True Crime Campfire - Episode 39: Paranoia: The Abduction and Murder of Rick Post, Pt. 1

Episode Date: February 21, 2020

We all have paranoid moments sometimes. We catch our significant other looking at us funny and we wonder, “Uh oh, is he mad at me? What did I say?” Or we walk into the break room and a huddle of coworkers suddenly stops talking—and we think “Oh my God, they were talking about ME. I must be about to be fired!” We all do it, and more often than not we’re wrong. Usually, the consequence of that is nothing more serious than feeling like a doofus for a second. But paranoia was the most dangerous force on earth for the major players in the story we’re about to tell you. It began as the thinnest tendril of a whisper. But soon that tendril branched out, black and cold as a strangling vine, and a whole circle of people would fall victim to its lies. Sources:Investigation Discovery's "Murder in Paradise," Episode "Spies, Lies, and Alibis"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-aug-21-me-torture21-story.htmlhttps://www.devicewatch.org/reports/rife/pretrial_memo.shtmlhttps://www.casewatch.net/doj/bailey/trial_memo.pdf?_ga=2.48969062.1959969553.1582257756-2053706941.1582257756http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/4041dmca.htmlFollow 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. We all have paranoid moments sometimes. We catch our significant other looking at us funny and we wonder, uh-oh, is he mad at me? What did I say? Or we walk into the break room in a huddle of co-we. workers suddenly stops talking and we think, oh my God, they were talking about me. I must be about to be fired. We all do it, and more often than not, we're wrong. Usually, the consequence of that is nothing more serious than feeling like a doofus for a second. But paranoia was the most dangerous force on earth for the major players in the story we're about to tell you. It began as the thinnest tendril of a whisper. But soon, that tendril branched out, black and cold as a strangling vine, and a whole circle of people would fall victim to its lies. This is,

Paranoia, the abduction and murder of Rick Post. So, campers, we're in San Diego, California, August 22, 1999. It was early morning when a 16-year-old kid named Ian Post got a call from his dad, secretary. She said, Ian, have you talked to your dad? He didn't show up for work and we haven't been able to get a hold of him. Ian's dad was Rick Post, a private investigator who was not in the habit of just not showing up for work. At 16, Ian was Rick's youngest child and the only one who was still living at home. He spent most nights at his dad's place. He was working part-time at the private eye agency. His dad ran with a business partner, but he also stated his mom's a lot.

And I got the impression that this was why he wasn't already aware that his dad had gone missing. I think his mom had dropped him off the night before, and he'd expected his dad to come in after he'd already gone to bed. But now, he was getting this weird phone call, and there was no note from his dad, and it was unheard of for Rick to skip out on work and not tell Ian what he was doing. He was a reliable guy. So Ian went outside, found his dad's car in the driveway, and the keys were in the mailbox. Huh. So he went back inside, and he noticed his dad's bed hadn't been slept in. And now he was starting to get freaked out.

None of this was normal for Rick Post. So Ian called his mom. Mom, have you heard from Dad? He didn't show up for work. But his mom said, no, she hadn't heard from him either. And she probably would have, because Rick Post divorced from his ex-wife, Barbara, had been pretty amicable, as we'll get into in a little bit. And they were still a pretty close family all around.

So if Rick had had to suddenly go to the emergency room with appendicitis or something, like if something had come up, would have let her know. So she was immediately worried. Something didn't feel right in a big way. Scary, right? Yeah, this is a living nightmare. Yeah, and it's interesting because if this were me, no one would know. Because, you know, we say Rick Post is reliable. Well, I mean, you know, like, I'm not saying I would miss work and not call in. I wouldn't do that. But, like, it's completely plausible that, like, nobody would have heard for me for a while and I wouldn't have left anybody a note or anything so i'd just be in huge trouble but rick like you could set your

watch by him so who was rick post well first of all he was a private investigator so cool job right and he cut a dashing figure as if he had walked right out of a movie he was handsome in a manly rugged kind of way tan and gorgeous bright blue eyes and built and everything and he was super charismatic so it probably won't surprise anybody to hear that he was catnip for the lady However, he wasn't so great at being monogamous with them, which had led to quite a few breakups over the years and the aforementioned divorce from his ex-wife Barbara, although that was about something a little bit different.

We'll get into that in a second. Rick ran the private investigations firm in Telesource in San Diego with his best friend John Kruger, but it's important to note that he wasn't your average PI. He wasn't the kind who, like, slunk around taking pictures of cheating spouses. He was more like a secret agent. And I know you're raising an eyebrows, so a real one this time, Camper's. Isn't that exciting? He had actually done quite a bit of work for the FBI and the CIA. And I know we say no one works for the CIA, but Rick Post actually did. Okay. He's the one guy. Right. He's the one guy who actually did. Unlike a contractor-type basis, I think. It's not like he was a CIA agent or anything like that. And he was a nationally recognized expert. This is so cool in cases involving cults and the occult.

Now, I know y'all are perking up your ears at that. So basically, Rick Post was Fox Mulder from the X-Files. For example, he was involved in the Heaven's Gate mass suicide case in 1997. Now, if you're not familiar with Heaven's Gate, I'll give you just a thumbnail sketch. Basically, Heaven's Gate was a cult started by a guy named Marshall Applewhite and a woman named Bonnie Nettles, who I shit you not, claimed to be angels and called themselves Bow and Peep at one point. Oh, God. Bo and Peep.

Yeah. In the late 90s, they convinced themselves that their destiny was to evacuate the earth and be beamed up to a spacecraft that they believed was following in the wake of the Hale-Bop comet. And in order to do that, sadly, they felt they had to commit suicide. So 39 cult members took their own lives with poison in March of 1997, and it was really, really tragic. And I remember it vividly. It was all over the news. I was in college at the time.

And I remember watching the Hale-Bop comet go by, too. I was up on the roof of a building with my boyfriend at the time, and we watched it go by. It was really bright and sparkly, and then the next day, we heard about this mass suicide. So, I know, it was horrible. And the Heaven's Gate cult is a fascinating story. If you're not familiar with it, there's a whole podcast about it that was quite good, if I remember rightly. So you should check it out. Anyway, Rick Post was heavily involved in that case, and he also investigated like Satan worshipper groups, murderers, rapists, et cetera.

And his work was dangerous, as you can imagine. he was threatened a lot and on multiple occasions his kids were threatened too the pissed off subject of one of his investigations made a serious credible threat to kidnap and harm the kids and they had to put the whole school on lockdown they had to provide security for rick's family at home and this i imagine was scary as hell for rick's wife barbara and in fact that constant sense of danger was one of the major reasons for their breakup reportedly so of all the kids ian was probably the closest to with his dad, especially since Ian worked for him at the PI firm.

And now, getting more and more freaked out by the minute, Ian called his dad's best friend and business partner, John Krueger. I'd like to call him John Freddie Krueger for obvious reasons. So Kruger hadn't heard from Rick either, and he rushed over to help Ian search the house. And they noticed that Rick's luggage was still there, and so was his favorite suit and his favorite pair of shoes. And by the time they finished searching the house, Kruger was worried, too. So now everybody is freaked out.

And that's where it sat for four stressful days. And then John Kruger called Rick's ex-wife and kids all excited. And he said, get over here. Rick called. He left a message on the answering machine. Come on, come on, listen. So they all rushed over and gathered around the answering machine. And Kruger hit play on the message, which according to the machine had come in at midnight the night before.

And here was the message. Hey, guys, it's me. I'm out of town in Mexico. I'm out for business. don't want you to worry about me. I'll be home in a few days. Bye-bye. Okay. So the voice was Ricks. No question about that. But there was something about it that made the hairs on the back of Rick's son's neck stand up. His voice just sounded weird. Kind of wooden, monotone. Definitely wasn't his normal, charismatic way of speaking. And it also wasn't like him

not to give any specifics about where he was staying, what client he was seeing, what business it was he was there doing, right? Yeah, that's absolutely terrifying. I can't even imagine myself in their shoes knowing something's wrong and not knowing where your loved one is. Yeah, absolutely. And they could feel it in their bones that something was wrong. The boys had always been close with their dad, not just father and sons, but friends, too.

you know. They love to do stuff together. They loved Rick's special spaghetti, you know. They loved watching movies together and laughing till they cried. They knew this man. And they had a sick, certain feeling that he was in trouble and they had no idea what to do to get him out of it, which I can't imagine many worse feelings than that. Can you? I can't. So the boys decided to call Rick's current girlfriend, Kim Bailey. Kim was Rick's biggest fan and she was worried sick too, of course. and Kim was a force to be reckoned with so she was very much Rick Post's match and they thought she might be able to help

she was in addition to being attractive and confident she was a self-made business woman running a multi-million dollar company she'd actually met Rick when she hired him to investigate employee theft at her company and very quickly Rick had gone from employee to boyfriend Kim fell for him hard and fast and she was a lady who was used to getting what she wanted and like so many women before her she wanted Rick So Kim put on the full court press, love letters, expensive gifts, the whole shebang.

Now, when Ian and Orion called, Kim rushed over to meet him at a cafe near Rick's office, and she said she and Rick had been on a trip to Baja the week before. She'd gotten back five days ago, and she hadn't heard from him since, and no way would Rick go this long without calling her. Kim told them she and Rick had been on great terms when she left him in Mexico. The trip had been a surprise, she said, a gift for Rick. And she said it was uneventful, for the most part, but there was one potentially important detail. One afternoon, as they'd been eating in a restaurant in Baja, two men had approached Rick

and talked with him for a few minutes. Kim had been in the restroom for most of their conversation, so she didn't know what it was about, but when the men left, Rick had suddenly announced that he had to cut their trip short and to go to Mexico City on business. He was apologetic about it, she said, but he said it couldn't wait. So she'd been disappointed, obviously, but she understood. His work was unpredictable like that sometimes. Kim said she dropped Rick off at the airport, driven his car back to his house, and dropped the keys in the mailbox, and gone home. And she hadn't heard from him since. Okay, so it sounds like Rick either arranged some business down there without telling Kim, or these guys just happened to bump into him and decided to hire him for

something. Yeah. So it was a mystery. Rick had taken off suddenly in the middle of his vacation to go to Mexico City after a mysterious conversation with two guys in a restaurant. But for some reason, he hadn't shared his reasons for any of this with anyone close to him. Rick's kids didn't know what to make of it. They were scared, shitless. John Kruger reassured them as best he could. He said, look, your dad knows how to take care of himself. There's got to be a logical explanation for this. We'll hear from him soon. But it didn't sit right with the boys. We're with Rick's ex-wife, Barbara. And two days after hearing that answering machine message and talking with Kim Bailey, Rick's family filed a missing person's report with the San Diego police.

Now, all you true crime veterans are probably going to be annoyed but unsurprised at what I'm about to tell you, which is that the cops showed almost zero interest in Rick's disappearance. They said, all right, look, guys, your dad's an adult, not to mention a PI. He's probably out of stakeout somewhere where he can't make any calls. This was 1998 before everybody had a cell phone, so this was technically plausible. But to really, Rick's family, the police department's failure to act, was so frustrating. Months passed. Ian moved back in with his mom. Bills piled up. Rick's mortgage, his phone bill, his electricity. The business limped along without him. You know, someone doesn't go months

without checking in, like at least not somebody for whom that is completely out of character. This is just ridiculous to me on the part of the police. I know. I know. The, and impotent rage and helplessness his family was feeling must have been unbearable. I can't imagine. It's infuriating. Because you're basically being told by somebody that doesn't know your loved one. Exactly. That's the thing that's so frustrating about it.

This is completely normal. He can do this if he wants. Well, he wouldn't just walk out on us. You don't know him. We do. Listen. With your ears. Use your earballs, officers.

I can all. only laugh because I'm so mad. So what do you do when the people who are supposed to protect and serve tell you that they can't do anything? You do nothing. Rick's best friend John Krueger stepped up to try to be there for the boys. He kept telling them to keep their chins up. There's got to be an explanation. Rick will be home soon. He reminded them how many scrapes he and Rick had gotten themselves out of over the years. And it was true. They had been in some deep shit before, and they always managed to climb out of it. John was a reassuring presence. But of course, there's no substitute for your dad. Why's not? Ian, his older brother, Orion, and their mom

tried several more times to get the cops to open an investigation. But every time they got the same line. Rick's an adult. He's a PI. He can disappear if he wants to. Rick's girlfriend, Kim Bailey, was frustrated too. She seemed absolutely bereft without him. She flew down to Mexico multiple times to put up missing persons flyers by the hundreds and to see if anybody had seen Rick. And that's all you can do when you're a loved one of a missing person. Like, you know, you're saying you do nothing, nothing official but you can do stuff like that and that's what missing people's family members and loved ones are often left with you know and it's terrible to feel like you're out there by yourself you know without any kind of official help they just go and put flyers up and talk to people

and hope somebody saw something and that's what kim was doing in Mexico because they had to do something to combat that emptiness because it felt like Rick just wasn't there anymore His ex-wife Barbara said that there was a day where she and Ian just looked at each other and both realized that this man they loved just wasn't there anymore. They felt it. Whatever energy had always bound their hearts to his, it had been cut off. That's so sad. I feel like crying. He was gone.

They knew it. Now, I don't know if it's just the human brain finally accepting loss and grief, or if it's something metaphysical. But this happens a lot where people say that they just know their loved one is gone. And I find that so fascinating. It really is, yeah. I know that if my dad went missing, you would have to fucking commit me. Oh, God. Yeah, if somebody, if the cops were like, me, your dad would be.

your dad's an adult oh hell no uh-uh i'd be knocking on their door all day every day absolutely i'd have a tent in their parking lot bitches and that is what missing people's families often do they're just relentless because they have to be they have to be their own advocate yeah sucks sucks it sucks it sucks so hard and then sometimes police forces are great and they jump right on it like look at the disenhausenkoff case oh yeah where girly chew literally she was five minutes late for work and her co-workers said look she's in this abusive relationship she's been afraid of her ex-husband, they got on it immediately. So it just depends, I guess, on the police force. Yeah. It's interesting. And I think sometimes it depends on the victim because you have

Oh, totally, yeah. A PI, which I know that police have a love, hate, mostly hate relationship with. And this, it's, you know, an adult man physically fit. Yeah, absolutely. Able to take care of himself. It's easier to believe that he'd just up and leave. adults in general but especially an adult like Rick I agree with you but still it's like when they're telling you this is out of character like just for God's sake just right please listen it would take five minutes to whatever breathe Katie yeah we don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole because we'll be here all night and they're at lay for a while everybody struggled to adjust to this new normal which of course was probably impossible I mean how can you move on with your life when

you have no idea where your loved one is and what might have happened to them. Until one day, the U.S. Attorney's Office got a phone call from a defense attorney named Colleen Cusack. She told them that she had a client who had some information about a conspiracy involving multiple people from San Diego, California, to kidnap and murder an American citizen in Mexico. So, the U.S. Attorney's Office passed this info on to the FBI. Cusack wouldn't, or couldn't, I guess, name her client. So they didn't have much to go on. But they couldn't just ignore the call.

They knew that murders and kidnappings of American citizens happened a lot in Mexico. The defense attorney had said that the kidnappers were part of an organized crime group, possibly associated with a drug cartel. Yikes. Now, campers, you probably already know that Mexican drug cartels can be scarily brutal. So the FBI started cross-checking the information they got from the defense attorney with missing persons reports in their system. They quickly narrowed it down to one likely candidate, none other than our missing PI, Rick Post. And as soon as they said the name,

the FBI realized they knew Rick. We told you that Rick had worked for the FBI, right? Specifically, he worked for them as a confidential informant under the alias Jim Green. And as they dug into his professional life, they quickly discovered that Jim had told a business associate that he had worked on a plot with the CIA to kidnap cartel members in Mexico. Oof. Yeah. That is not the kind of thing that's conducive to a long, healthy life. Yeah, not at all. Yeah, because those cartel dudes will shut you right the fuck down.

Yeah. Yikes. The FBI also discovered what a hot mess on toast Rick's personal life was. First of all, he'd been slamming ass all over God's creation for years. He'd been involved with married women. He'd had a paternity suit filed against him. Oh, boy. Yeah.

And there were over a dozen of. lawsuits pending against him, too. I guess some of the people he investigated took umbrage. I imagine they tend to. Basically, there was a whole big old scrum of folks who might want to see Rick Post dead for all sorts of interesting reasons. So shit, right? Yeah, that makes it difficult. So they decided to talk to Kim Bailey, who told them the same thing she told Ian and Orion before. The surprise trip to Baja, the two men in the cafe, Rick suddenly telling her he had to cut their trip short, the drop-off at the airport. They listened to the answering machine message the sons and John Krueger had heard months before, as well as a few more messages Rick had left for other people at the same time. And it was immediately clear to these experienced investigators that Rick Post had left those messages under duress,

which, by the way, they would have known a lot earlier if they'd just listened to the family. Yep. And what Ian and Orion had felt intuitively, they knew from experience. There's a certain tight tone of voice that people tend to use in those situations, and Rick had it in spades and all those voice messages. The agents heard fear and stress in every word. And interestingly, speaking of business partners slash business partners slash best friend John Kruger, although he'd initially been really helpful,

John suddenly didn't seem to want to cooperate with the investigators anymore. When the agents asked to interview him, he said he wanted to talk to his attorney first. So he went in the other room, he called his attorney, and after a few minutes on the phone, he came in with the phone and said, my attorney wants to talk to you. And when the agent heard the voice of John Krueger's attorney, he realized that this was the same defense attorney who had called in the original tip. Colleen Cusack. Colleen Cusack was John Kruger's attorney, which had to mean that Kruger was the tipster. Kruger. Rick Post's alleged best friend and business partner. Uncle John. Wow. So this meant that all this time, all those months that John Kruger had been keeping the business afloat by himself, supporting Ian and Orion and Barbara and Rick's other kids, telling everybody it's going to be fine.

We're going to find your dad all that time. He knew that Rick Post had been abducted and murdered in Mexico. Holy shit, right? But the question, of course, was why? Nobody knew, and John Krueger wasn't talking now. So, of course, they thought there's always a chance that none of this is true. Or if it was that Rick had gotten out of it and was lying low to keep his family safe. Like maybe he and Krueger are, like, doing this.

something, you know, with the CIA or on their own or something, like, and this is part of some kind of, like, plan that got out of control? They didn't know. But God knew that he'd been in trouble before. He'd tangled with scary people before. He'd had a target on his back before. As Kruger had pointed out to his boys months earlier, he'd always oiled out of it. So Rick's family, his friends, and the FBI agents all hoped he would do it again. They were hoping he'd walk through the door and say, whew, that was a close one. Or here's, you know, your explanation. nation, here's where I've been, and that would be that. And presumably this was girlfriend Kim Bailey's hope, too.

She had obsessively searched for Rick when he first went missing. She printed out hundreds of flyers, made multiple trips to Mexico to hand them out and question people who might have seen Rick. But lately, she just seemed to be totally beaten down. She had a big sprawling ranch in an out-of-the-way area, and lately she was spending almost all of her time just hold up there with her best friend slash ranch-hand Lana. It seemed like a really sad way for this successful, high-powered businesswoman to live, but it was also understandable. I mean, she had been so in love with him.

So, Kruger wouldn't talk at all now, and this both frustrated the FBI and, of course, raised their antenna. Like Rick, Kruger was no stranger to the FBI. As a matter of fact, he had tipped them off to some sketchy business dealings a while back. Guess what business was involved in these sketchy dealings? campers. None other than a company called Astropulse. Run by one Kim Bailey. Now Astropulse, despite sounding like the name of a sex toy, made biofrequency devices, aka black box machines. Astropulse claimed that these black boxes emitted electromagnetic waves that could cure all kinds of diseases from arthritis to cancer. Now obviously this was quack medicine, but Kim Bailey had made millions by

charging sick people thousands of dollars for these bogus-ass pieces of useless machinery, which of course did nothing to improve their health, but quite a bit to deplete their bank accounts. Anybody getting Dyson-Koff vibes here, campers? I am. Remember his bullshit cancer cures that turned out to be vitamin B-12 shots that he was charging people like five figures for? Yeah. And by the way, the black boxes looked a lot like the Scientology E-meters. So you can do with that what you will.

Yeah, this shit pisses me off. Same. You're targeting vulnerable people who are desperate to just get better in taking their money, not to mention potentially giving them a fake reason to not listen to medical professionals. Oh, I know it sucks. There's a special place in hell for people like this. Like that Australian scammer, Belle Gibson, you remember her? She did this shit, too.

Oh, she sure did. She pretended, campers, to have some. stage four cancer and cured it by eating clean. She made millions of dollars and gained thousands of followers before someone caught her in a lie. Oh, God, I hate her. She never even had cancer in the first place. So, you know, Belle, here's the thing, hon. Your miracle cure really loses some of its glitter when it turns out you never actually had the disease that you were supposedly curing. But here's the problem with that. Some people did have it and you encourage them to forego medical treatment, you awful shit show of a human being you.

Exactly. How many people did she have a hand in killing? How many families were needlessly grieving because she had to get attention and money? It is a travesty. You have to be an absolute monster to look at someone with a life-threatening illness and see dollar signs. And while we're at it, fuck Martin Screlly, too. Oh, the pharmacy pro guy? Yeah, definitely. Well, actually, no. Can we not?

Because I don't want to fuck that rat-faced little greed gobliny. No, you're right. I do not get away from me. We'll do something else with him. We can put him in the true crime campfire woodchipper. Oh, perfect. Along with Michael Dally. Yeah, that's going to be our next kick, our new Patreon goal, is if we hit like $10,000, we're going to buy a branded woodchipper.

Whitchipper. Yeah, to put all of these awful people in. We'll have a big true crime campfire logo on the side. Of course, we're kidding. Violence is wrong. He is a rat-faced little greed goblin, though. We hate him. He sure is. Anywho, so we have feelings about scammer, scampers, in case you hadn't figured that out. Okay, so moving on. So as they looked into Kim's life a little deeper, it turned out she was, let's say a little cookey, a little eccentric. She was paranoid, first of all. She was convinced people were bugging her office at Astropulse. So when she needed to talk business, she'd whisper instead of using her normal voice. I'm sorry, excuse me?

I know. This bish was whispering in people's ears all day at work. Is that some kind of HR violation or something? I would think. Isn't that freaking bizarre? and she didn't like to use phones because again she thought they might be bugged too Rick's son Ian got to spend a fair amount of time around her while he was

working for his dad and he said she always seemed a little frantic so in case we're not making it clear Kim had no chill like no chill whatsoever she was tightly wound and remember she was convinced her employees were stealing from her that was how she met Rick in the first place when she hired him to investigate this alleged theft which who knows if it was actually happening or not she was convinced it was

so the FBI became aware of all of this stuff and they decided to look at Kim a little bit more closely so they went out to Fallbrook which was the remote area out in the country where Kim had her ranch and on the drive up there they came upon a blonde woman walking on the property and they thought it was Kim at first so they slowed down and talked to her but as it turned out it wasn't Kim it was her good friend and ranch hand Lana and they thought hmm you know this could be an unexpected bit of luck, because who knows what her best friend might know, right? So they asked Lana if she'd be willing to talk with them, and somewhat to their surprise, she said, sure, absolutely. And once they got her back to the office, Lana dropped a bombshell on them. She immediately

started spilling like a broken water cooler, as though she'd just been waiting for the chance. She said she wanted to tell him what Kim did. It wasn't right. Kim had confided in her that she hadn't taken Rick to Baja because she wanted a nice romantic trip with the love of her life, she'd taken him there to get revenge. Revenge for what, you might ask? Well, Lana said that in early August of 98, John Kruger had asked Kim for private chat. Now, John knew Kim well enough to know she tended toward paranoia. Paranoia will destroy you, campers. You got to love advice that rhymes. It's got to be true, right? Kruger knew that Kim was obsessed with Rick. So for those of y'all who are Lord of the Rings nerds, like I am, he played

wormtong to her King Theodon. For the normal people, that means he got in Kim's ear about Rick. Yeah. He said, he's all like, look, Kim, you should know that Rick has been cheating on you. He's sleeping with all kinds

of other women. You don't deserve that, Kim. You're better than that. He's such a friend. Such a good friend, right? Now, remember, Camper's, by this point, Rick had become involved in the running of Kim's company. And in addition to cheating on her, Kruger said, Rick had also been stealing. He said, he's taking advantage of you, Kim. He's using you. He's playing you for a fool.

And that was all it took, for someone with Kim's psychological makeup, at least. Yeah, she was probably just like, I knew it, you know, because stuff like that is just always at the periphery of your mind if you're paranoid. Mm-hmm. So she freaked. She became a being of pure white-hot rage, as Kruger knew she would. And the two of them hatched a plan. They would have Rick kidnapped down in Mexico and torture him until he agreed to give back Kim's money.

They'd make him fess up with cheating, too. They'd humiliate him. They'd make him hurt. Jesus. But how to bring that about. So we'll leave it there for Part 1, Campers. But because we release both halves of an episode on the same day, you can go right ahead and listen to Part 2 now if you want.

Or save it for later, whatever butter is your toast. 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 TC Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to, to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.