True Crime Campfire - For the Thrill of It: Killer Couple BJ and Erika Sifrit, Pt 2

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

When we left you at the end of part 1, married couple BJ and Erika Sifrit had decided to take a break from their demanding schedule of selling scrapbook supplies and burgling local businesses and drive down to Ocean City, Maryland for a little vacation…join us now for part 2 of this chilling true story. Sources:Cruel Death by M. William PhelpsA&E's "American Justice," episode "Thrill Kill Couple"Investigation Discovery's "People Magazine Investigates"Cape Cod Times: https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2005/02/25/life-sentence-ordered-in-beheading/50917379007/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.com/Become 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. When we left you at the end of part one, married couple BJ and Erica Seifred had decided to take a break from their demanding schedule of selling scrapbook supplies and burgling local businesses and drive down to Ocean City, Maryland for a little vacation. Join us now for Part 2, For the Thrill of It. Another couple were excited about their beach vacation that week, too.

Joshua Ford and Jeannie Crutchley had been together for about three years by May of 2002. At first glance, they might have seemed like a little bit of an odd couple, mostly because Jeannie was 19 years older than Josh. She was 51, and Josh was 32. But it didn't take people long to realize that they were great together. They'd met at a Christmas party and hit it off like mad, and before long they were moving in together, into a nice house in Fairfax, Virginia, where Joshua had a great job lined up, and acting like an old married couple who were still head over heels for each other. Jeannie got along great with Zachary, Josh's year old son from a previous marriage. She was one of the nicest people I ever met, Zachary

told People magazine much later. He'd never seen her raise her voice or treat anybody badly. She was a lovely person, but mostly Zachary liked her because she made his dad happy. Josh and his ex-wife had been high school sweethearts and they were still friends. Zachary was the light of his dad's life and they spent lots of quality time together, bonding over their favorite sports teams and over karate too. Joshua was an experienced martial artist. He grew up in the sport. His dad owned a karate gym, a dojo, and all three of the men in the Ford family had a tattoo of the logo. Josh had a special ring to symbolize his connection to the family passion, too. Two silver dragons, and he wore it almost all the time. Josh and Jeannie both had busy jobs. Josh was a mortgage broker, and Jeannie was

an accountant for an insurance company. They liked to work hard and play hard, and by the time Memorial Day weekend rolled around, they were ready for a break. They met BJ and Erica Seifret waiting for the shuttle bus to Secrets, a popular nightclub on the strip. BJ and Erica were already pretty messed up. They'd been drinking all day, and Erica had been snorting her Xanax pills, and BJ didn't have exact change for the bus. According to Josh's son, Zachary, Josh was always an absolute light in the lives with people around him, one of those people who never meet a stranger. Gargarious, funny, generous, and sweetheart that he was, when he saw that B.J. and Erica didn't have

the right change for the bus ride, he offered to cover their fare. They were going to secrets too, he said. They sat together on the bus and chatted. I'll buy your first drinks when we get there, BJ said. They all had a pretty good time at the club. At first, anyway. Jeannie started to worry a little bit about Erica after a while, just because she was so wasted, but they still had fun. So when Erica and BJ invited them back to the rainbow condos to hang out in the hot tub, Josh and Jeannie said, sure, they went back to their hotel to get their bathing suits first, and then they all shuttled back to the rainbow. At first, everything was fine, fun. Joshua brought a little weed, and he and Jeannie smoked some with BJ in the living room while they chatted. But Erica seemed edgy

for some reason. She was moving around the condo kind of frenetically as if she were looking for something. Purse, her precious favorite coach bag, where she kept all her pills and expensive jewelry. She couldn't find it, supposedly. For some bizarre reason, Erica called 911 at some point in all this. She sounded a bit out of it on the call. There are people in my house that I don't know and my purse is suddenly missing and I'm afraid we're going to have a robbery here, she told the dispatcher, but she wouldn't give

an address. Why did she call 911? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, we know Erica's an anxious little gremlin, so maybe she was genuinely freaked out when she couldn't find her purse, and she just panicked for a minute, and then thought better of it, thought she'd rather handle it herself, her and BJ. And handle it, they did. Erica came storming downstairs.

BJ, I can't find my purse. And from this moment onward, things went very dark. BJ took out his gun and brandished it at Joshua and Jeannie, who were completely baffled by the sudden turn their night had taken. They'd been having fun up until now. But now, Erica and BJ were acting unhinged, accused. using them of stealing Erica's expensive purse full of pills and diamond jewelry. Now, Erica and BJ have each told multiple stories about what happened next, and I'm sure

most, if not all of them, were full of lies. What I'm about to describe to you is what the prosecutor believes happened based on the evidence. I know we're a true crime pod, okay, and I know not everybody loves content warnings in a true crime pod, but believe me when I tell you, this next part is rough. So listen at your discretion for the next few minutes. strip, B.J. said. Joshua and Jeannie looked at each other, then back to V.J. Like, come on, man, why? BJ brandished the gun at them. Get naked. Now. What could they do? Josh and Jeannie did what he told them, stripping off their clothes. Look, see, they said, we don't have Erica's stuff. But B.J. wouldn't let up. Just kept swearing at them, threatening them with the gun. Why are you doing this, Joshua said.

his family described him as a guy who could make friends with anybody anywhere they'd never met anybody who didn't like him so josh had every reason to think he might be able to calm b j down defuse the situation and get out of it alive but the thing about good people is they don't have that darkness in them so they can have trouble seeing it coming until it's too late sometimes fuck you asshole b jay said naked now and frantic to get away from b jay and his gun josh and genie ran into the bathroom and lock themselves in. The next few seconds or so, the moments between Joshua and Jeannie locking that bathroom door and the actual murders, I'm going to skip for now, because there's something about that part that I need to wait till later to tell you. But suffice it to say, as Joshua and Jeannie tried frantically to get help by banging on the window above the jacuzzi tub, B.J. shot through the locked door. Then he kicked it open. Josh was lying on the floor. He'd been shot, and he was still screaming, why are you doing this? B.J.'s response was to shoot him again, fatally, in the head.

Terrified, Jeannie tried to get as far away from B.J. and Erica as she could, sliding over to the vanity and trying to curl up underneath it. She had just seen the love of her life murdered. She had to know she was trapped. According to Erica, B.J. was elated by the whole scene. He took off his shirt and rubbed some of Joshua's blood all over his face and chest before turning back to Jeannie. Now, we don't know for sure how Jeannie Crutchley died. We only know for sure that it was murder.

There are at least two stories, that BJ killed her while Erica was out of the room, then demanded Erica checked to see if she was dead by stabbing her with a knife, and that Erica stabbed her to death herself. Got a cobra tattoo to commemorate it the next day, right where she stuck the knife into Jeannie. What's the true story? We don't know.

All they ever found of Jeannie was one leg. We do know Erica got the tattoo, though, so there's that. The aftermath of these murders, as described by Erica later on, is one of the worst things I've ever encountered in my life, and we don't know how much of it's true. Some of the stuff might have been Erica's attempt to make BJ into a bigger boogeyman than he already is, just to sell the idea that she only went along with the murders because he scared her.

It's hard to think about this stuff. We never want to share gruesome stuff just for the sake of shock value, but in this case, I think it's actually important to share some of this detail, at least, because it shows us beyond any shadow of a doubt, the kind of creatures that we are dealing with in BJ and Erica Seifred. And reminds us, I hope, that they both need to stay in prison for the rest of their lives. Some crimes, you know, you can pay your debt to society and move on with your life, but there's no way to pay back a debt like this. And before we get into this, I want to make something very clear. Joshua and Jeannie did not steal anything of Erika's. I don't know for sure if Erica even really believed that she lost her stuff that night,

or if it was just a ruse to set the murders in motion. It could be that she genuinely thought she'd been robbed at first, and then she and BJ just took the situation and ran with it, which seems like the most likely theory in a way, given that she did actually call 911 at one point, either that or she just kind of panicked for a second and tried to shut it down and then changed her mind again. I just wanted to make it clear to everybody that these two were completely innocent victims

and did not in any way rob or threaten these two shit stains. Not that it would have justified this regardless, but they didn't do it. And for the record, I think they both fought heroically for their lives and for each others, too, which I guarantee you is more than these toxic idiots would have done for each other. So after the murders, high on what he'd just done, BJ stripped totally naked, ordered Erica to bring him some garbage bags, and started dismembering the bodies in the jacuzzi. He had experience with human anatomy from his Navy medic training. Erica refused to help with this part, supposedly, and was so freaked out she peed her pants and threw up, about which BJ made fun of her, of course.

But BJ was obviously reveling in every minute of it. Erica said he was sexually amped up, which is just beyond disturbing. He kept telling her, come in here and look at this. Isn't this a beautiful sight and all this awful stuff? It's important to note that it must have taken many hours for BJ to dismember two bodies, and Erica could have left the condo and gone for help at any. time. And she didn't. There's a lot more I could tell you here. It's all really upsetting, and if you really want to know all the details you can read and William Phelps' book on the case,

but I think I'm just going to leave it at this. Erica later told Detective Bernal that BJ had asked her to take a picture of him, holding up parts of the victim's bodies, so he could send it to his seal friends. She said she did it, and she said that in the picture, you can see that he's aroused. Ugh. Erica said she used her digital camera to take the picture and then shipped the memory card back home. Now, as far as I could tell, though, they never found the picture, so who knows if this is true? Would I put it past BJ? No, I would not.

I think he's exactly the kind of trash who gets off on dishonoring people like this. What we do know is that the bodies were cut into pieces and put into various bags and luggage. And for the next few days, Erica and BJ alternated between murder cleanup, and partying. This was BJ and Erica's first night in Ocean City. The first night of their big vacation. So in between extensive cleaning sessions and visits to Home Depot for bathroom door replacement supplies, they partied, ate crab legs and pizzas, went tanning, drank, played

mini golf, and as Erica always did, she took plenty of pictures for her scrapbooks. The pictures which the investigators would find in the condo later, were disturbing. If you didn't know what the detectives knew, they'd just look like average beach vacation shots. Cute stuff. Drinks on the beach. Erica getting her new tattoo,

which not to veer too far off track is an insane choice for a beach vacation. Like, you might as well dip your new tattoo into a septic tank if you're going to go to the beach. Oh my God. It's a vivid image. Thanks for that. You're welcome.

Anyway, all the photos look to be of a young married couple with their arms around each other looking tan and happy. But to Detective Bernal, knowing what he knew, that most of these pictures had been taken after the murders, they were just ghoulish. In a lot of the shots, he could see Josh Ford's blood-flecked ring

on a chain around Erica's neck, a murder trophy, just like the kind serial killers are notorious for keeping. And this wasn't the only evidence that Erica wasn't the scared victim she would later claim to be. At one point, detectives talked to the Ocean City, tattoo artist who gave Erica the cobra tattoo after the murders, inspired by Juliet

Lewis and natural-born killers, of course. The guy said Erica and BJ seemed to be having a grand old dime. They joked around and chatted with him as he worked on her. When Erica kind grimaced at the pain and the artist asked her if she was okay, BJ said, don't worry about her. She's a fighter. She can take a punch. They talked about one of their favorite movies, American History X. B.J. modeled his own swastika tattoo after one of the characters in the movie. Ew. These two twins have zero personality.

They're like, I don't know what I want for a tattoo, but I know I like these movies. Like, if you're going to get a swastika tattoo, don't because you're a hateful bigot. But like, say it with your whole chest, dude. Just do it. Jesus Christ. It's just kind of right above the booby.

Yeah. Anyway, according to the tattoo artist, Erica seemed to be happy to be there with B. BJ, not at all nervous or afraid of him. Their vibe was just happy couple on vacation. The same vibes came out in some security footage the investigators looked at later, where they could see BJ and Erica stop outside a restaurant and look at a missing person's flyer of Josh and Jeannie. Erica read the flyer and grinned, then followed BJ inside. Oh, God, that's so creepy. There were a lot of things that gave the investigators chills.

As they were processing the bathroom, the CSI's noticed faint handprints on the window above the jacuzzi tub, where Josh and Jeannie had hammered on the window trying to get someone, anyone's attention. Investigators also found a lady from the Home Depot, where BJ and Erica bought all the bathroom repair stuff. She remembered Erica and BJ carrying a part of a door and trying to match a paint color. Would you believe this is all that's left of my bathroom door? Erica said laughing. That must have been some party, the lady said. Erica laughed. I guess you could call it that, she said.

Sure didn't seem uneasy or scared like she'd later claim she was, not even a little bit. And you'll know what happened a few days into the trip because we told you at the start of part one. The natural-born dill weeds decided to rob a hooters, tripped a silent alarm, and got themselves caught. And when Erica made the genius decision to ask one of the cops to go in her purse and get her Xanax, They found Josh and Jeannie's IDs. After that, came the search of the Seifert's condo, the discovery of all that blood, and some very frustrating conversations with these two unfrosted pop-tarts back at the station. BJ didn't say much of anything, just talk to my wife.

But Erica, ooh boy, she was all over the place, from Joshua and Jeannie, never heard of them, to, okay, BJ killed them both, and I was just too scared to tell anyone and beyond. Her story had so many versions, the detectives lost count. One of the first things Erica did was lead detective Bernal in a nice little wild goose chase around Ocean City in the surrounding area looking for the dumpster where she and Beage supposedly dumped the bodies. She wanted to try and score herself a deal, see? Her parents had already hired her a rock star defense attorney,

a guy with a thoroughly awesome name of Archangelo Tuminelli, aka Arkey. And of course Arkey was all for the first. idea of a deal, but he made sure Erica knew she had to tell the truth in order to get it. So early on, in the investigation, Bernal loaded her up in the back of a squad car and told her to tell him where to go to find the victim's remains. And it was a shit show. The entire time he was driving her around, Erica kept asking Bernal stuff like, do you think I'm pretty? Do you think I'm a good person? Okay, but do you really think I'm pretty?

Girl, what? You are looking for bodies. Like, it was bonkers. Finally, she pointed out a dumpster, like, there, that's the one. The CSIs spent hours searching the damn thing before they finally realized Erica was just blowing smoke up their asses. All they found in that dumpster was old carpet and stuff. And Detective Bernal was pissed. He was like, what did you and BJ do, Erica, dump him in a ditch? And at that, as Detective Bernal later told People magazine, it was like a switch flipped. Erica morphed into a different person from the one who'd spent the day asking if he thought she was pretty.

How dare you, I'll slit your throat from ear to ear. B.J. would never throw a body in a ditch. And then she said, we cut them up and threw their bodies in a few different dumpsters. This threw Bernal for a loop. He wasn't expecting dismemberment. The investigators didn't trust Erica as far as they could toss her, seeing as how she changed stories faster than most people change their underpants. Even Archie Tuminelli could tell she was full of shit.

Of course, he doesn't put it like that exactly. He just says he could tell she wasn't telling everything she knew. Right from the jump, he felt sure she was a lot more involved than she was telling the investigators. I mean, Erica had a knife and a gun on her at the time of her arrest, and they both had the victim's blood and tissue on them. Her little trip with Bernal to various dumpsters all over creation was pure bullshit, they felt sure. She was just trying to seem cooperative without actually giving them anything. Or shit, she might have just wanted an excuse to ride around with Detective Bernal

so she could quiz him about whether she was pretty or not. Arkey told Erica, look, I can get the dead. death penalty and life without parole off the table, but I can't get you out of a murder charge unless we're all 100% sure you're telling the whole truth. Prosecutor says, you got to take a polygraph and you got to pass it. No problem, Erica said. And finally, she gave them something they could actually use, the exact dumpsters and the exact type of garbage bags they'd put the body parts into.

This led the investigators to a specific landfill, and after days of hot, exhausting searches, with seagulls shrieking all around them and a smell most people cannot even imagine, a sanitation worker looked up and saw a human leg. Nearby, they found a military-type duffel bag containing a torso and an arm. The arm had a distinctive tattoo, the dragon logo, from Joshua Ford's dad's karate gym. That was all they found. Joshua Ford's torso and arm, Jeannie Crutchley's leg. It was heartbreaking that they never found all the remains of these two people who had brought so light into the lives of the people around them.

But they did find some crucial evidence. Inside Joshua Ford's torso, the medical examiner found a bullet, and that bullet matched the gun found on Erica, the night of her arrest outside Hooters. So she'd given them something tangible now, and it was looking promising for Erica. If she'd take and pass a polygraph about what happened the night of the murders and agree to testify against BJ, she could score a pretty sweet deal.

Get out of prison and time to start a new life. But Erica's attorney couldn't shake the worry that she was still lying or holding something back. But when he asked her, she swore up and down she'd told him everything she knew. B.J. killed Joshua and Jeannie. I was just there. I was too scared to tell anybody. But everybody in Erica's corner was about to get a nasty shock. During one of the interviews, Detective Bernal suddenly blurted out, Okay, Erica. What about the second couple? Erica's lawyer felt his stomach hit the floor.

What second couple? See, the investigators had been burning the midnight oil going through all BJ and Erica's vacation picks and tracking down every single person in them. One of those pictures showed a grinning Erica draped all over an uncomfortable-looking young woman in a bar. Her name, it turned out, was Melissa Sealing. Melissa met BJ and Erica four nights after the murders. when her friend Todd called her up, drunk, and begged her to come join him in this super fun couple he met earlier in the night. Melissa didn't want to do it at first. She was supposed to be flying to Hawaii in a couple days and she had stuff to do.

But Todd was persistent. So finally, Melissa gave in and drove down to Ocean City to have a couple drinks with him and his two new besties. When she got to the bar and met up with Todd, BJ and Erica, she almost immediately regretted it. BJ was giving her weird vibes and he was hammered. so much that he barfed all over the table at one point to which Erica reacted by taking out her camera and snapping a pick precious memories you know imagine that scrapbook page

oh my that's the crate that's almost the weirdest thing in the whole story why you would take a picture of a puddle of sick yeah well I'm picturing that I'm picturing all the like fancy like cut out glitter and like stickers you know glitter vomit I just you know Good God. She is such a weird, weird human being. Erica was acting crazier and crazier as the night went on, and Melissa's friend Todd, aka Drunken Hines, was no help. He was lit to the gills himself, drunker than Melissa had ever seen

him, which makes me wonder if they drugged him. I wonder about that too, actually, because like in the book, she kept saying, like, I have never seen him that hammered. Of course, it could have also just been that they were encouraging him to just keep drinking and drinking. and, yeah, he was trying to keep up with them. Totally. Finally, one of the bouncers noticed BJ trying to pick the lock on an ATM in the corner and told them they needed to leave.

And Erica wigged out. She spit on the guy, cursed him. And then, as the guy started to get a little more authoritative, she suddenly pulled her gun out of her bag. I'll kill you, she screamed. Everybody around them froze, but BJ just seemed mildly amused. He just took her by the arm,

Like, come on, babe, let's go. Jeez. After this, Melissa was beyond ready to go the hell home and never see these people again. When BJ and Erica invited her and Todd back to their condo to keep the party going, she said, no thanks. But when they got to the rainbow condominiums, BJ ran over to Melissa's car and motioned for her to open the window. Can you please help me get Erica upstairs? She's really out of it. Ugh, fine.

Which is so Bundy that, like, is. It makes my, like, a hair stand on it. It's so creepy. It's so bundy. This whole thing is beyond creepy. I know. Weirdly, though, once they all got upstairs to the Seifrit's penthouse condo, Erica suddenly seemed fine, asked if Melissa wanted a tour of the place.

Suddenly, she and B.J. were acting much more normal and together. It was strange, but kind of reassuring, too. Todd was still so hammered he could barely stand. Erica was showing Melissa some of her favorite clothes and jewelry. when suddenly she looked up and said, Where's my purse? From here, Melissa's story was eerily similar to what happened the night of the murders. Campers, I'm a little hesitant to admit this,

but I am a mourning person. I know. It's my person. shame. Everyone hates me. Despite that deep personal secret, because of the hours I keep, I end up being pretty groggy in the morning, and instead of just slapping more caffeine on the problem, I wanted to look for something that wouldn't make me a jittery ball of anxiety all day. That's where Magic Mind comes in. Magic Mind is a fully optimized blend of adaptogens, nootropics, and mushrooms combine in a convenient daily drink that can help you reduce stress

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science-backed shot of motivation. Again, that's magicmind.com slash campfire using code campfire 20. Grab the 30 pack for the best bang for your buck. Erica and BJ started freaking out about Erica's allegedly missing purse, and as everybody ran around the condo looking for it, BJ became more and more threatening, brandishing his gun. At one point, BJ grabbed Melissa's face in his hands. If you're ripping us off, he said, we had a couple other people try that the other night,

and if you've ripped us off, I'll do the same thing to you that I did to them. They were bad people, BJ said, and I'm ridding the, the earth of bad people. This terrifying scene played out for a few more minutes. Then finally, in a weirdly exaggerated voice, BJ said, Oh, look what I found! And from behind a sofa cushion, he pulled Erica's purse. How convenient.

Especially since Melissa had just checked there a couple minutes earlier and hadn't found anything. And a couple minutes later, as if nothing had happened, he plopped down on the couch, pulled Erica onto his lap, looked at Melissa and Todd, and said, Okay, we need to have some sex now. What? Melissa was never happier to get the fuck out of a place in her life. She grabbed Todd and peeled out of there. Later, she thought back to the trashed bathroom door

she'd noticed in the condo with what looked like a bullet hole in it. Erica sat in the interview room at her pre-polygraph interview telling them all this. From her point of view, of course, not Melissa's. Of course, she made it sound like BJ was the one and only culprit. But here's the thing. If Erika was so terrified of B.J., why would she actively participate in luring a second couple into the exact same scenario that ended in the murders of Josh and Jeannie? Bernal and his colleagues were convinced by now, Erica was every bit as guilty as B.J.

As Arki sat listening to his client admit to this night with a second couple, he thought, okay, this isn't a disaster necessarily, as long as she passes the Polly, we're still okay. I mean, the second couple walked out alive, right? I'm sure we're still fine. probably and erika swore up and down that there was nothing else she'd kept from her attorney now as y'all probably know the first step before a polygraph test is an extensive pre-interview on the day erika was scheduled to take that when he sat her down and said you need to tell me everything before you take this test erika confirmed it again i've told you everything i swear and she seemed totally casual to the investigators in a good mood if anything got into a girly girl chat with one of the

female detectives about coach bags and jewelry. Asked, hey, will I get my diamonds back at some point? You know, priorities, right? She didn't seem like she had a care in the world. One of Erica's big themes was that BJ was trying to frame her for the murders, even though he hadn't said a damn word yet. Beech never gave me a Christmas present until this year, she told the detectives. We don't celebrate because he doesn't believe in Jesus, but this year he gave me a Smith and Wesson. I've never fired it, though, she said. That was the one BJ used to kill Josh. He's trying to frame me with that gun. That seemed to be her narrative still.

BJ did all this on his own. He's a sicko. But sitting with the investigators before her polygraph test, Erica was about to blow up her entire deal with the prosecutors. She started talking about the B&E she and B.J. did together. Just for the fun of it. BJ was an expert at lock picking. She didn't really want to do it at first,

but then it became a rush and she loved it. He'd picked the lock. She'd slip in and steal. the stuff while he played lookout. And suddenly, in the middle of the story about the murders, Erica blurted out that when Joshua and Jeannie locked themselves in the bathroom, BJ looked over at her and said, what should I do? Just fucking do it, Erica said. Just do what, the interviewer wanted to know. Kill them.

The investigator was stunned. BJ had asked her what to do, and she told him. Now you have me on murder, Erica. said, uh, yeah. Down the hall, Erica's defense attorney was waiting for her to take her polygraph, blissfully unaware that his client had just blown their deal into a billion, million, trillion smithereens. I'm sure he died a thousand deaths when he found out, poor guy. I know. As the investigators scooped their lower jaws up off the floor of the interview room,

Erica elaborated. Beech had been wanted to kill somebody for a while now, she said. In fact, he just asked me, like a week earlier, if he could kill my whole family, like everybody, mom, dad, grandma, granddad's, her wealthy auntie, the whole fam. That way, Erica would inherit a butt pile of cash and they could flee to Argentina and start a fabulous new life. Damn. Erica said all this in the same tone of voice you'd use to talk about your second cousin's wedding coming up. Just, yeah, I think they went with buttercream instead of cream cheese for the cake. Once she gave BJ the go-ahead, he looked at her and said, Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and waste them. Cool?

Erica said, yep. They were being really loud, Erica told the investigators. I just wanted them to shut up. Oh, charming. Yeah, not an ounce of remorse. So, as you can imagine, that was it for Erica's deal. Prosecutor Joel Todd let her and Archie Tuminelli know that he was going after both her and BJ for the first-degree murder of Joshua Ford

and the second-degree murder of Jeannie Crutchley, and he was planning to try them separately. Erica was furious. She was convinced the prosecutors were dazzled by BJ's association with the Navy Seals, going after her to protect him, which, yeah, Erica, that makes sense. That's why they're charging him with the murder, too,

because they want to protect him. She's a moron. She's so dumb. Erica's time in jail, waiting for trial, was kind of eventful. At one point, she wrote a letter to one of their best friends trying to feed her stuff to say on the stand about BJ's scary behavior. It was a whole bunch of, don't you remember this? Don't you remember that stuff?

Mostly the friend did not remember at all. It was blatant. It was blatant manipulation, and her friend was pissed. Another friend told Detective Bernal that Erica had confessed to her that she'd actually helped to dismember Jeannie's body, then kind of backpedaled. when Bernal asked her for more details. And at some point, our girl developed a little crush on a fellow inmate, a guy named Jimmy, whom she somehow met in passing at the jail. They bonded over their love of basketball.

Soon, she and Jimmy started writing letters back and forth, and yeah, buckle up. Interestingly, given Erica's racist leanings, remember her reading, mind-comf and loving every second of it. Jimmy was a black guy, and the first time she told one of her girlfriends about him, she went on and on and on about how he had a college degree, and he never misspelled a word in his letters. Oh, my God. Oh, how unusual.

Oh, he's so articulate. This bitch is the absolute worst. She just couldn't help herself. Going from microaggressions to just full-on macroaggressions and the blink of an eye. In her letters to Jimmy, Erica blathered on about her love of diamonds, her favorite fashion mags, how her mom could come off as kind of snoddy sometimes, but she didn't really mean to, and her OCD. She should talk to BJ, calling him her serial killer X and bitching about the Navy SEALs and how dishonorable they really were. She said BJ was trying to frame her.

And she told Jimmy that BJ hadn't been that interested in sex with her, something she'd also told. other friends in the past. The only thing that really seemed to get him off, she said, was doing crimes. He was more turned on by the murders than he'd ever been by her. Yikes. She also bragged about the million or so dollars her parents were ponying up on her attorney and said the biggest thing she was upset about was the thought of wasting her young years in prison and losing her hot body. She told him all about her and BJ's B&Es and their bustling little side hustle selling stolen Hooters merch on eBay. And in classic Eric fashion, she fell in love with Jimmy Stapp.

Started calling herself his wifey. Not that I'd be too excited about that if I were Jimmy. Yeah, I think Erica would fall in love with a mannequin if it had a cord she could pull to make it say, you're pretty. Yeah, I think that's also true of, like, literally any of the detectives, like, it could have been anybody. Jimmy just happened to have the bad look. But Erica fell way down the fantasy rabbit hole in her letters.

What would their life together be like? once they both got out of jail. Would his mom and dad accept her, even though she was white? I'm no ho, she reassured him. Jimmy noticed that the longer they wrote back and forth, the more slangy her language got. Like, talking about the Hooters merch, she and Beech still had stashed in storage. She said, there's still about 300 Gs out there. I don't know where it is no longer. You feel me? Oh, my God. Erica. The cringe. God, Almighty. Oh, Lord. And she wrote a lot. about sex and I could not bring myself to include most of it because it just made me want to

like go hide under the covers for the rest of my life. It's all in the William Phelps book. Oh, but it's so bad. She, yeah, she wrote a lot about sex. Elaborate paper sex, as she called it, stories with cheesy porn scenarios where she'd get railed by both Jimmy and her favorite soap opera hunks. Or they'd do it at a party in front of everybody. She bragged about her junk a lot. like how plump it was specifically which just seems like a weird flex to me like is that a thing yes i don't know maybe maybe it is i shouldn't ask questions i don't want the answers to but just ew she confided and jimmy about getting double teamed one time by two dudes at once and she made up a nickname for his penis it was of course mr chocolate no uh no no i know i'm so sorry mr chocolate

and she told him he could put Mr. Chocolate in her whenever he wanted once they got out of jail. Yeah, it was very gross. And before long, she had Mitch and Cookies sending Jimmy money, $40 or $50 at a time. So at least he got something out of it that wasn't horrifying. In one letter, Erica told Jimmy about crossing the courtyard between two of the buildings at the jail and looking up at a window to see BJ, quote, all jacked up and gritting his teeth, obviously trying to scare her. She said she was afraid he'd kill her whole family if he didn't get convicted. But prosecutor Joel Todd didn't think either BJ or Erica was more innocent or guilty than the other.

He agrees with us. They're both awful. And he thinks that, on their own, they might have been okay, but together they're poison. BJ went on trial first in the spring of 2003. Erica's was a few months later. I can only imagine what it was like for the families of the victims going through both trials in quick succession. Josh's brother Mark had already been through a hell like this once before. Just a year or so before Joshua's murder, Mark's adult daughter Kelly went missing. She just vanished for almost three months,

and then somebody out for a walk on Scusset Beach in Cape Cod found her body. She'd been murdered, decapitated, heart cut out of her chest, and buried in a shallow grave near the ocean. The case was still unsolved at the time our story starts here, but a few years later, serial killer Eugene McCollum confessed to a couple of very similar murders and was sentenced to life in prison. He's the main suspect in Kelly's case. Very few of us can imagine what it would be like to go through something like this once, let alone twice. Mark Ford was already grieving his daughter and dealing with the rage and despair that all murder victims' families have to navigate.

Now his brother was gone too. predictably, Beech and his attorney tried to sell the idea that Erika had done both the murders by herself. He was passed out drunk in the Jeep at the time, he told the jury. His only role was to help Erica get rid of the bodies. He did okay on direct examination from his attorney, but under cross-examination, he came off as nervous and shifty. Didn't do himself any favors. Melissa Sealing testified too. This poor woman got sucked into this terrifying, potentially deadly situation because of a friend

Todd, who by the time he called her, was so drunk he could barely stand up. But she was a badass on the witness stand at BJ's trial and later in Erika's two. She stuck to her guns no matter what the defense attorneys said to try and discredit her. She was firm. BJ told her he'd killed the last couple who'd messed with Erica's stuff. She couldn't remember if he'd said I killed or we killed, but she remembered the overall message. It didn't look good for B.J. But of course the prosecution had a problem, namely that the direct evidence mostly pointed to Erica. The bullet founded Joshua's bodies came from her gun, Josh and Jeannie's IDs in her purse, Josh's bloodstained ring on a chain around her neck, and this showed in BJ's verdict.

The jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and Jeannie's death, but not guilty of the first-degree murder of Joshua Ford. The prosecutors were sick over it, as were Josh and Jeannie's loved ones. B.J. was sentenced to 38 years in prison with the possibility of parole. He came up for his first shot at release a year or so ago, and he was denied. Thank God. Josh's son, Zachary, was at the parole hearing, and I'm sure he attends to be at the next one, too. Erica's strategy was, of course, to blame everything on B.J. But in this case, the prosecution had a ton of hard evidence, and Erica went down in flames. The jury convicted her on both murders, and she was sentenced to life plus 20 years with the chance of parole. Her first shot will be next year in 2024.

I think it's strange how completely BJ and Erica's friends and family seem to miss the point in this case. In just about every source I've seen, the friends on both sides seem totally convinced that the other partner led their sweet friend astray. Yeah, it's bizarre. I guess it's a little more understandable from Erica's friends. I mean, as far as I know, there weren't any major indications before she met Beege that she was going to do something as horrific as this. Yeah, but like with BJ's buddies, that just floors me. It's like, you're surprised that he's a piece of shit. Really?

If a giant swastika tattoo above the nip-knop ain't enough of a red flag for you, I don't know how to help you. Yeah, like all BJ's friends claim he was just this sort of quiet, goofy guy before he met Erica, never. showed any violent tendencies, blah, blah, blah, and then he met Erica, and it all changed. And Erica was just sugar and spice before BJ. But that's just not reality. It's not how people work. Not that fast, anyway, not without, like, cult indoctrination or something. Right.

The fact of the matter is, folks, Erica and BJ are both assholes, each in their own special way. And unfortunately, for Josh and Jeannie, they're the kind of assholes who really blossom, them, you know, when they come together. Somebody, in the case, one of the detectives, I forget which, said in an interview that they were like a match and a stick of dynamite. And that's a pretty accurate way to put it, I think. A match made in hell. Yeah, I mean, I doubt Erica would have killed anybody if she hadn't met BJ, but I cannot

say the same about him. BJ had a deep interest in this shit, and I don't think there's a drop of human empathy in that man. And you learn more about that in the book. like the kind of books he was interested in and how he loved to play mind games and manipulate people. He's a total creep. But I think Erica is basically just hollow on the inside, the type to become whatever the man she's with wants her to be, even to the point of total destruction, whether it's hers or somebody else's. I think BJ was intoxicating to Erica because she'd

always felt left out of her parents' relationship. So she, I think more than anything else in the world, wanted a ride or die, or to be one for somebody else at least. And maybe burglary and murder was a way for her to prove to herself that she and BJ were ride or die, which is funny to me because, of course, they threw each other under the bus immediately. Yeah, I mean, you know, their love will go down in history, I guess, you know. I guess that's true. Romeo and Juliet and these two dipshits.

It's also worth noting that she pulled. the whole, who took my purse trick before, falsely accusing people of stealing it when she knew where it was, just to cause drama and scare people. She wrote about it in her journal. One time she and BJ had gone to a tattoo parlor, and as soon as they got inside, Erica realized she'd left her purse at home. So, completely normally, she accused some girls in the shop of taking it, freaked out, made a big scene, got the girls all upset and scared that they were going to get the cops called on them and then laughed with BJ about it later. Yeah, which really reinforces for me that this might have actually been a planned thing, not just a crime of opportunity. And back to Melissa

and Todd, I think they literally dodged a bullet that night. I fully believe that Erica and BJ lured them back to that condo to kill them. And I'm not sure why they didn't. I mean, maybe BJ just realized he was too drunk. Maybe it occurred to them that they didn't have enough days left in that condo to clean up another crime. Maybe they just kind of lost their stomach for it at the last minute. I don't know. But I believe that they were planning something horrible that night. And do I think it could happen again if they get out? Hell yeah. I think these two need to stay in prison for the rest of their lives. So Maryland parole board, I hope you're hearing this. 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,

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