True Crime Campfire - Killer Club: A Bizarre Story of Multiple Murder

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is generally known as a fun story—a court jester-looking dude in bright colored clothes, playing a flute and jauntily leading the town’s children off into the sunset. Y’know, good times. Dancing and singing and whatnot. The real story may be a lot grimmer—in fact, some historians think the Piper led the youths of Hamelin to be abducted or slaughtered. We don’t really know for sure. But we’re pretty sure about this: When a full-grown adult starts collecting troubled kids around him, telling them tall tales and making them wild promises, alarm bells ought to start ringin’. Sources:Orlando Sentinel: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1990-09-04-9009040217-story.htmlhttps://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1998-04-13-9804130053-story.htmlhttps://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1998-03-11-9803110636-story.htmlOxygen's "Snapped: Killer Couples," episode "Kosta Fotopoulos and Deidre Hunt"https://medium.com/true-crime-addiction/the-hunter-killer-club-narcissist-true-crime-bb501e3854efhttps://murderpedia.org/male.F/f/fotopoulos-konstantinos.htmFollow 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://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/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. The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamlin is generally known as a fun story. A court jester-looking dude and a... bright colored clothes, playing a flute, and jauntily leading the town's children off into the sunset. You know, good times. Dancing and singing and whatnot.

The real story may be a lot grimmer. In fact, some historians think the Piper led the youths of Hamlin to be abducted or slaughtered. We don't really know for sure, but we're pretty sure about this. When a full-grown adult starts collecting troubled kids around him, telling them tall tales and making them wild promises, alarm bells ought to start ringing. This is Killer Club, a bizarre story of multiple murder. So, campers, we're in Daytona Beach, Florida, November 4, 1989. At 5.30 a.m. call came into the local 911 dispatch from a shishi address in one of the wealthiest parts of

town, the home of the Phatopoulos family. Prominent local bar owner, Costa Fotopoulos, his wife Lisa, and Lisa's mom and brother Dino. It was Costa on the phone and he was in a panic. There'd been a home invasion, he said. I think my wife's been shot. She's not moving. He said he'd shot the intruder. The guy was lying unresponsive on the floor. When the police got there, Lisa's brother Dino Pospalakis met them at the door and raced ahead of them to show them to Lisa and Costa's bedroom. There, they found a young man lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood and 26-year-old Lisa Phatopoulos still alive but unconscious. She'd been shot once in the head. The police called for paramedics as Lisa's husband Costa stood by looking worried. But when the EMTs got

there, they quickly realized there was good reason to hope. The bullet hadn't penetrated Lisa's brain. It had gone into her forehead and sort of zinged around her skull right up against the bone before lodging right above her left eye. It wasn't a nothing wound, of course. There could still be brain damage, and there was no way to know how much until they got her to a neurologist, but they thought she might have a decent chance of survival. They bundled her up as fast as they could and whisked her off to the hospital. As Lisa's life hung in the balance, the Daytona police began their investigation of what seemed, at least for the moment, like a burglary that had gone horribly wrong for everyone involved. As for Costa Fetopoulos, who rushed to the hospital to be at his

wife's side and gave every impression of being frantic about her welfare, as you can imagine, by the next day, the media were all over the story of the hero homeowner, who'd shot an intruder to protect his wife and family. Yeah, I can already hear the gears turn in in y'all's heads. True crime has taught you well. It wasn't long before the investigators started to detect a faint but definite whiff of shenanigans in the air at their crime scene. Okay. What do shenanigans smell like? Well, it depends on the type.

Of course. So if we're talking a bunch of high school kids, like toilet papering their gym teacher's house on Halloween night, candy corn was maybe a faint note of X body spray, if that's possible with X body spray. Faint. Probably not. But the stank of a staged crime scene, who, it's like skunk crossed with sweat. Oh, my God. It gets worse with like a thick funk of air freshener that's like trying to

conceal the stench, but really only make it worse, you know? Yeah. Like the only thing worse than sweaty balls is sweaty balls and febrees. Yeah. So true. And that is what this crime scene was starting to smell like to the detectives. Metaphorically, obviously. Yeah. First, there was the point of entry into the house. They found a broken window on the ground floor, a point of pane of glass that was part of a French door. That initially looked like the point where the intruder must have broken in, but when they looked at it more closely, they realized

it had been broken from the inside out. Typical rookie mistake for crime scene stagers, right? We've all seen that one on forensic files a hundred million times. Maybe I'm being too critical, but I feel like which way to break the glass might be

crime scene staging 101. Yeah, yeah. Not only that, but the window itself was way too small to be the point of entry and too far from the door handle to have even allowed the intruder to unlock it. Did the three stooges commit the crime? Yes, we've solved it. Congratulations. Thank you. So, no way was this the point of entry. And then there was the fact that despite the house being chalkful of unbeatable stealables, stuff like fine silver, crystal, electronics, artwork, all kinds of stuff that any burglar worth a damn would have beeline for, nothing had been

disturbed. There was no telltale pile of merchandise waiting by the front door, no bag full of stuff. It seemed like the intruder had just come in, gone straight to the main upstairs bedroom, and shot Lisa Vitopoulos in the head. And why would he shoot her first? If you were a home invader, wouldn't you want to take out the biggest threat first, aka the male? Yep. So it just didn't look right. And before morning, had even turned into afternoon on that first day, the investigators had decided that they needed to give this case a much closer look. Who was this young man lying dead on the floor of the bedroom? Why was he there that night? And why had he shot Lisa Vitopoulos? Little did they know what they were getting themselves into. The wildest case any of them had ever seen in

all their years in homicide. But let's put a pin in that for a few minutes. But let's put a pin in that for a few minutes and get some background on Costa and Lisa Phatopoulos. Costa grew up in Athens, Greece, in the 60s and 70s, the only son of an executive with a Greek airline. And ever since he was a kid, he dreamed about emigrating to the United States. In Costa's mind, the U.S. was a place where you could have a rock star lifestyle. Fast cars, big houses, gorgeous women. Yeah, it's not like there are any gorgeous women in Greece or anything, right? Greek women are irritatingly beautiful. Yeah, Costa had a very lifestyles of the rich and famous idea of what the U.S. would be like.

I don't know where he got it, probably watching American TV and movies. Mm-hmm. And when he was 18, he decided to chase his dream and move here. He wanted to study aeronautical engineering, so he enrolled at Emory Riddle, Aeronical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. And he was in Hog Heaven from pretty much day one. To help pay the bills while he worked on his degree, Costa got a job at a barbecue joint. It was there where he met Lisa Paspilakis. She was pretty, she was smart, and best of all for Costa, she was rich.

Lisa's family owned an amusement park called Joyland on the boardwalk and a string of gift shops. She and her brother Dino stood to inherit it all someday. The Pospelakis family took an immediate liking to Costa. He seemed like exactly the kind of smart, ambitious Greek golden boy that they wanted for their daughter Lisa. And Lisa had no problem with that. She was smitten.

As for Costa, he was smitten too. Not so much with Lisa. I mean, he liked her and all, but Costa's real love affair was with the Pospelakis' money. And before long, he and Lisa were dating. Within a few months, they were engaged. And then came the big Greek wedding. Everybody was thrilled. They seemed like a perfect couple.

Are you nervous yet? Anytime we true crime nerds here. Perfect couple, right? Not to mention quick courtship. Yeah, that too. Well, at first, it seemed like Lisa and Costa had a pretty happy marriage. A few years in, Lisa's father, Augustine died, and she took over her family's businesses. Costa worked for her, Dino, and his mother-in-law in Joyland for something like $300 a week. This wasn't nothing in 80s money, but it wasn't a lot.

it was just running around money, really, kind of like an allowance. And by 1987, Costa was chomping at the bit to start his own business, something he could be in full control of. Yeah, Costa was not the kind of guy whose ego could really handle working for his wife and her family for an allowance, you know. It was eating him up to have to take orders from them, especially from her, I suspect. Yeah. He and Lisa also lived with her family. So they lived with his mother-in-law and her brother, Dino, and they lived. huge mansion, sure, but it still felt like close quarters to Costa, and it just ate him up that

it wasn't his, you know? A little bit too much family togetherness for him. So he borrowed some money from Lisa's fam and opened up Top Shots. A pool hall and bar on the boardwalk in Daytona. In addition to being a cliche destination for college kids on spring break, Daytona Beach is a huge tourist trap. So the boardwalk was a hot location for a place like Topshots. Lisa wasn't thrilled about the bar. For one thing, it was kind of a dive. The customer base wasn't what you'd call classy. But she wanted Costa to be happy, and Top Shot seemed to make him happy.

Yeah, she had no idea. Just how happy. Costa threw himself into his new role as the owner of a rough boardwalk pool hall. For a while, Lisa wasn't really aware of how fully he was embracing the seedier side of Daytona Beach, but she knew her husband seemed different. And she knew he liked to hire young transient kids as workers at the bar. A lot of them seemed like runaways, kids from troubled backgrounds who had come to Daytona to escape. Now, campers, we've seen this dynamic a million times before.

Prominent adult, in a position of power, gathering younger people with no power and exploiting them or turned him into minions or whatever. Kasa liked to surround himself with people who wouldn't say no to him, who were easy to impress with tall tales, who fed his gigantic e-eathing. go. Bit by bit, Costa Fotopoulos was becoming the flashy, gold chain, sporting, hot car driving Pied Piper of the boardwalk. He was in his element man's telling

the kids all about his work with the CIA. Wait, wait, wait, let me guess. I know you'd like that. Let me guess. He didn't work for the CIA. No, but the minions didn't know that. Costa would hold court in the back office at Top Shotshots and the minions

would gather around to hear stories about how Costa was a mercenary in the pay of the government, doing all kinds of secret spy stuff, because you know, spies love nothing more than to tell everybody all about their super secret spy stuff. And if any of the minions suspected that the stories might not be true, well, Costa had proof. On the back wall of the office was a framed letter from the CIA on official Central Intelligence Agency letterhead with the agency logo addressed to Mr. Constantinos Photopolis. You could not argue with that, unless you bother to go behind the desk and actually read the letter, that is, which was really just a polite

thanks, but we're not hiring in response to a letter Costa had sent him asking to become an agent. Because, you know, that's how that works, right? Like, if you want to be a CIA agent, you just shoot him a quick letter and let them know, right? Next thing you know, you got an interview. Right. Well, it was a rejection letter and that, and no one works for the CIA. Say it with me, Camphers. No one works for the CIA.

No. It's just an empty building holding a computer that spits out rejection letters. It's been like that since the 20s. Oh, man. So, anyway, it doesn't seem like any of Costa's employees at Top Shots ever took the time to read the letter. To them, it was solid proof of their boss's bona fides as a secret agent man. So campers, here we have yet another full-grown adult organizing his entire life around playing spy. Mm-hmm. Reading Soldier of Fortune magazine like it was his own personal Bible. Oh, Jesus. And this is bonkers.

He and Lisa were making plans to build a new house. And they were talking to a contractor, deciding on design elements and stuff like that. At one point, Costa told the builder he wanted to add a secret room to the house. Jesus. What for? Who the hell knows? Probably to keep all his guns and stuff.

Costa... Costa just like the idea of a secret room. room, you know. It was just fun for him. His business partner, Tony Calderoni, didn't fall for any of Costa's bullshit, like the kids who worked for him did, of course. When Costa told him he was a quote, Commando assassin, Tony thought it was ridiculous. And one night Costa invited him on a mysterious errand. And just purely out of curiosity, Tony agreed to come along, just to see what this frickin' lunatic was up to, right? What it turned out to be was Costa dressed head to toe and camouflage, packing a sword and two handguns.

I swear to God, I'm not making this up, going out to the middle of the woods to bury a bunch of guns and cash in the woods. And Tony could barely restrain himself from rolling his eyes the entire time. Like, dude just took himself so seriously. And Tony later told the Orlando Sentinel, quote, I thought he was a kid in a man's body, which I think is a little generous. yeah that's yeah close but a little generous yeah so did lisa know he was into all this sort of like she knew he liked guns and military stuff and conspiracy theories but she just

figured it was like a macho hobby she didn't think he was going around telling people he's in the flipping CIA so you know because that would have embarrassed her I'm sure she was just out there working hard to make her business as a success and in the meantime her hubby costa was having a full-on blast just playing soldiers slash spy in the woods. Sure, his bar was hemorrhaging money. He was already $20,000 in the hole, but I mean, who cares, right? He was having fun. And then, one afternoon in 1988, life got even better for Costa when a gorgeous 19-year-old

named Deidre Hunt walked into his bar looking for a job. Deidre was a head turner, and she turned Costa's so fast he practically got whiplash. He gave her a bartending job on the spot, despite the fact that she wasn't old enough to drink legally, and before long, they were having an affair. The 10-year age difference didn't seem to bother either of them. Neither did the fact that Costa was, you know, married? For Costa, Deidre helped him complete his juvenile, I'm a big man, trademark, fantasy. He had the divvy bar on the boardwalk with a rep for being kind of shady and tough. He had a whole crew of younger guys who bottle his fake CIA bullshit and thought he was hot

shit. He had money and cars and a big, beautiful house, courtesy of Lisa's money, might I remind you, not his. Right. And now he had the hot younger woman, too. Gross. Ech. For Deidre, Costa was a source of attention, lavish gifts, and cash.

And she'd never had much of any of that before. Deidre had had a rough life. Really rough. She grew up in poverty with no father in the picture and a mom who suffered from dissociative identity disorder and had 11 distinct personalities. Wow. Her mom was unemployed for most of Deidra's childhood, and she spent what little money they had on alcohol, self-medicating, I'm guessing, because of her mental illnesses. To make matters worse, Deidre was born with a disability that required her to wear big, clunky leg braces until she was 13. Not an easy thing for a kid to deal with.

But rather than feeling empathy for her little girl and doing everything she could to support her, Deidre's mom resented her. She hated having to spend money on Deidre's medical treatments. She hadn't really wanted her in the first place, and now she was watching all her booze money go down the tubes just so the kid could walk. So she took it out on her with verbal abuse and neglect.

Deidre got bullied at school because of her leg braces too, because kids can really be the worst sometimes. Her mom was constantly moving them around, so Deidre never got to stay at one school long enough to make real friends. She developed a tough shell like people tend to do when they're constantly getting hurt. When kids bullied her, she'd fight back. Her mom's response to this was to start beating her and leaving her alone for days at a time. God, that's awful.

After a while, perhaps finally realizing that motherhood, wasn't for her, she left Deidre with her sister, Deidre's aunt, and disappeared for a while. By the time Deidre started high school, things had changed. The leg braces were long gone, and Deidre had grown into a really stunning girl. Dark hair, dark eyes, cheekbones for days, and she started getting a lot of male attention. For a kid like Deidra, who hadn't had much in the way of positive attention in her life, it was like a drug. She embraced it. She embraced it, Full force. And when the high school boy started to bore her, she moved on to adults.

And I want to say something about this and about how this case tends to get portrayed in the media. Yeah, I know where you're going, and I agree 100%. The TV shows about this case, especially, like, snapped and wicked attraction. They make it seem like she was this bad kid, this teenage seductress, dating grown men when she was 16. She started bringing grown-ass men home when she was still in high school. school, and her aunt's reaction was just bizarre. Yeah, instead of like calling the cops on these adult men trying to have sex with a minor and like getting Deidre some counseling or whatever, the family was just like, well, time to kick the dirty whore out. Yeah. So now she was in a position

where she's 16 years old with no place to go, and she turned to sex work to survive, as many young people do in that situation. Yeah. She was basically living on the street. And then when she was 18 years old, she got arrested. Now, there are varying reports on this in the sources that we saw. Some say that she got arrested for sex work. Some say it was for her involvement in an armed robbery. So I'm not sure which is right. Maybe there was, you know, a little of both going on. I'm not sure. But either way, she did some time in jail. When she got out, she decided she didn't want to go back to that life. And she eventually made her way down to Daytona Beach, Florida, and to Costa Photopoulos's bar. So their affair started off hot and heavy. just got more and more intense. They'd mess around at no-tel motels, in the back office at top shots, probably under the CIA letter for extra hotness, everywhere they could do it. And eventually, in addition to the gifts he was showering on her, Costa rented Dieter an apartment so he could see her whenever he wanted. The apartment was just a couple blocks down the street

from the bar, so it was super convenient. You know, you got to give it to the man. He may have been a ridiculous shithead, but he was inefficient shithead. At least. He also started giving Deidre a cash allowance. She told him all about her past, her brushes with the law, her time as a sex worker, and rather than being put off, cost a nugget. For one thing, in his eyes, it made her seem sexier and more badass, but he also knew that her past made her easier to manipulate. Just like all the other troubled teens and early 20-somethings,

he'd gathered in around him at top shots. He regaled Deidre with all his CIA and mercenary stories, the whole soldier fortune Commando assassin narrative and he showed her his cache of deadly weapons because of course this asshole was full on obsessed with weaponry and I'm not talking about a handgun or two

okay I'm saying this man had grenades grenades he had a fully automatic fully illegal AK 47 and may I just ask what in the name of sweet star spangled shit does a person need with the flipping grenade like it's not for home protection

you're not going to lob a grenade at a burglar. Like, what are you doing? You're just playing spy, and it's pathetic. Anywho. Costa took Deidre to the firing range and showed her his guns, like you do. He told her he killed eight people as a government hitman. You know, just pillow talk. Cozy and up at the gun range. And Deidre's life up to this point had fucked her up to the extent that her response to this instead of, oh, really? Okay, I'm out, was, huh, cool. Oh, good gravy. So for a little while, the affair barreled along with Lisa Nunn the Wiser, but it, of course, didn't take long for her to get suspicious. I mean, we know, right, when that's going on.

And then, Costa's business partner's wife just called her up one morning and told her, like, Lisa, he's seeing this bartender. One evening soon after that, she followed Costa in her car right to Deuter's apartment. And when he came home, she confronted him and gave him an ultimatum. I'm going to fire that girl and stop seeing her, or I'm leaving you. And, of course, because Costa is a complete lying piece of shit, he gaslighted Lisa and told her she was crazy and nothing was going on. He wasn't having an affair, for God's sake. Dieter was just an employee. He was trying to help out. You know, she had a rough background. He was trying to be a stand-up guy. Uh-huh. Lisa, of course, wasn't buying it. And it was sad for her because she really loved this guy and his cheating was tearing her up. She was hurt and she was furious. And she reminded him, you know, your business is 20 grand.

and in debt. And if I divorce you, you'll get exactly $0 out of me. You're going to be sleeping on a cot in the back office of Topshots, that is, until it gets foreclosed on, and then you're going to be out on the street. And Costa knew she was right. And this would not do. This would have an unfortunate effect on his game of spy, right? So, wouldn't do. Now, this conversation happened just a few weeks before Costa's frantic call to 911 about the home invasion. and the bleeding, unresponsive wife, shot while sleeping, and the intruder, he had to shoot dead in self-defense. Speaking of, let's go back to the shooting.

Costa told the investigators that he and Lisa had been up late watching movies until about 2 a.m. Then they fell asleep, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up to a loud bang. He looked up and saw a man standing at Lisa's side of the bed. He was holding a gun. Costa kept a handgun on his bedside table. for protection, he said. A 9mm Sig Sauer P. 226. Practically on instinct, he said, he grabbed it, crouched down beside the bed, aimed it at the intruder, and pulled the trigger until he ran out ammo. The man dropped to the ground, and Costa ran to check on Lisa. She'd been shot. She was

bleeding from the head. Lisa's mom and brother had come running into the room then, and Costa had called 911. The hero protect her. So who was the intruder who now lay dead on the Photopoulos' bedroom floor? When CSI searched his pockets, they found his wallet. His driver's license IDed him as 18-year-old Brian Chase. So young, 18. A baby. The address on the ID turned out to be the home of Chase's father.

The dad said he hadn't spoken to Brian in a few months. Kid had fallen in with a bad crowd, shady characters who hung out on the boardwalk. The boardwalk, huh? Mm-hmm. Hmm. After Costa finished up a statement, he rushed to the hospital to be by Lisa's side. Imagine campers, how thrilled he must have been when the doctors told him. It's a miracle.

The bullet missed her brain. She's alive. Oh, great. No, that's great. Lisa, officially one of the luckiest. human beings to ever get shot in the head was awake and talking already, and the doctors thought she'd most likely make a full recovery. Despite the fact that she still had a bullet lodged in her skull, Lisa was well enough to talk to the detectives. She corroborated Costa's story about watching

movies until two in the morning and told them about waking up to a horrible pain in her head and hearing Costa on the phone with 911. But she also had a few interesting extras to add. For one thing, she told them that earlier in the evening, she'd seen Costa out in the yard, burying a black duffel bag. Now, this wasn't super out of the ordinary for Costa, as we already know. He liked to bury bags full of guns and cash as part of his soldier of fortune bullshit. Lisa thought it was weird, but it was just something he liked to do. I get an angry, paranoid little chipmunk.

Saving it for winter. He's kind of a conspiracy nut, she told the investigators. Oh, and by the way, y'all are going to love this. Apparently, Costa was always forgetting the exact spots where he buried his stuff. So he had to buy a metal detector to find it all. That is delightful. Spent force, ain't he? So much.

So much so. So Lisa might not have thought it was unusual for him to be burying God knows what out in the yard the night of the shooting, but the cops perked up their ears. They perked up even more when Lisa had told them that she and Costa were in the early stages of divorce. She'd always told him she'd leave him if he had an affair. An affair, eh? Hmm, this was getting curiouser and curiouser for the detectives. It was looking like a hero.

homeowner might not be exactly what they had here after all. This, despite Costa acting like the very picture of the concerned, loving husband when he arrived at Lisa's hospital room. He was crying, holding her hand, really putting on a show. Lisa later said that for a little while, she thought maybe the shooting had woken him up, made him realize what he was about to lose if he kept sneaking around with Deidre and Lisa went through with a divorce. Bless her heart. Man, that's such a bummer. Yeah.

And there was one more thing. thing Lisa told them in the hospital. She said she'd had a scare about a week earlier at the Joyland Amusement Center she and her family owned. It was a robbery attempt, she said. Lisa had been at the arcade checking on something or other when a young man pulled a gun on her and tried to force her into a little private office. She was terrified, of course, but she managed to escape by kind of dropping down and crawling through the guy's legs and running into the crowd, and he hadn't come after her. As they listened to Lisa's story, the detectives couldn't help but wonder if this had been murder attempt number one.

So, the local papers were touting Costa as a hero, and the story soon made its way down to the boardwalk. Tung started wagging amongst the minions. And before long, the detectives got the phone call that would change everything from a 20-year-old guy named J.R. Taylor. J.R. thought the cops might be interested to know that if the guy who'd gotten shot at the Fottopoulos house was Brian Chase, then he'd been hired to kill that woman. See, J.R. was Buds with Deidre Hunt, Costa Fatopoulos' girlfriend. And just a few weeks earlier, Deidre had introduced him to Costa and offered him 10 grand to kill the dude's wife for him. Well, actually, nobody had specifically said wife. But he figured that's who it was. He knew Deidre was having an affair with the guy,

and he knew she was getting sick of waiting around for a divorce. She was sick of sneaking around. She wanted to live in that big mansion, and she wanted to be Mrs. Fotopoulos, because she knows he's such a loyal partner, right? He's a catch. Deidre told him it'd be easy. Just a standard plug-and-chug murder, whatever the shit that means. Plug-and-chug.

She'd provide the weapon. She'd provide the details, and all he had to do was get into the house and kill Lisa. At one point, she asked J.R., do you know what it's like to grab somebody by the hair and blow their brains out? And when J.R. was like, uh, no?

Deidre told him it feels good. Good. Okay. Good to know. So, J.R. was pretty dubious at this point. He asked her, do you even have $10,000? She sure did, she said. She took him to the back office at Top Shots and showed him a bag full of cash. She even tried to sweeten the deal a little more. She said she'd give him a little something-something on the side if he did it. So, oh, well, my, my. So, the only thing stopping him because the existential dread of murdering a fellow human creature wasn't enough, I guess, was Costa. J.R. knew in his gut that if he broke into this guy's house, he probably wouldn't make it out alive. Everybody at Topshots knew about Costa's arsenal of weapons, his framed

CIA letter about his work with the government. I mean, this was a guy that had been given a license to kill by the Spooks, right? And not only that, but Costa had started an exclusive club for his inner circle of minions. He called it, and again, I swear to God we're not making this up, the hunter-killer club. Because apparently, he was 12 years old. Yep. Can't you just see the crayon-lettered sign on the door? Costa's super awesome hunter-killer club, no girls allowed, and like the S would be backwards? Yeah, uh-huh.

The Hunter Killer Club was going to be an elite group of trained assassins, JR said. Paid thousands of dollars to carry out sophisticated hits. For the CIA, presumably, it wasn't direly clear. assassins, trained by Costa, who, as I think we've made abundantly clear by now, had never been trained himself. Hey, come on, Katie, he read every issue of Soldier of Fortune, okay? He owned camouflage. He had grenades. What more training could you possibly need? Yeah, okay, I guess you're right. We're being unfair. I'm being unfair. He was highly trained. And I'm highly trained as a face pirate from all the sci-fi books I've read.

So, J.R. was pretty sure he'd never see daylight again if he took Deidre up on her offer. He figured his own death at cost his hands was probably part of the plan. Tie up the loose ends, you know. So he said thanks, but no thanks, and it turned out to be the smartest decision he'd ever made. When he saw the story of the hero homeowner on the news, he knew immediately what must have gone down. Brian had been a friend of his.

He didn't like it, didn't think Costa and Deidre should get away with it. And he figured Brian had probably acted under duress. The kid wasn't a killer, but he was scared shitless of Costa. J.R. figured Deidra and or her boss man boyfriend had threatened him. J.R. Taylor's story rang true to the investigators. For one thing, it explained the issues with the crime scene. The window, the fact that Brian hadn't attempted to steal anything, and how he'd shot the less threatening homeowner instead of going after Costa Phatopoulos with a gun on his bedside table.

So they hauled in Deidre Hunt for questioning, and to everybody's surprise, she caved like almost immediately, started spilling the whole sordid tale while drinking a Diet Coke and smoking Marlboro lights. She said J.R. Taylor's story was all true, but it wasn't her plan to kill Lisa. It was Costas. Lisa had found out about the affair, and she was about to to dump him, but Costa had a $700,000 life insurance policy on Lisa. If they divorced, he'd be broke. If Lisa was dead, he'd be 700 grand richer. On top of all that, top shots wasn't really Costa's main line of work. It was a front, Dietra said, for a money laundering operation. Costa had a business partner back in Greece who was making counterfeit cash. He'd sold coffee,

Costa a hundred grand's worth of bills for $10,000. And Costa was using the bar to launder the fake bills. This was one of the reason he liked hiring transients and runaways, people with sketchy backgrounds. Didn't ask too many questions, and they did what they were told. The feds were on to him about it, too. He'd been named a person of interest in the counterfeiting thing before the shooting. Later, the investigators would discover that Costa had tried to hire one of his employees to kill his in-laws, Augustine and Mary Paspolakis.

The guy refused, and Lisa's dad had died of natural causes soon after. Yeah, but that didn't stop Costa from telling people he'd had him killed, just to add to the mystique a little bit more. Mm-hmm. Well, why wouldn't he go... Oh, my God, he's so stupid. Because he's like, yeah, I killed one of them. I know.

The other one's still around. There wasn't a two-for-one offer. I couldn't get a deal. The federal investigation in Takasa's money laundering operation was one of the things stressing him out, making him short-tempered and eager to get the Lisa thing done. Because committing a murder while under investigation by the feds is the best idea anyone's ever had. And J.R. Taylor wasn't the only guy they tried to hire to kill Lisa, Diedra said. Costa had just told her to go around to all the regular Topshots minions and find

somebody to do the job, and she'd had to try several times before she finally talked Brian Chase into it. Yeah, there were actually five or six different botched attempts to kill Lisa before the night Brian Chase actually showed up in the Phatoplas bedroom. Costa's initial plan was for his hitman to kill Lisa at a Halloween party. But the guy who signed up for that one, a kid named Teja James, ended up chickening out because he was scared he'd get ID'd by somebody at the party or tackled and dragged into the police station or God knows what, which was probably smart. Next came the botched robbery attempt Lisa told the cops about a week before the shooting. And then finally, Deidre got poor old Brian to sign on.

They offered him five grand. She told the detectives that Costa had disabled the alarm at the house that night, let Brian in, and showed him to his and Lisa's bedroom. And she knew he was planning to kill Brian all along. It was part of the plan, she said, for Costa to look like a hero. Of course. Brian also sucked at being. a hitman, by the way. He tried and failed to kill Lisa twice before the night of the shooting.

Plan A was to stage a car accident, run Lisa off the road, and then shoot her in the head. Now, why did that plan go down the tubes? Because Brian couldn't get his car to start. Simple as that. Another time, he'd gone to the house, prepared to do the deed, but then he got spooked by the neighbors and ran off. And it just makes you think this woman is so lucky to be alive, like five or six different attempts. It's just a good thing her husband was such a ridiculous dip shit. And the teenage kids that he tried to hire were such incompetent boobs, because otherwise she would so have been dead. Yeah. At a certain point, the universe is just speaking to these assassins, right? Like, just screaming at them to fucking stop trying to kill this woman.

I know. And they wouldn't listen, of course. And Lisa also got damn lucky on the night of the shootings. After he shot her the first time, Brian had actually tried to fire again, but the gun jammed. And it was while he was, like, fussing with the gun trying to get it to work, that Costa shot him dead. Oh, and by the way, Deidre said, when they realized Lisa hadn't died from her gunshot wound,

she and Costa had started frantically planning ways to finish her off. One aborted plot had Deidre dressing up as a nurse and delivering a bomb to Lisa's room. Possibly disguised as a flower delivery. Oh, hey, Costa, the joker called. He wants his idea back. Right. What kind of janked-up wily coyote bullshit is that?

For God's sake, this man is an embarrassment. You think you could work for the CIA. You are an embarrassment, sir. A bomb and a flower delivery. God almighty. The CIA doesn't hire teenagers to carry out assassinations. ought to be ashamed of himself. It's pathetic.

But he and Deidre were just that determined to get that 700K. She told the detectives she had to die. She just had to die. So, holy shit, right? The plot was turning out to be way thicker than they'd expected. And Deidre wasn't done yet.

Almost casually, in between sips of her diet Coke, she dropped another bomb. She and Costa had killed before. one of the employees at Top Shots was a teenage kid named Kevin Ramsey and like most of the minions Kevin knew about the money laundering slash counterfeiting stuff I mean it was hard to be around there day in and day out and not know plus Costa was dumb enough to brag about it all the time but where most of the minions were smart enough to keep their mouths shut and do what

the boss man told them Kevin had apparently decided he was a Billy badass bless his heart and he tried to blackmail Costa Ugh. Costa did not like this. This, this would not do. So on evening, he took Kevin aside and said, Hey, you know what? I'm impressed with the initiative you're showing here. Trying to blackmail me and everything.

So I've got a proposition for you. He told Kevin all about the Hunter Killer Club, his elite group of assassins. Would Kevin be interested in joining? And Kevin, of course, was all in. Costa said, great, great, just one thing, though. Everybody who joins the Hunter Killer Club has to go through a little initiation. Kevin's like, initiation?

Yeah, yeah, it's no big deal. The thing is, if we're going to be sending you out on covert missions, we have to know you have the temperament to handle danger. We got to know you're not just going to pee your pants and run away, right? So here's the initiation. We take you out to the woods. We tie you to a tree. And if you can stand there and not flinch while Deidre and I shoot around your feet for a couple

minutes, then we'll know you're badass enough to handle bullets flying around, and you'll be in the club. Now, I can't imagine this appealed to Kevin much, poor kid, but he really wanted to be in the club. He had a reputation for being kind of gullible, and he was infatuated with Deidre, as they all were, because she was gorgeous, and any club she was a part of, he wanted to be part of it, too. And according to his girlfriend, he was also terrified of Costa, like, scared to refuse him anything he might ask for. So, I mean, we can judge the kid for. for this but remember he was just a teenager and costa was this larger than life personality most of the employees at top shots believed his story so they thought he was really like a scary you know

government mercenary so i just feel bad for the guy and whatever else he sure is hell didn't deserve what happened to him and what happened to him was this they took him out to the woods they tied him to a tree, they shined a flashlight in his eyes, and then Costa Fetopoulos turned to Deidre and said, Okay. And Deidre stepped up, raised a 22-caliber handgun, and pumped three bullets into Kevin Ramsey's chest. Kevin said, oh God, and sagged against the ropes holding him to the tree. A moment or two later, he drifted into unconsciousness, but he wasn't dead. You see, this wasn't Kevin's initiation into the Hunter Killer Club. it was Deidre's.

This was Deidre's chance to prove her loyalty to Costa, and she didn't seem to flinch. When they realized Kevin Ramsey wasn't dead, just unconscious, Deidre walked up to him, lifted his head by the hair, and fired another shot into the side of his head. When that still didn't kill him, Costa got annoyed. He took his AK-47 and fired once into Kevin's head, finally finishing the job.

Then he and Deidre just left the scene. leaving Kevin Ramsey's body right where it was, tied to a tree. Afterward, Costa gave Deidre a black beret to signify her membership in the club, and he told her she'd get a special HK monogram after she hunted somebody down and killed them. Ugh, nerd! So, campers, you might be wondering, why do we know all this in such detail? Because campers, they feel.

filmed it. Because a fucking course they did. A fucking course they did. Investigators later recovered the tape and it is beyond horrifying. We've only seen bits and pieces because obviously they can't show the actual murder on TV, but we've seen enough. And by the way, while they were talking to Deidre at the police station, CSIs dug up the black duffel bag, Lisa had seen Costa burying in the backyard the night of the shooting. Inside it, they found the AK-47 and the 22 pistol that Boardwalk Bonnie and Clyde had used to kill Kevin Ramsey. Deidre said she'd initially felt excited about taking Kevin's life, which go to therapy, Debra for God's sake. But then she realized Costa was keeping the tape as kind of an insurance policy in case she ever tried to cross him.

Of course he was. See, Costa had made sure to keep himself off camera. but there was nice, clear footage, well-lit, of Deidre shooting Kevin Ramsey four times. By the way, later at his trial, Lisa took the stand and identified the voice behind the camera as Costas, so they knew it was him anyway. Anyway, it kind of took the bloom off the rose for Deidro when she realized her boyfriend was keeping blackmail material of her. She led detectives to the gloomy, swampy place where poor Kevin Ramsey's body was still tied to a tree. I can only imagine what a sight that must have been. Oh, man. They placed Deirdre under arrest.

And now it was time to have a chat with Mr. Vitopoulos. Costa, of course, denied everything. He had no idea what happened to Kevin Ramsey. As you can imagine, the investigators weren't buying it. They couldn't get the sight of Kevin's body out of their heads. And of course, once search warrants came through, it didn't take long for them to find the murder tape. They put the grabus on our soldier of fortune,

and he and Deidre got a pair of matching charges for the first-degree murders of Kevin Ramsey and Brian Chase and the attempted murder of Lisa Phatopoulos. Deidra initially pled guilty and agreed to testify against Costa to try and avoid the death penalty, and she argued that she'd only participated in Kevin Ramsey's murder and the attempt on Lisa's life because she was afraid not to. She claimed Costa had subjected her to horrific abuse

during their whole relationship. Yeah, according to Deidre, to say Costa had a dark side would be an understatement, kind of along the lines of saying Ted Bundy had a little issue with women. She claimed he'd inflicted ritualistic torture on her, and I'm quoting from the Orlando Sentinel again here, cutting her with razors, sucking her blood, throwing knives, burning her with cigarettes, and an iron, poking her with needles, and threatening her with a gun.

And it's not as if we'd put any of that past Costa, It was a creep of epic proportions. But several of Deidre's friends from Topshots testified that this was all news to them. They said she'd never expressed any fear of Costa before, or any hesitation about murdering Kevin Ramsey and Lisa Phatopoulos. And she'd never told any of them that Costa had cut her or burned her or done anything of the kind. In fact, one of Deidre's roommates said that on the night Lisa was shot, Deuter came running into the apartment, all excited. She'd just driven by the Phatopoulos house and seen all the police. car, and she assumed Lisa was dead.

And she was just like a kid at Christmas, saying, The bitch is dead! The bitch is dead! Another friend said she'd gone for a walk on the beach with Deidre shortly before Kevin Ramsey's murder, and Deidre told her all about it, how she was looking for Kevin, so she and Costa could take him out to the woods and kill him. Told her all about the hunter-killer club,

how killing Kevin was going to be her initiation, and far from seeming intimidated or scared, Deidra's friend said she seemed excited about it. other friends said she talked about wanting to be an assassin for hire in Europe she wanted to drive a Ferrari because you know if you're a hired assassin it makes sense that you'd want to be as conspicuous as possible right and Costa had told her that once Lisa was dead they'd be rolling in money and they could do all that and more plus because of his work with the CIA

even if they got caught it would all work out fine because apparently super secret CIA hitmen are allowed to just murder anybody they want including their wives now Diedra, of course, said all her friends were lying, and a couple of them were also phasing charges themselves, so you could argue that they were just telling the cops what they wanted to hear. But I don't know. See, at Costa's trial, the prosecutors actually argued that Costa had abused Diedra. I assume it was because he was trying to blame the whole thing on her, or at least discredit her as a witness against him, so it made sense for them to present her as a victim of Costa's abuse and manipulation.

Now, where's the truth? I kind of suspect somewhere in the middle. Whatever her relationship with Costa was like behind closed doors, Deidre was absolutely a victim of serious abuse throughout her life. Her mom actually took the stand on her behalf at one point and admitted to severely abusing her when she was growing up, and there's no doubt about that. And she was taken advantage of as a teenager by a whole succession of grown men. So, you know, whether Costa was drinking her blood

and threatening her to get her to take part in his murder schemes, or whether she was just so damaged from her childhood that murder struck her as a fun adventure. I have some sympathy for Deidre, either way. Now, obviously, none of this excuses what she did, nor should it give her a get-out-a-jail-free card, but this girl had never known anything but chaos in her life, like from the day she was born.

So, I have a little bit sympathy for her. The judge, on the other hand, did not. He took one look at the snuff film of Kevin Ramsey's murder, and he gave Deidre the death penalty, despite her cooperation. Acosta got the same sense. sentence. Now, a few years later, though, Deidre appealed. One of her major arguments was that while she was sitting in jail waiting to testify against Costa, her defense attorney, Peter Niles, had tried to sell her story to a tabloid TV show for $5,000. Yeah, it's actually worse than it

sounds. He, this was her defense attorney. He brought in a TV crew to interview her in jail, and he told the jail and her and everybody at the time that they were just there to video tape their attorney-client meeting, like in preparation for her testimony. But then when they got there, he actually fessed up to Deirdre. Oh, by the way, funny story, true story. Actually, this is the crew from a current affair. So be a limb and give them an interview, okay? Holy shit.

Like, can we say enormous conflict of interest? Can we say disbarment? Like, unbelievable. And a current affair ended up airing a story called Deadly Deidreux. soon after, using the interview footage that her freaking defense attorney set her up to give. Not great. So Peter Niles ended up suspended for a year, which, in my opinion, is not nearly enough of a punishment. Like, that should be disbarment grounds if you ask me, but whatever.

Yes. And Deidre got a new sentence, Life Without Parole. So she at least didn't get the death penalty. She's still in prison today. And interestingly, she's been very vocal in the past year. about the way her women's prison has handled the COVID crisis. Spoiler alert, not super well in case you were wondering. I'm shocked.

Damn, do we ever need prison reform? Anyway, look it up if you want to. It's interesting. As for Costa, all his appeals have been denied, and he's still cooling his heels in prison. He'll never get out alive. And I'm sure he's regaling all his fellow inmates with zippy little stories about his years with the CIA. Which probably go over great in prison, right? Right. And, of course, the silver lining to the ginormous storm cloud that is this story is that Lisa made a full recovery.

And she still has the bullet lodged in her skull, but she's grateful to be alive, and she has managed to put Costa in her rearview mirror where he belongs. So, we hope she's doing great. So, that was a wild one, right, campers? And forgive me for my whiskey voice. I've had a sinus infection, and we just didn't want to have to skip this week. So you just have to deal with a little bit of a croaky Whitney. I hope it's been okay. She's kicking ass. And 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. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Kristen, Jacqueline, Anastasia, Leslie, and Anaja. And if I pronounced any of those wrong, please tell me, and I'll fix it next week. We appreciate you all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff.

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