True Crime Campfire - Episode 21: Bad Romance Part 1

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

Love is grand, or so they say. When it works out, it can be one of the greatest things in the human experience. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it doesn't work out. Sometimes it fails to work out in truly spectacular fashion. Join Katie and Whitney for three true stories of love gone horribly, horribly wrong. Case 1, "The Doctor," involves a level of deviousness we rarely see in would-be killers. This is a scary story of near-fatal attraction--and perhaps a bit of a cautionary tale about infidelity. Case 2, "The Con Man," is a nightmarish story of large-scale manipulation and personal betrayal on a truly breathtaking scale. Case 3, "The Schemer," is a story about obsession in its purest and most dangerous form. We hope you enjoy this first "grab-bag" episode! Sources:Books: Obsession by M. William Phelpshttps://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-doctor-ana-maria-gonzalez-angulo-gets-10-years-poisoning-n214221Oxygen's "Snapped," episode "Ana-Maria Gonzales-Angulo"https://truecrimedaily.com/2017/12/20/gay-porn-model-convicted-of-murder-and-conspiracy-with-pregnant-girlfriend-in-killing-of-wealthy-businessman/https://www.courthousenews.com/personal-lives-display-love-gone-bad-murder-trial/CNBC's "Deadly Rich," episode "The Boy Toy Killer"Oxygen's "Snapped," episode "Sheila Davalloo"Follow us, campers!Patreon: 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. Love is grand, or so they say. Most of us spend a great deal of time and energy chasing it. And when it works out, it's one of the greatest things in the human experience. But sadly, it often doesn't work out. Sometimes it fails to work out in truly spectacular fashion. Sometimes you jump into a promising new relationship with both feet, only to end up running for your life. This is Bad Romance, Three Cases of Love Gone Wrong. Case 1. The Doctor

It's January 27, 2013, Houston, Texas. It was around midnight when the staff of the emergency room at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the most renowned hospitals in the world, looked up to see a man stumbling through the door. They were startled to realize that the man, who was in obvious distress, was someone they knew. It was their colleague, brilliant cancer researcher Dr. George Blumenstein. 48-year-old Dr. Blumenstein was being supported on each arm by two of the most important women in his life, his longtime girlfriend, Dr. Yvette, Tony, and his research partner, Dr. Anna Maria Gonzalez, and Gullo. And I'm really proud of myself that I said that without stumbling over it, because I was pretty sure.

I wanted to applaud. Yeah, that was amazing. Let's all just take a moment. Golf clap. So Blumenstein was acting drunk, slurring his words and not making a lot of sense. his girlfriend said he'd fallen ill suddenly earlier that day. He had called her from work that morning to tell her he wasn't feeling right, and she'd advised him to go to the emergency room.

And he said he would, but he hadn't, and his condition had worsened throughout the day. Dr. Gonzalez Angulo told the ER staff that she'd been working with him all day, and all he'd had was coffee. She'd been the one to finally convince him to go to the emergency room. She said, he's been totally unreasonable. And then she said that that was. wasn't like him at all, which they knew because they were colleagues with him.

So it was weird. Anna Maria and Evette had finally, finally talked him into going to the hospital, but even once they got him there, it took some convincing to get him to walk through the door, which again was totally out of character. Finally, though, he relented, and doctors began running tests. They did an MRI, a spinal tab, all kinds of blood work, it wasn't a stroke, it wasn't a heart attack, his blood work was clean, so it was a mystery, but he just kept getting worse and worse. His kidneys were failing. He was delirious, just absolutely miserable.

They all knew that he was running out of time, but they didn't know what the hell was going on. By sunrise on January 28, seven hours since George Blumenstein had stumbled through the doors of the ER, George was in bad shape. Evette and Anna Maria were devastated, watching the man that they cared so much about slipping away. His kidneys failing, his organs shutting down one by one, it was really starting to look bleak. and they all knew it. And unless they could figure out what was going on, George was not going to make it. But he was in good hands with some of the best doctors in the world on the case. And on January 31st, after four days in the ICU, a kidney specialist noticed cloudiness in one of George's urine samples. He put it under a microscope and was completely stunned by the results.

There were crystals in there. Now, true crime fans, I know some of you guys are perking up your ears right now because crystals in the urine are a tell-tale sign. A tell-tale sign of ethylene glycol toxicity. So, do we know what ethylene glycol is, campers? Katie, I know you know. It's antifreeze. It's anti-freeze, exactly. Dr. George Blumenstein had been poisoned.

Was it an accident? Or was it an attempted murder? So, let's put a pin in that for a moment and get some background on our keep. players. Dr. Anna Maria Gonzalez Angulo grew up in Colombia. Her family was wealthy and prominent and Anna Maria had led a life of privilege. Her uncle was governor of one of the provinces there and when Anna was a teenager, she lost a loved one to breast cancer and it really changed her total course in life. She had been really, really close to this person and she decided to become a doctor and fight the type of cancer who took her loved one from her. And it's interesting. I happen to be

acquainted with a lot of nurses. And I have heard that story so many times that the reason why they got into it, particularly from oncology nurses, that the reason they got into it is because someone they loved had suffered from cancer, died from cancer. So I think this is actually a pretty common thing and admirable, I think. I think that's the type of direct action the world needs more of. Absolutely. And man, was she good at it. She was top of her class in med school, absolutely brilliant, scary smart. One friend said that she was probably the smartest person in any room she was in. And after she finished med school in Columbia, she moved to the U.S. to get her Ph.D. in Houston, Texas, and she eventually became an American citizen. In 2003, she joined the

staff at MD Anderson, which, as I said earlier, is a hospital world-renowned for its cancer research. Now, even among all these brilliant doctors, Anna Maria stood out. She was totally beloved by her patients, not at all the sort of stereotypical, chilly doctor researcher with an awful bedside manner. Anna really cared, and her patients became completely devoted to her, just convinced that she was the one who could save them, and often she was. And she was convinced of that too, and she devoted herself to her patients and her research. She was obsessive about it, passionate about it. It was the driving force in her life, and it didn't leave a lot of room for a dating or social life. But that wasn't her priority. She was married to her work, and her relationships were with her

colleagues. Now, we've probably all known people like this. Some of us might be people like this. She was just one of those incredibly driven people. Dr. George Blumen Shine was a specialist in head and neck cancers, and like Anna, he was at the top of his field. They met in 2008 when she was 37 and he was 43. They were both interested in drug development, and so they started working together on the interplay between breast cancer and head and neck cancers, trying to develop treatments that would work for both. Yeah. They both had impeccable reputations, and there were a lot of hopes writing on them both. People felt sure that they would make real breakthroughs together, and they worked their asses off toward that. They wrote papers together, they did study after study, and then they started

traveling all over the world together to attend conferences. So inevitably, probably spending this much time together, they started to get close. Sure. Anna was also getting pretty chummy with George's longtime girlfriend, Dr. Yvette Toney. Now, Yvette was a gorgeous, brilliant woman. She was an epidemiologist. She'd put herself through school and was every bit as brilliant and driven as her boyfriend. She was working at the pharmaceutical company Glaxo Smith-Kline at the time. She and George had been dating for 14 years and Yvette wanted very much to get married, but George was a little bit of a commitment fob

and he was holding out on the marriage thing, even though they'd been together for 14 years. And hey, like, I'm not saying you've got to get married just because you've been together a long time, but it was clearly something that she wanted very much and he was holding back. But they had taken a pretty big step recently, they had started trying to get pregnant. Possibly because of her age, she was in her 40s, Yvette hadn't had any luck conceiving. So in 2012, she and George started working with fertility specialists to try in vitro fertilization, which is a very difficult, expensive process,

and takes a lot out of you emotionally, too, from what I hear, but they seemed committed to it. And of course, George had confided all this in his friend and research partner, Anna, and she'd been very supportive. Nice, right? Seems like a nice little trio of friends and colleagues. Yeah. That's going to work out great. So when our story begins in 2013, Anna was in the process of making a major breakthrough in her research, with George's help, of course. So back to January 30th, 2013, MD Anderson Medical Center ICU. They've just discovered that George has been the victim of ethylene glycol slash antifreeze poisoning. So first things first, they put George on dialysis, in a desperate attempt to clean out his kidneys.

And then they called the cops, obviously. They tried to question George, but he was in excruciating pain, number one, and he couldn't talk to them for more than a few minutes, and he kept going in and out of consciousness. So they moved on to the first logical suspect and the person who knew George the best and might have some inkling of what the hell was going on,

that being, of course, his girlfriend, Dr. Yvette Tony. And Yvette was a mess. but she sat down with detectives very eagerly very willing to cooperate and help she told him that the night before he got sick George had gotten back into town after a medical conference he'd picked up some dinner and they'd eaten and had a glass of wine together and when they went to bed he seemed fine and also when they woke up the next morning he seemed fine

he'd gotten up he'd gone to the office on Sunday morning to catch up on some work and he called her that afternoon to tell her he was feeling strange now she knew that he was not the type of person to complain he didn't usually he wasn't the type like I am as my poor husband will tell you like my like left eyelid hurts like a little bit for some reason and also it's been twitching and I don't know my head kind of hurts like I'm just like a running commentary but not George I don't know I just feel he needs to know yeah you got to keep him abreast of the situation if I'm going to be grumpy because my tummy hurts he needs to know why right so anyway um george was not that type because i guess you know he doctors are like this though

yeah no that's probably true yeah yeah multiple studies where they're like we it's it might be arrogance or it might just be that we don't feel like we can stop well either way we don't go to the doctor i think doctors and nurses health care providers in general make terrible patients generally it's almost a cliche you know this is just i don't know it they know it too well and they right tend to boss the other health care personnel around and want to self-diagnose and everything. So anyway, she knew he wasn't the type to complain. So she said, George, go to the ER. And he promised her he would.

And if it knew, you know, he was surrounded by colleagues who were all distinguished doctors. So she felt like, you know, he'll be fine. He's going to get himself checked out. It didn't seem serious. He just said he felt weird. When she didn't hear anything from him, though, she got worried. And when she hadn't heard back from him by that evening,

she started trying to track him down. And she couldn't find him. until a little before 10 when it finally occurred to her to call Anna. Anna said George was at her house. He hadn't been to the ER. And so Yvette rushed over to Anna's, a little bit irritated at George's stubbornness. And by the time she got to Anna's house, George was gone. Anna said he'd wrestled his keys away from her and driven off, saying he was going to the hospital himself.

Wow. Again, very out of character to act that way. So Anna and Yvette had followed in a panic. and found him in the parking lot of the medical center, acting drunk and belligerent and refusing to go in, like a toddler. So, Yvette had managed to coax him into sitting down on a bench outside the ER, and when he continued acting belligerent, she started recording him on her phone so that she could show not only the doctors and nurses, but also him later on, how ridiculous and out of character he was acting.

And you can actually watch part of this video. It's very, very clear from it that this guy, is not right. We'll try and find it and post it on social media. He's slurring his words. He's not making a lot of sense. So it's a very strange behavior. And finally, they'd managed to get him in the door of the hospital and into medical care. So police had a vet's statement, and now they wanted to talk to Anna to corroborate her story about the hours leading up to Georgia's hospitalization. And Anna said that she'd be happy to talk to them as soon as she was able. She was a busy researcher after all. So, yeah.

Can't talk right now busy, which to me is rather odd. If one of my closest friends and colleagues were in the hospital and, like, maybe going to die, I think I'd make time. I might. Yeah. Honest said she'd get back to him as soon as she could. So police moved on to Georgia's other co-workers was ethylene glycol something that they used in the lab? Could he have ingested it by accident? and they said that they did use antifreeze in the lab for various things,

but they thought it was really unlikely that George would be careless enough to ingest some by accident, because, you know, he knows it's poisonous, obviously. Right. Police asked them if they thought there were any jealous co-workers lurking in the shadows. Were these people maybe resentful of his success and the claim was somebody, like, out to get him? But everyone they talked to said, no way. George was well respected, well liked. His professional reputation was impeccable.

His personal life, however, George's colleagues said there were rumors that George didn't know where to draw the boundaries between his personal and professional lives. Rettro. Yeah. So everyone knew George and Anna spent a lot of time together. They traveled together for conferences. They were basically attached to the hip. And there had come a point where it became obvious that their professional relationship

had evolved? That's a nice way of putting it. I think, in fact, they were pretty damn unprofessional, and it was an open secret that they were having an affair. George openly gushed about Anna, called her his little princess. And this was weird for George until Anna, he'd always been very private about his personal life. Anna was touchy-feely with him, getting handsy with him in the office. Oh my God. Geez, Louise, people, get a hold of yourselves. You are distinguished physicians and researchers. This is gross to me,

but also interesting. It's like, do you think that this is part of the thrill when people have affairs? I mean, and I realize that many people who have affairs are very discreet about it, but a lot of times you hear about people not being so discreet. And I wonder, for those people, like, do they want people to know? Do they like the risk of, getting caught? Is that part of the zing of it for them? Do you think? I don't know. I think that's probably a big part of it. And because they're like including people into their dirty little secret. Yeah. And keep in mind that like I think nine times out of ten, no one's going to say anything to them. So they think they're getting away with it. Yeah, but somebody might say something to your spouse or your girlfriend or boyfriend or whoever. I think they just delude themselves into being like, we're doing it in front of them and they don't know. Yeah, definitely. It's gross. Gross. little princess. Bluh. So nobody had absolute proof, but everyone knew what was happening. Anna denied it when people asked her about it, and people felt bad for Yvette, who worked at M.D.

Anderson years earlier and who was really well liked. This had all been going on while George and Yvette were in the process of taking their relationship to the next level by trying to get pregnant. George had even started talking about the possibility of marriage. The notorious commitment fob seemed to be rethinking his position now that there might be a baby on the way. But at the same time, he was still having an affair with Anna. So had Yvette found out about the affair and taken revenge? Police wondered, especially since Yvette sometimes referred to herself as George's common-law wife, George was a millionaire.

Would she benefit financially if he died? But then again, Yvette had been the one who kept trying to get George to go to the ER, all that first day. If she hadn't, he probably would be dead. Remorse? Or innocence? Now, police couldn't be sure, and they put Yvette through the ringer for a while. She took and passed a polygraph, handed over the bottle of wine she and George had shared together the night before he got sick, submitted to hours of questioning. It turned out, Dr. Blumenstein didn't even have a will, so Yvette didn't stand to benefit financially from his death. Police didn't get the feeling that this woman was a killer.

She was eager to cooperate. So they knew they needed to look elsewhere, and they wanted to start by interviewing the other woman in George's life. And Anna finally agreed to sit down with the police. She acknowledged the affair, and she dropped a bit of a bombshell. She said she had known for some time that there was someone who knew about her in George's relationship and resented it. Ooh, twist. I know, right?

Out of nowhere. She and George had received an anonymous letter at work, she said. It said that the letter writer knew about their relationship, that it was inappropriate, and that if they didn't knock it off, the writer was going to out them to everyone at the medical center. Yikes. Yikes, indeed. I can't even imagine getting a letter like that. Like, if you were doing something that you know is not cool and that you know is kind of, you know,

unprofessional. Right. And then you get a letter like that. And you've got to be wondering, who the hell is it? You got to be looking at all your coworkers thinking, like, which one of you is? it? Oh, God. Is it a vet? Is she playing mind games? Like, ugh. Terrible. I mean, obviously, you're bringing it on yourself, but still, dreadful. Yeah, like, I'd immediately jump, jump 10 feet away from that person that I was having an affair with. No kidding.

So, she and George were understandably shaken by the letter at first, but they talked about it and they figured it was a colleague, someone who was jealous of their research. They decided to ignore it. But whoever threatened them hadn't left it at that. Anna said she'd received a number of threatening phone calls at her office. The person had said, stay away from Dr. Bloom and Shine. Yikes. Now, she stayed the course. She figured the person was just trying to rattle her.

She ignored the calls. She also said that someone had apparently been calling Glaxo Smith-Kline, Yvette's employer, to allege conflict of interest on a study George was running as the principal investigator because the study was sponsored by GSK. Now, nothing came of the calls, but it seemed someone was definitely gunning for them. You know, it's like apparently the field of cancer research is just a hotbed of intrigue. Yeah, super cutthroat. It's like a soap opera or something.

I actually have a friend that works in cancer research. Oh, yeah? And it's exactly like a soap opera. No way. Okay. Gray's... We got a side episode. We got to do a side episode on the intrigue in the cancer research field.

I'll see if I can get her to guest on. But, yeah. See, this is why we don't have a cure yet, people. Keep it in your pants and go do your damn work. There are people suffering. Yeah, Gray's Anatomy is a documentary. So, anyway. And then, Anna told police, it ramped up.

One evening, as Anna was going home to her townhouse, two people, a man and a woman, had jumped her and beaten her up. Whoa, okay, a man and a woman. Yeah. That's bananas. So they hadn't stolen anything. She called George and he'd taken her to the police station to report the assault. Now, there were pictures of her bruised belly, wrist, and face. Damn.

Yeah. So the doctors at MD Anderson caught the poisoning just in. in time. The dialysis worked, and George miraculously started to get better. Still, it took a while for police to get to question him. He went in and out of consciousness for days. Finally, George woke up enough to be interviewed. He admitted the affair with Anna right away. George said their relationship had started out professional, but Anna had come on strong. Hi, I'm Darren Marler, host of the Weird Darkness podcast. I want to talk about the most important tool in my podcast belt.

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And then one night in fall of 2011, he and Anna went to a conference in Sweden. And the sexual tension had finally taken them over. So I love this, don't you? I love how he blames it all on Anna here. Like, I didn't want to cheat on a vet, obviously. But, you know, she came on so strong. She was always flirting. was she was all over me guys

okay that it really I mean if a woman expresses a sexual interest in you it's against the law not to respond right you have to capitulate even if you're even if you have a long term you know commitment to another person

come on dude really but I do imagine you know for some reason I'm picturing them like standing on a hotel balcony with like snow falling oh yeah in you know Sweden in a beautiful scenery and like a mug of like you know like Irish whiskey or you know hot chocolate with with whiskey and something with whiskey oh oh yeah butter like butter nut or

butterscotch butter scotch butterscotch snops yeah and then you know the atmosphere just kicked in and it was just too much and it was like a lifetime movie and they had to make it happen yeah boundaries are for chumps I guess and again this is a collie for God's sake and they're supposed to be curing cancer. Let's just all keep reminding ourselves of what they were supposed to be doing, which is curing cancer. And instead, they're doing this shit. Y'all are about to find out what kind of boundaries George was willing to lay down. Oh, my God, I cannot with this. I forgot about this until just now. Oh, I can't wait. You guys are going to love this shit. So George, George was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I had an affair. But in my

My defense, she came on strong and our sexual relationship was limited. You see, Anna only ever gave him oral sex. Oh, my God. They'd never had what he called full sex. And this seems to be how he justified this big bag of bullshit. If he didn't have full-on sex, P&V sex with Anna, then somehow he wasn't really cheating. on event which just okay first of all is absurd and second of all reminds me of like some of the ridiculous rules that like kids set up at church camp you know like if it's if it doesn't go past

third base doesn't count yeah you know like yes it does okay there's like an episode of Seinfeld somewhere where where i think elaine asks jerry like when do you consider sex has taken place and he says well i think you know when when the nipple makes an appearance It's actually a pretty good guideline. That is a good guideline. And so poor Anna, poor poor Anna wanted to have full sex and often asked for it, but he wouldn't do it. He just couldn't do it to Yvette. George, what the hell, man.

This is a grown-ass man. Yeah. He's in his 40s. He's curing cancer. Yeah. Well, he's supposed to be. Instead of going and getting a little, you know, something in his office, just this is, this is some Bushley bullshit right here, is all I'm saying, like, do not, do not try and

sell that on anybody. And it is amazing to me that someone is brilliant and accomplished as Dr. Anna Gonzalez-Angulo would put up with that horseshit. Come on, man. I mean, at least, okay, first of all, be enough of an adult to admit that you're cheating. Yeah. And then for the love of God, be honest with Yvette. And then for the love of God, if you're going to have sex with a woman, have sex with her for God's sakes. Do something for her, too. I'm not saying it has to be full on, but you got to do something. What's she getting out of it? I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know. It's real fuck boy hours in Dr. Boney Shine's office. Right. So is. That is just some bullshit, George. Oh my God. So, police, I assume while rolling their eyes so hard, you could, you could, they're don't you know? Like, they probably all went back to the station. We're like, oh, you are not going to

believe this. Yeah, I don't know. So they asked George if he thought that Yvette could be responsible for the poisoning. And George was like, no, no, no. She hadn't known anything about the affair until he was laying, dying in the hospital. He'd confessed to everything. As well, he'd confessed to everything as he lay in the ICU undergoing dialysis. And by the way, by the way, that is a total fuckboy move. Choosing that moment to tell her so she couldn't slap the absolute fucking shit out of him. It so is. Like, come on. And that, you can't tell me that wasn't a strategic move right there. That's a power play. I'm lying here in terrible pain. And I know that you've just been afraid that I was going to die. So I think this is the right moment to tell you. I've been cheating

on you? Sort of. I mean, not really. With somebody that you trusted. Yeah, and considered a friend. Oh, George. While we've been trying to get pregnant. Yeah. So, George also told police that Yvette had, had in fact gotten pregnant at one point. George kept that news from Anna, knowing it would upset her. And sadly, Yvette had miscarried the baby.

They were both devastated, and Anna finally pressed George. to tell her why he and a vet were both so depressed. He told her about the pregnancy and the miscarriage, and it was after that that some bizarre stuff started happening. Not just the weird letters and phone

calls and the attack on Anna, but also Anna started getting a little single white female. She started buying the same stuff George had. Oh, weird. Yeah, like the same car,

same watch, same luggage, she showered him with love notes and compliments and wildly expensive gifts. And if George tried to not accept the gifts, she'd insist and physically press them into his hands. It was a lot. So let me just get this straight. So George is getting expensive gifts and oral sex and attention and love notes. And Anna's getting what exactly.

Exactly. Girl, Anna. Girl, what? She's getting called little princess in public. I don't. Oh, Lord. So, George said that in hindsight, he should have realized that Anna was behind the weird letter and the phone calls and the quote unquote, assault outside of her townhouse. He knew it now. He just hadn't wanted to believe it at the time. At the time, he'd supported Anna. She seemed to be under a lot of stress. She was losing weight, looking pale. He wanted to be there for her. I'm sure. sure he did. And he'd been at her house the morning he got sick. Before he went into the office, he'd gone over for a little morning something, something, something. One-sided, something, may I remind you? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He'd scooped Anna up and carried her up the stairs and they did their thing. Oh, how romantic. It's the one romantic thing in the story. And as he was getting dressed

again afterward, Anna had come in with a cup of dark Colombian coffee. He didn't like coffee much, so he refused it at first. But Anna was weirdly insistent. She seemed insulted that he didn't want to try this coffee from her home country, and he didn't want to be rude, so he downed it, and it was gross. Sickly sweet. Sically sweet. And of course, until recently, anti-freeze was very sweet. and you could put it in a soda or iced tea or Gatorade or something, and the person couldn't even tell it was there. Now they have to add a bitterant, and you know why they have to add a bitterant?

Because it's shit like this. This happened so many times that the industry finally caught a clue. And to me, that's bizarre because it's like it never occurred to y'all in the first place that making a deadly poison taste like Kool-Aid might not be the best idea in the world. Yeah, because it naturally tastes that way. And so there are still companies that make it without the better in it. No, I thought that was a requirement now. That sucks.

I think you have to order it out of the country. You did not hear this for me, campers. I'm not giving you advice on how to get. Oh, boy. I just know from another case that we were researching the stouties. Oh, God. The stouties. You guys wait for that episode.

That's going to be bananas. That's another season. And this is actually not the first case we've discussed that featured someone being insistent about feeding a victim something gross. So we saw this with Matt Baker and his milkshakes. We saw this with Dyes and Hosencoft and his gross bitter vegetables. Yep. We saw this with Clara Schwartz and her gross fucking pork chop that she had somebody

tried. And you know, so often people capitulate, you know why? Because just like George, they don't want to be rude. Yeah. And just please for the love of God, if you have a bad feeling about something, And I don't think George had a bad feeling. I think he just didn't want coffee. And it's fine to say, no, I don't want coffee, by the way.

No is a complete sentence. You know, you don't have to do something you don't want to do. But in particular, it's just a trope and true crime that so many people have gotten into dangerous and sometimes fatal situations because they didn't want to be rude. Right. And it's better to be rude than dead. Yeah. Don't fall back on social niceties when it comes to, like, food.

And you know something's wrong. Because in all three of those. cases that I just mentioned, somebody was like, this isn't right, but they kept doing it anyway. Yep, yep, yep, yep. So as soon as George woke up in the ICU, he said he knew what happened. It was Anna. She'd poisoned him with that damned coffee.

After he got out of the hospital, George started recording his phone calls with Anna as police continued their investigation. Her bitterness about Yvette and obsession with George was evident in all of them. She was obsessed with convincing George that Yvette was behind the poisoning, not her. She said, I have enough circumstantial evidence to bring charges. Would you believe me if I proved that to you? Which George was like, no. And Anna was like, well, I can.

Which, okay, bitch, why are you bringing charges and not the cops? But whatever. She insisted that Yvette was behind the threatening letters and phone calls. And police soon discovered through phone records that the call. Calls never even happened. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's some amateur hour right there making up fake phone calls that, you know, they can check phone records, just FYI.

Yeah. Just file that information away. So at this point, George was Dunzo. He was recovering slowly, but doctors told him he would never be at full functioning again. He will have health issues for the rest of his life. And he lost about 60% of his kidney function, which is horrifying. Jeez. Yeah.

So he's only got about 40% of his. kidney function left. So he's, I mean, this is a permanent damage, most likely for George. And Anna was eventually arrested, and police gathered some sweet circumstantial evidence. Anna used ethylene glycol in her lab. She had told a colleague that George was poisoned before the doctors at the hospital had discovered that, which how would she know if she wasn't responsible for it? And she'd given a colleague what pretty much amounted to a confession. A doctor testified that the bruises on Anna after the quote-unquote assault outside her townhouse seemed self-inflicted.

She fought the charge pretty hard, alleging that Yvette was the one with the motive, and her defense attorney paraded a bunch of her devoted patients onto the stand, all of whom were convinced that the compassionate doctor that they knew was not capable of this. Yet another example of somebody with a very convincing mask, or just with two really different sides to their personality. You know, when she's in her professional role and she's dealing with patience, she's terrific. But when she is obsessed with a man and she has a romantic rival and things are starting to get real, watch the hell out. Yeah.

Yeah. So she was convicted of aggravated assault. Now, why it wasn't attempted murder, I can't understand because it seems very clear that that's what was going on. And she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. she's eligible for parole, interestingly enough, this year. Huh. Yeah, great, right? She still maintains her innocence, which is amusing to me because it's so clear that she's guilty.

And, you know, basically, this is fatal attraction, except Anna went after the object of her affection and not the rival, which is actually kind of odd. But I think, you know, it was a situation where, you know, if I can't have you, nobody's going to have you. And, you know, there you go. That's it. So, holy shit. And interestingly enough, the Susan B. Komen Foundation, which is the Cancer Research Foundation, they still have a video somewhere on their website of Dr. Gonzalez-Angulo talking about her research, which I think is rather astonishing. It's like, you're not going to take that down after she's, you know, convicted of poisoning a guy. But anyway, it's still up, or at least it was when I was first researching this a few months ago.

If I can find it, I'll post it. Yeah. Yeah. So moving on to case two. The con man. This one, you guys. Buckle up. Oh, my God. Oh, you guys thought I was mad about the last one. Yeah, this is a rager. So we're in Baja in Mexico, a few miles outside of the resort town of Rosarito. It is May 2, 2015, 305 a.m. A couple of Mexican patrol officers come up on an abandoned range rover by the side of a desolate road. this is odd obviously so they stopped to check things out they didn't find anybody inside but there were some suspicious marks on the side of the vehicle what looked like a hand swipe in blood and i mean i have seen pictures of this and it is like goose bump inducing then they found more blood in front of and behind the car and then a trail leading down to a ravine nearby they followed the blood trail and discovered the absolutely brutalized body of a white male Now, there's some gnarly details coming, so just brace yourself. The man had been stabbed dozens of times, essentially gutted, and there were actually intestines like visible, bless his poor heart. His stomach had been slashed. His throat was cut so badly that he was almost decapitated.

He had defensive wounds on his hands and arms, so he had obviously fought with his attacker. The medical examiner would later find that the man had died for massive blood loss and that he'd been alive when he went over the. the ravine, which I think is probably the most horrifying part of the whole thing, that when somebody tipped him or pushed him over that ravine, he was still alive. So to detectives, this seemed personal. Overkill usually is, as we talked about in the Clara Schwartz episode. The detectives quickly identified the dead man from his passport, which was still inside the Range Rover.

He was 52-year-old Jake Marindino of Houston, Texas. So we got Houston again, twice. It's a bad romance going on. in Houston. Fix yourselves, Houston. So Jake, who went by Jay, was a larger than life personality. He was independently wealthy through the generosity of his elderly parents who were Texas oil millionaires, with whom he was very, very close. And he had a wide circle of friends who adored him and with whom he was very generous. He loved to share his good fortune. And he had friends from all walks of life, rich and poor, gay and straight, and he was always the life of the party.

and Jay was gay, he was out and proud about it. He'd had a few serious relationships over the years, but as of 2013, he was single and looking for love. And then, on a trip to San Diego, California in 2013, Jay met David Enrique Mesa. David was 25 years old, exactly half Jay's age, and he looked like what I would describe as a Latino Disney prince, like just a gorgeous human being,

beautiful dark skin megawatt smile with dimples and his face has kind of a boyish like sweet open look about it especially when he smiles like you just couldn't imagine that this guy would ever lie to you or have any kind of guile about him right you just looks like the sun coming out when he smiles

and he's just built like a Greek god so in other words pretty much anybody's dream guy who's into guys right the guys would tell people later on that they met by chance in a bar but that wasn't strictly speaking the case. They actually met through an ad on the internet. David was working as an escort, a sex worker,

and they met when Jay hired him for an hour for $100. They met at a hotel, and apparently really hit it off, and when Jay went back to Houston, they kept in touch. So they were sending emails back and forth and stuff. And within two weeks, they planned a trip for Mesa to visit Jay in Houston. Email exchange from the planning of the trip, shows how far their relationship had already progressed in two weeks

which again, I think we've said this before, that's a red flag okay? Moving really, really super fast, red flag. Jay asked what David would like to do in Houston and David responded that he like long walks on the beach, watching the sunset

together, anything Jay wanted to do he would be happy to do. The important thing was that they'd be together and he signed off love you, just like like something out of a romance novel, this beautiful young man. But again, this is two weeks in. And, you know, very, whatever you want to do, you decide. Hmm. So Jay paid for David Mesa's trip in full. And this would soon become a pattern in their relationship. Jay paid for everything.

His parents were very generous, as I said, and he knew that when they passed, he was due to inherit millions and millions of dollars. So he'd never had to work. And he really liked, you know, the finer things, living it up in style. Jay wore designer clothes. He lived in a gorgeous condo. He ate at the best restaurants, drank only the best booze. You know, must be nice, right? Right, yeah.

This was very different from David Mesa's life. David had never had a lot of money, and he'd never seen anything like the gifts that Jay soon started lavishing on him. So these were things like clothes, shoes, watches. He gave him money every month. and when David fell in love with a little red motorcycle Jay bought it for him on the spot without batting an eye which is astonishing I can't even imagine like seeing a car I like

and somebody just saying here it's yours damn you know and for Jay you know this was a way of showing love showing David how much he wanted to be with him and if it ever occurred to him to wonder whether this hot young demigod might be using him for his money Jay never confided that to any of his friends

friends. And right as his relationship with David Mesa was starting to get going, Jay's mom died. Yeah. And he was devastated. He was so close with his mom. As a result of his mom's death, Jay inherited about $3 million. And I don't think it will surprise anyone to hear that soon after that, Jay's relationship with David really started ramping into high gear. In an email to his cousin soon after New Year's in 2014, Jay was just gushing. He said, I'm in love. He couldn't stop talking about his new guy. He was so proud of David that he would even take his phone out at parties

and show off naked pictures of David to his friends who were highly amused about this and a little dubious. I mean, Jay was a great guy. They all loved him, but he was not, you know, a GQ cover model. And he was twice this guy's age. So, you know, their reaction was pretty much, okay, I think I see what's going on here, right? And don't, sorry. Don't show nudes to your friends, you losers, by the way.

Don't do that. Probably not very classy. Please don't do that. So at one such party, after getting an eye full of David's goodies from the pictures on Jay's phone, several of his gay male friends took another friend named Bobby, a woman, aside, and said, Bobby, you know he's a porn star, right? Yeah. And Bobby was skeptical. She was like, no way, are you sure? And the guy's just like, Bobby, we're sure.

Trust us. This guy is in porn movies. They all wondered if Jay was aware of this little sideline of David's, but apparently nobody ever asked him. I guess they weren't sure how to bring that up, but so we don't know, you know, whether Jay was aware of this, but it was true. David did do adult film work for a company called Sketchysex.com. Okay. Sketchy sex.com. They made gay porn, and their proprietor describes it as, quote, end of the road type stuff.

edgy which just yikes end of the road type stuff the type of stuff most adult film actors won't do so one can only imagine

David made $700 a scene and Jay's friends are pretty sure that Jay never knew about any of this and even more interesting neither did David Mesa's friends and family they thought he was an accountant they thought he worked in

finance. And as 2014 got underway, Jay was falling further and further and further for this new guy. And he was showering him in money and gifts. So in addition to the stuff I already mentioned, he bought David a $45,000 sports car and gave him $20 grand in cash. Just, wow. Jeez, oh, Pete. Yeah. And he gave David his own debit card, which was connected to Jay's bank account. And they went on shopping trips all the time. Jay paid for everything. I mean, just in incredible just lavishing gifts on this guy and jay wasn't naive i mean he knew that david was an escort that's how they met he knew that he was half his age he knew there was a pretty big gulf between the two of them in terms of looks and everything but i think he was just blinded by love or at least by

infatuation and obsession whatever you want to call it lust and despite his active social life jay was lonely i mean he had lost his parents he was heading into middle age without a partner to grow old with And basically what I'm saying is that he was vulnerable. He was ripe for the pick-in, which is sad. And I'm thinking about Sonny Blake from the Dyson-Koff case right now. You know, the woman who had breast cancer and was in her 70s and Dyson just homed right in on her and, you know, basically sucked her dry. So very vulnerable. And Jake had dreamed for years of retiring in Mexico.

He loved it there. He loved the geography and the people and the food. And as he and David started to get serious, in the fall of 2014, he began making plans to buy a condo in Rosarito, which is a resort town on Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. And he wanted to live in that condo with David. He wanted to move their relationship to the next level. He wanted to make it official. And when David said, yes, Jay was over the moon, told everybody, he and David went down to Baja to go condo shopping with a friend of Jay's and they ended up settling on a gorgeous ocean front building, the Palacio del Mar.

And I've seen pictures of this place. It's amazing, just stunning. Jay was going to have his decorator friend, Bobby trick out the place for him and David. I mean, it was going to be a show place, just beautiful. And Jay's friend spent several days with Jay and David down there, and she said it was a fun trip, and that David gave every indication of being completely in love with and completely committed to Jay. No red flags.

I mean, they were convinced. as a couple and she was happy for them you know i mean i can understand why i can understand if i were a friend of jays certainly being dubious but then if you spend a whole weekend down there with them and they're really seeming happy and there's nothing that sets off your spidey senses yeah i can i can see that being like all right well maybe god knows love is wild man you know So who knows? Maybe this is genuine. And in Mexico, when you buy a piece of property, you have to have a beneficiary.

So if you die, your property goes to this person. And Jay signed the paperwork to make David his beneficiary. So now, if Jay were to die, David would stand to inherit a spectacular oceanfront condo in an upscale resort town. Let's all just take a moment and digest what the... That's probably going to mean. So the condo needed some work before they could move in, some decorating, a little bit of remodeling. So it would be a little while before they could move in.

But the plan was made. Everybody was excited about it. So we're going to end it there for Part 1, Campers. And because we release both parts on the same day, if you want to go ahead and listen to Part 2, go for it. Or you can save it for later, whichever you want. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe. Until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire.

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