True Crime Campfire - Cradle to Grave: Three Stories of Killer Kids

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

Most parents will tell you that parenthood is one of the greatest joys in life. And for most parents, that’s undoubtedly true. Having a child is an intense experience in both joyful times and bad, and it tends to change you in ways you can’t possibly anticipate. A parent’s love is eternal and unconditional, and it goes without saying that there’s pretty much nothing a child can do that a parent can’t forgive. Most of the time all this works out just fine. Buuuut…there’s also this. According to the FBI, hundreds of parents are murdered by their kids each year in the US. And in the overwhelming majority of these cases, the parents didn’t even almost see it coming. We’re about to look at a handful of cases where the family’s most golden children—the ones on whom their parents had pinned their greatest dreams—turned on the people who loved them most. Join us for three chilling stories of killer kids. Sources:CBS "48 Hours Mystery," episode "Memory of Murder"Documentary "The Christopher Porco Case, 15 Years Later"Investigation Discovery's "Deadly Women," episode "Killer Kids"Book: The Class Project: How to Kill a Mother: The True Story of Canada's Infamous Bathtub Girls""Crime Investigation Australia," episode "The Gonzales Family Murders"https://7news.com.au/original-fyi/crime-story-investigator/australias-grisliest-murders-money-lies-and-alibis-bring-down-a-baby-faced-killer-c-531469Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes a day early, an extra episode a month, a free sticker and more!): 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. Most parents will tell you that parenthood is one of the greatest joys in life. And for most parents, that's undoubtedly true. Having a child is an intense experience. in both joyful times and bad, and it tends to change you in ways you can't possibly imagine. A parent's love is eternal and unconditional, and it goes without saying that there's pretty much nothing a child can do that a parent can't forgive. Most of the time, all this works out just fine. But there's also this. According to the FBI, hundreds of parents are murdered by their kids each year in the U.S., and in the overwhelming majority of these cases, the parents didn't even almost see it coming. We're about to look at a handful of cases.

cases were the family's most golden children, the ones on whom their parents had pinned their greatest dreams, turned on the people who loved them most. This is cradle to grave, three stories of killer kids. mother's memory. So campers were in Bethlehem, New York, an affluent low-crime neighborhood, November 15, 2004. A guy named Peter Porco didn't show up for his job as a law clerk for a prominent local judge, and Peter was really well liked at work, and it was way out of character for him to just not show up and not call, so his co-workers sent one of the court officers to check on him. When he got to the Porco's house, the guy found a key in the front door lock. Odd.

Then he noticed what looked like blood smears on the floor of the porch and a little bit on the doorknob too. So concerned, obviously, he tried the door. It was unlocked. In fact, it wasn't even all the way shut. So he pushed it open and went inside. And on the floor and closet door, he saw more blood, a lot more. And then he looked at his right and saw his friend and colleague Peter Porco. Peter was lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs, his eyes wide open.

He'd been butchered. He was obviously dead. And I can't even imagine finding something like that. Just horrific. So the poor guy ran to call it in. And when the police got there, they were stunned by the violence of the scene. It was the worst by far that any of them had ever seen. Peter's head and face were covered with just horrific hack marks,

made by some kind of a heavy bladed weapon, probably an axe or a machete. Now, campers, what do we think of when we're going to be? we hear hack marks to the head and face, besides the obvious, just horror of the whole thing. When you see injuries to a victim's face, not to mention overkill, I mean, Peter had a dozen or more separate wounds, which was way more than necessary to kill him, what do we usually think? Those types of injuries usually indicate an unreal amount of antipathy toward the victim. You don't mutilate someone's face unless you hate them or what they represent. someone that's capable of creating those types of injuries is dangerous, to say the least.

Yeah, absolutely. And especially in a case as creepy as this one was already turning out to be, that's got to send an extra chill down the detective's spines. And as they moved through the Porco's house, the investigators could see that there was blood all over the place. I mean, everywhere. And when they made their way to the Porco's upstairs bedroom, it got even worse. Peter's wife Joan lay in bed Her face practically obliterated By the same kind of horrendous hacking wounds That her husband had suffered

The bedroom was bathed in blood And a heavy blood-soaked axe Lay at the foot of the Porco's bed So obviously now we've got the murder weapon, right? Detective Bowdish, the lead investigator Was approaching the bed when a little bit of movement caught his eye Joan Porco Against all possible odds

was still alive. And she was making a little commier gesture with her hand. I mean, he just could not believe that this woman was still alive. I mean, her face was practically gone. Just unbelievable. Now, Detective Bowdish had already noticed

some important things about the crime scene. For example, no forced entry. There was a key in the door. And that would later turn out to be a spare key that the porcos kept under a flower pot on the front porch, which, bad idea, if I may say, let's not keep spare keys under a flower

pot, okay? Just call a locksmith. It's okay. Yeah. There was no ransacking, no signs of burglary. Nothing appeared to be missing or disturbed. Joan's purse was on the kitchen counter. Still had money, credit cards in it. There was some nice jewelry on the dresser. Obviously, we've got overkill in the case of Peter. I mean, both Joan and Peter just been completely brutalized. And then we've got the facial mutilation, which suggested probably a close personal relationship with the killer. So all of this was going through his mind as he approached Joan Porco, where she lay bleeding in bed. And the paramedics got there right around that time, and they started working on her, and he noticed that she was responding to their orders.

Like they would say, move your right arm, and she would move her right arm. And they'd say, can you stop moving your legs? And she would comply, right? So he figures she's in there, like as badly damaged as she is, she's understanding what's being said to her. So he said, Joan, do you know who did this to you? And she nodded, like very definitely. so he said okay Joan was it a family member she nodded again now detective boutish happened to have been to this house before and he knew this family so he knew the names of their kids so he said Joan did Jonathan do this to you Jonathan is one of the two brothers in this family and at that Joan shook her head no that left only one option so Boutish said Joan was it Christopher did Chris do this to you and Joan

nodded. Yes. Now, before Boutish could react to this, the paramedics whisked Joan away to the ambulance. She was going to need emergency surgery. I mean, they had no idea whether she was going to make it. So she was out of the picture at this point, but she had given them something absolutely precious to any investigator, a prime suspect. And Boutish later said that he absolutely felt that Joan was understanding his questions, that she was right there with him. That would become very controversial later on. But as police and CSIs examined the house, it was a bit of a puzzle. At first, it looked as though the murder had taken place all over the house because there was blood everywhere. But as the CSIs looked closer, a really disturbing picture began to emerge. And y'all, I have to warn you, I have got goosebumps already just thinking about this. This is one of the creepiest things I've literally ever heard in my life. It's the worst. So, yeah, brace yourselves because it's freaking rough.

So what they eventually figured out was that Peter and Joan had both been attacked in bed but then at some point Peter had regained consciousness after being hacked with an axe more than a dozen times and then as he was bleeding to death

and his brain no doubt damaged from all these blows from an axe Peter had gone about his morning routine as best he could he had stood bleeding freely at the bathroom sink there was blood all over the bathroom and he'd gone downstairs and into the kitchen he had partially unloaded the dishwasher

they found blood all over that he'd taken some stuff out of the fridge and it looked like he had been trying to make his lunch for work that day and he'd gone out on the front porch he'd come back in and that was the point where he finally collapsed at the foot of the stairs so if that's not a nightmare come to life i honestly don't know what is that this poor guy his brain just kind of barely there still was just on autopilot and going through his morning routine just as we all do. It's just bonkers and horrifying. And they soon discovered more disturbing stuff. The alarm box by the front door had been smashed. And creepily, someone had cut the phone lines via a box attached to a telephone pole in front of the house. And as he

moved through the house, Detective Bowdish realized he'd been there before. It was two years earlier, Thanksgiving Day, 2002, and it had been a weird call. The porcos had called that day to report the theft of two laptop computers, and a screen had been slid open at a kitchen window. Now, the weird thing was that this seemed to have happened while the porcoes were at home, like having Thanksgiving with the whole family. And Bowdish remembered thinking at the time, like, that that was so strange and improbable in that he really, felt like it was a staged break-in because first of all the window with the slit screen wasn't open very far it wasn't far enough for somebody to crawl through very easily and then there was a ton of stuff like on the kitchen counter right underneath the window those pots and pans and a colander

and like none of it was disturbed and there was no way you were going to climb in that window and not knock like all of that stuff off onto the floor and it would have made clattering noises and everything and alerted their attention that hadn't happened plus the porcos had been really weirdly close-mouthed about giving any details of the theft and the supposed break-in. All they said was that there were two laptops missing, and that was pretty much all they wanted to talk about. So Boutish had taken their statements, filed their report, and nothing had come of it. Now, this. Interesting. Especially since the cops soon discovered that a screen on the garage window had been slit. And they also discovered that an axe was missing from the garage. So how did they know

this? Well, Peter Porco was an organized guy, and he had one of those corkboard things that had the outlines of the tools where the tools were supposed to hang, and all the other tools were still in their places with their little murder victim outlines, you know, around them, except for the axe, which now lay bloody at the foot of the Porco's bed. So it seemed the murder weapon had come from the property. And Joan Porco, who might not make it through the night, had identified her 21-year-old son Chris as her attacker and the killer of her husband Peter. So clearly, they needed to talk to Mr. Chris as soon as possible. Chris was a student at the University of Rochester, about a four-hour drive away,

and according to him, he first learned of his father's murder and his mother's attack when he got a phone call from a local reporter, asking him to comment on his parents' murders, which I can't imagine any worse way to find out than that, unless maybe it's walking in on it. Right. I mean, just to find out from a reporter wanting a comment, that's horrific. So, Chris hung up with the reporter and called the Bethlehem Police. And I have heard this 911 call. And granted, there are plenty of people who are calm in a crisis.

I'm one of those people. I can seem very together and calm in the middle of a crisis. But there is a difference between calm and casual. Yes. And Chris is cash on this phone call. I mean, it's literally like, hey, you. Yeah, my name's Chris Porco, and I just got a call that my parents had been murdered. Do you have any information about that?

Like, it was literally like he was ordering Chinese food. It's freaky. It's creepy. So the police, you know, confirmed what was going on with Chris, and Chris's uncle came to Rochester to pick him up and took him right to the hospital to see his mom. But Joan was still in surgery. So Chris sat with the youth minister from his church in the waiting area of the hospital, and the minister later said that he started to feel sick to. his stomach the more he talked with Chris. He said Chris seemed completely unconcerned about his mom

and really just seemed interested in talking about the various ways in which the situation was inconveniencing him. Great. Not good. The minister was very creeped out by this. Also, a local reporter who was at the hospital because his wife was having a baby and managed to loiter around the Porco family and eavesdrop slash observe said that he could tell right away that the family suspected Chris. He would move away from him and huddle up for private conversations. I love by the way that this reporter is like, honey, you keep pushing. You're doing great. There's been a murder. I'm going to go eaves draw. I wonder how his wife felt about that. I would actually be like, okay, go. I got this. Come back and tell me everything. Exactly. That's how I feel. Like I can see

I can see some people being like annoyed. Like do you ever shut it off? But also, go people watch baby. I wouldn't want him there anyway if I was having a baby. That's. No. Get out. Just leave me be. I'll let you know when it's done. So by now, word had gotten around that Joan had IDed Chris as the killer before she was taken to the hospital. The reporter also noticed that the police had put two guards in Joan's room. Police asked Chris to come to the station for an interview and he left the hospital while his mom was still in surgery. Cops interrogated him for six hours. Detective Boutish said Chris refused to look at him in the eye for the whole six hours.

That's a red flag. Chris denied harming his parents. He said he was in the lounge in his dorm room all night dozing on the couch. It quickly became clear, however, that none of Chris's frat brothers slash dormmates could verify his alibi. In fact, they were certain he wasn't there. One student did see him in the morning after the attacks, but nobody had seen him overnight.

Yeah, and they were like all there playing cards and hanging out and everything, and they said we would for sure have known if he was there. Right. It wasn't. Cops took possession of Chris's prized possession, his bright yellow Jeep. And by the way, a bright yellow Jeep has to be on the top 10 worst kind of car for a murderer to drive list. Huge and easily spotted. Come on. Oh, right. Like, you might want to rent one or something under a fake name, obviously. Duh. Duh. And most importantly, they began reviewing security footage from the campus's top-notch brand-new security system. And it quickly revealed that Chris, was lying. Chris's yellow Jeep was recorded driving through a campus parking lot at 10.30 p.m. Six minutes later, the Jeep was captured driving away from campus. At 1045 p.m., a New York state toll collector remembered taking a toll from a young man in a bright yellow Jeep. See, that's why you don't want to drive a distinctive car, because that toll operator probably would have forgotten

all about you if you weren't in that bright yellow car. And at 151 a.m., another toll collector saw a yellow jeep driven by a young white male, speeding into her lane nine miles away from the porco home. To 14 a.m., the alarm was deactivated with the secret code, known only by the family. What the killer hadn't known was that the data from the alarm system was stored in a hard drive in the basement, so smashing the box by the door didn't do what he hoped it would. At 4 a.m., as he was leaving for work, a neighbor saw Chris's Jeep parked in the Corco's driveway. He knew Chris's Jeep. He'd seen it there many times before.

4.54 a.m., phone records show the phone line was cut. 8.30 a.m., the yellow Jeep was captured once again by the security cameras heading back onto campus. So, based on the timeline, it was certainly possible that Chris had been the one to attack his parents. The cameras didn't capture the Jeep's license plate or Chris's face, but they did capture some decals on Chris's Jeep, and a telltale mud stain. They confronted him. He vigorously denied it, claiming he was just moving his Jeep

to another parking spot. But didn't mention any of that in his initial interview. He said he spent the whole night napping on the dorm lounge. It was not looking good for Chris. But then, cops get thrown a major curveball.

Joan Porco had made it through surgery, albeit severely disfigured. She lost one eye and had terrible facial injuries. Bless her heart. And she was now insisting that she had no memory of the attack or of nodding when the detective asked her if Chris was the one who attacked her.

Joan insisted, my son is innocent. Yeah, and bless her heart, honestly, I can't even imagine what she must have gone through. So, you know, I don't judge. And there's some controversy later about whether it was even possible for her to have understood what the detective was asking her. So there's a legit, you know, I'm certainly not suggesting that she's. She's lying. I think she probably doesn't remember. Right, right.

Yeah. But as detectives continued to investigate, a disturbing picture of golden boy Chris began to emerge. According to Chris's girlfriend and frat brothers, Chris had told everyone he came from a fabulously wealthy family. And the barrage of lies didn't stop there. According to Chris, he had a trust fund that was about to mature. His parents had a lodge in Vermont. His grandmother owned a huge amount of real estate in Connecticut. Did you say about to mature?

That's interesting, isn't it? How do you know you're about to come into a big chunk of money, Chris? I don't know. I wonder. True mystery. That's a thinker. He also said his family owned an enormous vacation house on the Outer Banks in North Carolina and another in Aruba. But when his friends would ask to go there, he'd always find an excuse why it wouldn't work out that weekend. His family had white tie tuxedo-clad servants when he was growing up. He habitually bought out the first class cabin of a plane to take trips. He offered to do this for his friends so they could go backpacking in Europe, but somehow that trip never materialized. Once, on a trip to Bethlehem to visit his parents, Chris drove his girlfriend past a big mansion and claimed they used to live there

before they'd decided to downsize. Problem was, his girlfriend knew the people who actually lived there, and they'd lived there for years and years. So she knew it wasn't true. Yeah, and this amazes me like, that's not enough of a red flag for you, darling. I guess not. She decided she wanted to let that one slide for some reason. And maybe she was like, maybe they haven't lived there as long as I thought. Like, it's possible. Yeah, sure.

Who knows? Chris acted like Mr. Bigg whenever they went out or had a party. He'd buy like $300 worth of alcohol for everyone. And he bought a vending machine for their hall at the dorm. and when the investigators discovered that Chris had a secret source of income, the 2002 burglary at the Porco home started to make a lot more sense. Chris had a bustling little business on eBay, selling stolen electronics, laptops, cameras, all that kind of stuff.

laptops had gone missing from the dorm as well as the Porco home. Chris's friends were stunned to realize he'd lied to them about everything. In addition to all this, Chris was flunking. out of school. Get out. I know, right? As police dug deeper, they discovered that he had flunked out of the University of Rochester. He told his parents that one of his professors lost his final exam, and that's why he flunked out. Sure, but don't you hate when that happens? I mean, as a professor, I know I just frequently just lose people's final exams, and then when I lose their final exam, my response is to flunk them because, you know, it's their fault. It's just a stupid.

it a story. And if parents apparently bought this complete bollocks for Pete's sakes, which tells you something, doesn't it, about how parents can be about their kids. Right? So he'd gone to community college for a semester, and he flunked out there too. But then, Chris

managed to forge his transcript from the community college and get readmitted to the University of Rochester. He told Joan and Peter that the university had made a mistake in kicking him out, and that they had agreed to waive his tuition to make up for it. This, too, they bought. Okay, so first of all, just University of Rochester, wow, I hope in

the intervening years since this happened, you have tightened up the ship a little bit, because how do you forge a transcript? Like, really? You don't have better screening to catch that? Yeah. That's bananas. And anymore, you don't even, you don't even send your transcript. You don't even touch it. Well, this is true. Yeah. This is 2004, but it's like, dang, you know? And also, this really highlights for me just how like forgive me i'm sure none of the parents listening are like this i'm sure you're not but parents can be just nuts about their kids sometimes and i used to teach elementary school i used to teach high school i taught undergrads before i started teaching grad students i have seen this shit firsthand i mean firsthand i once had a kid blatantly plagiarized his final

paper in like a high school english class that i was teaching he just took the entire thing off the internet put his name on it and turned it in that was the extent of his contact with this paper okay and so of course when i gave him a zero on the assignment and failed him in the class because this thing was worth like 40 50% of the grade his dad was livid and like called the school and was screaming at me and at the principal and everything he just didn't understand the assignment you didn't make it clear uh-huh okay because it's reasonable to think that anyone on planet earth would think that the final assignment in the class, which is worth like 40, 50% of the final grade was just to go online and find a paper that someone else wrote and put your name on it

and turn it in. Sure, sure. It's reasonable, right? Why could God, why would anybody think that was the assignment? And by the way, if you're suggesting that your kid did think that, then wow, you must not think much of your kid. Right. And here comes yet another little nugget of parenting advice for me, someone who, remember, has no kids, but also has lots of opinions on parenting. In my opinion, you are not doing your kid any favors if you do this. If you let your kid get away with murder like that. Sometimes you're literally letting them get away with murder. Well, this is true. And all you're doing, in my opinion, if you do this, is create a monster because they have got to experience consequences when they screw up or it's

going to bite you right in the ass. Just trust me on that. I've seen it enough times as a teacher. So, anywho, Chris spun his mom and dad a big old web of lies about it being a mistake that he got kicked out of school and the school waving his tuition to make up for it, which is just beyond absurd. And in reality, what Chris had done was take out a $31,000 loan for his tuition, forging his father's signature, which, by the way, is a felony in case y'all are wondering. So he's committed a felony now. And there are tons of emails between Chris and his parents, just full of his bullshit, like, you know. Oh, no, I didn't miss a car payment. I was just waiting for a new bank card. I sorted it out. It's fine. Oh, no, no problem. The school is waiving my tuition. It's all good. And in reality, Chris was broke in a huge amount of credit card debt. He owed a ridiculous amount of money for parking tickets. And in fact, Peter's last act, the night before he was murdered, was to pay off his son's parking tickets, which for some reason just breaks my heart into smithereens. I mean, I just hear that detail and I keep thinking about him like stumbling around and bleeding and trying to make his lunch for work. I think it's because it's so unbelievably selfless.

Like his son was repeatedly getting fucking parking tickets where he knew he wasn't supposed to park. And his dad was taking care of him. Because that's what good dads do. Yeah. It's so sad. And, you know, he strung his parents along for a while, but finally, not long before the murder, Peter Porco discovered that $31,000 loan that Chris had fraudulently taken out in his name, and he realized, my own credit is at risk here. And he freaked. And he canceled the loan, and he emailed Chris, and he said, it's time to stop the bullshit. Call me at the office right away. And he said, if Chris didn't, he was seriously considering turning Chris into the cops. Chris never called. And a few days later, his mom sent him this heartbreakingly desperate email. She said, we are very upset about your lack of communication. We don't know if you're well or what your mental state may be. Your father is about to have a nervous breakdown. For God's sake, please call.

Chris, never called. And a couple of days before the murder, Peter Porco told a co-worker that he was afraid his son might be a sociopath, which has to be a tough thing for a father to admit. Yeah. So he was thinking about this. He was worried, you know, and how many times have we seen that? in these cases where people had a bad feeling. I don't think he thought

his son was going to kill him, but he knew something was wrong with that kid. He knew that. He confided that. And I imagine he probably also confided that in his wife. So it took about a year of investigation, but eventually police charged Chris with the murder

of his father and the attempted murder of his mother. And it's so disturbing, y'all. His mom, who continues to support him to this day, was right there in court with him every day supporting him patting his arm and hugging him in front of the cameras oh it's just it gives me the wiggins and there's a picture from the trial where chris and his mom are like talking together in the courtroom and she's this tiny little woman and he just looms over her he's like a big guy and he's

really tall and it's just chilling we'll have to post that picture for you so you can see it it's it is just disturbing beyond words and of course her face is still disfigured and she's she lost an eye and everything. I mean, you can tell she was attacked. It's horrifying. So during the trial, Chris's brother Jonathan testified. Now, unlike his mother, Jonathan was clearly estranged from Chris. He wouldn't look at Chris as he testified. He told the jury their relationship was strained, which yeah, I bet it is. And he told them that Chris was absolutely aware that he would inherit $1.1 million in life insurance money if both the parents died. Chris had said he did not know that. Jonathan said Oh yeah, he knew. We both knew. So obviously he was lying about that. And Jonathan's icy demeanor on the stand made a huge impression on the jury. He was just telegraphing with his tone and his body language and everything he was saying that unlike his mom, he knew exactly what his brother was. And people who knew this family have said that, you know, they were a loving household. They were a, you know, very supportive household of their kids. But, you know, they expected that,

their kids would study and get good grades and everything and that Jonathan had never had any trouble meeting those expectations. He was in the military now. You know, Chris, on the other hand, this I think is a good story to illustrate it. One family friend said that Jonathan was the kind of kid who would spend all day building a whole Lego city. And then Chris was the kind of kid who'd come in and smash it. Wow. Yeah. So from an early age, I think Chris really chafed against the expectations to succeed, you know, and probably deeply resented his brother that he was able to meet those expectations and Chris wasn't. Who knows what was going on in the kid's head? But the prosecution put on a very strong circumstantial case and Chris was found guilty after only six hours of

deliberation. I'm not the least bit surprised to hear that. He was sentenced to a minimum of 50 years in prison. So, Chris, he's probably not going anywhere anytime soon. He still maintains his innocence. And his poor, poor sweet mom, bless her heart, still scarred, still suffering from brain damage, God knows what kind of post-traumatic stress she might be suffering from, still to this day supports him. I have so much empathy for this woman. Absolutely. Because of course, of course she wants to cling to the beautiful lie that her son, with all

the motive, means, and opportunity in the world didn't brutalize her in her own home, didn't murder his father. It's easy to be critical of her, but the alternative is such a cold and ugly truth that it's probably the only thing keeping her from true despair. Yeah, it is way too psychologically threatening, I think, for a parent to not only recognize that, you know, my son is a sociopath, but also, I mean, if you admitted this to yourself, you would have to be admitting, like, my whole life has been a lie. My son does not love me. My son wanted me dead. my son took my husband from me I mean that's just too scary

I think for a parent to admit and so I certainly do not hold it against her that she has chosen the path that she's chosen and all I hope for her is that she can heal and that he doesn't try to hurt her again for God's sake because she seems like a sweet lady so moving on to case two

which we're calling devious buckle the hell up for this one y'all oh boy so campers were in Australia for this next one July 2001. Now, in the U.S., when you want to call the police, you call 911. In Australia, it's triple zero. So, triple zero got a call from a hysterical sounding young man who said his name was Sef, S-E-F Gonzalez. Seth said his parents had been attacked. In fact, he said they'd been

shot and that he had just chased the intruders out of the house. Hero son, right? So after telling all this to the triple zero dispatcher, Seth hung up, which you should never do. do not hang up on the dispatcher. You've got to stay on the phone until help arrives because they need information from you. But he hung up and he ran over to a neighbor's house and the neighbors actually went back with him to the house to check on the family and they were just completely horrified to find kind of in the front foyer slash living room the bodies of Seth's parents Teddy and Loiva in huge pools of blood. So the Gonzalez family were immigrants from the Philippines and they were a huge success story.

Teddy was a successful immigration attorney. He did very well for himself. The Gonzalez's lived in a big, beautiful house, in an affluent area. And everything had just been going great for them in Australia. Until now, obviously. So first responders didn't take long to get there, and as they searched the house,

they discovered one more body upstairs, Teddy and Lueva's 18-year-old daughter, Clodine. So almost an entire family just wiped out. and Seff must have been saved because he wasn't home when the intruders broke in. CSIs and police noted that the killers seemed to have gone through the house looking for something. Drawers had been opened and rifled through. One of Teddy's briefcases had been upended onto the floor and the papers kind of strewn all over the place and the same thing had been done to Loiva's purse.

Interestingly though, Loiva's wallet was still there. And they noticed something else weird. The stuff that had been scattered around was lying on top of the bloodstains. not the other way around. Now, that was interesting because it showed that the ransacking had taken place after the murders, not before, which seemed odd, right? Mm-hmm. Like, you'd expect it to be the other way around.

But they thought, you know, maybe the killers had just figured, well, everybody's dead, we might as well take our time search in the place. Who knew? And then, you know, got chased out of the house by Steph when he got home. And then on one wall of the living room, the killers had left a disturbing calling card. Somebody had spray-painted an anti-Asian message in, ginormous blue letters, like it covered the whole wall. Also, in a downstairs window, the screen had been slashed.

But there was something odd about that, too. A forensic examination showed that the screen seemed to have been cut after first being taken off the window. Now, why would somebody take a screen off the window and then slash it? So, between that and the briefcase being dumped out on top of the bloodstains, what are we thinking, campers? Is there a particular word that's coming to mind at all? Hmm. Is it staging?

Yes, ma'am, it is. See the man about your prize. So, crime scene staging is a really important clue because it tends to mean that the killer is trying to steer you away from the most obvious suspect. A stranger probably isn't going to feel the need to stage a murder to look like a robbery or a suicide or whatever. So when we see staging, we tend to think the killer is probably someone close to the victim. Yeah. The medical examiner quickly. determined the family's cause of death. Teddy, Lueva, and Clodine had all died from a combination of blunt force trauma and stab wounds. The parents had defensive wounds on their arms and hands,

but Clodine had none. That's interesting. So that probably means Clodine was taken totally by surprise and incapacitated before she had a chance to fight back or do anything, right? Precisely. The Emmy also determined that the victims had died sometime between four and seven. p.m. Clodine was probably the first to die. Then Loewa came home and was most likely set upon right as she walked through the front door, not knowing that her 18-year-old daughter was lying dead upstairs. Teddy was next, and he was also probably attacked right as he came through the door after work. A few days after the murder, the lone survivor, Seth Gonzalez, agreed to walk the police through his story of finding the bodies. Now, okay.

Here we come again with the murder advice. Campers. Do not kill anybody, obviously. But if you do, never agree to a walkthrough, it will 100% bite you in the ass. Yeah, always. I mean, I could name you half a dozen cases without even thinking about it. Don't do it. But Seth was not a camper and did not get the memo about that.

Yeah, he didn't ask us. So he met the detectives at the scene of the murders and walked them through his story step by step. And right away, there were some things that didn't add up. First of all, by now the police had more precise information about the victim's times of death. They'd all been killed at different times, and the timeline clashed with some of the elements of Seth's story. For example, Seth told the cops that his sister Clodine was still alive when he found her. But that was impossible. According to the medical examiner, Clodine had been the first to die.

Then, there was the extent of the family's injuries. Big time overkill. You don't usually see that with home invaders and burglars. If a burglar is surprised in the middle of his crime, nine times out of ten, he's just going to run away. But on the rare occasion, when a burglar does attack a homeowner, it's usually a very quick utilitarian attack. Just enough to incapacitate the person,

so the burglar can get away. Of course, there was that anti-Asian graffiti on the wall. So maybe this wasn't just a robbery. Maybe it was a hate crime. That needed to be looked into, too. But police had enough concerns about Seth's story that they decided to quietly take a closer look at the Gonzalez family's golden boy.

At a press conference the day after the murders, Seth was every inch the grieving son and brother. He said, if you were to picture the four corners of the world, in my eyes, we were those four. Seth pleaded for anyone who had any information about the killings to please come forward. He looked directly into the camera as he said, Please help us. As the sole survivor of a horrific family tragedy, Seth was garnering nationwide sympathy.

At his family's funeral, he gave the eulogy. and there wasn't a dry eye in the place by the time he finished. But when he finished the eulogy, which was undoubtedly very moving, things got a little weird. Seth burst in a song, Acapella, the Mariah Carey and Boys to Men song, One Sweet Day. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And specifically, it was the verse that goes, sorry I never told you all I wanted to say hey so was that as excruciating for you as it was for me

yeah probably yeah yeah that's because it's super freaking weird when somebody just randomly bursts into song because it's not a Disney movie it's real life so that discomfort that I just made you all feel for a second there That's probably how the people at the funeral were feeling. Sorry I never told you all I wanted to say. It's an interesting choice of lyric, isn't it? I think he probably made all that pretty clear anyway there at the end.

I mean, a murder is worth a thousand words. Yeah, and the song really did disturb some of the people in the audience. As you said, it was just weird. Weird as hell. I went to college with this girl who was a theater student, and I love theater. kids. I love you guys. Oh, I was a theater. I love you. Yeah. But anytime we were in the cafeteria, she would just randomly start singing in line. Oh, no. I wanted to trip her so bad. She was so annoying. It's awful. Don't ever do it. It was the worst. No one wants you to start singing.

And I know you want attention, right? Because that's why you're doing it. But this is not the kind of attention you want. No, no, no. You don't want people having homicidal fantasies. about you in the cafeteria. I did. I did. That's bad attention. So it was weird what Seff did. And to some people, something about it seemed insincere.

Just for show. It especially disturbed Sef's Aunt Emily, who came away from the funeral, feeling deeply unsettled. Meanwhile, police were searching Sef's computer, and, who boy, did they find some shit? Somebody had been doing some extensive research on poisons. Not only that, Ceph had ordered some Caster beans online. Oh, shit. Oh, campers.

Some of you might know this already, but Caster Beans are the origin of the poison, ricin. A poison so deadly, the United States government categorizes it as a weapon of mass destruction. Jeez, Louise. And one of the searches on Ceph's computer was how to turn castor beans into ricin. Oh, great.

Yikes. That's reassuring. Yeah. It gets more interesting. Shortly after those castor beans had been delivered, and one week before the murders, Seth's mom, Loewa, had been admitted to the hospital with what doctors thought was severe food poisoning. She had horrible GI symptoms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, the whole thing. She couldn't walk straight.

She was really weak. These, by the way, are all classic symptoms of rice and poisoning. Yep. They were also learning that Sef seemed to be an accomplished habitual liar and had been for years. He told friends that he'd signed a million-dollar contract with a music studio. That he was a world champion kickboxer just back from a title fight in Brazil. That he was running a modeling agency.

That he was flying to New York soon to take a meeting with a cosmetics company exec. that he was a lawyer with his own luxury condo in the city. He was all over the place with this stuff. And also, he's like 20 at this point, or possibly even 19. I mean, at least Chris Porco was somewhat consistent with his bullshit. It was all just my parents are rich, you know, and I'm going to be rich soon. Seth, like, this kid can't make up his mind about what he wants to pretend to be. But it's like, how do you think somebody's going to buy that you're running a modeling agency at 20?

Like, use your head, kid. It makes no sense. No. I'm guessing he just went wherever his latest whim took him. But it's interesting how similar these two cases are, Seth and Chris Porco. Oh, big time, yeah. And if you think back to our second one nerds attack case with Chris Pritchard and the murder of Leith von Stein, there are a lot of similarities there too. Yeah, and I would say even with the first nerds attack with Clara Swartz.

I mean, they all have elaborate fantasies as a theme, and elaborate fantasies in general seem to play a really important. part in these parasite cases, as well as in, you know, serial killer cases and a lot of true crime, I mean, these people tend to have elaborate fantasy lives. And I could name you a bunch of others just like these. If you're interested, you can look into the case of Bart Whitaker sometime or Dana Ewell. Same shit, different day. So, as the sole survivor of the murders, Seff was in line to inherit millions of dollars from his parents' estate. But of course, that takes time when you're talking about an active murder investigation. So Seff didn't get access to that money in the days and weeks after his family was killed.

And he was starting to get real irritated about that as time went on. And he kept pressing the detectives and the family accountant. When is this case going to be closed? When can I get my money? How much am I getting? Now, he did get $15,000 from a victim's compensation fund just to help with living expenses and funeral expenses and stuff. But he was going to have to wait for the big money and he hated it.

So he was just pestering the hell out of the family accountant. ask him, when can I get my money? When, when, when? In fact, he'd gone to the accountant for the first time only two days after the murders, which is kind of odd for a grieving kid who just lost his entire family, right? And then two months after the murders, Cepha announced to his family that he had a brain tumor. A brain tumor, campers, bless his heart. And he said he needed money for treatment.

So basically, he was hitting his family up saying, give me money or I'm going to die. And unsurprisingly, one or two family members was a little bit suspish about this, and it was very quickly exposed as a lie, just a scheme to get his hands on some cash. Why did he need such quick cash? Well, police found out he'd been to a Lexus dealership and seen something he liked. So he'd gone ahead and placed an order for a car worth 75 grand. So later that day, he'd called his grandma in the Philippines. so this is his dad's mom

and his grandma managed some of Teddy Gonzalez's rental property so she had access to quite a bit of family money and Seth spun her this big bunch of nonsense about a brain tumor and asked her for $200,000 for treatments and he even went so far as to forge

medical records and other documents and fax them to her and she was about to do it but fortunately the police caught on to this little scam and were able to get to grandma before she forked over any money and I'm sure that was a real fun conversation for her, don't you bet? So she's just lost her son horrifically, her daughter-in-law, her granddaughter,

and now her grandson is pulling this shit. And I have to think she must have realized on some level what that meant. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And you know, these types of liars are so fascinating to me. You have this kid that just can't stop lying. He could have asked for so much less and probably would have succeeded. Yeah.

But as they say, greed is a bottomless pit. And you often see this with, you know, personalities like this where they take these ridiculous risks where if you had just scaled it down a little or if you'd been patient and waited a little while, you know, but they're just unable to do it. They just cannot put off gratification. If he was like, hey, like I need like 10 grand to get me through the next couple months. Absolutely. It would have been fine. So by now, unsurprisingly, the family was divided over Seff. Some suspected he was involved in the murders, some defended him, Seth's grandmother, having just almost been scammed out of $200,000 by the little shit,

and his aunt Emily, who had been so creeped out by Seff's little song at the funeral, began to see that Seff didn't seem to be grieving, like, at all. And they were just stunned by his callousness and greed, especially when the police, who were growing increasingly convinced of Seth's guilt, stopped his victim's comp payments. And Seth got furious and started pawning his dead mother's, like, family heirloom jewelry, which was precious to her. Which is disgusting. And then he started selling off his dad's cars. His dad had like a collection of cars, which were his pride and joy.

So all the stuff that had huge sentimental value. And Seth is just selling it to keep himself in the style, which he felt he did. reserved. Ugh. And then the police found a compelling piece of evidence. There had been shoe prints in blood at the murder scene. And in Seth's bedroom, they had noticed an empty shoebox alongside all the full ones. So, Seth was one of those kids who kept his shoes in all the boxes, like all lined up in his closet. And unsurprisingly, he was into nice shoes. And there was this one empty box. Just one. So CSIs bought a pair of shoes exactly like the ones that had come in that empty box. And lo and behold, they were a perfect match to the bloody shoe prints at the scene.

Oh my God. Why did you keep the box? I know. I think the same thing. Why in God's name would you keep the box? It's bizarre. So the investigators were also uncovering evidence of conflict between Seth and his parents. The Gonzalez's house had always been a place of high expectations, just like the Porco House, especially when it came to academics. You know, Seth and Clodine were expected to study hard, make good grades, etc. And Seth had been in trouble with them for bad grades in recent months, so much so that they had threatened to take his car, which was his prized possession if he didn't do better. There was also some static between Ceph and his sister Clodine. So Ceph had been a bedwetter, like all his life, which

by the way, campers is one of the items in the McDonald triad, interestingly enough, like bedwetting past the age of six, fire setting cruelty to animals. I don't know if he has any of the other two, but it's got the bedwetting past the age of six. And of course this was a source of embarrassment for him, as it would be for anybody. But apparently, Clodine had told some of their relatives about it, and she would kind of make fun of him about it and stuff like siblings often do, which was shitty and mean, but it's a sister thing to do, right? I mean, brothers and sisters tease each other.

But Sef deeply resented this. Not only that, but Clodine had found out that Seff had been falsifying his grades from university, like to placate their parents because they were threatening to take his car. And when Clodine saw that, she told the parents. so Seth knew that his parents knew he was full of shit and that he hadn't been doing better in school he knew they were going to take his car and in his mind it was all Clodine's fault

she'd narked on him oh boy not good so there was all that the next big revelation was that Seth's Aunt Emily had been to the house on the evening of the murders with her 10 year old son and they had seen Seth's car in the driveway and y'all this is so creepy you know how a lot of front doors have that long skinny window next to them well aunt emily had kind of peered through that long skinny window like she'd rung the doorbell and nobody came she looked through that window and she thought she saw a man moving around inside the darkened house

yeah so this was all very compelling but it wasn't quite enough to make an arrest so the Aussie police sent in an undercover detective to see if he could get Seth to talk now It's not exactly like this, but it's kind of like in the same vein as the Mr. Bigstings that they do in Canada. If you've never read about those, they're fascinating. They're very controversial. Some people think they're a terrible idea. And by God, if it didn't work, because Seth is apparently an idiot. And he confided details to the undercover that only the killer could know. Freaking doofus.

So again, campers don't murder anybody for the love of God. But if you must, if you must commit a murder, and the investigation is going on, and you know that the police are looking at you and suddenly a new friend appears in your life and tries to get you to share details about your crime? For God's sake, this is not a fun new friend with whom to do crimes. This is an undercover cop, like, obviously. So don't open your mouth.

God, he's done. Yeah, if, okay, if you're the kind of kid like Seth that has never done anything or had anything to do with the seedy underbelly of society, just know that criminals do not seek you out to do jobs. The shit you learned in dare is a lie. They have a whole group of people who they trust to do jobs and crimes. Right.

No one, and I repeat, no one wants a snot-nosed kid to work for them. Your new friend is wearing a fucking wire. I know. He's like, oh, friend, it's so exciting. Like, no dumbass. It's an undercover detective. So, anywho, let's walk through what Sef, bless his heart, told his new bestest friend, the undercover detective. And he made a very full accounting. At 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the murders, Seff had a tense meeting with his parents at his dad's law office.

So they argued about Seth's grades and the fact that he had tried to fake them and the car and all the stuff that had been brewing for a while now. And finally, Seth had enough and he stormed out in a hospital. and he went home and when he got home he found his sister Clodine just alone in her room studying and I don't know how much he premeditated this if at all but as Clodine sat at her desk reading Seth was kind of staring at the back of her head and thinking how this was all her fault she ratted him out and he said this huge rage just blossomed up and he came up behind her and attacked her first with a baseball bat and then with the knife and the reason why she had no fence wounds was that she never saw him coming, so she didn't have a chance to fight back.

And once his sister was dead, Seth knew he was past the point of no return, and he waited for his mom to come home. He put on his father's jacket, he put on a pair of gardening gloves to protect him from the blood, and he waited. Loiva arrived home at 5.30, and as she walked in from the garage, her son, who she carried in her body for nine months, who she had nurtured and loved his entire life, attacked her from behind, and stabbed her again and again. And as she lay bleeding on the floor, he leaned over her and slid her throat. And I can only imagine what must have been going through her mind in those moments. I don't really want to know, to be honest. It's just horrifying beyond words. And, oh, this is so creepy. As Seth was scattering his mom's purse contents all over the

floor, the doorbell rang. And this, of course, as we know, was Aunt Emily and her 10-year-old son. So just picture this scene. We've got Seff in the dark room, having just killed his mother, kind of leaning over and scattering the contents of her purse to stage the scene, and bong-bong. So he froze. And outside the door, Emily was worried when she saw what she thought was a man moving past that little narrow window by the door, but her 10-year-old son was impatient to go home. He was hungry. He wanted to get home and do his homework. And he said,

Mom, it's just a coat rack. Come on, they're not home. Can we go, please? And if Emily had pressed the issue, if she had tried the side entrance, for example, to which she had a key, I am 100% confident that both she and her son would be dead now. So Teddy came home from work around seven. Seth heard his car, his key in the lock, And as his father came through the door, Seth jumped him, stabbing him so severely that it severed part of his spinal cord. Oh, my God, wow. Teddy fought back. But Seth was younger and stronger, and he was the one with a knife. And once his father was dead, Seth scattered the contents of his briefcase all over the floor. Then he spray painted the racist graffiti on the wall, took a shower, and left to get rid of his bloody clothes and the big.

baseball bat. And then he met up with his friends for a night out. Wee. How fun. He then got home around 11 and found the bodies. Yeah. And I think it's important to note here that these murders were hours apart. So he killed Clodine at 4 o'clock, Loiva got home at 5.30, and Teddy got home at 7. So between each of these awful crimes, we have an hour and a half where this kid just sat and waited and managed to hold on to that incredible rage, that commitment to continue this carnage against his family all that time for three separate scenes. It's just chilling, isn't it? Absolutely chilling. And not once did he turn back. No, he's just sitting there in the dark, just holding that knife waiting. So creepy, God. Seth changed his original story

when the police confronted him about the problems with his timeline. Now, he claimed he'd been at a brothel and said he was too embarrassed to admit it the first time they questioned him. Police later discovered that Seth had tried to bribe a taxi driver and a sex worker to back up his story with, wait for it, 50 bucks. Oh, wow. My dude. If you want me to be your alibi in a murder investigation, you're going to have to do better than 50 lousy bucks. Right. You're about to be a millionaire, kid.

Think big. Yeah, that's pitiful. So the taxi driver and the sex worker caved immediately under police questioning. They had no idea this kid had killed anybody. They just thought he was lying to his parents or his girlfriend or somebody about where he'd been that night. While the police were getting their final ducks in a row to convince prosecutors they had enough to arrest him, Seth tried to get several media outlets to pay him for interviews. Classy.

And they quickly figured out that this was most likely an attempt at damage control. Because while they were putting the finishing touches on their investigation, the police were surveilling Seth. And his behavior was starting to really worry them. Seth claimed he'd been attacked and that the attacker warned him not to talk to the media again. When he added that the attackers had threatened his aunt and grandmother, the police got really concerned. Was Seth trying to set up a scenario where the real killers went after his aunt and grandma, too?

Was he planning on murdering them to further the narrative that this was a hate crime targeting his family? So that did it. Police didn't want any blood on their hands, so they went ahead and put the habeas on Seth. But the investigation continued, as they tend to do, even after people are arrested. And the cops soon discovered a tantalizing little piece of information on Seth's computer. Apparently, someone using Seth's computer had sent an anonymous letter to a food

company saying that some of their products had been poisoned. Now, this was before the murders right around the time he'd placed that order for castor beans. Oh, be down. Clearly, Seth had been hoping this would provide an alternate suspect, some kind of domestic terrorist, if his family all died of ricin poisoning. Wow. And on yet another search of the house, they also found very well hidden in his bedroom, a small vial of liquid ricin. Damn, this kid is not somebody I want anywhere near. Anywhere near a flipping vial of ricin. That's terrifying. Weapon of mass destruction, okay? And I actually wonder why he abandoned the ricin plan anyway. I mean, obviously he had the stuff. I mean, maybe it's just because it didn't kill Loiva on the first try.

And also, why would you keep the ricin? You absolute jack wagon. He is so bad at this. He's so bad at this. And by the way, that vial of ricin probably could have killed his family like 10 times over. Oh, no doubt. No doubt. So, unsurprisingly, Seth Gonzalez was convicted of the murders of his family in 2002 and sentenced to life, which in Australia is 65 years in prison.

He was also convicted of the threat of product contamination for the rice and litter. Most likely, this kid will never see daylight again. Thank God. Geez. Yep. Oh, and he maintains his innocence, which is hilarious. Good luck with that, buddy. Yep.

Okay, campers. Moving on to case number three, which will be a quickie. A quickie, but a creepy. Case 3. The Bathtub Sisters, otherwise known as a shitty Scissor Sisters cover band. We are in Mississauga, like, if you can find Mississippi and Zaga. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2003. A teenage girl called 911 to report that her mom was unconscious with no pulse in the tub.

She said she and her sister found the body after returning home from a movie. The 911 operator tried to walk her through CPR, but the girl repeatedly refused to touch her mom and wouldn't follow the operator's instructions. Odd, right? First responders arrived quickly to find two teenage sisters and their mother dead in the bat. Now, we have to note, campers, that we don't know these people's real names, because Canada has this thing where they protect the identities of juvenile offenders. But author Bob Mitchell wrote a book about the campaign. case, and he calls the victim Linda Anderson, and the two girls who were 15 and 16, by the way, Elizabeth and Sandra. Sandra's the older sister, but those aren't their real names.

So their mother was lying face down in the bathtub, dead. Mike Polly was the first investigator to arrive on the scene, and despite their odd behavior on the 911 call, he said they seemed reasonably upset, as any kid would be, to come home and find their mother in that kind of shape. So let's get a little background here. The victim, quote unquote, Linda Anderson, was a hardworking single mom. And in addition to her teenage daughters, Elizabeth and Sandra, she had a nine-year-old son, too. She worked hard. She had two jobs, in fact, to provide the kids with what they needed, but she also was a person who had her demons. Specifically, she had a drinking problem.

When she got home, she'd start drinking, and a lot of times she wouldn't stop until she had to be let off to bed. And unsurprisingly, her kids hated that, because she had to be drinking problem. who wouldn't? You know, it's hard to grow up with an alcoholic parent, and she was the only parent they had because their dad wasn't around. But despite that anchor around her neck with her addiction, Linda loved her kids, and she worked her ass off for them despite it. The two girls were scary smart. One of their guidance counselors said they were the smartest kids she'd ever seen in her entire career, which I imagine is a hell of a thing to say. They spoke five languages, They had an encyclopedic grasp of whatever material they studied,

but they had a little bit of an attitude. They saw themselves as have-nots. Their mom was providing them with the bare minimum, but she was also spending a lot of extra money on liquor, money that they felt should be spent on them. Their friends all had nice cars and clothes while they were just getting by with second-hand stuff, and they felt entitled to the lifestyle that their richer friends had.

Now, a lot of kids from less-than-wealthy families probably feel this way, The difference is they would never, in a gazillion years, do what these girls were about to do. They realized that if their mother died, they and their younger brother would get $68,000 each. And apparently, that was just too big a carrot for these kids to pass up. So, they began researching ways to kill someone. They quickly landed on drowning as their MO of choice. According to the TV show Deadly Women, they thought it would be quick and unspectacular. I have a feeling their victim didn't quite see it that way.

Yeah, I imagine it was pretty freaking spectacular for her, but, you know. All right, okay, whatever you say. Investigators eventually found, and this is not a typo, and I'm not misspeaking, 14,000 hits on their computer for search results about drowning. Jeez, Louise. And 300 hits for codeine and 100 for bathtub. So obviously they were busy little bees doing their research. And then, failing to destroy their computer, thereby leaving future detectives a nice little prezzi tied up with a big bow.

Smart, did you say? You know, supposed to be super smart? Mm-hmm. Apparently, there were some common sense gaps in those genius IQs, but oky-dokey. Which can be the case with geniuses sometimes. And as dipshit killer kids tend to do, bless her hearts, the girls shared all their big plans with their little friends. During their late night trips to Denny's or whatever the Canadian equivalent of Denny's is, I don't know. Is it Tim Hortons?

Is that a thing in Canada? Do you have Denny's in Canada? Now I need to know. So Canadian campers get on that for us, if you will. Do they have Denny's in Canada? And if so, do they have the moons over my hammy breakfast meal? I'm curious. So they told their friends that once they had the money from their mother's murder,

they were going to take the entire group on a trip to Europe and then they were going to use the rest to buy a marijuana farm, which cracks me up, like as if you're buying an anything farm for that amount of money. Medical marijuana was legalized in Canada in 2001, so they had big plans. In fact, FBI profiler Candace DeLong said, for a teenage killing, this one had much more planning than any I've ever seen. These girls are dangerous, and that was on the show Deadly Women. author Bob Mitchell says they plan the murder like a class project right down to having their friends help them plan it for months and that part just knocks me flat like I remember being a teenager and I know that teenagers generally don't tell their parents much

I mean when I spent the night at my friend's house one Friday night and we snuck out to drive to the nearest good-sized city and watch a midnight movie about vampires with my boyfriend I didn't tell them about that hi mom if you're listening it was me and Lindsay John S drove us in that little Z-28 of his, and cops pulled him over on the way home because he drove like a bat out of hell, and we had fun. He was a gentleman. He didn't try anything.

So, anyway, I didn't feel that was a need to know for my parents at that time, and there are always things like that with teenagers. It's part of the right of passage of becoming an adult. I get that, but I would very much like to think that if one of my friends was planning to murder someone, I would have pushed the iron curtain of silence aside. and filled somebody in on that, some adult, if not my parents specifically. Like, it takes 10 minutes to make an anonymous phone call to the cops. If you don't want to, you know, be called a rat or whatever, fine. Make an anonymous call. Or warn this single mother that her daughters are planning to drown her in the bathtub.

Something, you know. It's just horrifying to me that all of these kids, and there were many of them, treated this like a fun activity. Like none of them had an ounce of empathy for this woman. It's just horrifying. So the girls knew their mom had a routine on Saturday afternoons. She would have a few glasses of vodka sodas before taking a bath. This Saturday, the girls gave their mom codeine pills, which, by the way, were provided

by the younger of the two's boyfriend. And they gave her the codeine pills along with her drinks. And as they waited for the drugs to take hold, they hopped on an instant message chat with their friends and well-wishers, who all helpfully cheered them on. That's so nice. The older sister said, I feel like I'm going on a vacation. This girl was about to murder her mom. And she got giddy like you do before you go on a trip to like Disneyland.

Fucking yikes. Yeah. One kid said, still planning that one out. And the younger sister said, yep, drowning. Tub. Their friend said, that's like one of the worst ways, though. Oh, we got an expert. here. Well, where were you when they were coming up with this plant? Jason. Whatever your name was,

I don't know his name. I just know it was one of their friends. Jason is as good as name as any. Yeah, I think he sounds like a Jason. The younger sister replied, fell, hit head, drown, sleeping pills. She won't be able to move. And then the older sister chimed in, this probably seems weird, but it's as if I'm going to leave on a vacation soon. And then, a different friend typed, Well, good luck. Wear gloves. Well, good luck. Wear gloves.

Jesus Murphy. So profiler Candice DeLong has an interesting insight about this. I mean, it seems like the rock stupidest thing you could possibly do if you were planning a murder to go on instant message and tell a bunch of people about it.

And it is, obviously. But Candice's take on it is, and I quote, her need to stay connected was stronger than her need to stay silent. And I think that makes a lot of sense, especially given their ages. Right. So shortly after they logged off that chat, the girls prepared their mother's bath.

And then they helped an incredibly impaired Linda down the hall, into the bathroom, and into the tub. And they offered to wash her back, so she'd turn over. And then the older sister put on a pair of latex gloves and held her mother's head underwater for four minutes as she struggled to stay alive. And because of all the research they'd done, the older sister knew how long it took to drown someone, between two and six minutes, according to the internet. So Bob Mitchell says she decided to split the difference, and timed it for four. And she later told her friends, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Isn't that nice for her? Once their mom was dead, the sisters met up with their friends, you know, to fill them in on all the juicy details and to establish an alibi.

After a night of funzies with their bestest buds, they went home to find the body and call the police. Now, initially, cops bought their story. Who would think that two teenagers could pull off something so cunning and cold? Now, their friends, bless their hearts, bit their tongues. Not one of these little shit bags called the cops. But fortunately, the older sister just couldn't shut the fuck up. So every time she got drunk, she'd tell random people about the murder. Bob Mitchell said,

I think she wanted people to know that she had outsmarted the adults. She had outsmarted the police. She had outsmarted a corner. Yeah, congrats about that. Later on, you can outsmart the other girls on your cell block. When it's time to play who's got the shiv. So a year later, one such friend went to the police with the information. The police wired up his car and sent him to go get her to confess, and she delivered like dominoes.

She told him, it was either her or me, and I'm younger. I see myself as having more potential. Yeah, you're doing great. So both girls were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, but because of their ages, they got a youth sentence, which in Canada means a grand total of 10 years. and if that makes you sick to your stomach you better brace yourself because they were paroled after four both girls went to college

the younger is now a lawyer ain't that a kick in the kidney makes me want to puke and I do believe that you can rehabilitate children I do but this shit was cold and calculated and it was not a typical parasite

these kids needed to do more than 10 years in prison in my opinion, and certainly more than four. So, the younger girl's boyfriend was also charged with aiding in the planning of the crime, because he was the one that provided those codeine pills, thank you very much. He got 18 months, 12 of which had to be served behind bars. But he successfully appealed the sentence and was granted a new trial, but we couldn't find any follow-ups on that for some reason.

He's probably out there pursuing a rewarding career as a frickin elementary school teacher now or some shit, so that's great. And there's a movie based on this case. It's called Perfect Sisters, stars Abigail Breslin and Mira Sorvino, and it very much portrays the girls as sympathetic victims, which is really interesting to me, and which just irritated the shit out of Bob Mitchell on whose book, the director based a lot of the movie. Mitchell's take on these kids is that, quote, deep down inside, these were narcissistic, greedy little murderers. And I'm going to have to go ahead and agree with him there. Their mom may have been an alcoholic, and that's absolutely a hard thing for girls to go through. I get that.

But this murder was not a crime of passion. It didn't happen after a bad night or a big argument. This was carefully premeditated, coldly executed, and their motive was by their own admission, money. Not we were abused, not our mom was an alcoholic, money. We wanted to start a weed farm. We wanted to go to Europe. So as we said earlier, their identities are protected by Canadian law, so all we can hope is that these girls have gotten murder out of their system. And they got some good counseling, you know, while they were in. And I really

feel sorry for their little brother. I can only imagine what he went through and, you know, what happened to him after his only parent was killed. I don't know. But, yeah. It kills me when these types of murders are portrayed in movies. And it's exactly, like you said, it's a sympathetic view. As poor little puppies. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, that's completely not the case. And are there cases like that, absolutely. Oh, sure. Yeah. I would say probably most parasite cases are like that, where the kids have been terribly abused and they strike back. But this is not that case. But you picked the worst case, Director of Perfect Sisters. I know, exactly. And, you know, I think it's interesting because at least these three cases that we're talking about now are so

similar. The motives are similar. The aftermath is similar. It's just, it's creepy. Grie, greed, greed, fantasy fantasy fantasy narcissism narcissism you know and and in every case these were kids who had great potential smart very much loved parents who were willing to sacrifice for them and instead they do this and I will leave you with this because it's going to punch you right in the nards okay when I was researching these cases I found a lot of pictures of the parents like holding their kids as babies and I remember looking at a picture of Joan Porco holding little baby Chris and thinking she's holding her murderer. Is that not just a gut punch to think that?

That when you see those pictures of these parents holding their children, they're holding their killer. Yeah. Do you get chills? I did. Yep. So those were wild ones, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week.

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