True Crime Campfire - Classified: The Murder of Walter Sartory

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

There’s an old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get ya. For one brilliant yet troubled mind, living in fear was pretty much the norm for most of his adult life. His friends had come to take his worries with a grain of salt. Some of them seemed like the kind of bizarre fantasies you’d find in an episode of the X-Files. Nobody really took them seriously. That is, until their paranoid friend went missing. Join us for one of the strangest cases we’ve ever covered—a twisting, turning story of greed and secrets: both government and personal. Sources:Cincinnati Magazine: https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/features/death-and-the-maid/https://murderpedia.org/female.B/b/blanc-willa.htmInvestigation Discovery's "Killer Instinct with Chris Hansen," episode "Death of a Genius"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. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's an old saying that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. For one brilliant yet troubled mind, living in fear was pretty much the number. norm for most of his adult life. His friends had come to take his worries with a grain of salt. Some of them seemed like the kind of bizarre fantasies you'd find in an episode of The X-Files.

Nobody really took them seriously. That is, until their paranoid friend went missing. Join us for one of the strangest cases we've ever covered, a twisting, turning story of greed and secrets, both government and personal. This is Classified, the murder of Walter Sartory. So, campers, for this one, we're in the little town of Hebron, Kentucky. March 4, 2009. Police arrived at the home of 73-year-old Walter Sartori. They were there to do a welfare check. Walter's friend Anne Cardi had called earlier that day, worried that she hadn't heard from Walter in a while.

Normally, they talked just about every day, but over the past couple weeks, Walter had gone dark on her. She hadn't worried too much at first. A retired mathematician and scientist, Walter sometimes flew off to scientific conferences, but it had finally reached a point where Anne knew Walter would have gotten in touch by now if he could. She worried that maybe he'd fallen or something or had a stroke. Maybe he was lying on the floor somewhere in his house, unable to get to a phone. It happens with older folks sometimes, and Walter wasn't necessarily in the best health. a sort of frailness about him. So Anne called the police and reported him missing. They knocked on the door, first a normal knock, and then, as Deputy Greg Tanner later told

Chris Hansen, a cop knock. But nobody came to the door. So Deputy Tanner went around the side of the house to poke around a little, and he found the garage door unlocked. So he decided to just go ahead and go in. Sometimes an officer will do that, and sometimes they won't. It just all depends on the circumstances, but when you're dealing with an older person, especially one with health problems, I think it's probably a good call. Deputy Tanner had done hundreds of welfare checks over the years, found people in all kinds

of different situations, but he definitely wasn't prepared for what he saw as he walked into Walter Sartori's house. There were post-its stuck to almost every surface, everyone with a little note like brushed teeth or have coffee. They were everywhere, every tiny element

of Sartori's life documented. And even stranger than that, taking up a startling amount of space in the house was an elaborate, custom-built computer system, or multiple systems, more like, five or six. The place looked like mission control or the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Everywhere you look, there was some kind of computer equipment, and when the deputy looked more closely, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It looked like Walter Sartori, this unassuming, 73-year-old retired scientist, was trying to

figure out how to make weather. Tornadoes, specifically. There were neatly handwritten notes and calculations and page after page of computer printouts. It was, as Deputy Tanner later put it, eerie. And it didn't stop there. On a few of the custom computers, he had connected to a system in Berkeley, California, a system owned and operated by the SETI Institute. SETI, campers, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They're looking for aliens.

And Walter Sartori was looking, too, putting some of that powerful computer system to the task of scanning the sky for UFOs. Now, you might be tempted to laugh. That is, if you were unaware of a couple of important little items in Walter's biography. Walter was a legit genius, with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and patents on several sophisticated medical devices. And he'd spent most of his career as a mathematician and nuclear fifted. physicist, working for the U.S. government with top-secret security clearance at the Oak Ridge National Lab. In the early years of its existence, the Oak Ridge Lab, tucked away in a discrete part of

the Tennessee Woods, was a dedicated military research facility. And in the 1940s, it began work on a top-secret job, one that would come to be known as the Manhattan Project. Quick history lesson, if you're not familiar, started by President Roosevelt during World War II. the Manhattan Project was the effort led by the U.S. in collaboration with the U.K. and Canada to develop nuclear weapons. We were worried that Hitler already had one. We were afraid he was going to use it. And, yeah, Manhattan Project.

It was carried out at a few locations across the country, and one of those was in Oak Ridge, what they called Site X, as if this needed anything else to make it like an episode of the X-Files. I was going to say, did somebody call Mulder and Scully in on this one? Because I feel like they should be in on this one, for sure. The government brought in something like 30,000 people to work at the Tennessee facility. They actually built a secret town to accommodate them all. That's the town that would later be named Oak Ridge.

I guess because they figured Site X didn't look that great on a map. And probably didn't sound too great as the name of like a high school or something either. Like, what do those kids pick as their football mascot? Anyway, one of those 30,000 workers was Walter Sartori, and he was nothing short of brilliant. One guy who worked with him there told Cincinnati Magazine's Brent Donaldson that Sartori was the guy you'd always go to with the really tough questions. He could solve problems that none of the other scientists could solve. And these were all brilliant people, so that's saying something. No kidding.

Walter stayed at the Oak Ridge Lab for most of his career, 30-something years, long as long as he's. past the Manhattan Project. He worked on a lot of classified stuff. But he also got some of his inventions patented, centrifuges that separated white and red blood cells, for example, stuff like that. Pieces of equipment he designed decades ago that are still used today. So sophisticated that nobody's ever managed to create anything better in all that time. Dang.

In the healthcare field, where the tech is constantly evolving, that's pretty damn impressive. No kidding, it is. Walter had an almost superhuman brain and a fascinating career, but he also had a lifelong struggle with mental illness. As a young man, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and although he took antipsychotic medication to manage it, the illness was still a constant in his life. He never dated or married, he didn't socialize much, he worked, and he came home. Now, at age 73, he was known as a little bit of a reckless. though he'd been interacting more in the last year or so ever since he moved to Hebron.

He'd been in therapy. He still went to scientific conferences sometimes. Yeah, he especially liked the ones run by the Center for Inquiry, a think tank that tackles a whole different range of issues, religious stuff, ethical, scientific and pseudoscientific, paranormal, all kinds of stuff. And the American Association for the Advancement of Science, too. He liked being around smart people who cared about things.

And he had a small circle. of friends, mostly online. Mostly, in fact, people he'd met in a chat room for schizophrenics and the people who loved them. That was how he'd met Ann Cardi, the woman who'd called the Boone County Police Department to report him missing. She'd started the group in the 90s to help support her schizophrenic dad, and she and Walter became close buds. This was one of the first things that got Deputy Greg Tanner's spidey senses twitching as he looked around Walter's empty house that first day. wherever he'd gone, Walter Sartory hadn't taken his schizophrenia meds with him. Now, Walter had a history of being scrupulously compliant with his medication regimen.

He never went anywhere without his meds. So this was a flaming red flag. Deputy Tanner decided he'd better call this one in. He had a sinking feeling that Mr. Sartori was either wandering around somewhere, off his meds, and in crisis, or worse, that he'd been taken somewhere against his will. As brilliant as he was, Walter had some major vulnerabilities. He was generous, almost to a fault. So much so that some of the people he'd befriended online were getting regular monthly payments from him

for as much as $2,500 a month. Despite his simple lifestyle and the teensy little house he lived in, Walter's medical patents and smart investing had made him a millionaire many times over, and he'd designed his own algorithms, by the way, for the investing. I mean, just a brilliant mind, incredible. Estimates put his net worth at about 14 million by 2009, and he wasn't close with his family. He didn't have any kids, and he'd fallen out with his siblings years earlier, pretty nastily by all accounts.

So he shared what he had with his online friends, some of whom he'd known since the earliest days of the web. Now, people with that kind of money on hand are always potential targets, even more so if they also suffer from mental health issues. Walter had been paranoid pretty much all his life. His friends were used to it. He was always saying somebody was out to get him. The government, usually, the CIA or terrorists. In Walter's mind, someone was always lurking in the shadows ready to pounce. Wouldn't it be an awful irony if this time somebody actually was?

One of the first people lead detective Coy Cox interviewed was Anne Cardi, the friend who'd reported Walter missing. Anne said Walter had come out of his shell a little bit recently. He'd made a new friend online, a woman in upstate New York. And when Detective Cox dug into his email account, he realized Walter had actually gone to visitor not long before he dropped off the map. So, here we go, lead number one. Her name was Terry Davis.

And the day he arrived on Terry's front doorstep, grinning like a teenager and they hugged each other for the first time, was Walter Sartori's first date. At age 73. A strange love story, but a love story nonetheless. Terry told Chris Hansen about it later. She said they were like a couple of school kids together, just sweet on each other. Walter held her hand. Aww.

I know. It kills me dead. It's so precious. He was charming, Terry said, with the beautiful, gentle voice, the smartest man she'd ever met in her life. And she admired his kindness, the way he helped his friends who didn't have the kind of resources he did. And the way he was still looking for new opportunities to learn, even though he'd wrapped up his career years earlier, which I got to admire that, too, by the way. We've got to keep learning. and challenging ourselves or else our brains just kind of give up.

I think the world would have a lot less problems if everyone thought like that. Me too. Keep using that brain. So anyway, he and Terry got along beautifully during their visit, which definitely is not always the case when you meet somebody your friends with online. Anybody ever had that experience? I've had that happen a couple times where I groked like really well with somebody on Facebook and over text, and then we were just oil and water in person. I'm not talking about you, KT.

I can hear you over there wondering. You're a delight. Damn right. But Terry was aware of Walter's struggles with mental illness. So one night they went out to dinner. The waitress was doing what waitresses do. You know, just smiling and kind of bantering with Terry. And Walter was hating every minute of it.

He was just humming like an old refrigerator, just tense from stem to stern, glaring at the waitress until the poor girl finally gave up and left. and when Terry was like, dude, what's up with you? Walter said she was laughing at me. Why is she laughing? And he would not be talked out of it no matter what Terry said. During the week or so they spent together, Terry got other glimpses of Walter's mental illness too. One time he saw an aunt crawling on the table and freaked out. The CIA, they've been training those electronically to spy on me, he told her. So, clearly his meds weren't a miracle cure. They helped him

regulate better. They kept him from spiraling, but the paranoia was always there. It was a worry for Terry. She hated to see him struggling. But for the most part, their visit went great, and they started talking about Walter moving in with her. When they had to say goodbye at the end of the week, they had a big, long, kind of bittersweet hug at the door. And about 10 days later, on Valentine's Day, Walter sent her two dozen roses. So Terry told Detective Cox, she was heartbroken when Walter stopped answering her calls and emails not long after that. Eventually, she just figured he was ghosting her. Despite all the talk of making a life together, he decided not to take the relationship any further. I decided he dumped me, she told Chris Hansen, because after all, my husband did, so probably Walt did too.

Oh, man, that just, bless her heart. She seems like the biggest sweetheart, too. But based on what Terry was telling them, Walter had gone dark on her at the same time he disappeared on everybody else. It didn't take investigators long to realize that whatever she had been in Walter's life, Terry Davis had nothing to do with his disappearance. She loved him, respected him, and most importantly for their purposes, she had no idea he had money. He hadn't told her, and she'd just assumed he lived on the same kind of modest retirement

income she did. She figured they'd put their resources together and buy a nice little place together. She had no idea he was a multi-millionaire. When they told her, she was obviously shocked. Terry wasn't a con woman or a killer. She was just a sweet lady who was missing the man she loved. The investigators were back to square one, so they figured they'd go back to Ground Zero, Walter's neighborhood.

They went door to door, talking to neighbors. Had they seen anything suspicious around the time Mr. Sartori went missing? Sketchy people, suspicious cars. Nobody had. But then, just as he was turning around to leave after interviewing a woman on Walter Street, Deputy Tanner had a sudden inspiration, a Columbo moment. He said, oh, by the way, what about maid services? Did you happen to see any cleaners at Walter's place?

Bingo. Oh, yeah, the neighbor said. Molly maids were there. I remember the car with the logo on the side. Molly maids. Okay, that could be something. So Deputy Tanner called them up, spoke to the manager, and he had an interesting story to tell. He said on the day they showed up to clean Walter Sartori's house, a woman met them at the door.

She said, Mr. Sartori and I are going to be traveling together soon, so we need for you to clean the house before we go. And if you could come back a couple times while we're gone to pick up the mail, that'd be great too. Huh. As far as the investigators knew, Walter only had one lady friend he'd be likely to travel with, and that was Terry in upstate New York. It wasn't her. The Molly Maids guy said the woman he spoke to was black, and Terry wasn't. Not only that, but Walter wasn't exactly a world traveler. He hated leaving his house. His trip to visit Terry was a once-in-a-blue-type thing. He went to conferences sometimes, but that was part of his routine. They were the same

ones he'd been to every year. Walter Sartori was not a take-off on a whim type of guy. He wasn't a take-trips with friends type of guy either. All his friendships were online, and that was the way he liked it. He could control those situations.

He didn't have to have somebody up in his personal space, and he could decide exactly how much he wanted to interact. Yeah, Walter wasn't going to take off on a trip with somebody, and if he were going to do it, he sure as hell wouldn't do it without his meds. So this lady who hired the molly maids to clean Walter's house seemed like she was lying. Why would she do that? Something was distinctly fishy here. Fortunately for the investigators, the molly maids had taken down this lady's

phone number. It was the number for a Paul Blanc and his wife Willa of Union, Kentucky. Detective Cox headed over to their house. Paul Blanc said he knew who Walter Sartory was. He was a friend of his wife's. Right on cue, Willa Blanc came to the door and introduced herself, just smiling and friendly as damn it. Oh, Walter, yeah, he's a great friend of mine. I met him when I was cleaning his neighbor's house a while back. I've done some housekeeping work for him here and there. I saw him down at the Kroger store on Saturday. Now this took the detective back. You saw him Saturday? Like this past Saturday a couple days ago? Yep, Willa said. Well, this was weird. Was it possible this dude wasn't wasn't actually missing at all, just incommunicado? Nobody else had seen him for several weeks at this

point, but here was Miss Blanc saying she saw him at the grocery store two days ago. It didn't seem right to Detective Cox, but Willa Blanc was calm, friendly, cool as a fridge full of cucumbers. She wasn't giving off any of the usual signs of deception. She didn't seem the least bit nervous, so Cox wasn't sure what to think. He thought, okay, maybe Walter had found himself a new interest, something that's been taken up most of his time. Maybe he's been so engrossed in it, whatever it is, that he's just lost contact with all his friends for a while. Weirder things have happened.

So, on the off-chance that was it, Cox decided to surveil Walter's house the next day, dawn to dusk, and see if he could catch Walter leave in the house, like super early in the morning or something when none of his neighbors would be likely to see him. Well, he didn't catch Walter coming or going, but he did see the mailman arrive, and he thought, all right, you know what, since I'm here, I'm going to take a look at this guy's mail.

Just out of curiosity, that natural detective instinct to poke around in every possible nook and cranny of a person's life. And lo and behold, campers, in that day's mail, was a statement from fidelity investments. This triggered something in the detective. Just, for some reason, an alarm bell started ringing. And he hauled ass back to his office and got a subpoena drawn up so he could look at that statement.

And when he did, his heart hit the floor. He'd been hoping all this time that maybe Walter was still around somewhere, that there was going to be some kind of innocent explanation for all this. But now, he knew it in his gut. This was a crime. And Walter Sartori, if he wasn't dead already, was in serious danger. Walter had investments all over the place. Fidelity was just one of them.

But in this one account alone, he had over $1.5 million. And on February 18th, right around the time Walter went missing, a power of attorney had been filed for control of that account. Now, a power of attorney, as you probably know, gives one person total control over another person's money. For all intents and purposes, legally, if you hold somebody's power of attorney, you are them. You can walk into their bank and drain them dry.

And the person who had power of attorney for Walter Sartory's Fidelity Investments account was Willa Blanc. Miss Molly Maids, I just saw Walter at the Kroger's, Willa Blanc. This situation had the distinct stank of financial fraud all over it. Apparently, Willa had called up Fidelity Investments several times in mid-February. She was a friend of Mr. Sartori, she told him. He was an old guy, and he was really starting to slip.

You know how they get? They have good days and bad days. So sad. Anyway, she was trying to help him out, and they decided the best way for her to do that was to make her his power of attorney. So could they just go ahead and take care of that, please? Well, Fidelity told her, sure, they could make that happen, but they'd have to meet Mr. Sartori first and make sure he was on board with the plan. They couldn't do it over the phone, they told her they'd have to see him face to face.

So Willa said, sure, I'll bring him in. And sure enough, she showed up at their Cincinnati offices later that day. She told the Fidelity rep that Mr. Sartory was in pretty bad shape health-wise, and would he mind coming out to the car to meet the gentleman instead of making the poor old fella come all the way inside? And I mean, how are you going to say no to that? Right. So the rep followed Willa out to the car, a shiny red corvette. Willa's a big fan of fancy cars. In the passenger seat was Walter Sartori.

Or at least, that's who Willa said he was. It was kind of hard to see him, actually. The poor old guy was wearing an oxygen mask that covered most of his face. And when the rep asked him questions, the guy just kind of mumbled his answers from behind the mask. It was hard to understand him, but Willow was so cheerful and calm and friendly, she put the rep at ease. And he came away convinced that Mr. Sartory was in full agreement with her plan to give her power of attorney. By the time Detective Cox got access to the records, Willa Blanc had already taken more than $200,000 out of Walter's account. Yikes. She'd met

Walter Sartory when she was cleaning house for one of his neighbors a few doors down. Willa was a car buff, and she noticed Walter's nice new Prius. Next time she saw Walter out in it, she waved him over. Her sister was thinking of buying one of those, she told him. Would he mind giving her a quick ride so she could see how it handled? Soon after that, there was a big snowstorm, and Willa and her son Louis went over, unsolicited, to shovel Walter's driveway. Walter was away visiting Terry in New York at the time,

and when he got home to find his driveway, snow-free, he was confused at first. But then, Willa showed up at his front door, told him she and her son were the ones who did it for him while he was away. She was all smiles and, feeling obligated, Walter awkwardly invited her inside. He offered to pay her for shoveling the drive, but Willa said, no, no, she didn't want any money.

She also didn't seem to want to leave. She poked around his house, making Walter excruciatingly uncomfortable, and she ignored his hints that she should probably get going. He practically had to throw her out before she finally left. And I hate this kind of person. I hate when people do something nice and then have to make sure everyone knows they did it. I know. It totally defeats the purpose of the nice thing.

It's like, give me credit, give me credit. Oh, no, I couldn't possibly take any money. But yes, I will come inside. Like, shut up. And she did this. She actually did this multiple times over a, period of a week or so. She would just barge into, she'd just come over. Hi, Mr. Sartorian, just barge into his house. And Walter had really severe social anxiety. Of course. So this was

really uncomfortable for him. And she would just snoop around. And yeah, it was really excruciating. However hard, Willa may have tried to charm Walter, he was unsettled about that encounter. She set his inner alarm bells blaring at about 100 decibels. Later that night, he emailed Terry about her. He said, I don't trust her. I might be merely paranoid, but I suspect she might be running some sort of confidence racket, or she might be casing my house to see if it's worth robbing, or both of the above. But she has not actually done anything illegal that I know of.

This evening, I even had a locksmith change all the locks on the outside of the house, on the possibility that she picked up a key from the mess on my computer table and made a wax image of it to copy it. Now, y'all might point out here that Walter was prone to, paranoia, which is true. I mean, he was suspicious of the ants in his driveway. But my guess is this one was more about gut instinct than paranoia. Something about Willa's slick, intense charm. Her flashy car and her designer clothes and jewelry made him nervous. Yeah, I think it would me too. About a week after sending that email, Walter left for a conference in Chicago. It was from there that he sent Terry those two dozen roses on Valentine's Day, and it was within a day or two of his

return flight that he disappeared from the radar of everybody who cared about him. And wherever he went, Detective Cox was pretty sure he didn't go willingly. Clearly, it was time to take a good look at Willa Blanc. So they put her under surveillance. And when the surveillance car saw her drive away, with her adult son Lewis in the passenger seat, they took off after her, while Detective Cox went up to the house to talk to her husband Paul. Paul and Willis seemed like something of an odd couple. He was quite a bit older than she was, for one thing.

So Cox was curious to hear their backstory. Now, y'all... I gotta tell you, the story of how Paul and Willa Blanc got together has got to be one of the weirdest in the history of time. They met in the early 2000s. Paul was working at a tech company.

Great job, expensive condo, plenty of money in the bank. And Willa was working as a cleaner at the company where Paul worked. And a lot of the time while she was in there cleaning his office, she sort of chat him up and offer to come over and clean his house sometime. So one day he mentioned he was going away on a trip and Willa was like, oh, why don't you let me come clean your place for you and look after it while you're gone? Paul said, okay, sure. Obviously he was expecting her to just like come over and clean, water the plants, pick up the mail every other day

or so. But when he got back from his trip, there she was. Like staying in his house. And when he was like, okay, thanks, you can go now. Willa just refused to leave. Like, no, I like it here. I don't want to leave. Uh, do what? But like, you have to and stuff. This is my house, you know? And Willis like, no, I'm going to stay. And she did. Which is why I always say campers and hear me when I say it, never let anybody into your house. I'm seriously not kidding. People can do this shit. It's no joke. They can just come in your house and claim squatters rights and you're screwed. You can't kick them out, not quickly anyway. You have to go through a whole expensive legal process. It's a gut-dang nightmare. There have been so many cases like this that Netflix apparently did a whole

docu-series on it recently. So be careful, for real. Like, don't let somebody stay at your place unless you trust them implicitly. Like, squatters' rights are necessary because sometimes landlords are scumbags, but... Sure. oh boy do they get abused just like ADA service animal laws like no Karen your peacock isn't a service animal shut up and get off your the plane now I imagine that if most y'all found yourselves in this situation you'd probably bite the bullet and get the ball rolling on those legal proceedings you know to get this person the fuck out of your house you probably wouldn't do what paul Blanc did, which I swear to God I'm not making this up, was just lean into it and marry the bitch.

Yeah, that's what he did. After she'd moved into his place against his will and conned him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, buying up all kinds of nice cars and clothes and gambling at her favorite casinos. So poor Paul Blanc went from being a successful tech engineer, living the bachelor life in a nice condo, to half a million in debt, with a white. who conned him into it. Now, I don't know how this happened. Maybe he genuinely came to lover somehow. These, unfortunately, are the only details I know about their relationship. But I mean, holy shit, right? It's like, what a beautiful story. They should really do a rom-com like this starring Tom Holland and Zendaya. Paul really thought, well, if you can't beat him, marry him. That's literally exactly what he did. What the hell? So, anywho, poor Bass.

I guess. Detective Cox wondered if, having drained Paul Blanc of every resource he had, Willa decided to just move on to the next old guy in her crosshairs, which was, of course, Walter Sartori. He wondered if she had Walter stashed somewhere, torturing his passwords out of him, making him sign documents giving her control of his assets. They had no idea how to figure out where, other than to keep tailing Willa around town, and they worried that if he was still alive, Walter might be running out of time. Without his meds, he'd be in bad shape by now. But then they caught an unexpected break from Willa's victim-slash-husband Paul. He was just talking about the various cars they owned, and he just casually threw it out there that Willa had wrecked his Chevy Trailblazer in Indiana a few weeks earlier.

Now, of course, it was a few weeks earlier that Walter Sartori had gone missing. Turns out, Willa, who, if you haven't noticed, had herself a little gambling habit, had gone up to Indy to visit a friend of hers, Dwayne Lively. A guy she liked to hit the casinos and play cards with. And while she was up there, she had a car accident. When Detective Cox spoke to the officer who responded to the crash, he knew he was on to something. First of all, the accident happened at like 4 o'clock in the morning. And second, the story Willa told that the scene was totally different than the one her husband Paul was telling now. She told the responding officer that she was on her way to Indianapolis to take some fire

to her sister, who was pregnant and sick. She's been buying wood at Kroger, she said, and that's too expensive. Okay. Now, why on earth would you be running an errand like that at 4 a.m.? And the whole time they were standing there talking, Willa seemed really concerned about the alleged load of firewood, which was supposedly in a big, tightly duct tape and bungee-corded trash can in the back of the trailblazer. She was adamant that they let her unload it and take it with her,

once her husband came to pick her up. Hmm. Suspish. Mm-hmm. The officer who responded to the accident scene was kind of like, huh. But Willa was, as she's known to be by now, perfectly calm and composed and friendly.

She didn't seem nervous, and there was nothing about her behavior that raised a red flag. So he didn't have any reason to hold her. Now, though, Detective Cox figured he had a pretty good idea of what had really been inside that bungeied-up trash can. Walter Sartori. Oh, God. They'd been hoping they'd find Walter alive.

But that was seeming pretty unlikely now. It was a chilling moment for the investigators. So while the surveillance team tried to keep tabs on Willa, the other investigators headed to Indianapolis to talk to Willa's friend, Dwayne Lively. Dwayne didn't have much to say about Willa's visit, said they just hung out. played cards, and that was about it.

But his adult daughter Amanda, who pulled up to the house just as they were leaving, was a little more talkative. Amanda said that Willa hadn't been alone when she came up to visit. She said Willa's son Lewis was with her. And she told a story that under the circumstances made Detective Cox's blood run cold, especially when Dwayne lively reluctantly confirmed it was true. Willa had told Dwayne that Lewis had run over a dog the day before. She was worried about it, she said, because the dog belonged to this old guy she was taking care of.

Willa didn't want the guy to find out that her son accidentally killed his dog. She said she had the dog in a trash can in the back of her van. The van she'd switched out for the totaled trailblazer after her accident on the way up here. And she offered Dwayne $1,000 to take the trash can. can out into the woods and burn it. And I mean, really burn it. Tend to the fire until the dog's body was nothing but ash. Seemed like a weird, kind of gross request to Dwayne, but a thousand bucks was a thousand bucks. So he led Willa and Lewis out to a remote spot in the woods near his house.

They covered the trash can in old tires and gasoline and set it on fire. As he and Lewis kept feeding the fire through the night, there were a couple of times when Dwayne could see a piece of bone or flesh through the flames. At one point, he looked over at Willa and said, this better be a dog. Obviously, he knew in his gut that it wasn't. I think we need to add an addendum to the true crime campfire guide for not implicating yourself in murder.

Under Rule 43, it's never a mannequin. Add Rule 43A, it's never a dog. Because this happens pretty often. It really does. And when Dwayne led the police to the burned remains in the woods, they found a human femur and a charred pair of glasses. Although it would take a few days

to confirm it, this was all that was left of Walter Sartori. Complicated, brilliant, kind-hearted man burned up in a trash pile hundreds of miles from home. So, the team that was trailing Willa and Lewis had lost them in traffic, so they put out a be-on-the-lookout or Bolo to try and find

them. Unfortunately, it didn't take long. On March 14th, a little less than a month after Walter went missing, they put the habeas grievous gravis on Willa and Lewis at a red roof in for financial exploitation, kidnapping, and murder. Willa, cool and collected as always, immediately asked for a lawyer. But our son, Louis, not so much. Lewis was ready to spill. He had his own troubled history. How could he not growing up with Willa? His dad, a gambler like Willa with a gift for counting cards, had left them when he was young. And Willa wasn't what you'd call a nurture or caregiver type.

According to Lewis, she'd had him when she was 19, and he wasn't planned. His take on it was that he, quote, reigned on her parade. She was more focused on her own wants and needs than his. She used to lock him in a closet to punish him and beat him with a belt. One time she fed him dinner with live bugs crawling all over at his punishment for staying over at a friend's house a little too long. There's a file folder on her about an inch thick with CPS, and Lewis spent some time in foster care because of the abuse,

but eventually went back to live with Willa. Predictably, Lewis responded to all this by acting out. When he was 19, he got arrested for stealing credit card numbers from one of his mom's house cleaning clients and run up about $700 worth of charges. When he got caught, he told the police, quote, The reason I think I did it was my mind was unstable, and the computer was my link to the outside world I knew little about. What I've done was a waste of time, money, and intelligence. He almost talks like somebody who grew up in a cult, doesn't he?

And by all accounts, Willa had a tight. psychological grip on Lewis. He told police she puppeteered him all his life, wouldn't let him have friendships, wouldn't even let him drive until he was well past the age of 16. Now, in the interrogation room, Lewis laid it all out for investigators. He seemed offended at the way they were questioning him. He said, you act like I'm not in pain and I don't care about this Dr. Sartori or something. I'm sitting here like a monster. Wow, Lewis, whatever could have given him that idea. But Lewis swore up and down, he tried to help Walter Sartory in the end, but his mom wouldn't let him. According to him, on February 16th or 17th, he wasn't sure of the exact time of night.

Willis somehow got Walter to her place in Union, Kentucky, most likely against his will. She may have used a weapon, it wasn't really clear. She called Lewis to help her, and apparently he never considered no an option. They brought Walter down into the finished basement where Lewis lived, a big room with a pool table and a bar in it, and duct taped him to a chair. The goal, of course, was to keep him there long enough to get control of his accounts. And, I mean, I suspect Willow always intended to kill him,

but we don't know that for sure based on Lewis's story. Without his antipsychotic meds, Walter went more and more downhill over the next few days. You don't just suffer psychologically when you're deprived of those meds. It actually kills brain tissue. But the psychological and emotional effects are even worse. Walter was terrified, thinking he'd been

kidnapped by terrorists who were holding him for ransom. He kept asking when he'd be allowed to leave. And the heart-wrenching thing about this is this has always been Walter's worst nightmare, the thing he'd feared his whole life. And now it was happening, for real. In addition to the awful effect of the medication withdrawal, Lewis said Walter also seemed to be drugged. Willis' husband Paul later told Detective Cox that he'd seen Willem mixing some kind of

crushed pills into a pitcher of lemonade, then carrying the lemonade down to the basement. Later, the CSIs found aspirated blood on a pillow in the basement, and evidence of feces and vomit there, where Walter had gotten sick and Willid made Lewis clean it up. After a couple days, Lewis said it was obvious Walter was in serious trouble. He was getting really sick, lethargic, and unresponsive, struggling to breathe. Lewis had had to revive him three times with CPR. So, according to Lewis, he tried to get him to the hospital. He said he carried him to the garage and put him in the back seat of the car.

But Willa caught him as he was about to leave, and they had a blistering argument. You can't take him to the hospital, blah, blah, blah. Willa was, as Lewis put it, on fire. This may have been the first time in his life that Lewis tried to stand up to his mother. But as she always did, Willa got her way. And not long after that, Walter passed away. We're not sure of the exact cause of death. There wasn't enough body left to figure that out.

Willa ordered Lewis to put his body into the trash can, and together they duct taped it and bungee-cordered it up. And y'all know the rest of the story. Willa had big plans for Walter's millions. In addition to scamming her way into power of attorney over Walter's fidelity investments account, she'd also wrangled a trust that would give her access to 60% of his assets upon his death. And on February 27th, days after she, Lewis, and Dwayne had burned Walter's body in the woods, she'd shown up at a Chevy dealership to check out the new Corvettes. She'd already asked to be first

in line for the ZR1, a $100,000 car that had just come out. Yice. When she found out that the owner of the dealership had already earmarked the first one for himself, Willa had a connoffin fit on the lot. According to Cincinnati magazine, she screamed, I just got a $10,000 wire and I'm about to get a $7.5 million in cash. Oh my God. It was quite the little performance, but they knew Willa at that dealership. She bought a lot of fancy cars.

So they generally tried to treat her like royalty regardless. Oh, my lord. And I'll just say that if I ever get to the point where I'm yelling at customer service, workers and saying stuff like, do you know who I am? Please, please just put me down. I had a good run. It's over now. I will be happy to.

Thank you. But that little champagne dream was just a Miller high life fantasy now. When she realized her son had opened up about what happened, Willa ended up taking a plea deal. In exchange for life without parole, instead of the death penalty, she pled guilty to capital kidnapping. She still had on her Versace glasses in court. Lewis pled too. He ended up with a 30-year sentence. He'll have a chance at parole someday. Willa was a pure predator. She sought out cleaning jobs where she'd have access to older, wealthy men,

and she took them for whatever she could get. She spent their money on luxury cars and clothes and couldn't have given less of a shit what happened to them afterwards. When they searched her police found a shelf full of books that seemed designed to help her choose and manipulate victims. The guy couldn't remember the exact name of the most blatant one of these, but he told cincinnati.com it was something like how to choose your prey. Yikes. Wow, that is very scary. By the way, a giant storm has just started right outside, so if you hear weird background noise, that's what it is, great timing. We're almost done. So as for Lewis, well, you know, I don't know.

some sympathy for him, just because I think his stories of abuse at Willow's hands are probably exactly true, and even the detective said they thought he'd been indoctrinated. In the interrogation room, he ended his confession by repeating, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry about a hundred times in succession. But, you know, plenty of people go through abuse and manage not to do this. And according to Cincinnati Magazine, one of the things Willa spent Walter's money on was a payment to Louis, of $50,000. So his motivation may have been as much financial as it was fear-based. We can never know for sure.

As for Paul Blanc, it doesn't seem like he was ever charged in connection with Walter's abduction and murder. Now, why, I don't know? Because it seems like he was home for at least part of Walter's ordeal, but maybe he really didn't know what was going on in the basement. I mean, who knows? After Will is sentencing, one of Walter's friends from the online support group told Cincinnati.com's Brenna Kelly, quote,

His family was on his computer, and they, referring to his killers, had no idea that he was as connected as he was. We were his family. One of the reasons why he was killed is they thought he was so isolated that no one would care or miss him, but he was missed, and he is missed. She also said that Walter had spent his life avoiding social situations because of the fact he was distrustful of other human beings. The first time that he basically opened himself up to someone who was a stranger to him, it resulted in his death. And that, I think, is the worst thing about this case.

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 as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our Patreon angels. Thank you so much to Katie, Elizabeth, Margaret, Alexis, Elsie, Hannah, another campaign. Lady and Jacqueline. We have K-Toes. We have K-Tai. We appreciate you to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode

ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes even two, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us. If you're still listening, just know that if you haven't heard your name yet, we are getting to it. We're very behind. And we like to have shorter lists. We think it's more special.

There's hundreds of you. It takes a while. We've all heard podcasts where they list off like 50 names in an episode. And like it just feels, it just feels less special. So we want to. Exactly. We want to extend a special thank you to each of you. So we do them in little clusters.

Yeah. Of sweet angels. Sweet angels. Thank you.