True Crime Campfire - Impostor: The Murder of Tim Wicks

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

The fable of the wolf in sheep’s clothing has always been one of my favorites. You know the one—A hungry wolf can’t get close enough to grab a sheep for dinner because the shepherd is so vigilant. But one day he finds a sheepskin, and slips it on. Now he just looks like one of the flock. He can slip right in among ‘em. And when the shepherd’s back is turned, bam. Dinnertime. Now that is a perfect murder metaphor. How many cases have we seen where a predator manages to hide in plain sight, cloaked by his ability to seem like a super nice guy? More than I can count. And here’s another one. Join us for the story of Tim Wicks, a kindhearted musician with a close circle of friends, who set off for a new adventure in Canada, only to disappear without a trace. When Tim's name later popped up in North Dakota as an accountant under investigation for embezzlement, his friends were baffled. Was Tim living a double life? Or was something more sinister at work? Sources:Court papers: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/nd-supreme-court/1106318.html https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14082874Journal Sentinel, "Fatal Identity: A Five-Part Series" by Gina Barton: https://archive.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/Fatal-Identity-364036301.html/NBC News, "The Tale of Two Timothy Wicks": https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14082874Oxygen's A Lie to Die For, Episode “A Stolen Life” Investigation Discovery's To Catch a Killer, Episode “The Real Tim Wicks” 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/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: 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. I always like that fable of the wolf and sheep's clothing. You know the one. A hungry wolf can't get close enough to grab a sheep for dinner because the shepherd is so very vigilant. But one day, he finds a sheepskin and slips it on. Now he just looks like one of the flock. He can slip right in among them. And when the shepherd's back is turned, bam, dinner time. Now that is a perfect murder metaphor. How many cases have we seen where a predator manages to hide in plain sight, cloaked by his ability to seem like a super nice guy? More than I can count. And here's another one. This is Imposter, the murder of Timothy Wicks.

So campers, for this one, we start out in Hales Corner, Wisconsin, a quiet little suburban village just outside of Milwaukee. On January 15, 2002, a little group of friends came into the police department to talk to Kent Schoonover, the one and only police detective in this sleepy little town. They were worried, they said, about their buddy Tim Wicks. Tim was a drummer, and a few weeks ago he'd gotten a gig playing in a band up in Winnipeg. His friends hadn't heard from him since, and nobody seemed to be able to reach him. Tim was 48 years old, single, and a really damn good drummer. He'd studied at the Berkeley College of Music.

He was a seriously talented musician. But as a lot of us artsy types are painfully aware of, seriously talented doesn't always translate to seriously successful. Drumming didn't pay the bills, so Tim also worked as a house painter. He didn't work for a company or have any assistance or anything like that. It was just him, and that was how he liked it. Tim was kind of a loner, not in an unfriendly way, but he could be a little shy and he preferred to work by himself. He did have friends, though, and they loved him.

Tim was a relaxed, chilled out dude, really easy to like, and he still dreamed about making her career out of drumming. This gig up in Canada was exactly what he'd been waiting for, a chance to make 800 bucks a week doing what he loved and built up his reputation in the music scene. Now, if you followed a few missing persons cases before, it probably won't surprise you to hear that Detective Schoonover was, at least at first, not very concerned about Tim Wicks. It's hard enough to get the cops to jump to it about any adult missing person, but a 48-year-old guy who's self-employed with no family and told his friends he was going to be out of the country for a while. It wasn't like Tim had vanished from the face of the earth, he just hadn't called his friends in a couple weeks. Didn't seem like anything to call a dateline about. But Tim's friends insisted something was wrong. He didn't have a huge circle of buds, but the ones he did have, he liked to stay in touch with.

They talked on the phone all the time. He'd said he'd call when he got to Winnipeg, but he hadn't, and Tim just wasn't the type to flake out on something like that. If he said he was going to call, he'd call. If they'd been visiting a bigger, busier police department, Tim's friends might have left frustrated with the classic, look, your friend's an adult, he can go missing if he wants to. But unlike a lot of bigger city detectives, Kent Schoonover actually had a little time on his hands. He figured he'd spend a few hours and see if he could get in touch with Tim. He still wasn't at all worried about the guy. He just wanted to give these

friends some peace of mind. Oh, Kent, you're lucky because I was about to roast you with the power of a thousand sons. I know, right? We've seen it too many times. too many times. So he went over to Tim's apartment complex and talked to the manager there. Tim had told her the same thing he'd told his friends that he was going to be up in Canada for a while playing drums in a bar. Tim had already paid his January rent and she wasn't worried at all, but she agreed to let Detective schoon over into Tim's apartment. Nothing in there seemed unusual. There was a big open space in the living room where Tim usually kept his drums. Obviously, he'd taken them with him to Canada. There were some things in the fridge, but nothing that was going to go bad,

quickly. It looked just like Tim had told his friends, like he was just planning to go away for a little while, but not forever. Nothing suspicious. And he left a note with the apartment manager. It read, if you do need to get a hold of me, here's a number. I'm with my friend Dennis. So,

great. Schoonover took the note. He could call this number, talk to Tim, and hopefully get all this cleared up. Back at the station, Schoonover called. A guy answered the phone. Hi, this is Detective Kent Schoonover from Hales corner, Wisconsin. I'm looking for a Tim Wicks. There was a brief silence. I don't know a Tim Wicks, the guy said. You must have the wrong number. Oh, okay, Detective Schoonover said. Who's this I'm

talking to? Again, an odd little pause, and then the guy said, Dennis. Okay, what's your last name, Dennis? He asked. Uh, Johnson. I'm Dennis. Dennis paperclip. Yeah, that's it. Dennis paperclip coming from a long line of paper clips. It's like straight out of that episode of Brady Bunch, like Sher Jan. Yeah, exactly. I don't think you'd need to be Sherlock Holmes to hear that response and think, yeah, that guy's lying to me. So with his spidey senses all a tingle, schoon over. Press for more information. Where did Dennis live? Dennis Johnson answered right away this time, giving an address in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Now, Kent Schoonover's specialty as a detective was fraud. It was what he dealt with most in Hale's Corner, where there was almost no violent crime, and this Tim Wick's thing was starting to smell fishy. So when he hung up with Dennis Johnson, he called up the Bismarck PD to try and check this guy out. And I know this is going to shock you. Not only did they not have anything on a Dennis Johnson, but the address schoonover gave them didn't even exist. And the phone number had a Fargo area code, not Bismarck. Oh, snap. So Dennis had most definitely lied to him, and Tim Wicks' disappearance was starting to feel like a bigger deal. The detective got a search warrant to take a closer look at

Tim's apartment. Nothing there really jumped out at him at first. But then the officer started to look through Tim's tax returns, which had been prepared by a company called Lotus Financial Services, specifically by an accountant called Dennis Gady. There are only so many Dennises in the world. Do you know a Dennis? I do not, actually. Yeah, I don't think I know a Dennis either, just menaces. And I think knowing two Dennises is probably some weird glitch in the Matrix thingy. Gady and Tim had met when Tim hired him to do his taxes, and they'd quickly become friends. They both loved music.

They could talk about it for hours on end. Schoonover ran the name Dennis Gady through the National Crime Information Center database, and let you know. The dude was wanted, both on a child support case and for helping a prisoner escape in Western Wisconsin. Holy shit. Yep, Dennis Gady was looking at jail time. Not a long stretch, but probably. a few years, so, okay. Tim had left contact information for Dennis Johnson, who was clearly lying about who he was, and was also associated with Dennis Gaidie, a criminal on the lamb.

You don't got to be Benoit Blanc to guess that these two Dennises were probably one and the same. What next? Well, Dennis had a Fargo number, so Schoonover called over there and asked to speak to one of their detectives and happened to get one by the name of Tammy Link. Did Fargo Fraggo PD have any information on a Dennis Gady? No, they did not. Okay, well, how about the missing person himself, Tim Wicks? Did Fargo PD know anything about him? That question had Detective Link rocking back in her chair because she absolutely did know a Tim Wicks. She was investigating him in an embezzlement case for stealing from the company where he worked as an accountant. In fact, she was supposed to be interviewing him later that day.

so this was weird why the hell would tim wicks tell his friends he was heading up to canada for a drumming gig and then move to fargo and become an accountant instead what kind of bizarre double life did this guy have going on there were things that detective link had uncovered in her embezzlement investigation that fit with what schoonover knew about tim like for example he'd go out for drinks with his co-workers sometimes to this club that had live music and he'd end up playing drums he was good they said everybody liked him at work They'd hired him through a placement agency, his boss said. He came really highly recommended. He'd aced all his qualification tests, but before long, the bloom was coming off the rose. The first signs of trouble were small. A little money would go missing here, a little there. Then the boss noticed a $4,000 check written to Petty Cash,

when the company didn't have a Petty Cash account. When they chased down the check, they found that it had ended up in Tim Wick's personal account. When they dug a little deeper, it got worse. Tim had given himself a Christmas bonus, too, when he had no business taking. It was time to call the police on Wix. That's where Detective Tammy Link got involved, and it was right around that time when Tim Wicks' friends back in Wisconsin reported him missing. Interesting.

But there were a couple things that didn't quite fit with the whole Tim Wicks has a double life theory. For one thing, when Scuner asked Detective Link to describe Tim Wicks, She was like, oh sure, he's a big guy, little over six feet, probably about 300 pounds, balding glasses. That was all wrong. According to his friends in Wisconsin, Tim Wicks was about 5'8, slightly built with a full head of gray hair like Steve Martin. And while Fargo Tim Wicks was married with a four-year-old stepson, Wisconsin Tim was single, no kids. And of course, Schoonover knew that Tim Wicks had been in Wisconsin up until a few weeks ago. And he wasn't a fraudster, at least not that anybody knew of.

The entirety of his police record was one solitary speeding ticket for going 44 in a 30-mile zone, and he wasn't great with numbers. He'd met Dennis Gady because he'd responded to an ad Dennis had put in the paper offering to do your taxes for $25. Devious financial masterminds ain't paying some random dude 25 bucks to do their taxes. So what the hell was going on here? Well, it didn't take the two detectives long to figure out that the description of the Tim Wick's under investigation for embezzlement in Fargo was a spot-on description of Dennis Gady, from the baldhead to the wife and kid. So it seemed pretty clear that Dennis Gady had stolen Tim's identity.

It wouldn't have been too hard for him. I mean, Dennis did Tim's taxes. He knew his social security number, his bank information, everything. And it was easy to guess at a motive, too. Dennis was wanted by the cops. And while it would have taken a little while for the Wisconsin police to track him down to North Dakota, they'd have found him eventually and laid down the habeas grabus. But nobody was looking for Tim Wicks. Not until now, anyway.

So, obviously, this revelation shook up both cases for Detective Schoonover and Link, and they were both starting to suspect that there might be something more sinister going on than a simple case of identity theft. Dennis Gady had moved his family two states over and stolen somebody's identity to keep from going to jail. What else might he be capable of? Schoonover started to think that the best case scenario was that Tim Wicks was alive but in danger. And the worst? Schoonover was discussing the case with some of the other officers in Hale's Corner when one guy remembered a teletype they'd gotten from police up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just over the Wisconsin border, about an unidentified body they'd found. When police departments find a John or Jane Doe, they send these teletypes to other departments across the country, hoping for situations just like this, where an officer will see a possible connection to one of their own cases.

This particular John Doe had been found by a survey crew on January 7. second, on the Michigan side of the Menominee River. And it was incomplete. Both the head and the hands had been cut off, obviously to try and prevent identification from fingerprints or dental records. A couple of weeks later, about the time that Tim Wick's friends first went to the police, the same survey team, 35 miles further up the river, found a severed head. I don't know what kind of money you can make on a survey team, but I think that would probably leave my last day on the job. Poor dudes. Oh, my God. Right? Twice. It's the same crew. Yeah.

It's so awful. Those poor dudes. It's awful. Awful, awful. The corner had already determined from the evenness of the saw marks that the head and the hands had been cut off with an electric saw while the body was frozen. And the newly recovered head had the same neat marks where it had been cut off. The hands would never be found, but the torso and head belonged to the same person. and the head also indicated a likely cause of death, a single gunshot wound. But was this person Tim Wicks? Investigators still needed to find Tim's dentist to get a hold of his records. And with one and a half million people in the Milwaukee metro area, that could take a while.

Schoonover, dreading days of calling every dentist in the yellow pages one by one, decided to take another look in Tim's apartment to see if there was a bill or something else from a dentist there. and right there, stuck onto the fridge with a magnet, was a reminder card for Tim's next dental appointment. That was a lucky break, and another one followed right after. Whenever a homicide case crosses state lines, there's always a chance for some serious slowdown in the investigation. Different jurisdictions don't always mesh together well, and the headless John Doe being

up in Michigan could potentially be an issue. But it turned out that police on the Michigan side of the border often sent bodies of homicide victims down to the coroner's office in Milwaukee, which had the resources to do a more thorough job. John Doe's body was just across town. It took a forensic orthodontist all of two seconds to compare the x-rays from Tim Wicks and John Doe before he said, yep, that's him. Tim Wicks, a nice guy with a rare talent, beloved by his friends, was dead. He'd been murdered, shot in the head, frozen, then cut into pieces. Back in Fargo, Detective Tammy Link had been continuing her embezzlement investigation,

and she'd gotten a search warrant for the house where Dennis Gady lived with his wife, Diane, and her four-year-old son. The Gaties weren't around, but Link and a couple of officers started the search anyway. And just as they were getting underway, Link's phone rang. It was Kent Schoonover, calling to tell her that the body in Michigan was definitely Tim Wicks. The hairs went up on the back of Tammy Link's neck. Her embezzlement and identity theft case had just been upgraded to a murder, and she was about to step inside the prime suspect's house.

Her search warrant was quickly amended to include evidence of murder, and CSIs descended on the place. The house was mostly empty. It seemed like it had been abandoned a while ago. Nothing overtly sinister jumped out to the investigators, but evidence can be sneaky, especially blood evidence. It was time to hose the whole place down with Luminal. They got no hits till the kitchen.

But when they sprayed down the linoleum floor there and hit the lights, everybody's jaw dropped. The entire floor was glowing blue. They'd never seen anything like it. It was possible that this wasn't blood but bleach. Luminal can react to that too. But it was an interesting finding anyway. It looked like these people had scrubbed the entire floor with straight undiluted bleach. That's not something you do when you're just cleaning up.

somebody had worked awful hard to clean up a hell of a mess on that linoleum in a bucket in a utility room they found a mop with dried red stains in the strings outside close by a barn they found scratches in the dirt and figured out they had been made by a backhoe someone had tried to dig a hole in the middle of winter in north dakota now a lot of people talk about how intelligent dennis katie seems he's got that gift a gab that so many of these folks we cover have but i just want to remember remind you all that this dude tried to dig a hole in the middle of winter in North Dakota. He got maybe an inch down into that rock-hard frozen dirt before giving up completely.

I mean, they always are talkers. It's much easier to talk the talk and to walk the walk. Like a hole in the fucking North Dakota winter. Christ. Yeah. Yeah, I could have told him not to even try that, but bless his heart. So we've got a murder suspect who recently bleached his kitchen floor than tried and failed to dig a hole in his yard. It was looking like Dennis Gady had killed him in the kitchen, then tried to bury the body in the yard. When that didn't work, he'd had to turn to a much messier,

much more exotic method of body disposal. Soon, surveillance footage at a hardware store in town would tell the rest of that story. There were Dennis and his wife Diane buying a cart full of stuff that should have had clipy the paper clip popping up on the cashier's computer screen going, it looks like your customers are trying to clean up a murder. Do you need help calling the cops?

An axe, latex gloves, huge gardening shears in January, again, garbage bags, just the whole kitten caboodle. I'm telling you, Home Depot, call us. We will sell for cheap. We will sell this idea to you. The clipy. Yep. But Dennis was long gone now, along with Diane and her son, who, by the way, Diane had just taken in violation of a custody agreement with the kid's dad in order to follow her new hubby dentist in North Dakota. murder, dismemberment, custodial kidnapping. A truly, truly a fairy tale for our time. Yeah, it's a beautiful story. So the investigation continued looking for anything that might help police track them down. Schoonover talked to Tim's bank and learned that on January 10th, a week after Tim's headless body had been found in Michigan, someone using the name Tim Wicks had emptied his savings account, taken out just over 16 grand.

Further digging revealed that Dennis Gady had spent most of that money on a motorhome a few days later. Police knew what they were looking for, but it's a big country, and tracking down one vehicle, even one as conspicuous as a motorhome, which probably isn't the best on the lamb vehicle, by the way, isn't easy. They had a trace on Dennis's credit cards, but back in 2002 at least, that took a day or two to get information to investigators. Very useful if the person you're after is staying in one place, but a lot less helpful if they're on the road. The credit cards told investigators that Dennis and Diane went to Nebraska and Ohio and Wisconsin. They didn't seem to be going anywhere. They were just kind of aimlessly circling around the upper Midwest, presumably until the money Dennis stole from Tim ran out.

And it was that stolen money that Detective Schoonover was able to get an arrest warrant for. Nobody had much doubt that Dennis was responsible for Tim's death, but they didn't. didn't have enough evidence yet to charge him. And they also put out an arrest warrant for Diane over the custody violation. So when and if they tracked down the motor home, both Dennis and Diane could be held. The manhunt was stressful for everybody. The investigators were pretty sure at this point that Dennis had killed Tim Wicks and dismembered his body.

I mean, most killers wouldn't have the stomach for a dismemberment in a million years. This dude is ice cold. So they had no idea how he'd react if he was backed into a corner. Would he shoot at him? Hurt Diane and the little boy hurt himself? For over two months, Dennis and Diane were on the run. But their pursuers only had to get lucky once,

and on March 4th, they did. When an officer in Lincoln, Nebraska, recognized the description of the motorhome from a bolo, ran the plates, and got a hit. The motorhome was in an RV park. Aware that he could be dangerous, the local PD had a SWAT team ready to descend, but before they could, Dennis spotted one of the squad cars

and made a quick decision. He came out of the motorhome with his hands up and said, I give up. And that was absolutely the best outcome anybody could have hoped for. Because remember, there was a four-year-old kid in that motor home. You say go to a SWAT team. God knows what's going to happen. There have been some horrible tragedies like it's, it can get early. Mm-hmm. Dennis and Diane were both arrested and whisked away to different states. Dennis to North Dakota to face for the moment charges of

theft and insurance fraud. And Diane to Wisconsin, where she was charged with custodial interference. Both wound out pleading guilty and Dennis was sentenced to four years, Diane, to six months. So, for the investigators, this started a clock running. They had four years to build a case against Dennis Gady in the murder of Tim Wicks. In North Dakota, Dennis was giving the police who interviewed him absolutely nothing. Dude was about 50% smart as he thought he was, but he knew when to clam up. But what about Diane?

She'd been at Dennis' side throughout his move to North Dakota and his assumption of Tim Wicks' identity and stayed there while Tim was murdered. and Dennis started his slow, rambling flight from justice, what did she know, and what would she share? When police interview suspects or potential witnesses, how they go about it depends on the individual and the circumstances. Going in hard can break one person down, but get another to just slam their walls up and give you nothing. Diane Gady was imprisoned right in Kent schoon over his backyard in Milwaukee, and he decided he'd try to build rapport with her. He visited with her pretty much every other day, talking about her kids, how she was doing, and he tried to shake

her devotion to Dennis, telling her that he'd try to pin this whole thing onto her. He found out that Diane had met Dennis at work a couple years earlier, and he'd swept her off her feet, sent her a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day with a dinner invitation. Very, how does Whitney say it? Romantic. Romantic, yes. Dennis wasn't going to make it on the cover of GQ magazine, but everybody liked the guy. He was, as Diane put it, a smooth talker. And he was hilarious, which always helps. He was good with Diane's little boy, and the kid liked him so much, he started calling

him Daddy Dennis. Dennis sold her a whole bill of goods that he'd whisk her away from her tough life as a single mom and take care of her every need. What he didn't bother to mention at first was that he had a bunch of felony warrants out for various frauds and scams. When he finally had to fess up about all that, because, you know, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge and he wanted Diane to go with him, he made up a bunch of bullshit about how it was all a big misunderstanding. He'd been set up to take the fall by some shady people he'd done business with. None of it was his fault.

And Diane bought it because, again, smooth talker. Remember campers, charm is a verb, not a state of being. Talking sweet doesn't make the words any less bullshit. And in the summer of 2001, he talked to her into a quickie courthouse wedding. Not long after that, Dennis skipped bail and high-tailed at Tafargo with Diane and her son in tow. As she told him the story, Detective Schoonover started to feel like he was getting somewhere with Diane. She was starting to warm up to him, but it never lasted long. Just when he thought he was making progress with her, she'd get a letter from Dennis,

and he'd manipulate her into clamming up again. don't talk to the detective he's lying to try to trick you he just wants to put us both in prison and the thing was diane was pretty easy to manipulate i guess that's one of the reasons why a scammer like dennis was interested in her in the first place it was after one particular letter from dennis that diane suddenly told schoon over a story about what happened the night tim wicks died she said he'd stopped with dennis and diane on his way up to winnipeg and after an evening of drinking, Dennis had passed out. Then Diane said Tim had tried to assault her. And fighting for her life, she'd managed to get a hold of Dennis's gun and shoot Tim in self-defense.

Now, we've said this before, and it's important, so we're going to say it again. And probably again and again after that. Yeah. Which is that in the vast, vast majority of cases, when women report being assaulted, it's because they were assaulted. False allegations are incredibly rare, but when they do, show up, they tend to show up in cases like this where people are trying to manipulate. In Diane Gady's case, there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious about her honesty, not least the fact that she had waited until months after Tim's death to bring this up, and only after repeated communications from Dennis.

And the circumstances she described were just weird. Little bitty Tim Wicks, who wasn't a heavy drinker, drinks all 300 plus pounds of Dennis Gady under the table. It just didn't add up. Diane wasn't particularly convincing. Her heart just didn't seem to be in the story she was telling. There's video of a later interview she does with the police, and when she's trying to express regret or horror, it's like flashing back to the worst high school play you ever saw.

But for the moment, that was her story. Dennis didn't kill Tim Wick, she did. Dennis, bless his heart, was as innocent as the driven snow. Right. So why would Diane confess to killing Tim if she hadn't actually done the deed? She was taking a big risk if investigators believed that she had, in fact, shot Tim, but didn't by her excuse for doing it. Bottom line was, she was willing to take a fall to get Dennis off the hook,

and the reason really just seems to be that she was in love with the slippery fucker, and he had a tight psychological grip on her at the time. Everybody who knew Dennis and Diane together saw that she was just ass over tea kettle in love with the guy. God knows why. She wanted that dream white picket fence life with him and thought that would be waiting for her if she took the fall for him and claimed it was self-defense. Part of that white picket fence life, of course,

would be the other person in the house when Tim Wicks was shot, Diane's four-year-old son, Joshua. Counselors did a forensic interview with the kid, showing him pictures of his mom and Daddy Dennis and asking him who they were. And then they showed him a picture of Tim Wicks, and again asked him who that was.

Joshua told him that was Mommy and Daddy Dennis's friend Tim, who'd been teaching him how to play the drums, which is the most heartbreaking detail in this whole story. for me, by the way, that Tim was teaching that kid to play the drums. It's just, that gets me every time. He had no idea what kind of danger he was in, clearly. So was there anything else Joshua could tell them about Tim? The investigators asked. Joshua nodded his head. Daddy Dennis shot him, he said calmly. Dang. Out of the mouths of babes or whatever. Now this wasn't going to be admissible

in court because this was a four-year-old child, but it sure as hell helped convince investigators that they were on the right track going after Dennis. After serving her six months for custody violation, Diane was released. Dennis was still in prison up in North Dakota on the fraud charges. Detective Schoonover kept in touch with Diane, visiting her regularly to chat and help with things around the house, and maybe living the free life for a while convinced Diane that life with Dennis was going nowhere good, because in 2003, she filed for divorce. Schoonover helped her with that, too.

and in February 2004, just over two years since Tim Wick's murdered body had been found, Diane agreed to sit for an interview with the police and the FBI. She wasn't promised any kind of a deal, and she wasn't coached. She just wanted to come clean. After Tim had responded to Dennis's I'll Do Your Taxes for $25, add the two of them met up and they hit it off. Dennis was a drummer too, nowhere near as good as Tim, but he was enthusiastic and loved to play. Two of them bonded over that and soon became buds. They'd hang out, sometimes go to open mic nights, and play together,

and then all of the sudden, Tim's new friend Dennis pulled up stakes and moved to North Dakota. As far as Tim knew, Dennis had just gotten a new job out there. What had actually happened, of course, was that warrants were out for Dennis' arrest, and he was a high tailing it out of town. As soon as he hit Fargo, Dennis fully assumed the identity of his good friend Tim Wicks, using Tim's name and good credit to get a mortgage on a big house. Now, Diane claimed that Dennis told her he was doing this all with Tim's full knowledge and permission, which is a pretty tough pill to swallow.

I mean, it's not hard to believe that Dennis would lie to her. He lied as easy as breathing. It's just hard to imagine why she believed it. To Tim, Dennis was a buddy he sometimes played drums with. Why the hell would he be willing to screw up his own credit and risk jail time to help keep this flapjack out of the joint. Diane totally knew Dennis was stealing Tim's identity. She just didn't give a shit. And Daddy Dennis could do no wrong. Which is the most infuriating part of this. She stood by and watched all this happen in the name of love, which

frankly, like, go fuck yourself, actually. If you're willing to stand by and watch someone you love ruin someone's life for convenience, you deserve a few hours in the TCC locker. Don't worry, I'll help you in. Like, and with friends like these, Jesus. Yeah, I know, right. Everything hummed along fine for a while, but then, toward the end of 2001, Tim started the ball ruling on buying his first house. He was so excited.

He'd saved up for years, but when Tim's mortgage company started doing their due diligence, they found something weird. Tim Wicks already owned a house up in North Dakota. Tim was confused and a little freaked out, so he went looking for help and advice from the most financially savvy person he knew, his buddy, Dennis Gaetie. God, bless his heart. It seems like he really had no suspicion whatsoever at this point. You just wanted advice. On the call, Dennis was full of friendly concern, told Tim not to worry. He'd look into what was going

on. Then he hung up, and his face as grim and dark as a thunder cloud. He turned to Diane and said, Tim's got to die. Because this problem wasn't a problem that was going to go away. Tim wanted to buy a house. When he was told he couldn't get one because he already had a hefty mortgage he knew nothing about, he wasn't just going to shrug and keep on living in his apartment complex. He knew somebody had stolen his identity, and sooner or later, he was going to talk to someone in authority, and one of their first questions would be, do you know anyone who lives

in Fargo? Somebody would connect the dots for him, and from there, it would be a short walk to the arrest of Dennis Gady. So Tim had to die to protect Dennis Gady, or to put in another way, Tim had to die because Dennis Gady is a mega dip shit, a potato head, a flavorless little half-chewed wad of gum. He clearly thinks he's one step down from Galileo, and like we said earlier, most people who are who knew him thought he was brilliant. But we've seen time and time again. Smart people can be dumber than duck shit when it comes to doing crime. Not only did he steal the identity of somebody who knew him well, which is something that could bite you in the ass in a hundred different ways, but then as soon as he got a job in Fargo, he started an embezzlement scam, so ham-fisted and clumsy

that his employers were onto him, like, immediately. Flea justice in one state, and within months of your new start in a new state, you got the police sniffing after you for an entirely new dumb-ass crime. I mean, that's just not right. Lay low shit for brains, for God's sake, at least for a little while. Unbelievable. So anyway, it was a couple days after Tim called him that Dennis came up with this fictional gig playing drums for 800 bucks a week up in Winnipeg. He knew Tim well enough to know that this would be a dream come true for him. And Dennis would even drive Tim up there. They could stop in Fargo on the way and visit with Diane and Joshua. So on the day after Christmas, Dennis picked up Tim and his drums in Wisconsin, and together they headed for North Dakota.

The night of December 28th, Tim and Dennis were sitting in Dennis's kitchen, drinking, smoking weed, laughing, having a grand old friendly time like they always had. Diane didn't smoke, so she went to bed early. She woke up to Dennis frantically shaking her and telling her to come downstairs. In the kitchen, Tim was lying on the floor, snoring. Diane didn't immediately think anything was wrong, and the guy was snoring. She said to Dennis, man, you must have really partied this guy out. No, I shot him, Dennis said. And he had.

He'd shot Tim Wicks in the head, but it hadn't killed him. So as Diane watched in horror, Dennis got a plastic bag and put it over Tim's head, suffocating him until he was dead. And then Diane, always up for standing by her man, helped Dennis drag Tim's body out of the house. And now she could see the blood from his head wound, leaving a bloody streak across the linoleum. They put Tim's body out in their shed to freeze in the cold North Dakota winter night.

Together, they went back and scrubbed the kitchen clean with bleach. Dennis, the genius, figured he could hire a backhoe, dig a grave in the yard, and bury Tim. Because even if he had been able to get through the icy ground, no one investigating Tim's disappearance was going to be suspicious about a freshly dug hole in a suspect's yard, right? Is this guy in Mensa, by the way, do we know? Because I feel like he should apply if he's done. not already a member like he would just fit right in like it's just it's it's truly i know i say this a lot but it's truly baffling because dennis's plan thus far has just been one steal tim's money

and identity great on it right and then two oh fuck oh shit they're going to figure that out uh uh kill tim i guess and then he does that and he goes three oh fuck oh shit i have to dispose of the body. And then four is just four question marks. And then five is profit. Profit. Like, what little this man had in intelligence he made up for in audacity, which normally isn't a bad thing.

But then he immediately lost it again with absolutely zero foresight. Yeah, he's a piece of work this one. Oh, God. And of course, as we already know, this backhoe didn't work. So Dennis's next plan was this. His dad had some property up in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and there was an old cistern on it. They could cut Tim's body up, burn the body in the cistern, and Tim might never be found. So they hired a U-Haul and hit the road, Dennis, Diane, and Little Joshua up front, Tim's frozen body and some power tools in the back.

It's just so messed up that they brought that kid along for this. It's just creepy as hell. But when they got up to Michigan in the middle of the night, Dennis couldn't find the cistern. So now what? Well, they headed south. And when they were crossing the bridge over the Menominee River, Dennis, on impulse, decided, fuck it, let's just do it here. Pulled over.

Dennis went into the back of the truck while Diane and Joshua stayed up front. They could hear banging noises from the back as Dennis, I swear to God, in the back of the flipping U-Haul, cut up Tim's frozen body. Uh, while this four-year-old was in the front. And when Joshua asked what was going on, Diane told him, Daddy's got some work to do. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you, woman?

I just can't. I can't with this. And when Dennis was done, he called Diane back to help him carry the torso back onto the bridge and throw it over the railing. And of course, they missed the water. And the body just landed on the bank. Now, you've just killed someone

and you're engaged in the vital step of disposing of the body. And you screw it up, but it's recoverable. All you got to do is scramble down to the riverbank and put the body in the water yourself. But Dennis had just had enough, I guess, at this point. He just already worked hard cutting up the body and he really just wanted to get his lazy ass back home. So just leave the body there. It'll be fine, right?

Diane would never say how Tim's head ended up 35 miles up river, which makes you wonder if Dennis maybe sent her to take care of that gruesome little errand herself. He told her he'd thrown the hands into the woods where animals would eat them, and they probably did. They drove down to Milwaukee, and the next day, Dennis, posing as Tim, emptied Tim's bank account, stealing all the savings Tim had put together over the years for a down payment on his first house. I hate this guy so bad. After they bought the motor home and hit the road, the plan was to flee to Mexico. Who the hell knows why they didn't end up there?

probably seemed like a little too much work. Yep. These aren't the most committed killers we've ever covered. During their aimless wandering among the RV parks of Middle America, Diane claimed she kept telling Dennis they had to turn themselves in, but I don't know about that. She didn't lift a damn finger to warn Tim Wicks after Dennis told her he was planning to murder the guy, didn't pause at all in helping Dennis clean up the evidence of the killing.

I think she was in this thing up to her neck. Oh, 100%. Yeah, fuck you, Diane. Yeah, I'm going to amend what I said earlier. A few hours in the TCC locker, but maybe, like, it's now like the chokie from Matilda, you know, with the nails in it. I think that's what she deserves.

Fuck off. Finally, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Dennis and Diane spotted a squad car. We're going down, Diane said. Dennis went in back and started packing a bag, as if they let you take fucking luggage into prison, You dumb bitch. Come on, Dennis. Come on. Dipshit. Then he walked out of the motor home with his hands up and surrendered.

This testimony was plenty. Dennis Gady, still in prison on embezzlement and identity theft charges, was charged with the murder of Tim Wicks. The trial was in April 2006 and was scheduled for two weeks, but only took one. It was Diane's testimony that sunk Dennis during the trial. stacked up alongside all the circumstantial evidence, there was only one explanation that made sense, and it was the story Diane had told. The jury deliberated for three and a half hours and came back with a guilty verdict.

Dennis Gatty was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. The judge described Dennis' crime as a case of pure, premeditated murder as cold and as calculated as one will ever find. Yep, pretty much. Diane was not charged in connection with Tim's death, and she can count herself damn lucky. She wasn't promised anything in return for testifying against Dennis, but I guess the prosecution figured having her as a witness against Dennis was the most important thing. But morally, if not legally, she absolutely contributed to the brutal death of Tim Wicks, a good guy who just trusted the wrong people.

Oh, and by the way, Diane later had the nerve to tell Dateline that she didn't think she really could have stopped what happened to Tim. Oh no? Really? Your husband turns to you one night and says Tim has to die and you don't bother to mention that to anybody, but your conscience is clear enough for you to show your face on national television and spout some half-ass horseshit like that. Shame on you. That man was teaching your little boy how to play the drums. Oh, I just, I cannot. One thing all Tim's friend said about him was that he was a gentle, kind-hearted man, worth a hundred of the piece of trash who killed him. We hope his loved ones have found some peace. I wish he was still here with us. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week,

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