True Crime Campfire - Fool Me Twice: The Murders of James & Virginia Campbell

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Some of the easiest people on the planet to fool are those who have a real high opinion of their own brains based on very little evidence. A classic con-artist trick is to make the mark think they’re the one in charge, they’re the one making the decisions. They don’t realize they’ve been taken until their bank balance is empty and they’ve signed away the deed to granddaddy’s farm. Sometimes they won’t even see it then, because that would mean facing up to some unpleasant realities about themselves. In this week’s story, the consequences of gullibility and manipulation are a lot heavier than financial ruin—three generations of a family have their lives torn to pieces over greed and a web of the darkest lies imaginable. Sources:Daddy’s Girl by Clifford Irving Court papers: https://casetext.com/case/ray-v-state-51The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/02/26/true-confessions/718e2739-0997-4ac0-a551-d860a9f51b7f/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Looking for better games? SlotsGem has so much more. Your favorite games, live dealers, and the best tournaments await. Do yourself a favor and claim the welcome bonus. Shine bright like a diamond with slots gem.com. Terms and conditions apply. Please gamble responsibly. Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. or roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Some of the easiest people on the planet to fool are those who have a real high opinion of their own brains based on very little evidence. A classic Conardist trick is to make the mark think they're the one in charge.

They're the one making the decisions. They don't realize they've been taken until their bank balance is empty and they've signed away the deed to Granddaddy's farm. Sometimes they won't even see it then, because that would mean facing up to some unpleasant realities about themselves. In this week's story, the consequences of gullibility and manipulation are a lot heavier than financial ruin. Three generations of a family have their lives torn to pieces over greed and a web of the darkest lives imaginable. This is Fool Me Twice, the murders of James and Virginia Campbell. So, campers, for this one, we're in Houston, Texas, June 19, 1982.

It was 3.30 a.m. and in an upstairs bedroom in the wealthy memorial neighborhood, James Campbell slept beside his wife, Virginia. A faint hum and a soft gray light filled a room from the TV. James and Virginia's young grandsons, Michael and Matthew, had been watching Star Wars on the VCR for the million's time. They'd fallen asleep before Princess Leia even got rescued, and the movie had played out until the tape stopped and rewound. The two boys were still asleep at the foot of the bed and a big pile of blankets. A loud noise startled 8-year-old Michael awake, or maybe several loud noises. Still sleepy, he looked up and saw a figure briefly standing in the doorway. Then it was gone. When Michael looked at his grandparents' bed, the horror of what

he saw there shook him fully awake. James and Virginia were both dead, their sheets and blankets bloody. They had been shot. James had one eye open. It seemed to be looking right at Michael. Michael tried to talk to his granddad, who he called Papa, but James was long past being able to reply. Michael shook his younger brother awake, and the two terrified boys ran downstairs and out the back door. The Campbell's housekeeper, Maria, had her own little apartment over the garage, and the boys clattered up the stairs and hammered on her door until a sleepy Maria opened it in her bathrobe. She took one look at the boy's faces and immediately knew something was horribly wrong. Michael blurted out the horrible scene he'd witnessed in his grandparents' bedroom. In a panic,

Maria was too scared to go and look for herself and who can blame her. Instead, she called J.W. Campbell, James' younger brother and a junior partner at his law firm. Shortly after, it was J.W. who managed to make a fairly calm 911 call to the Houston PD. My brother and his wife have been murdered, he said. It's not something that shows the U.S. justice system in the best light, but the fact is that a double murder in a wealthy part of town will almost always be a top priority to the authorities. When the homicide investigators arrived, there was already a swarm of police parked outside, along with an ambulance. Neighbors and bathrobes stood on the lawns and watched. Everybody bathed in the red and blue lights of the cop cars.

The Campbell's house struck the investigators as unusual right away. It was an expensive place, but inside it was sparsely furnished, and most of what furniture there was was old and scuffed. They'd already noticed that the yard was poorly kept. Their first impression was that this was a once wealthy household that had hit hard times, or at least hard times by the she-she standards of Memorial Drive. I mean, you're in no real danger of hitting the breadline when you have a living housekeeper. The house provided tantalizing clues. The window in the den was half open. On the floor just inside the front door, they found a white surgical glove. There wasn't much mystery about how the murders had happened, though. There were six 45 caliber shell casings on the floor in the Campbell's bedroom. Where they were scattered, suggested that the shooter had stood just inside the doorway, turned right toward the double bed so the ejected shell casings bounced off the wall. There was actually a 45-

automatic in the room, behind glass in the gun cabinet on the back wall, but it was immediately apparent that that gun hadn't been fired in a long time. James Campbell was evidently a cautious man. Leaning against the wall close to his side of the bed was a loaded shotgun. It hadn't been touched. There was a lot of blood. On the ceiling, on the sheets, on the drapes. There had been six shots, and they had all hit their targets. Virginia had been shot once in the head, once in the arm, and once in the chest, and had almost certainly died without ever waking up. James might have been startled awake for a second or so, just long enough to sit up and turn toward the door, but then he'd been shot through the eye and died instantly. The killer

had shot him two more times, just to be sure. Nothing had been disturbed or taken. Virginia still had a big diamond ring on her finger. The killer had come in, killed them both quickly and efficiently from about six feet away and left. This was cold and deliberate murder, and by someone who was proficient with firearms. James's younger brother, J.W., sat in the kitchen, looking rumpled and dazed, and had trouble focusing on the investigator's questions.

It all felt surreal to him. Barely an hour ago, he'd found his brother and his wife dead. When he was asked if he knew who might want James dead, J.W. vaguely said, A client? But he was just guessing. didn't have anyone specific in mind. James primarily worked on personal injury cases, a field where it's easy to make enemies. From JW, the investigators learned the shape of the Campbell's family.

They had four daughters. The oldest two, Michelle and Betty Ann, both lived up in Austin. Another daughter, Cindy, was grandson's Michael and Matthew's mom. She still lived in Houston close by. Their youngest daughter, Jamie, was in college in Knoxville, Tennessee. I have to call them, J.W. told the investigators. You could tell he was dreading it. Michael and Matthew were in their PJs, still hiding out in Maria's apartment. When police had first tried to talk to them, eight-year-old Michael had said,

we can't talk to you until we've seen our lawyer. But he loosened up after her J.W. told him it was okay. Bless his heart. Where did an eight-year-old kid learn to ask for an attorney? He probably saw it on TV, but that's so cute and, like, kind of sad. Or his granddad taught him right. You don't talk to the police without an attorney. You don't talk to, like, I kind of, I got a respected.

It's so cute. He probably had, he didn't probably understand. Granddaddy told him, hey, kid, no self-snitching. Michael's story was simple. He'd woken up, briefly seen a figure in the doorway that discovered his grandparents' dead bodies. But until an interpreter arrived, Michael also translated the detective's questions for Maria. She always spoke Spanish with the boys, and her English wasn't quite up to describing complicated situations. Maria gave the detectives plenty to think about.

She had already been awake when the boys had started banging on her door, surprised out of sleep by a crashing noise. It might have been the done window being forced open, she said. It stuck a lot. That was all she had seen or heard of, the actual murder, but as the live-in housekeeper, she knew all the Campbell family tea. Michael and Matthew weren't just spending the night with their grandparents. They lived in the house and had for more than five years. Their mom, Cindy, lived nearby, but she was in and out of their lives, mostly out. She was more like an auntie or a cousin than a mom.

Just last week, the Campbells and the two kids had just gotten back from a European vacation when Cindy showed up at the house. She in Virginia had gotten to a big screaming argument, and Cindy had stormed off. Maria told the detectives that after that she'd seen Cindy hanging around by the window in the den, somewhere she didn't usually go. Had she been fooling around

with a lock? And then Maria laid out a big old slice of motive pie. According to her, James and Virginia were planning to file for custody of the boys and they were going to cut Cindy off financially. Every month, James wrote each of his daughters a check.

They didn't all get the same amount. It varied, depending, I guess, on how much James thought they needed and how he was getting along with each of them at the time. Probably not the best way to foster healthy sibling dynamics, but, you know, it's his money. He can do what he wants with it. It's like exactly the dynamic out of, like, succession.

Yeah. And I bet it made for, like, fun, exciting Christmas dinners. Yeah. The detectives Antennae were twanging at this, but so far this family drama wasn't really adding up to two execution-style murders with highly accurate gunshots. But there was more. Cindy had a boyfriend, David, and James and Virginia didn't like him at all. Most people didn't like David because David was half proto-in-cell nerd and half pure USDA Prime Grade A asshole. He was always calling little Michael

and Matthews stupid and spoiled and Maria had seen him hit the kids more than once. The previous year, Maria had caught him snooping around in James and Virginia's bedroom while they were out, Cindy was downstairs, and she told him to get out of there. David didn't speak a whole lot of Spanish, and most of what he could speak were insults. He called 60-year-old Maria a stupid, fat old whore. Real nice, man, real classy. She started yelling back at him, good for her, and Virginia Campbell came home right in the middle of it. She told David to get the hell out, and then he started yelling at her. So David lost his visiting privileges. Virginia told Cindy that if she ever saw David in the house again, she'd call the cops. Because Cindy didn't drive. This meant that

whenever she came over, David would just sit in his car in the driveway, just fuming. Awkward. Recently, Cindy had been asking to come live at home again, but Virginia wouldn't let her. According to Maria, she was scared of her daughter. Scared of her own daughter. She thought she was deeply unstable. So, you know, that's a red flag. If your old mom is, like, scared of you, we might have a problem. So obviously, police were going to take a close look at Cindy and David, but they also had to investigate J.W.'s vague concern that his brother had been killed by a client. James Campbell didn't necessarily have the most pristine reputation in the Houston legal scene.

He'd never been reprimanded or suspended or anything, but he sailed pretty close to the wind when it came to, you know, ethics. His nickname among the other attorneys was Dirty Jim. And although he'd mellowed out, a lot as he'd gotten older, James hadn't always had a firm grip on his temper. When he'd been a young lawyer in his 20s, he'd once kicked an opposing attorney in the shins right in front of the judge's bench. Judges love when you do that, by the way, assault people in their courtroom, big fans. I mean, it makes it interesting at least, right? James's rough edges were one of the reasons he'd hired his younger brother, J.W. as a junior partner. J.W., although sharp as

attack had a kind of easygoing, good old boy air. People usually liked him, more than they like James. J.W. would bring in the clients and James would do the trial work. Virginia worked as James's paralegal and secretary, putting in a lot of the sweat that made the whole thing work. It took some legwork, but the detectives quickly ruled out disgruntled clients as a suspect. They also didn't think J.W. was a likely pick. They had no reports of bad blood between the brothers, and it was clear that J.W. had needed James a lot more than vice versa. James's death was a loss to his little brother in every possible way. So then there was the kids and the inheritance, and really the kids boiled down to Cindy, the only daughter who lived in town, and the only one that James and Virginia had a fractious,

difficult relationship with. Even split evenly between the four daughters, that inheritance was a significant chunk of change. James had a $200,000 life insurance policy, and he in Virginia owned about $2 million worth of real estate. Now, translating that from 1982 money to today, that would be $650k in insurance money and $6.5 million in property. Damn. But would it be divided equally between all the kids? According to the older daughters, Michelle and Betty Ann, their mom had told him that James was going to rewrite his will, cutting Cindy out completely and shifting her share directly to Michael and Matthew. But there was no sign of a new will, or in fact any will at all, in James' safety deposit box.

Nothing the investigators heard about Cindy suggested she had any experience with guns, and whoever had shot the Campbell's definitely did. But what about boyfriend David? To start with, he didn't even seem to be boyfriend David anymore. As far as anyone knew, the two of them had been broken up for months. A romantic partner is always a good suspect as an accomplice, but an ex, not so much. David West definitely set those red flags flying, though. He was a former Marine who owned a rundown house in the Montrose district close to downtown Houston,

where he liked to get drunk and high and shoot his handgun into the ceiling or out the living room window. Oh, that's got to be fun for his neighbors. It's like a caricature or like something you'd see in like an 80s movie. Yeah, he absolutely is. He was also a survivalist who slept in a hammock and a hoarded canned goods and apparently didn't believe in laundry detergent. When clothes got too stinky, he'd just shove him in a closet. You could probably smell his house from the space station.

And this won't surprise you all. Like so many of the dipshits we've covered on our show, David was a loyal reader of our old friend, Soldier of Fortune magazine, the magazine choice for many a racist, militant, violent weirdo. I could have told you that without you even telling me. Like, I knew it already. Like, there's going to be stacks of soldier of fortune in there. Tied with twine. We just know it. People thought he and Cindy had hit the skids, but now all of a sudden it seemed like they were back together. He came with Cindy to James and Virginia's funeral, and he went with her to the police station, where detectives took sworn statements from each of them about the night of the murders. Their statements matched well, but not perfectly,

meaning either they were telling the truth or they'd practice their story. The night before the murder, David drove Cindy over to Memorial Drive, where she asked her mom for money. Virginia gave her $10 and asked Cindy if she wanted to hang around and see the boys, but Cindy said she was in a hurry and left. Mom of the year. That's real nice. Yeah.

I just want my money, mom. I don't want to see my kids. Gross. Don't need to see the children. The 10 bucks got Cindy and David into a punk club where they stayed until closing at 2 a.m. Then they went to David's place and had a little romance among all the dirty socks, which I have to, I have to ask. Was it in the hammock? I hope not.

It can't have been, right? It can't have been in the hammock. Before moving on to a party at around 3.45 a.m. When that wound down, they went to an all-night place for breakfast around 4.15 a.m. Good Lord. Just listening to all that made me exhausted, although I used to do stuff like that too, like in my, you know, wild youth. But man, it makes me tired to listen to now. Go to bed, you freaking weirdos.

I didn't even do that in my wild youth. But I was up at like five, you know, when I was in my 20s because I just, I like being up early. Lord, I go to bed at five. In both their stories, the timing between leaving the club and getting to the party was a little mushy, but that was normal. It would have been more suspicious if they'd been able to provide a minute-by-minute account of everything they did that night. Still, their statements had a big gaping hole around the time of the murder, where their only alibis were each other. That's true for a lot of crimes committed in the early hours in the morning when most people are asleep.

Those were all the alibi Cindy's older sisters over in Austin had, Michelle with her girlfriend and Betty Ann with her husband. Austin was two and a half hours away, but that's not too far to drive with millions of dollars on the line. Cindy, though, was at the tip

top of the sibling suspect list. She lived nearby, and by her own account, she was awake when the Campbell's were killed. And the apparent threat of getting cut off financially and losing her kids, not that she seemed to give a shit about them, but I think she gave a lot of shit about the money, were motives that might as well have been displayed on big neon signs.

All the Campbell daughters were kind of shy and a little weird as kids, and obviously there's nothing wrong with that. Shy and weird includes a hell of a lot of kids. Cindy was always the most shy and the most weird, an odd duck who would flip in a second from sweet and smiling to shouting and ragey. She was obviously smart, but she was kind of a dud academically, just kind of drifting through life like she was half in a dream. From early on in her life, she'd been a talented artist, but she'd never put in the work to make something of that talent. Cindy wasn't really about putting in the work on anything. She'd been kind of a lazy, self-involved kid, and by the time she was 26 and her parents had died, she'd never had a job. Just lived rent-free

in a small apartment building her dad had gotten as payment in a case. In school, Cindy hadn't smiled much and hadn't made many friends. She'd been a real quiet kid who somehow managed to get into a lot of trouble. She'd gotten along well with her dad, but less so with her mom, who was doing most of the actual parenting. Cindy was insecure about her weight, which yo-yoed a lot, but nobody else seemed to think it was a problem. She had plenty of dudes interested in dating her. Cindy ran away from home a few times. When she was 14, she apparently ran away and moved into some guy's apartment for a while.

According to Clifford Irving, whose book Daddy's Girl, was one of a few times. our sources for this case, Cindy's sisters called this mysterious stranger figgy, as in a figment of Cindy's imagination, because they knew she lied as easily as she breathed, and nobody in the family ever met this dude. A teenager who's insecure about their looks, suddenly discovering that other people find them attractive, can often be a recipe for some real bad decision-making. The next time Cindy ran away, she was just 16 years old, and this time, when she came back home, she had a husband and a newborn baby, both called Michael Ray. She also had a new Oklahoma accent.

According to her little sister, Jamie, Cindy often changed the way she talked. When she wanted something, especially from a guy, she had a little girl voice real high and pitiful, and she'd open her eyes all wide and pout. Like a freaking cartoon, ugh. But according to Jamie, when Cindy got mad, she sounded like Regan from the Exorcist. In a theme that would only get weirder and wilder throughout Cindy's life,

she'd told her husband a really colorful story about her home life while they were up in Oklahoma. Her father, Cindy said, had been locked up in a mental institution, and her mother had shacked up with another man. This new man and her mom were abusive to Cindy, beating her and locking her in closets for hours on end. After Michael Jr. was born and Cindy decided she needed her parents' help and money, she realized this story needed some creative editing. Wouldn't you know it? Her dad made a miraculous recovery and was released from the asylum, and then he reconciled with Cindy's mom, which explained why the household Cindy was about to take her new husband and baby to was actually really happy and normal.

Oh my God. What was it her sister said? She lied as easily as breathing. Yeah, this woman reminds me so much of Dante Soutorious, if you all remember that episode, like way back went. She is so much in common, even down to the creepy little baby voice that she used on men. same thing. It's wild. So Cindy's new family moved in with her parents, and a couple years after Michael Jr., Matthew was born. Moving in with a wealthy lawyer's family was potentially quite a step up for Michael Ray Sr. who was a tugboat worker, but he wanted other things in life besides mere material gain. Specifically, he really wanted to stick his dick in women other than his wife, and after he'd done that a few times, they divorced. He never saw his kids again, just moved on with his life as if they didn't even exist. Father of the year.

Yeah. You know, he and Cindy might be soulmates. Yeah, they deserve each other, for sure. They really deserve each other, you know. Cindy moved into her dad's apartment building, rent-free, and foisted Michael and Matthew onto her parents, who were in their 40s and definitely hadn't been expecting to raise young children again. Cindy didn't have any interest in being a parent,

but it was a good way to meet people. She met her next husband, Philip, at a meeting of the Parents Without Partners Support Group. They got divorced almost immediately. According to Sister Betty Ann, Cindy claimed he flashed schoolgirls, though Betty Ann said this in a way that made it clear that she thought her sister was full of shit. There were several brief affairs in one semi-serious lemon boyfriend, and then Cindy moved back in with her folks on Memorial Drive. They convinced her to study art at some.

St. Thomas University where a younger sister Jamie was a student, and that was where Cindy met David West. David and Jamie had actually gone out once or twice before Cindy showed up. Not long after Jamie came out as gay. I'm not saying there's any cause and effect there. Just that it's kind of funny that David West was apparently the kind of guy that made her go, nope, I'm down with all that. It's like on Seinfeld where George's girlfriend, like, realizes she's gay right after she dumps him. I mean, like, done with that. Well, it's like, I mean, it can be, like, more subtle if you date, like, respectable men that, like, I don't know, take care of themselves and wash, wash up after themselves. But, like, you walk into David's house and he doesn't have washed underwear and you just, the smell hits you.

And you're like, women. He's got visible stink lines, you know. It maybe makes this situation a little more clear cut in the moment. I think this isn't for me. I'm ready to come out. You know, I was scared. I was in denial until this very moment. Throughout this story, there's a lot of confusion about whether David or Cindy was in charge of what was happening.

Confusion that's mainly caused by David thinking he was in charge when actually Cindy was playing in like a fiddle for a minute. When they first met Sidipon, her little girl voice, TM, and fluttered her eyelashes at him. Oh, look at me. I'm just a cute little helpless thing. Yeah, I'm disgusted with myself. I hated that. Con artists and other manipulators are often highly skilled at cold reading. They can spot a potential mark a mile off and figure out how to sneak past their defenses really quickly. Cindy had immediately clocked David as a classic Captain Save a Ho. As we'll see a little later, David was really kind of a loser when it came to dating,

and he didn't pick up on what Cindy was putting down. She had to call him and tell him he was cute and that she wanted to go on a date with him. Little sister Jamie was in the room when Cindy made the call. After she hung up, Cindy dropped the little girl voice and told her sister that David looked like a pig and ate like a dog. God. Girl stand up. When Jamie asked why Cindy would want to go out with someone like that, Cindy said, Someone like that will do anything you tell them.

He'd be like a dog, just real easy to train. What a peach. Man, Cindy's the kind of woman that incells think all women are. It's true. It's 100% true. God. And David is exactly the kind of guy that every insel thinks they are. Like, just disgusting and helpless.

Just that's who they are. The girl of David's dreams was a girl he could fix and change, and Cindy soon figured that out. She started sharing her trauma, some real, but most made up. They were soon dating, and Cindy started working out with David. He was always going on about how a healthy mind requires a healthy body. Well, you know what else a healthy body requires is a shower once in a while, David. Oh, God. I'm just thinking about, oh, going to the gym and, like, using equipment after him.

Oh, no. Like, oh, God, it must have been horrific. There are no, like, wipes or sprays that could, that could wash the equipment. You just have to throw it out. Oh, my God. David, who had a jealous streak a mile wide, soon regretted that. Later, he said, I got her down and wait, and everybody started chasing after her ass. Nice.

Nice. Good, dude. Excellent. While he was imagining himself as the fitness bro version of Henry Higgins, David was in fact doing every little thing Cindy wanted. She might as well have been walking him around on a leash. As they got closer, David got the full story of Cindy's terrible childhood. And I feel like we need to preface this by noting that Cindy grew up in a nice but by no means huge house, the kind of place that can feel pretty crowded with two parents and four kids. She always shared a room with her sisters, all of whom vehemently denied.

that any of what Cindy later claimed was going on was actually happening. Cindy told David that her father had been abusing her since she was 13, and that her oldest son Michael was in fact her father's child. Cindy neglected to tell David that she'd been living all the way up in Oklahoma when she'd gotten pregnant with Michael, and David wasn't the guy to question what his girlfriend told him. He actually described Cindy to others as his project, and surely a mere project couldn't pull the wool over the eyes of a big strong guy like him.

He convinced himself that Michael looked a lot like his grandfather James, and to him, that was incontrovertible evidence. According to Cindy, her mom, Virginia, was furious. Not about the abuse, though. She was jealous of Cindy and angry that James would now give her favorable treatment over the other girls. She started beating Cindy regularly, and then made her own sexual advances on her. Oh, wow, that's a disgusting story. when Cindy turned her down she said Virginia locked her in a closet for days on end when Cindy soiled herself Virginia forced her to eat her own poop then shut her back in the closet to sit in her own filth now if you followed true crime for any amount of time you know that people can do some insanely awful things to other people so this story is not like this couldn't happen this shit does happen and has happened but imagine you're a teenage girl and you don't see your sister who you should share a bedroom with for days because she's locked in a closet and being made to eat poo. That seems to me like something that would make an impression on a young girl, something that

you probably wouldn't forget. But none of Cindy's sisters had ever witnessed or suspected any abuse at all in the house or felt like their parents treated Cindy any differently than the other girls. It's not the kind of thing that was ever going to happen. But if David had been able to compare notes on the subject with other people in Cindy's orbit, he'd have realized he was being sold a line. Cindy told a mutual acquaintance that her dad was a saintly loving figure and that the abuse all came from Cindy's evil stepmother and nasty step-sisters who wanted to cheat Cindy out of her inheritance. In this version, David wasn't Cindy's boyfriend. He was just a friend who had sexually assaulted Cindy in the past. Everybody got a different story. David West is a recurring TCC character,

a guy who thinks he's real smart but is actually a gullible turnip and he ate all this shit up with the spoon. He liked his girls damaged and needy so he could be a big protector man. He was born in Houston in 1956 and pretty much the only interesting thing that happened during his boilerplate suburban childhood was when a machine in shop class tore off the little finger of his left hand. He'd later brag that he'd been able to shut down all sense of pain through pure willpower alone. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Sure, man. What, like, that's called like, that's just called like trauma. Like, of course. When something traumatic happens to you, yeah, you tend to like...

Yeah, you often don't feel it. Don't feel it right right away. But yeah, sure. It's your manliness. It's just because he was built different, Katie. It's your testosterone. You're right. When he started skipping school, his parents sent him to Allen Military Academy, which evidently opened a door for David.

He joined the Marines in his junior year. In his four years of active service, he got his high school diploma and spent 18 months in Morocco guarding naval bases, but the most significant thing that happened was when his mom's wealthy aunt died. David inherited about $100,000 in cash in stocks. His mom, as executor, bought him the house in Montrose in a little piece of land out in Iola. With old cases like this, we often translate money in today's value, but it's different with stocks. A lot of the stocks David inherited were in Exxon and Texaco. If he'd just sat on him like his mom told him to, they would be worth millions today. But when David got out of the Marines in 1978, he sold the stock and went on a

three-month vacation in Europe. When he got back, he bought a Mustang. Rum, rum. Are you noticing a pattern with our David? I am. He's not, he's not prone to patience. Very much likes the very quick, quick satisfaction. Instant gratification. It had no patience. The House and Montrefer, was kind of run down before he got his hands on it. David's mom had intended that he used some of his inheritance to remodeled the place, but David moved right in and invited some of his buddies from the Marines to move in, too. He tried a couple of college courses, tried a couple of jobs, but nothing stuck. He drank a lot and smoked a lot of weed.

He trashed his Mustang and then bought a transam and trashed that too. Those are like exactly the two cars that I would pick for him to, you know, like late 70s, Sort of douchebag guy who thinks he's hot shit. Mustang Trans Am. It would be a Dodge Charger now. You know it would be. Yeah.

Or a cyber truck. A Dodge Charger. He couldn't have fucking afford a cyber truck. He couldn't afford a cyber truck. That's right. Instead of working, he sold the piece of land in Iola and lived off the money from that. By the time he was 25, three years after receiving his inheritance,

he was unemployed, pretty much broke, and always asking his mama for cash. You'd think that if the military teaches you anything, it would be some respect for order and cleanliness, but apparently not for our David. Nope. The house was disgusting. The kitchen was full of trash bags,

only about half of them, closed. He had fleas, fleas jumping around on the carpet. Oh, my God. Whenever you turn on a light, Texas-sized cockroaches would scurry under the fridge. When David's clothes got too stinky, he just tossed them in a growing pile in the closet. When whatever room he strung his hammock up in got too grungy even for him, he'd just move to another route. Come on, KT. He's just pheromone maxing.

Okay. He's trying to attract the ladies with his potent man musk. Don't say those words to me. That's a thing. That's a thing, right? Some of the kids are doing. Don't say those words to me. I don't like that you said those words. in that order to me. I don't like it. I try to stay with the trends is what I'm, you know. Yeah, it's the one benefit.

It's the one benefit of me coaching youths is that I can say stuff like, I can say stuff like to a child, you got that dog in you, and then they look horrified. It's like, do you got that dog in you? Yeah, they're always horrified. That's so funny. Yeah, no, it's horrible. And I can just, I can picture this house because I have seen episodes of hoarders, okay? I know what this house looked like.

Yeah. You might think this is why he didn't have much success with women, but his equally gross housemates apparently did. Like, this is what's crazy is like so many of the like male forums will talk about how to get laid, how to get women. And none of them consider asking a woman because I'm sorry, but like there are women with low enough standards that will sleep with men in houses like this. Oh, honey, absolutely.

I was thinking I have I have entered houses like this with men that I was dating. Do you know how many of my exes have fixed their lives because I went into their house and I was like, this is fucking unacceptable. Clean your fucking bathroom. And they do. I had an ex-boyfriend who let the dishes in the sink get so bad that the apartment complex like found out about it because of the smell. No. And sent like a maintenance person to be like, you have to clean your sink.

We've all, listen, I think, I dated this man. I think every, I think every woman has this story. Oh, absolutely. My college boyfriend, his bathroom in the house he lived in was disgusting. I, like, I went to go take a shower in there and I left. I was like, I can't. This is too gross. There was like, shavings in the, in the sink still.

Like, it just looked like, it just looked like, it was just grungy. But like, that's what I'm saying is like, they don't ever ask a woman because here's, here's the thing is all of these dudes were getting laid except for David. It was a joke. Yeah. It was a joke among them that if they wanted to get laid, they wouldn't take David with them when they went out. He was a mood killer, an anti-Aphrodisiac, which is very funny. And a lot of women liked him. They just didn't want to go out with him.

He was a weird combination of classic miladying loser and a quick, jealous temper. Oh, no. And when he liked a girl, he'd basically just sadly stalk her, always hanging around with a droopy dog look on his face, always offering to help them. And the girls he fell for were usually the ones he knew had some kind of trauma in their past. He wanted to look after them. And like, you know he's the guy that would go, no girls ever want to go out with me. It's like, okay, yeah, dude, you're right. He's the victim in the whole thing.

They're always the victim. More than one of these ladies described him as essentially still an adolescent. God, this is so gross. One time, he actually got as far as making out with a woman, good for David, and then started dry humping her leg, which gross her out so much, she made him leave. the only girl he'd kind of made things work with with Cindy, and he often spoke wistfully about her, but he'd also say that she was bad shit crazy,

and that was why he dumped her. With everyone else, he had a stank of desperation too eager, too needy. The fact that he might not have changed his underwear since the Ford administration probably didn't help either. Like, I'm sorry. Like, I just, I don't understand, like, it can't be me. I know, right? It's bitches, man.

Bitches, man. If for whatever reason some lady wanted to dive in and sweep David off his feet, he'd be an easy mark, and that was about to become very relevant. A couple of years after James and Virginia were murdered, the case was cold.

The investigators suspected that Cindy, and probably David, were involved in the killings, but they had no physical evidence beyond shell casings and that one surgical glove left by the front door. The casings told them nothing without the matching gun, and the FBI lab had gotten nothing from the glove. Police suspected it had been deliberately dropped there to confuse the investigation. In the early 80s, Houston homicide was overworked.

Unless new information was brought to their attention, they weren't doing anything more on the case. But of course, police aren't the only investigators. Frustrated at the slowdown, Cindy's older sister Betty Ann hired a private firm to look into the case. The PIs discovered that Cindy was married yet again to a young Syrian student, Talal, who they suspected was mainly in it for a green card. Cindy was falling to pieces. She'd burned through her inheritance, not least by hiring and firing a string of attorneys that she used to sue her family who she felt were cheating her.

More than one of these attorneys noticed that the only time Cindy ever seemed like really energetic and happy was when she fired them. That was what got her juice is flowing. So funny. She was reclusive and living in even more filth than David. She'd stopped bathing and apparently also stopped flushing toilet paper. She just piled the used pieces in a closet in the bathroom. Like clearly some mental illness is happening here.

She stank. She was also highly paranoid. The PIs tried a gimmick to make contact with Cindy, claiming that they'd seen an ad that she was selling a TV. Cindy just opened the door a crack and shrieked at him to go away. Her husband, Talal, came out soon after and said, I'm sorry, please forgive this. My wife is not feeling well.

This poor man had to live with her. Oh, my God. So, Cindy came out and screamed, Get the fuck out of here! From behind her husband in the crack in the door. So that was a no-go. Cindy was too paranoid. David would be an easier target for information,

especially if they worked in. with a pretty young woman. The pretty young woman in question was Kim Paris, a 23-year-old who'd just gotten out of the Navy and was occasionally making some money busting fake workman's comp injury cases. Kim had a routine.

She'd wear tight jeans and a tight sweater and park her car outside of a Target's house. Then she'd let the air out of one of her tires. When the target came out, Kim would look up from her knees and ask for help. I'm just so helpless when it comes to mechanical stuff, she'd say. So diabolical.

If the guy was faking his injury, he'd get down on his hands and knees and change the tire for her. Kim's partner, parked across the street, would get the whole act on videotape. So the plan was that Kim would get to know David really well, essentially become his girlfriend.

If he'd been involved in the Campbell murders, Kim would coax a confession out of him. There were some obvious complications with this. David would be a lot more likely to open up to an intimate partner, and that was over the line from what Kim was willing to do, which God no, I don't blame her. She didn't want to have to get too close to old stinky. So she would tell him that she was a victim of sexual assault and couldn't really handle any physical intimacy. That story was actually based on Kim's real life experience. She would just make it seem a lot more

recent when she was talking to David. And from her preliminary surveillance of him, it was something that would make her a lot more appealing to him. Another damaged girl to fix. Captain Sabahoe, suit up, baby. David was into kind of a punk scene, so Kim dressed for the part, dyed her hair pink, put on red stockings and pixie boots, and got a quasi-military looking jacket. I want that outfit. Oh my God, that sounds so cute. She met David at his local bar in the middle of December, 1984. I'm Teresa, she said. Call me tea. She was having a little fun. Her alias Teresa Neal was a name Agatha Christie had used when she'd gone

missing for two weeks in 1926. He couldn't really get away with that in the Google Age, but Kim was entirely and accurately sure that David probably wasn't much of an Agatha Christi fan. David was an easy mark. He thought he'd hit the flipping jackpot.

This cute girl kept looking at him and smiling and was receptive to his cringy flirting. She told him she'd just gotten out of the Navy the previous week and was staying with sister. She was new in town, looking for a job. It was kind of at a loose end about her next step in life. You know, like maybe some worldly strong man could guide her. The next important thing you're going to do in your life, David said, is meet me here tomorrow night at 8 o'clock for dinner.

Yeah, shit like this was why David kept striking out with women, but of course Kim was all for it. Dating is so much easier when you're being ruthlessly manipulative. As early as that second meeting, Kim felt like she was on to something. David told her he was planning to open his own bar in Montrose with financial backing from a silent partner. A few years later, he said the silent partner was an old girlfriend and y'all, he literally said, I'm her Svengali. Dude, first of all, I don't think you know what that means.

And second, you can't sell Svengali. That's worse than deciding your new nickname's going to be Ace or T-bone and then insisting everybody call you that. Oh, God, he's so cringe. It's so cringe. And that's, there's, oh, my God, I'm her Svengali. Like, ew. He kept bringing up this bar, so Kim made herself look fascinated and impressed. He said he was going to start moving on it as soon as his ex-girlfriend got her full inheritance from her parents, which her cruel sisters and uncle were trying to.

cheat her out of. Both her parents died, Kim said. Yeah, in a car accident, David said. That's awful, Kim said. Nah, it's the best thing that ever happened to her, David said. Obviously, the old girlfriend was Cindy and her parents hadn't died in a car crash. The list of reasons why David would lie about that was pretty short. For all intents and purposes, they started dating. It was completely sexless. If David even tried to kiss Kim, she'd stiffen up. and push him away. She told him early on about her sexual assault like she was trying to warn him off. It just made him more invested in her.

Three weeks after they'd met, he was telling her he wanted to marry her. Good Lord. Kim kept opening up about her past and he did likewise, but not enough. Kim had been playing this line that she was a little bit psychic. And one night in February when they came out of a club, she told David she felt like there was something physically between them. A psychic buried that meant he was hiding something big from her. Later, they sat in the car outside his house, hugging from warmth.

And Kim, the psychic, said she knew that whatever David was hiding, it was something to do with Cindy. He broke down, sobbing. I want to tell you, but I'm afraid, he said. Then he stumbled off into the house. She called him the next morning and he was relieved. He thought she might cut him off because he said, men aren't supposed to cry like that oh boy I'm sure it says that in soldier of fortune

they probably put it in every issue of soldier report remember no crying yeah it's like the first it's the first like letter from the editor like first of all men don't cry no crying second of all we're going to tell you how to be racist more racist more efficiently more efficiently racist but I love you David

Kim said, she wrote, I feel a confession is imminent in her work journal. I just love Kim. Like, you can't help but feel bad for David. But, like, also, are you stupid? She's awesome, too. Like, there's this wonderful picture of her. Like, it's so 80s. It's just, I can't get enough of it.

She's cool as hell. She's dope. It's just, like, seriously, her? You think her? David? Okay. Droopy dog. Mm-hmm.

It was. The confession was imminent. On February 20th, Kim went to David's house. She was wearing a wire, and homicide detectives were listening in a van across the street. At first, it didn't seem like there was any chance of them getting what they needed, and they had to suffer through David trying to whine his way into Kim's pants. I'm a very sexual person, he told her. I went to hold you and kiss you and love you.

In the pan, one of the cops said, this is pitiful. this guy couldn't make out in a whorehouse I love that they're like Waldorf and Stettlering it I mean I mean you have to Roasting him from the van Yeah you have like obviously

This is this is oh my God Just and like the I just It's just very like 17 year old boy Like it just hurts if I can't If I can't put it in And it's like, dude. Gross.

Kim and David went to dinner and then started arguing in Kim's car. He wasn't willing to open up to her and she was going to leave. He wouldn't see her again. They yelled at each other and then settled down. Detectives in the van thought the night was a bust. Then, David said it. Okay, I'll tell you. I killed both of Cindy's parents.

Later, he said, she fucking begged me to do it. And I wanted to do it. She offered me a lot of money. She stood there with me and I shot each of them three times. And still later, Cindy's the one that fucking planned it. She's going to give me $25,000. I don't feel any remorse. All I did was administered justice.

There was a plan in place for this eventuality. Kim said, I'm out of cigarettes and started driving to a nearby circle K. She skipped out of the car and the police van pulled right in beside the car and cops piled out with their guns drawn. David West was arrested. The same day before he and Kim had gone out, David had told a roommate what he thought of her. Just buckle up for this. Okay. This is what he told his roommate about Kim.

I'm going to marry her. She's the perfect Aryan woman, big bone, strong and blue-eyed. She'll make a good breeder. She's intelligent, but she's not wimpy. She goes out there and does things. What did I just say about, like, soldier of force and making you more efficiently racist? What did I just say? He's right out of central casting.

She goes out there, does things. She certainly does, Davy Boy. Things like getting your creepy fedora wearing ass tossed in jail. Honestly, I'm half convinced that this guy is a time traveler from like mid-2000s fortune. He so is. He missed his always. He really did. He would do numbers on like in cell forums.

He would do so good. Oh, yeah. He would be so popular. So Cindy was arrested, but the case against her was almost in time. based on the recordings that Kim Paris had made, and that made it uncomfortably flimsy. To be confident of a conviction, the prosecution needed David to directly testify about Cindy's involvement in the shootings. The only way they'd get that was by making a deal. If David agreed to testify, he'd get two life sentences instead of facing the death penalty. He agreed.

Cindy's trial was an uncomfortable experience with the prosecution bringing up all of her unfounded allegations against her parents just to show how quickly they dissolved in the light of day. And the defense made a very gross attempt to parlay the fact that two of the Campbell daughters were gay into evidence that like the whole family was obviously a breeding ground for perverts. Good God Almighty. Nobody should be nostalgic for the 80s. Okay. The clothes and the music, yes. The politics, no. Jesus. Cindy was found guilty, surprise, surprise, and also given two life sentences. She died in prison in 2021 at the age of 65, and David West is still behind bars, and you can tell which prison he's in by the visible funk rising from the roof as you drive up.

You know, you can see the Great Wall of China from the space station. They also can track. They can also see the jail. David West is it? The stink lines. Yep. And I want to point out, out that this man had two sort of successful relationships in his life, okay? And they were a woman who was manipulating him to murder her parents for her and a private eye who was manipulating him to try and get him to confess to it. And that was literally the only two successful relationships this man ever had. Bless him. So we'll leave you with that. You know, like I hate to say it, but I think he could probably do numbers with the, with the hybristophiliacs. I think I think maybe he's doing I think he's oh I hope not I think he could he's just love after lockup

he's a little he's a little too pathetic for him though they like him to be a little uh yeah less pathetic they yeah he's well he's puppy dog but he's also got that like sort of fake strong man thing about him so yeah you never know if he could put on a good enough act in his letters or whatever he could probably get a groupie they liked gasey so who knows oh god I know that's insane good lord so here we go again y'all more narcissistic manipulation more terminal main character syndrome

and another dude with a desperate need to prove himself to be bigger and badder and braver than he really was James and Virginia lost their lives Michael and Matthew lost the people who'd been parents to them since they were tiny Cindy's sisters lost their mom and dad and their sense of security

and in the end Cindy wasn't even satisfied with the spoils spent the rest of her life bitter and angry and paint herself as the victim until the day she died in prison. Kind of seems like it wasn't worth it, huh? Now, we have something special for you today. If you have Investigation Discovery, Max, or Discovery Plus, you can tune in on December 22nd to watch Your Girl Whitney here on the show Very Scary People. Remember our episode about the Sun Jim Gang, the murders the movie Pain and Gain is based on? Well, Investigation Discovery must have liked that episode.

because they invited me down to Miami to talk about it on camera. That episode will air on Investigation Discovery at 9 p.m. on the 22nd, and it'll be streaming after that, so give it a watch, and please be kind. It's my first time on TV, and I'm going to be watching through my fingers. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire.

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