True Crime Campfire - Episode 38: Inferno: The Story of Dante Sutorius, Part 2

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

In Part 1, we introduced you to Della “Dante” Sutorius, a woman determined to land herself a rich husband and spread as much destruction as possible in the process. A few of Dante’s cute little pranks include setting a boyfriend on fire, sending the same boyfriend to prison for drugs and tax crimes, and burning down another dude’s house. When we left you we were right in the middle of giving you the run-down on some of this dear lady’s most interesting escapades, which as I’m sure you’ve already predicted, are going to culminate one day in murder. Join us now for part 2 of this wild ride of a story.Sources:Book: Della's Web by Aphrodite JonesOxygen's "Snapped," Episode "Dante Sutorius"The Canadian Global Television Network's "Pretty Dangerous," Episode "Della Dante Sutorius"https://murderpedia.org/female.S/s/sutorius-della.htmFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In part one, we introduced you to Della Dante Satorius, a woman determined to land herself a rich husband and spread as much destruction as possible in the process. A few of Dante's cute little pranks include setting a boyfriend on fire, sending the same boyfriend to prison for drugs and tax crimes, and burning down another dude's house. When we left you, we were right in the middle of giving you the rundown on some of this dear lady's most interesting escapades, which, as I'm sure you've already predicted, are going to culminate one day in murder. Join us now for Part 2 of Inferno, the story of Dante Satorius. Now, campers, we can't get into every man who felt Dante's wrath during these years, so we're just going to hit some highlights for you. We call them Dante's greatest hits.

One guy had his break lines cut and believed it was Dante who did it. No proof, so no arrest. This woman was bulletproof, like she got away. with so much stuff. And I guarantee you, if I did one thing, I would get immediately caught. I'm sure of it. Like, if I freaking jaywalked, I would go to jail. And yet people like Dante just, I'm just going to set you on fire and just walk. It's unbelievable. Yeah, I think, I hate it. I think it's because you and I and people like us feel guilt and remorse for actions. We have the pesky human emotions to contend with, right?

So, cut a dude's brake lines, most likely. She vandalized the home of one of her boyfriend's female friends, spray painted this poor woman's walls, ruined a rug that cost thousands of dollars, stole jewelry, clogged up her toilets and sinks just like she did with SIDS. She refused to hang out with one boyfriend's friends because they were two working class. Oh, holy shit. Wow. She's such a peach, isn't she? She's a darling, two working class. That's disgusting.

She managed to spend assloads of money on clothes and jewelry despite never holding down a job for too long. So clearly she was milking these guys for all she could get out of them. And every one of them, no matter how briefly she dated him, like if she dated a guy for two weeks, she would go insanely jealous. They all got a taste of that crazed jealousy of hers. It's just amazing. It's like all that rage, all that emotion, even with guys she'd only been out with like maybe eight or ten times. So, thinking of that, can you imagine what the husbands went through? Because we're about to get into it.

So buckle up. Husband number three was a guy named Grant. He was a successful contractor, and Dante landed him by claiming to be preggers, which was a habit of hers, as you'll see. Now, no baby resulted from this, but she got a ring on that finger. And once she had that Mrs. in front of her name, the sweet little girl slash sex getting act ended like a record scratch. It was like, done.

Dante spent shitloads of Grant's money, did zero around the house, criticized him constantly. And she called him a nerd in particular, which as a nerd, I find personally offensive. Yeah. What's wrong with being a nerd, Dante? Plus, she stopped having sex with him. And she spent most of her time shopping and watching horror movies on the VCR. And Grant said she liked the really gory ones, which I think is interesting, right?

Hmm. So as she had with Sid, she told Grant all about the alleged abuse that she said, suffered at her mother Olga's hands, told him Olga had once thrown boiling water on her and that she still had the scars on her hands. And she held her hands up and said, see, see the scars? And there, like, absolutely were no scars. Like, her hands were completely pristine. And that just fascinates me, like, the confidence with which people like this lie. I mean, didn't she know other people had, like, eyeballs, you know, and could see that she didn't have any scars? Like, you can see burn scars. They're pretty obvious.

He has eyes, Dante. She was just so certain that she'd be believed because her perspective was the only one that was real to her. And we should say, you know, we should believe victims unless we have clear reasons not to when we're talking about abuse. But in this case, we have ample reason not to. All six of Dante's siblings have said there was absolutely no abuse in that house whatsoever, that their parents were loving, indulgent even, maybe a little strict sometimes. I mean, they expected them to be home at a certain time and do their homework. but that they never hurt any of the kids, not once, not ever.

And that's a united front. The only person saying this is Dante. So to me, I think that's pretty clear, right? And one night, Grant fell asleep on the couch watching TV. And when he woke up, okay, guys, seriously, just get ready for this shit. Dante was standing over him, just staring down at him. So I want you to get a good mental picture campers. You wake up, you're disoriented.

it's a dark room you look up and see a silhouette of a woman staring down at you in that like flickering blue light you know from the TV and then he heard a thud and without a word dante just turned around and walked out of the room and as grant started to get up he put his hand on the floor by the couch and he found a butcher knife laying there so this woman had been standing over him with a knife just watching and then when she saw he woke up she just dropped it and walked out of the room like something out of freaking paranormal activity or something nope nope nope nope it's too scary and later on grant found like he started finding other knives just stashed away in odd spots around the house like she was squirling knives away like a crazed chipmunk preparing for winter except instead of nuts it's things she can stab you with and one night cool as a cucumber she just looked at him and said you know i could kill you or anybody else and it wouldn't bother me a bit i'd get away with it too i could play a judge like a fiddle You know, just pillow talk Like you do Well, we'll see how that works out for you, Dante, darling.

So her and Grant's fights got worse and worse And one night it escalated to the point where Grant got scared And called 911 And while the cops were on the way, Dante started hitting herself And like slamming herself up against the wall And when the police arrived, she told them Grant had beaten her up And sexually assaulted her And Grant got arrested

and when he made bail, she met him at the door of the jail with like a big grin on her face and she said, looks like G.B. learned himself a lesson. Wow. Wow. Wow. Like the gleefulness just looks like you learned yourself a little lesson. And soon after that, she left him and she emptied his bank account on her way out and she said something to him like, you know, I know I can't ruin your life permanently, but at least I can completely drain your finances before I leave you or something like that. And then that's exactly. what she did. Wow. So another one bites the dust. I mean, this chick is scary, seriously. Yeah. And I think she's actually one of the scariest people we've covered. Oh, 100%. Her along with Tracy

Richter, actually. Yes, those two for sure. Because this is the power she held over the men in her life. Yeah. She threatens him, tells him that she's capable of murder, and sets him up for a domestic violence charge. And she's the one that left him. He was so mentally and emotionally abused by her that he stayed. Even after all that, it's absolutely terrifying. Just like Sid, I mean, we were talking about how, you know, you can say, like, why in God's name would you stay in a relationship like this? But abuse dynamics are very complicated. Yes.

It's never as simple as that. So you really can't judge somebody for not getting out sooner or whatever. You can be a support system and you should. But don't ever convince yourself that you understand what it's like to be in a relationship like that unless you've been there. And I say that as a survivor of an abusive relationship, you know, and I stayed much longer than I should have. The dynamics are complicated. So, and yes, she did have a tremendous amount of power. And this was actually something that came up more than once where she would accuse a man of either beating or sexually assaulting her.

And then she would take it back and drop the charges and say, no, I, you know, it's fine. it was a misunderstanding, and then she would hold that over the guy, you know, so really scary. There was another kerfuffle with a guy named Jeff soon after this, and we don't have time to get into the whole thing, but I mention it because it's important for you to know that she got pregnant by him at one point, and he gave her money to get an abortion and a tubal ligation. So Dante got her tubes tied. Remember that. Okay, so husband number four was a handsome British expat named David Britton.

Dante met him at a bar He was here on a work visa Working for Cincinnati Bell in the IT department And he was successful He was making good money He had that panty-pealing English accent And they got hot and heavy fast And after only two months

Which again is a pattern In this case Dante was pressing hard for an engagement But David wasn't so sure You know he'd already gotten a little bit of a taste Of Dante's bizarre possessiveness He was a young guy he didn't know if he was ready to settle down yet so dante did what she always did in this situation

despite the fact that she had just had a tubal ligation she told david she was pregnant now this was a big deal for david because he did not want kids and he was firm about that and dante knew this and she knew that it would give her leverage so she told david if you marry me i'll get an abortion but if you don't i'm going to have the baby and i'm going to come after you for child support for 18 years. So this would have literally been a spite baby. She would have had this child out of spite to screw with this guy. And bless his heart, David didn't think to ask for proof of any of this. He just panicked and fell for it. And after their wedding, Dante pretended she'd had the abortion, which she didn't need in the first place because she had gotten a tubal ligation.

Wow. Yes. This bitch, man. So also after the wedding, David came across some paperwork of Dante's and discovered she'd lied about her age. David was 32 at the time, and Dante had told him she was 33. Now, she was actually 44, 12 years older than David. And he was furious. That's a pretty big lie. It really is. I mean, she obviously, she passed for 33.

She had that bang and bod and everything. But, like, you don't want somebody lying to you that much at the very beginning of your relationship, a 12-year age difference, you know? I mean, you need to know how old your partner is, right? Yeah, it just seems like a, it also seems like a needless lie because he was attracted to her regardless. Totally, exactly. That's why it's so kind of offensive that she would just lie to him to lie to him, apparently. So, I do need to tell you, campers, that David seems like a bit of a piece of work himself. Yeah.

He, he says he started dating Dante in the first place because she initially rejected him. He wanted to, and I quote, make her fall in love with me and then dump her to punish her. Oh, wow. Okay, Ted Bundy. Yikes. And when I say that, I mean that, like, the true crime nerds will know what I'm talking about, that Ted Bundy actually did this to a woman that had dumped him in college. and he like wooed her back and then dumped her out of revenge because he was a peach and once the marriage started going bad he admits that he fantasized I'm talking about

David Britton now about pushing Dante off a cliff so in a way these two are kind of perfect for each other and it's sad they didn't work out really it's a it's the great romantic tragedy of our time and here's the thing is like I think all of us would maybe fantasize about pushing Dante off a cliff. I know I have personally, just in the past 10 minutes. Right. But he didn't know all the stuff we know. No, absolutely not.

So, not at that point. I think that makes him a bad person, not us. Yeah, he's, David's a piece of work. So one thing that bugged David was that Dante really wasn't that bright. She never made any attempt to take advantage of the private school education her mom had tried to provide her with. And she was intellectually lazy. But she tried to cover up her lack of knowledge by acting like she was just pretending to be stupid. So no, no, no, I knew what that word meant. I was just kidding. That's actually a fairly good strategy. I wonder if that would work

for me when I make a fool of myself. I'm going to try that sometime. And to top that all off, she was horrifyingly elitist and racist. She wouldn't even watch a movie if it had poor people in it. That really limits your selection at Blockbusters. Right. Right. God, Dante. And she was a huge poser.

She learned just enough buzzwords and basic info about stuff. She considered classy, like wine, art, and music to pretend she knew about them. But it was all for show. and that became obvious if you really tried to engage her in conversation, which David found embarrassing. So, like, yeah, like, this wine really has notes of chocolate. Poor David. Poor David.

So there were the usual dramatic scenes, calls to 911, accusations of assault that Dante would quickly take back, threats to kill David if he cheated on her. One day, she called and threatened a female co-worker of his, and she made him account for every single minute of his time. Once, she came after him with a loaded 44 magnum. Dang. He managed to wrestle it away from her, and after that, he took all of the ammo out of the house. Good move, but I think I'd have taken the gun out of the house myself, but okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm assuming it was his gun, so maybe he didn't want to lose the cost of the gun. But like we said, there's things that cost more.

Mm-hmm. Probably a funeral would be one. Mm-hmm. She threatened to report David to the IRS. And she did this later with Daryl Satorius, too. And it legit scared both of them. So obviously they were both tax cheats, which is so funny. I don't know why. I know. It cracks me up. God. Being rich sounds so hard, Whitney. Oh, I know. Poor little poppers. I feel so bad for them. God. So finally, David decided he'd had enough. And he told her he was leaving.

Dante ran up the stairs. And a minute later, she came back with that 44 Magnum screaming, where's the fucking bullets? Oh, let me help you find them, sweetie. Right. And David's extremely ill-advised response was to laugh. I'm assuming it was a nervous laugh. Yeah, I would hope so. And at which point, Dante started just hitting him in the head with a gun. Jeez, come on. She's not.

Campers, these two were married for less than two years. Mm-hmm. Two years. Yeah. And it was shortly after she and David split up that she met Dr. Daryl Sotorius. And I think it's worth noting that he thought, Daryl, thought he was husband number three. But he was actually husband number five. So back to Dante and Daryl. As I said, they met through a dating service, got engaged after a whirlwind courtship, blah, blah, blah.

she presented herself to him as a Ph.D. in psychology. Doesn't it come up a lot with psychopaths that they have an interest in psychology? Yeah, and it makes sense if you think about it. Like, if your mind didn't work the way most people do, wouldn't you be curious about why? Mm-hmm, definitely. And I wonder how much of that is interest in trying to appear normal. Mm-hmm. Well, we know this was something that she made a study of.

I mean, she went to that modeling school to try and learn how to carry herself and, you know, land herself a rich husband. So, you know, this was something she'd done in other contexts. So it makes sense to me. But, I mean, we should point out she does not have a PhD in psychology at all. But it's interesting that that's the fake degree she would make up that she had. Yeah. She is literally that song Beauty School Dropout. So anyway, Dante sold Daryl a totally fake version of herself.

a brilliant, educated and sophisticated woman who came from a wealthy family. Not at all the sort of person who'd set a guy on fire, you know. Dante refused to sign the pre-up Daryl wanted, which probably should have been red flag number one, but he married her anyway. And once they were married, the bloom fell off the rose pretty quickly, as was typical for Dante's relationships. The first thing that went off the race,

was when Dante met Daryl's daughter, Deborah. Say that five times fast. I know I was impressed that you got that out without stumbling over it. It's like a little tongue twister. Deb was in her 20s and she was Daryl's favorite kid. They had a really close relationship. Deb was prepared to like Dante. She was more age appropriate for her dad and she seemed like she had her own means.

unlike gold digger Lisa. But then the first time Dead met Dante, Dante told her, I'm one of the most intelligent women in the world, you know. Who? Okay. Who says that? Who on this planet, Earth, says shit like that? I can't imagine.

Right out of the gate the first time she met her fiancé's daughter. And then she topped it off by saying, I can read anybody like a book. I can see right through you. So you don't have to pretend to be worldly to me. Oh. You're a sweet girl. And if you play your cards right, I might just be able to teach you a thing or two. Lord have mercy, the nerve.

God, you just met this girl. You'd think, yeah. You know, if you were actually the most intelligent woman in the world, Dante, you'd know not to do this yet. yep and when dante moved into darrell's house debb helped her move and she found a big box full of wigs and hair extensions and makeup and fake fingernails and eyelashes and she thought this woman is held together with glue now we're not judging anybody for liking wigs and fake eyelashes no we like makeup and stuff like that too but in dante's case it's interesting because it fits with the rest of her personality. I totally agree. The Barbizan school courses to teach her how to pretend to be posh. The books on how to marry a millionaire.

Practicing facial expressions in the mirror. Exactly. Dante was all surface. And multiple people said that she was much prettier on pictures than in real life. That when you met her face to face, she had no glow. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. interesting. And I suspect what they were reacting to was not so much her looks, but her flatness, like a lack of sincerity and empathy and any genuine interest in other people for their own sake.

They also said she used to put on a fake, posh accent that reminded them of Erica Kane, one of the rich bitches from the old soap opera, all my children. Oh, my God. And she was always dressed to the nines and always talking about having never worked a day in her life. Remember Tracy Richter's fake British accent? Again, man, the themes just keep popping up. And it wasn't true that she'd never worked a day in her life. She had held down jobs here and there. And people said they could tell that she hadn't really been born rich like she claimed to be. But I mean, this was her thing. I mean, she read books to learn how to do this stuff. I mean, like you said, I love makeup. I love playing with wigs and fake eyelashes and all. But

in Dante's case, finding a box of what essentially looks like stage makeup, that's interesting to me because it just underscores that really there was nothing in there. This woman just approached her entire life like an actor approaches a role which is really sad and also pathetic.

And Dante immediately injected herself into Daryl's relationships with his grown children. He never got to spend time alone with them or have a phone call where she wasn't listening on the line. She, Deborah and her dad had this tradition of painting together like

They each had an easel, and Deborah would come over, and she and Daryl would paint and chat. And that was like a special little thing to them, and Dante, like, wormed her way into that. So now it was Dante in the middle of their painting afternoons and stuff. And then Dante found out that Daryl's daughter, Deb, was engaged in that Daryl was planning to pay for the wedding. And after that, it was on. It was war. She stopped trying to be nice to Deborah. She started calling her, leaving nasty messages, stuff like, I hope you know you're not getting

a penny for your wedding. That's our money, et cetera, et cetera. And she and Deb got into some knock-down, drag-out fights over the phone. It just got uglier and uglier. And Dante just became obsessed with the idea that Debra was planning an exorbitant wedding on Daryl's dime, which really she wasn't. I mean, it was just a regular kind of upper middle class wedding. It's not like, you know, she was having it at the four seasons and getting, you know, Billy Joel to come and sing or something. I mean, it was just a wedding. And Dante's friend said, Look, Dante, Darrell gives you everything you could possibly want. You spend all day shopping, you don't have to work, you get to go to the spa whenever you want.

It's not like you're hurting for money. Why don't you just let this go? But Dante could, because Dante could never let things go. And then the sex stopped cold, just as it had with Grants. And Dante started getting nasty, criticizing Darrell all the time, following the same pattern that she had with her previous husbands. And one of the things that Darrell liked to do to relax, was cook, and he was really good at it.

But Dante refused to let him cook for her because she couldn't be sure the kitchen was clean. The kitchen, in their fabulous McMansion. Yeah, I'm sure it was filthy, Dante. And this is bananas. Instead of Daryl's home-cooked gourmet food, Dante insisted he bring home Boston Market Chicken and White Castle hamburgers.

Because, you know, White Castle is such a bastion of cleanliness. Like, what the hell? Like, I like fast food. get me wrong but like if you asked me to do a word association game and you said really gross fast food place i would immediately blurt out white castle uh exactly and white castle is only an acceptable option if you're hammered or if it's 2 a.m and you've lost control of your life exactly so it's certainly like if your issue was germs really not the greatest solution i do miss boston market though we don't have any around here anymore i used to love their like

mac and cheese and they had really good stuffing and those red potatoes just oh shut up so good so anyway one day dante paid a visit to darrell's office and she was bossing everybody around she started barking orders at his staff and yelling at the nurses and everybody was just baffled at first it's like why she was even there and then it became very clear that what she was doing was trying to weasel a look at his private records and finances so red flag big time and of course they took told Daryl about it. He was furious at her for bullying his staff and poking her nose in where it didn't belong, and they had a huge rip-roin argument about it that night. And it was during that argument that Dante told Daryl he'd better not cross her. She said, when men cross me, they

suffer. And she told him she'd once set a former boyfriend's house on fire. And then she told him she'd set one of her boyfriends on fire, presumably poor Sid. And then she told him about the time she pulled the 44 Magnum on her ex-husband. Now, this was the first Daryl was hearing of any of this. Remember, she'd presented herself to him as a sophisticated woman, a Ph.D., not an insane little chihuahua with a pension for chaos, right? And he was freaked out. But Dante didn't let their rapidly deteriorating marriage slow down her spending.

She spent money like her life depended on it. She filled their McMansion with expensive antiques and rugs. and this is the best part because it is the perfect metaphor for Dante herself. She spent $10,000 in 1990s money on a crystal chandelier that she bought, wait for it, from an out-of-business Victoria's Secret Store. God. Moses smelled roses. I just love it because it's so on-brand for her,

like the fake socialite who learned a few vocabulary words to pretend she could talk about culture and who claimed to love gourmet food but really just wanted White Castle and Boston Market, right? Oi. But she loved her Victoria's Secret Chandelier and she bragged to her sister Cheryl about it nonstop and she looked down on Cheryl for her like working class lifestyle

because, you know, working for a living. Ew. In Dante's world. Having like an honest job with which you pay your bills and support your family. Just ew, icky. So she looked down on Cheryl for that. She made sure Cheryl knew it, which is just gross.

And also, by this time, her daughter, Sean, had reached out and gotten back in contact with her for some ill-advised reason after years and years of estrangement. I mean, I'm being facetious. I understand why you would reach out to your mother. Yeah. It's just, you know, it didn't do poor Sean any favors, I suspect. And Sean was living with her new husband, and their house didn't have a furnace. So they were freezing their butts off, and Dante wouldn't buy her a new furnace. just like she wouldn't help her.

She just let her daughter freeze while she indulged herself in spa treatments and furs and jewelry and designer clothes. Real nice. And it shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that she was a nightmare to wait staff and service people, which I think is a very good litmus test for a shitty person. You know, if somebody is nice to you but shitty to waiters, shut it down. Shut it down. Because that is not a nice person. So that's right there as a bucket of red flags.

She'd show up 45 minutes late for her hair appointments. and still expect to be seen right away, you know, stuff like that. She acted just imperious to everybody. And she acted like that around her and Daryl's neighbors, too. So between her wild spending, her clumsy attempt to get a look at his finances at work, her constant criticism of Daryl, her bizarre jealousy, Dante's relationship with Daryl was getting more and more strained. They started sleeping in separate bedrooms.

They both started locking their doors. And Daryl was also having some problems on some other fronts. For one thing, he was worried about his practice. his referrals were falling off because younger doctors were coming in and sucking up a lot of his business so he wasn't making as much money anymore and of course dante was still spending money like the world was ending and she had to use it all up before the meteor hit and he also started getting maudlin about his ex-wife jan and about his ex-girlfriend lisa wondering if he'd made a mistake divorcing jan and marrying dante i mean you think maybe a little bit plus his heart but again we have to say campers please don't marry somebody you just met please please untold heartache could be avoided in many of these cases if people just would not marry people that they just met

so as she was in every relationship dante was viciously jealous of anybody else darrell wanted to spend time with or talk to even though she didn't seem to like him much but she would get so jealous anytime he would want to spend time with anybody else even his own kids or possibly even especially his kids since they were starting to figure out what a shit show she was, and Dante probably figured they'd try to talk their dad into leaving her. At one point, she and Daryl went to a Christmas party at her friend Beth's, and Daryl fell into an interesting conversation with Beth about their shared

interest and mystery novels. Now, Beth wasn't exactly Daryl's type. She was happily married for one thing, and she was kind of an Earth mother type. She didn't wear a lot of makeup or dress sexy. And Daryl tended to go for the stereotypically sexy ladies. But it didn't matter to Dante. When she saw Daryl and Beth talking, she immediately started acting like a giant toddler. And that's saying something because she was only like five foot nothing. Yeah, she's a tiny old thing. That's why we keep calling her a chihuahua.

And a wombat, just tiny rodent. So she was whining about how her back, her. and she was asking everybody to bring her pillows and ibuprofen and fawn all over her. And she shot daggers at Beth. For God's sake. It was bizarre behavior. That Christmas, Daryl gave Dante a beautiful diamond tennis bracelet, possibly as a peace offering in hopes that they might turn their still brand new marriage around.

And all Dante could talk about was that the carrot weight wasn't high enough for her taste. She bitched and moaned about it all Christmas Day. Who does this? What human being does this? Who gets a diamond bracelet and bitches about it? Like, anyway, I just can't. Any gift, really, at all. But a flippant diamond bracelet and you're bitching because it was 3.5 carrots and not 5 carrots or whatever.

She was super pissed about it. Poor Terrell. And it was right around this time, right after the tennis bracelet incident, that Dante started talking to everybody about how depressed and suicidal Daryl was. And he was depressed. I would argue that anyone would be living with a specimen like Dante. No shit, right? But he wasn't suicidal. No one who knew him believed that.

Dante and Daryl's fights started getting nastier and nastier after that disaster of a Christmas, too. Now, remember, it was just a few weeks earlier that Dante had told him she'd once set a guy on fire and told him not to cross her. Told him she'd once pulled a gun on a guy. Well, Daryl had just about managed to convince himself that she'd been exaggerating, just being dramatic. and then one night he found a gun in her room. They'd had a conversation once when they were dating about guns. Dante said she hated them. She was scared of them.

She'd never have a gun in the house and on and on and on. Now he found one in her room. And he was terrified. He was so unsettled, in fact, that he took it to the police, who, by the way, were assholes. So awful. You're not scared of a little woman, are you? They basically shamed him for being scared and sent him away.

Uh, charming. Yeah. In fact, no one took him seriously, including his friends. Oh, come on, you're six foot two. She's a tiny little thing. What's she going to do? Campers, don't do this if one of your guy friends is in a toxic relationship and tells you that they're worried for their safety.

Yes, I mean, this is dangerous and toxic and very, very not good because it just reinforces the pre-existing tendency that men have to avoid showing, quote, unquote, weakness even to their detriment. And a lot of men are in abusive relationships. A lot of men are physically abused in relationships, and they don't tell anybody because of this shit. Oh, you scared of a little woman? And also bringing up his height as opposed to her height, it doesn't matter if she's got a gun in her hand.

What the hell is wrong with people? I think if Daryl had had more support from the people around him, it's very possible this story would have had a different ending. And that just breaks my heart. Yeah. And his fears were basically written off as like, what's she going to do? Absolutely. Absolutely. It's absurd.

This bitch set somebody on fire. I know. I know. And I wonder, you know, how much of that he shared with the police at the time. Because surely, I mean, maybe I'm expecting too much of law enforcement, but you would think that if a guy tells you, you know, my wife straight up told me that she's tried to kill men before that she set a guy's house on fire, et cetera, that they wouldn't just give him that, oh, what are you scared of a little woman bullshit? But that's what they did. So I surely he must have told him. I think it's shameful.

Yeah, it's absolutely pathetic. And, I mean, look at cases like Eileen Warnos. She's not a big, hulking monster. She's a tiny woman with a gun. Didn't matter. Yeah. I got a little heated there. Now, privately, Darrell was becoming more and more afraid.

Dante was scaring him, staring at him, lurking around corners, staying in her locked bedroom all the time like a creepy little goblin. The tension in the house was palpable. don't cross me she told him one night i'll kill you y'all if somebody tells you that they're going to kill you believe them please absolutely darrell started digging into dante's past and eventually he tracked down her mom olga and her sister cheryl who were scared to talk to him at first but when he told them about the gun and the threats I guess their consciences got the better of them

and they told him all kinds of stuff Darrell found out that that sweet little baby voice Dante had lied about everything he wasn't husband number three he was husband number five all that scary shit she told him was true and worse that guy she sat on fire

she'd also turned him in for drugs and tax evasion. She was ruthless, they said. Her own family members were scared of her. Olga said, Daryl, you need to be careful. You need to take her seriously. Daryl started wearing a bulletproof vest to work. Just imagine being that scared of your own spouse

that you would feel like you had to be walking around in a bulletproof vest. And at one point around this time, Daryl's daughter, Debra, kind of poked the bear and got into another screaming match with Dante over the phone. And she said, I love this. You ain't shit, Dante. He got you from a fucking dating service, which is hilarious. And true. But also it infuriated Dante to the point where Daryl, this is so sad, he left this really plaintive, sad sounding message on Deb's answering machine, just begging her not to antagonize or even talk to Dante anymore. And he said, and this is chilling.

I may not live through this. I'm serious. So you can see where Daryl's head was, and they played that at her trial. I mean, he was well aware that there was a chance this woman might kill him. Yeah, and he spoke to a divorce attorney who listened to Daryl's story with increasing horror and then advised him to get out of the house immediately. And oh, my God, do I wish he'd taken that advice, campers? but he didn't. Daryl's money worries were weighing on his mind almost as heavily as his Dante was.

And he couldn't stand the thought of giving up that McMansion, which is understandable. That's a lot of money to take a bath on. And if you leave your marital residence during a divorce, it tends to look bad in divorce court. It looks like you abandoned your home. It's incredibly stupid and I think archaic. And yes. It should 100% not apply in a situation where you're worried for your physical safety. No kidding.

Stupid. You should be able to run for the hills and not have to worry about losing your home or a giant chunk of money. But there you go. And Daryl had been through one divorce already. Yeah, he just didn't want to have to do it again. He made sure his bedroom door was locked at night and he started wedging a chair up under the door handle, too. God, how could you ever get a good night's sleep?

I don't know. Nevertheless, it wasn't long after that conversation with the divorced attorney that Daryl didn't show up for work one morning. And we know the rest of the story. Yeah, unfortunately we do. So, as we said, Dante landed in the detective sites as the prime suspect early on, and the police investigation was actually pretty brief. And obviously we don't have time to go into it in any detail. But one thing that helped pin down Dante as the prime suspect so quickly was that her mom, Olga, filled the detectives in on Dante's checkered past, shall we say, as did Cheryl. And man, Dante was furious about that

for years afterward. There's a hilariously terrible show called Pretty Dangerous that has an episode about Dante. And it's available on Amazon Prime if you want to watch it. The show is campy as Hell phenomenal. It's so good. It's like a low-rent, deadly women, you know. It's so good. And she gives an interview in it where she tries to convince us that Olga murdered a woman in their neighborhood when Dante was a kid. And she's like, everybody knew she'd done it. Everybody. So by everybody, you mean you. Got it. Okay.

You mean you as in I just made this up right here sitting in front of this camera right now, which was the impression that I got watching it. So Dante's defense, of course, was that Daryl had committed suicide, but the gunshot was to the back of his head. Now, that's not unheard of, but it's very uncommon to shoot yourself in the back of the head. There was also a bullet hole in the floor, which is also really uncommon in suicides for there to be more than one shot fired. And the forensics were really what carried the day at trial. The blood pattern analysis combined with the position of Daryl's body and the location of the gun showed that Daryl had been asleep on the couch when he was shot in the back of the head.

The blood evidence showed that Daryl's body had been moved after death. After she shot him, Dante had taken Daryl's hand and shot the gun into the floor so that he would have gunshot residue on his hand. She thought she was being clever. But see, they could tell this because there was dried blood underneath

the gunshot residue on Daryl's hand. So, first of all, there wouldn't be any blood on his hand at all if he'd shot himself. but even if there somehow was the blood would be on top of the gunshot residue not underneath it so that was powerful evidence

as was the testimony from Dante's ex-husbands of course and unsurprisingly Dante was convicted of murdering Darrell at her sentencing the judge called her a lionfish beautiful on the outside deadly poison inside

and later in an interview she said at my trial the judge called me an angel fish that's our Dante always trying to make herself look better than she is. No, an angel fish, you crazy bitch, a lionfish. So she got a 24 and a half year sentence, but fortunately for men everywhere, she died in prison in 2010.

She would have been eligible for parole in 2023 if she hadn't. So few, right? Because we do not need this scary bitch walking around wreak and havoc. After her trial, Dante's sister Donna told a reporter, It's just weird to me. She had everything she ever wanted. The big house, the furs, the jag, vacations. All she had to do was love the man.

All she had to do was be human, and she couldn't even do that. And Donna, by the way, told Aphrodite Jones that she believes Dante has killed other men before Darrell. She doesn't have any proof, though. It's based on the fact that Dante stayed with her for a while in between relationships at one point, and Dante stole money from her and stuff. a whole big shit show and she said that at one point she was going through dante's glove box of her car i think she said she was looking for the stolen money and she found like driver's licenses of a couple of guys and like a pair of men's glasses and things like that and dante couldn't really

explain where she got them and then she said dante just straight up told her i killed these two guys but again she doesn't remember the names on the driver's licenses she didn't get dante on tape saying this there's no proof she did go to the police with it, but without knowing any names, it's kind of hard to look into it. So as far as I know, nothing has ever come of those allegations. But Donna believes it absolutely, according to Aphrodite Jones. And I wouldn't put it past her. No. Most definitely. The only thing I might put it past her is getting away with it. Right. Because she was bad at it. So bad at it. Yeah. So this was a wild one, right? Campers? Please do us a favor. And if you come across a bouquet of red flags like

Ms. Dante, run in the other direction. Okay? You know we'll have another one for you next week, but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. You can follow us on Twitter at T.C. Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire,

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