers and handed them over to a forensic expert named Jimmy Wegg. While Wegg was examining them, the Montana police went to Arkansas to talk to the infamous Barbara Miller. Barbara seemed shocked to hear that Bill was dead. She admitted to sending the

Think Again I've reinstated my ticket email when Bill had broken up with her, but she claimed that was the only email she'd sent him in the last two years. She absolutely denied sending harassing and threatening emails and letters, making harassing phone calls, and flying out to Montana to vandalize Bill and Ann stuff. In fact, she told them, Anne had called her a number of times over the past two years. In addition to making that call to her employer and accusing her of harassing her family, and by the way, Barbara had almost lost her job over that. Anne had called her off and on. Barbara said, she'd pretended to be my friend, see what I was doing. She said she got the feeling that Anne was trying to check up on her.

So that was weird. But, I mean, Anne had a rock-solid alibi. Traffic cameras and receipts put her in-mat in Missoula all day, the day of Bill's murder. On June 11th, the medical examiner conducted Bill's autopsy, and the picture suddenly got a lot clearer. Bill's autopsy, stomach contents. Stake and broccoli still relatively intact. I know, I'm sorry. This meant that Bill had most likely died no later than 11 p.m. Saturday night.

A lot earlier than Anne's story indicated. That was while Matt was out of the house at his bonfire, while the two of them were supposedly having their nice night in, just the two of them. Making love. Gross. Yep. Poor Matt had gone to bed that night with his father's dead body in the house. And so had Anne, for that matter.

And woken up with his dead body in the house. Yeah. So the detectives called Anne back in for another interview the next day. She showed up with an attorney, which, okay, that's fair. Casually, the detectives got her to repeat what they'd had for dinner that Saturday night. She repeated what she'd told them days earlier. Oh, steak and broccoli. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, steak and broccoli. When police confronted Anne with the forensic info about Bill's time of death, she was adamant. you do not have that information. It's not possible and on and on, which what is the matter with these people gaslighting detectives? Oh, no, you don't actually know what time he died. You're mistaken. It's like, this is my story and I'm sticking to it and I don't care what facts you show me. They also told her they'd found the gun in the glove hoping she'd confess.

But nope, no confession was forthcoming here. She was pissed off, defiant, and eventually she got so upset that her attorney stopped the interview. And when they told her she was under arrest for Bill's murder, she panicked. She really did. She fell to the floor and scooted back up against one wall of the room and begged them not to take her to jail. I'm not that tough. You don't know me. I can't go to jail. You can have my passport. could release me to somebody's custody. You don't know me. You don't know me. It was like, it was such a spectacle. Yeah, she was like a cornered animal. I mean, she really freaked out.

Like, there's a recording of this and it's highly amusing, really. Honestly. Like, maybe you should have thought of that before you murdered your kid's father, Ann, you fucking massive dupus. I love, I'm not tough. Oh, you're not tough. Well, shit, I apologize. I didn't know you weren't tough. Here, Deputy Smith, just hand me the key in the cuffs. We've got to let this little lady go. She's not tough. She can't go to jail. What the... You think you're just going to say, no, really, I'll get beat up in jail.

Like, oh, okay, well, we'll just let you walk right out the front door then. Yeah. Do you double pinky promise that you'll come back? You pinky swear you'll come back now, don't you? You're the scary one. You murdered a guy. What are you afraid of?

We got to laugh, guys. Got to find laughter somewhere. Between the arrest and the trial, the investigation continued. Anne had plenty of support. Everyone had been aware of the crazy stalker dogging the family for the past two years, and no one believed Anne was capable of violence. Everyone was stunned, disgusted. But here's the thing.

Anne told the truth when she said that Bill's stalker killed him. She was just lying about who the stalker was. it wasn't Barbara Miller it was Anne dun dun when he searched Anne's computers Jimmy Weg found a gold mine he hadn't had to work

very hard to trace the origin of the harassing emails when he opened Anne's computer and opened Yahoo email he immediately saw the greeting welcome freak of arc campers this woman tortured her own family for two years her own kids

holy shit of course he couldn't prove Anne had been the one at the keyboard sending those emails as freak of arc but they could prove it wasn't Barbara Miller she'd been in Arkansas the whole time she'd never come to Montana once during the whole two years

and she had an airtight alibi for the time of Bill's murder. She was on a security camera at Walmart with her husband in Arkansas. By the way, here is why it's such a bad idea to try to frame somebody else for murder. Because unless you know where that person is at all times, it's going to fall apart immediately because chances are they're going to have an alibi. And then that just immediately goes right out the window no matter how much preliminary spade work you might have done. to make them seem like a crazy stalker, Anne. You flippant doofus. Anyway.

Such a dufus. She is a very stupid murderer. And of course, Barbara testified at the trial about the affair, the breakup, the fact that Anne had called her every few months for two years. And while Barbara testified about her affair with Bill, Anne could barely keep seated. She made faces. She squirmed in her chair. she blew out her breath in an exasperated way like she's so over it

you could tell it was driving her crazy to have to listen to Barbara still just mad as hell it also came out at trial that the results on the gun and latex glove revealed gunshot residue and Bill's DNA on the outside no surprise there and Anne's DNA on the inside

not good Ann not good not good so they also found that anne had managed to duplicate an Arkansas postmark to make it look like the letters had come from there which is very clever but again she's on the security camera at Walmart Anne so all your clevery clever little work just falls apart

and during a search of her car police found two envelopes one sealed with another harassing letter one unsealed with the fake Arkansas postmark they found Anne's DNA on the adhesive of the sealed one which was really dumb again handwriting analysis showed with high probability that the writing on the envelopes was Anne's. Anne, honey, bless your heart, you're such a bonehead. So, investigators also found a list Anne had apparently been keeping for years.

All of the, quote, really mean things Bill had said or done to her. Seems like Anne held a grudge like a mafia don. Among those things, by the way, Bill had bought phone cards, Anne didn't know about, and he'd signed up with an online dating service in 2004, a year before the affair with Barber. in anne's nightstand drawer they found a note in anne's handwriting instructions on how to shoot the kind of gun bill was shot with in addition to the freak of arc emails anne's computer showed 56 internet searches for how to kill someone how to poison someone and get away with it how to put a person to sleep smart anne by all means use your own computer for that you flip an idiot yeah idiot don't search for questionable things on google some people google is not going to tell you how to get away with the murder For the love of God. It's almost sort of adorable how people think, I'd you Google it.

Yeah. It will tell you how to, I don't know, dissolve a body in acid, not that I've ever Googled that. But it won't tell you, like, how to, like, conceal evidence. Very unlikely. Grow the fuck up.

Just think it out yourself. Anyway, and the cherry on top of all of this, a life insurance policy, a $500,000 policy on bill. Guess when it was, taken out, campers, two years before his death. So right around the time, Anne found out about the affair. Boom. So, of course, Anne's defense was that this was a suicide. They argued very weakly, in my opinion, that someone must have found Bill before Anne and Matt got back and

worn the glove to move the gun so that Anne wouldn't have to know that her husband had killed himself, to spare her from losing another loved one to suicide. Who the hell would have done that? And why they wouldn't have spoken up to save and from prison? They didn't know. So good job, guys. Good try. Unsurprisingly, on Friday the 13th, 2008, Ann Stout was convicted of first-degree murder

almost one year to the day after Bill's death. And she was sentenced to life in prison. And she's still there, thank God. She appealed and lost in 2010. And her sentence includes a provision that she has to undergo psychological evaluation and counseling before she can even be considered for parole, which I think is a very smart move.

because this woman has got some issues going on. So here's the main thing I'm wondering, and I want your opinion on this, Katie, and everybody's. Did Anne plan this murder for the whole two years? Or did the, quote-unquote, stalking start for one reason and continue for another? So did she start by wanting to just punish Bill for what he had done and maybe give them a common enemy to kind of draw them closer together, if they could both be united against Barbara?

Maybe that'd be good for their marriage. And then did she realize she couldn't let it go and just decide to kill him and cash in on that life insurance, or was the plan from the beginning to murder him? And did she initiate the stalking as a frame job the entire time? And I also wonder if she actually did, quote, unquote, make love with him before she shot him. It seems like she shot him in his sleep, so I think it's actually likely. Yeah, I think two facts hold the answer here. And one is the list of grievances she had with her husband.

Right, yeah. That's holding a grudge. Because that just shows that she is, yeah, able to hold a grudge. She's stewing. Yeah, she's been stewing for two years. She's never forgiven him. And then the life insurance policy. Yeah.

Because it happened right around when she found out about the affair. Mm-hmm. So I don't think, I don't think this was a spur of the moment thing. I think she planned the stocking to start a frame job. Yeah, I think she at least had it in the back of her. mind as an option from the very beginning. Oh, yeah. You know what?

I can just murder him. Yeah, that'd be a deal. This doesn't go well. And then I can frame this woman, this woman that my husband slept with. So yeah. So yeah, I think this was probably one of her plans from the beginning. She was like, I could harass him for a couple of years. But she put her own kids through that.

That's crazy. That's the worst part. Yeah. And Anne's son Noah was on her episode of Snap, and he seems realistic about his mom's guilt, which is rare enough, actually, in these cases. And we've all seen families who are in deep denial. He basically said, look, I'm not saying she's innocent. I'm not saying she's guilty. I'm just saying she's my mom and I'm going to support her. And bless his heart, he has every right to feel about this however he wants to feel. Yeah, totally. And I feel bad for him. And, you know, bless his

heart for still support and his mom. I'm sure he's lost more than enough already. So I can see why he would want to maintain some connection. But I'm glad she's getting some help. Yeah. Because she's completely unremorseful. Like she still doesn't admit it. I've seen her in interviews. and she's still defiant and angry and not good. So this 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.

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