True Crime Campfire - Love Will Tear Us Apart: The Murder of Larry McNabney, Pt 1

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

There aren’t many stories older or more widespread than “bad decisions made for a pretty face or a hot body.” Those throbbing biological urges can kick reason and good sense right to the curb. For most of us, this is more likely to happen when we’re young and, y’know, dumb. But there are some people who will always be willing to put their hands in the fire, to risk everything they have for desire. It’s a trait that often goes hand-in-hand with a self-destructive recklessness that’s so fundamental to your nature that it might as well be in your bones. Join us for the story of California's "Marlboro Man murder" and the pair of devious, greedy killers who almost got away with it. Sources:Cold Blooded by Carlton SmithMarked for Death by Brian J. KaremABC's 20/20, episode "Hell in Heels”Investigation Discovery's "Evil Stepmothers," episode “She Can’t Hide”Seattle Met: https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2022/11/jz-knight-ramtha-yelm-washington-school-of-enlightenmentHerald-Tribune: https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2002/03/15/woman-sought-in-california-murder-has-ties-to-florida/28711016007/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

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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. There aren't many stories older or more widespread than bad decisions made for a pretty face or a hot body. Those throbbing biological urges can kick reason in good sense right to the curb. For most of us, this is more likely to happen when we're young and, you know, dumb. But there are some people who will always be willing to put their hands in the fire to risk everything they have for desire. It's a trait that often goes hand in hand with a self-destructive recklessness that's so fundamental to your nature that it might as well be in your bones. This is Love Will Tear Us Apart, the Murder of Larry McNabbney. So, campers, we're starting this one in a vineyard, just north of the little town of Linden, California.

February 5, 2002. Three men had spent the day out working in the fields, and one of them had spent the day out working in the fields, and one of them had his doggy with him. Around 4 p.m., the dog started barking like mad. He'd found something, and being a very good boy, he wanted to tell his people about it. But the farm workers were not so much excited as horrified by the discovery. Their dog had found a human leg bone,

sticking up from the dirt in a shallow ditch between the fields. The bone was bare, all the flesh having been eaten by local wildlife. The workers hurried home and called their boss, who then called the sheriff's apartment. Detective Debra Sheffel took the call and had an idea of what the farm workers had probably found. The previous year, she'd testified at the trials of Lauren Herzog and Wesley Shermanteen, the serial killer pair known as the Speed Freak killers. They'd killed at least four people and possibly dozens more across San Joaquin County in the 80s and 90s,

and not all of the victim's remains had been found. So she thought maybe that's what they had. But when she got to the scene, Detective Sheffel saw her. right away that Herzog and Shermantine couldn't have buried this body. They'd been arrested three years ago, and this shallow grave was fresh, just a few weeks old.

It didn't take long for investigators to uncover the buried body, which wasn't buried deep. It's not that unusual for killers to start digging a grave and then half-ass it when they realize what hard work it is. The buried body was that of a middle-aged man, kind of a big guy, wearing boxer shorts and a torn t-shirt. A barbed wire tattoo wrapped around his left bicep. The body was positioned strangely in a sort of fetal position, which is not that

weird in itself, but it is when the body, like this one, is buried on its back. Detective Sheffle then had another idea about who this body might be. The disappearance of Sacramento attorney Larry McNabney had been getting significant media attention across Central California. But Larry had gone missing back in September, and this body hadn't decomposed nearly long enough. The body's identity wasn't the only mystery. The forensic pathologist found no significant injuries to the body, no gunshots, no blunt trauma, no broken bones. There wasn't any indication of why this guy was dead at all. The only injury was an intramuscular hemorrhage on the upper back, which didn't come within a country mile of being fatal. One mystery was swiftly solved, though. The fingerprints from the body

did indeed match those of Larry McNabney, the 53-year-old attorney who'd been missing for five months. As to the body's relatively good condition, well, they knew it hadn't been frozen because that would have caused obvious tissue damage, but might he have been kept in a refrigerator? That made sense. Larry was six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. If he'd been crammed tight into a refrigerator, that could explain the injury to his back, which would have been pressed hard against the side. It would also explain the weird curled-up positioning of the body.

Whoever had put Larry into the refrigerator would have had to fold him up tight like that to fit him in. The pathologist took samples of Larry's hair, blood, brain, and stomach contents, because if Larry hadn't been killed by any obvious injuries, that suggested a more subtle method. Poison. But who would want Larry McNabney dead? Investigators actually had a head start on that question. Larry had been missing for five months, and they'd already pieced together a picture of what had been a pretty wild and messy life. Larry was born in Reno, Nevada in 1948 to an upper middle-class family that seemed to have everything going for it on the outside. Inside the home, things were tougher. Larry's dad, James, who everyone called Mack, was distant and demanding with his two boys. He'd been drafted to serve in both World War II and Korea, and everyone who knew him said Mac had come home

colder and harder. He'd also come home with a serious drinking problem. A significant proportion of a person's predisposition to substance abuse can come from genetics, and both Larry and his older brother Jimmy inherited this problem from their dad. Mack demanded that his sons excel both academically and athletically, and they did. Larry mostly went along with what his dad wanted, except when it came to the ladies, because, you know, teenagers will literally drop dead before they'll date who their parents want them to. Mack didn't approve of Larry's high school girlfriend, Donna Pagini, and the Pajini. Genies, a boisterous Italian-American family, didn't like Mack either.

They thought he had a giant stick of his ass. So in his one real act of youthful rebellion, Larry married Donna in his junior year of college, and they had a daughter soon after. Donna was already thinking she'd made a mistake in marrying Larry. That's not unusual when high school sweethearts get hitched, especially when the groom kind of mainly did it to piss off his dad. And Larry had started drinking. He was a friendly, outgoing guy, always ready with a joke and a laugh.

But when he drank, all that turned dark. He'd get cynical and mean, quick with insult rather than jokes. In 1970, they moved to Sacramento so Larry could go to law school. But Donna was pretty miserable there. She hated being alone with Larry and away from her family. Within a month, she moved back home and filed for divorce. Divorce in Reno is famously fast. six weeks later, their marriage was over. Wow.

1970 was a nightmare year for Larry. Just a month after Donna divorced him, his mom, Marie, filed for divorce from Mack, whose drinking had gotten progressively worse. When Mack drank these days, he was abusive and Marie was fed up. A week after she filed, Mack took his own life with a gun. Oh, man. Yeah, and it gets worse. By this point, Larry's older brother, Jimmy, had been in the Navy for two years, where he developed a heroin problem. Three weeks after Max death, Jimmy intentionally overdosed and ended his own life. Oh, my God.

Holy shit. And right on the heels of divorce. I can't even imagine. That's horrific. Yeah. It's hard to say would affect all this had on Larry. In the span of a couple months, he lost most of the people closest to him. It had to be devastating.

So it's probably no surprise that Larry would have trouble making lasting relationships for the rest of his life. Not that it stopped him from trying. In 1973, he married for the second time to a woman named Jody and adopted her five-year-old daughter. The next year, Larry graduated near the top of his class from law school. He worked for a few years as a public defender before going into private practice with his buddy Ron Bath. They were a good match. Larry was a brilliant trial lawyer, super sharp and fast on his feet, while Bath was more careful and ran the business side of the partnership.

This was good, because while Larry never had much trouble making money throughout his life, he did have trouble keeping it. Ron Bath later said, If Larry made a buck, he spent $1.30. If he made $100, he'd spend $130. If he made a million, he'd spend $1.3. Larry was still drinking, and by now he'd added cocaine and sometimes heroin to the mix. Bath and their secretary had to cover for him in court a lot when he was too drunk or high.

Ugh, yeah, self-medicating grief, I suspect. Sure. He went to rehab off and on, and it would always work for a while, but it never stuck. And neither did his marriage to Jody. By 1982, they split, and within a year, Larry was married to wife number three, Gail Fredericks. Just a month later, he hit the legal jackpot with a massive multi-victum case against a local school. The settlement with the school's insurers netted Larry a monthly payment of 37. $700 until 2004, which would be pretty sweet even now. In 1983, that's the equivalent of $11,000 a

month. Damn. And by now, Larry was 35 years old. He'd already defended some high-profile criminal cases, but the school settlement had given him real wealth. Most of us would be set for life in this situation, but Larry had a destructive streak a mile wide. He hit the booze and drugs even harder, and the Jekyll and Hyde side effects got worse. When he was sober, Larry was great to be around. When he was drunk, he could be kind of a prick. His wife, Gail, of course, got to see Mr. Hyde more than anybody else, and their marriage fell apart in 1986. I think a lot of us have at least one friend who is absolutely terrified of being single and alone, so they tend to just careen from one relationship to the next. Well, that was Larry, and the ink was barely dry on his

latest divorce when he got married for the fourth time to a fellow attorney named Linda Gardner. The ceremony took place in an expensive cabin Larry had built in the hills south of Reno. Afterwards, his mom, Marie, told one of Larry's old friends that this was the last one of Larry's weddings she was going to go to. So Marie apparently didn't have a lot of hope that this marriage would take, but dang, mom, maybe keep your mouth shut at least until they've cut the cake. Imagine your mom sitting in the audience at your wedding like, this is the last one of the these I'm coming to. Damn. She was right, though. Larry filed for divorce within a year and sold the cabin for tens of thousands of dollars less than it had cost him to build. Ouch. Ouch.

1988 was another bad year for Larry. He was defending a pair of brothers in a massive meth distribution case with two dozen defendants and mountains of evidence. It would be one of the largest, longest criminal trials in U.S. history, with the transcript eventually running to almost 25,000 pages. It was incredibly tedious work for the most part, and all the attorneys were having a rough time with the case, but Larry had a breakdown. Nine months into the case, the judge called him mid-morning recess. As the lawyers filed out of court, Larry said, I can't take it anymore. The other lawyers laughed. They'd all felt the same way during this case. But Larry didn't come back after the recess. The proceedings couldn't move forward without him, so the judge

asked one of the clerks to track him down. Right then, one of the other lawyers got a call from Larry. He said he was sitting at home with a bottle of whiskey and a gun, trying to figure out what to do. His friends rushed over and calmed Larry down and helped him check into a rehab facility. When one of them called the rehab later on, he could hear Larry shouting in the background, I won't go back. He can't make me go back. I won't do it. He was just completely burned out. After he came out of rehab, Larry wanted nothing to do with his old life. He got a new girlfriend, a hairdresser named Cheryl, who was calm and patient and kind of just took care of him.

He rented a dumpster and threw out all his old files, legal books, suits and ties, like he was done with the law and with his old life. And he realized that his monthly school settlement income gave him the freedom to do pretty much whatever he wanted, which must be. be nice, right? He took up carpentry and soon moved with Cheryl and her three girls to the little town of Yelm, Washington. Larry would later describe his time up north with Cheryl as the happiest he'd ever been. They were years of peace and kind of sort of enlightenment. See, Yelm Washington isn't famous for a whole hell of a lot, but one thing it is known for is being the home of the Shining Tower of Bullshit known as Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, which some of our old veterans will remember has cropped up in a TCC case before. Now, it would be easy to get

sidetracked with Romtha, so we're going to go through things pretty fast, but trust me, it's a fun rabbit hole. In the 1970s, Judy Knight was a blonde, pretty cable TV executive who went by the name Jay-Z for Judy Zebra. The second part, coming from an old nickname she'd gotten, when her mom and first husband pressured her into dyeing her blonde hair dark brown. And, of course, that made it grow out two-toned. Thus, Judy's zebra. The 70s were big on the mystical power of pyramids, which apparently could do everything from cure impotence to keep your razors always sharp. In 1976, the curious Judy made a pyramid out of construction paper in her kitchen. And in an explosion of blue light and golden glitter,

a seven-foot-tall man appeared, dressed in robes of purple and white and pure light, whatever the shit that means. This was Rumptha, a warrior king. who lived 35,000 years ago in the now sunken, and entirely fictional, lands of Lemuria in the Indian Ocean. The mighty Ramtha conquered most of the planet and accrued such wisdom and power that at the end of his life, he didn't die, but ascended to a higher plane, where he had since been joined by Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha. And now, in 1976, Ramtha had chosen to bring his message of enlightenment to the modern world through the holy vessel of a 30-year-old cable TV exec in the Tacoma suburbs who

looks kind of like Barbara Streisand because why the hell not? Romtha would possess Judy's body and speak through her promoting a message that was a grab bag of late 70s New Age weirdness and self-help. Judy could put on quite a show and she

slashed Ramtha were soon touring to ever-increasing crowds. Soon she set up the School of Enlightenment and sleepy little yelm and between lecture tours and classes and books and videotape Ramtho was soon raking in the cash. And Miss Judy Zebrae was something of a minor cuckie celebrity.

She was on the Merv Griffin Show in the 80s. And if you're wondering what kind of accent a 35,000-year-old Lemurian warrior has, the answer is kind of like if the Count on Sesame Street starred in the worst Shakespeare production you've ever seen. One blonde carn artist, ah, ah, ah. made absolute shit piles of money doing it too like built one of the biggest mansions

the West Coast had ever seen up to that point and if you've ever driven down 17 mile drive in California you know that is saying something because there are some obscene houses out there there's big money and enlightenment especially if you have the skills of a small town community theater actor and no like messy conscience or sense of shame to get in your way

Larry who had just had a breakdown attended Romptha classes and retreats. He changed his name to Shantar for a while and worked as a carpenter. Meditating every morning, living the kind of peaceful, stress-free existence that's a lot easier to pull off when you're pulling in thousands of dollars a month in settlement money. As to how much of Jay-Z Knight's big bag of bullshit Larry actually believed, I'd guess somewhere between very little and none at all. Spirituality doesn't seem to have been a big part of his life. and he had a deep well of criminal defense attorney cynicism. But he was curious about new ideas,

and he liked the pace of life in the Pacific Northwest. In the early 90s, Larry's mom died, and by this point, Larry was getting kind of bored. And Romphe had lost its lesser, moving, as Colts always do, from, these are lessons about life, to you better do what we tell you and give us all your money, which was not going to fly with a free spirit like Larry.

It was time for a new life again, one in the same ballpark as his old one. He and Cheryl moved back to Reno, and Larry set about trying to become the biggest personal injury lawyer in the state. If you live in an American city of any size, there's probably one local attorney who's always on billboards and commercials promising to get you money if you've ever been hurt. Sleep on PP at the Walmart, call the hammer. We'll get you the money you deserve. This is pretty much the kind of thing Larry was going for. He had no interest at all in getting back inside a courtroom. He'd use heavy advertising to ensure a high volume of cases. If he couldn't get an immediate settlement,

he'd farm the cases out to other lawyers getting a commission if they won. Larry had inherited some cash from his mother and grandmother and cashed in his monthly school settlement payment. This money ceded the most important parts of the operation, advertising and glitzy offices to give the impression of a successful high-rolling operation. Soon, Larry, often on horseback and wearing a 10-gallon hat, was a familiar site on TVs across western Nevada. And it worked. Within a year, business was booming, so big, the company could hardly keep up. Larry bought a fancy new house and started playing a lot of golf.

His setup didn't actually require him to do much. Nothing was going to court, and he had paralegals and freshly graduated young lawyers to process cases. He shot ads, popular. He shot ads, into the office every now and then, and the money rolled in. It also rolled out. McNabbney and associates, there were no associates. It was just a good name, was spending upwards of 50 grand a month on advertising. Overall, they were barely breaking even, which is not bad for a one-year-old business, but Larry saw they needed more cases to really take off. So he expanded from Reno to Elko and, unfortunately, Las Vegas. Compared to Reno, Vegas. Compared to Reno, Vegas. Vegas was big time, and Larry set up a big-time office with fancy wood paneling and deep carpet,

exactly what you'd expect a high-class, successful law office to look like. He got a condo in Vegas and split his time between there and Reno, but he needed an office manager to run the Vegas operation full-time. One of the applicants for the position was a tall, beautiful young woman named Elisa Rettlesberger, and Larry fell for her right away. Redelsberger was the last name of a sucker she'd married and quickly divorced the person. previous year. Elizabeth, or Elisa, was even more fake, a name she'd adopted from an old prison buddy. Her real name was Lauren Sims. Lauren was born in Massachusetts in 1966, but moved to

Brooksville, Florida when she was just a little girl. And if she didn't quite have a silver spoon in her mouth, it was at least silver-plated. Her family were prominent local business owners. Lauren was a real bright kid. Her IQ apparently tested out at 140, and she was friendly and popular although with the kind of stubborn streak that's real cute when a kid's seven, but has the potential to become a nightmare a few years down the road. She also learned how to talk her way out of trouble. Once she started driving, a friend saw her use a couple different methods to get out of a ticket. One was the old standard of smiling and flirting and saying she was, oh, so sorry.

I've used that one myself a couple times. And the other time, she said she'd run that stop sign because it was her time of the month, and she had to get home real fast, which made the cop go bright red in the face. and just waver on. God. Props for that one. Lauren had some standard issue teenage rebellions, smoking and drinking and staying out too late, but her real bad choices, as I think is true for a lot of teenage girls, were about boys.

That was definitely true of young Whitney. I was a good kid except for that. Oh, boy. In 1984, in her senior year of high school, and right after she turned 18, Lauren dropped out and married a boy she'd practically just met, Virgil Scott Jordan, who, understandably, I think, just went by Scott. They had a daughter, Haley, the next January, but by that time they were already divorced. Man, I really thought those two teenagers who just met and barely knew each other were going to make it, didn't you? I did. I did think they were going to make us.

Scott was my favorite character. He's gone already. He's gotten already, I know. Scott, we hardly knew ye. Another bad choice brief relationship followed with a guy 17 years older than she, and they had a son named Cole. During this time, Lauren finished high school and qualified as a dental technician, and after that, the cheese really started to slide off her cracker. Lauren started stealing, and not because she had to. She shoplifted, which unless you're stealing like bread or diapers, almost always has a psychological cause. Her first arrest was for lifting a $5 hair color kit. Later, she was feuding with a neighbor and snuck into the woman's apartment to steal

ceramic flower arrangements and a telephone, which definitely lands her in the deeply weird category, not so much the nefarious cat burglar, right? Then she robbed her boyfriend's wife. They were going through a divorce and the boyfriend had sent Christmas gifts for their kids hoping his wife would let him come over to spend Christmas together. And when the wife gave that plan a big old thumbs down, Lauren broke in and stole the gifts, as well as an answering machine, jewelry, and clothes. She came back a second time to steal another answering machine, like Lauren, what is with you in the phones and the answering machines? The great hair dye caper had already landed her on probation, which these later burglaries stretched to five years. Plus, she had to pay restitution.

In a pattern that would stay with her throughout the rest of her life, when Lauren was down, she liked to shop, especially for clothes. But she was broke. So over six weeks, she wrote 18 bad checks, which were 18 probation violations. She also got kicked out of her trailer and didn't bother to give her probation officer her new address. Lauren's criminal career was all petty, small-time stuff, but there was a lot of it, mostly committed while she was on probation. She got a three-year prison sentence, but was out inside a three months, having proved substantial assistance to an ongoing investigation. We don't know the details, but we all know how many inmates are prone to letting their tongues wag,

and Lauren was certainly bright enough to use something she'd heard to her own advantage. So, you know, she was obviously snitching on somebody. She was in trouble again, almost immediately. First, I love the story, she picked up a Tampa police officer in a bar and went home with him. And after he fell asleep, she stole his credit cards and went on a spending spree. She knew he was a cop. Like, really? That's just not smart.

She went back to the Slammer for a few months for that. Yeah, she was basically speed running terrible life choices, bingo. She was going for that blackout. She was like, I'm on probation, 18 bad checks. I'll show you probation. I'm broke, sleep with a police officer and steal his money. That's the definition of this time it's personal. Like, usually a cop, like if you get your credit card stolen, it's like, oh, that sucks.

Sorry. But like, when you steal a cop stuff? Are you kidding me? Oh, yeah. He's coming after you. Going for that blackout. Then she just ignored the terms of her probation and had to wear an ankle monitor. Shortly after that, she gave up custody of her son to his father, but kept custody of Haley.

Way to make a little boy feel special, Lauren. Ugh, that's horrible. It's awful. Not long after, Lauren helped herself to her bosses. credit card to buy $180 worth of stuff for her apartment. Before her court date, she cut off her ankle monitor and got ready to hit the road. Jesus. She gave Haley a choice.

She could go and live with her grandparents or go on the land with her mom, which, for God's sake, Haley was eight years old, mind you. That's a choice you have to make for her lady. And, duh, the little girl chose her mom. Of course. Their relationship had already kind of flipped. Like little Haley felt like she was the mom and she had to take care of Lauren. Oh, that's so sad.

It happens so often with people like Lauren. Absolutely. She has no impulse control. She's, you know, sprinting around fucking shit up. And this little eight-year-old has to be the voice of reason. And that's going to mess you up. I mean, any kid who gets parentified, that's the, I think the psychological term for it is parentified. like that is it messes you up in all kinds of ways.

It's really unfortunate. Yeah, for sure. Where Lauren and Haley were in what they did for the next year or so is kind of hazy, which I guess you'd expect from someone on the run from the law. Although I doubt anyone in Florida was setting up roadblocks for a petty thief and check fraudster. But in May 1994, 14 months after she snipped off her ankle monitor, Lauren got married in Vegas to a businessman named Ken Rettlesberger. Not that Ken knew who he was marrying.

Lauren was going by the name Elizabeth Ann Barish, who'd been a cellmate during one of Lauren's brief stints in the can. After that, everyone in the story called her Elisa. The marriage was over by the end of the year, but the newly minted Elisa kept her new last name, which may have well been the whole reason she married Ken in the first place to establish a solid Vegas identity. I mean that in the 50 grand she got in the divorce. When Elisa walked in to interview for the job as Larry McNabbney's office manager in the summer of 1995, there's no mystery about why she got his attention right away. She was tall and pretty and had a brilliant smile. And there was a bright, intelligent charisma about her.

Most of us have known somebody like this. When you first meet them, you think, wow, this person's really fun and cool. Then you get to know them a little better, and it's like, oh, I get it. They're bad shit nuts. Oh, yeah. But that first impression can be pretty intense. It can suck you right in before you know what you're getting yourself into. Uh-huh.

And the fact is, despite their radically different career histories, Larry and Elisa were alike in a lot of ways. Both were sharp and witty in the same dark-humored way, and they both had a reckless streak. Sparks flew between them for minute one. And despite Elisa's total lack of professional experience, she picked up the basic of Larry's business right away. He hired her. Now, Larry McNabbney was a lot of things, but he wasn't a schmunk. He was an experienced criminal attorney who'd represented killers, bombers, and drug dealers. And he was more than familiar with the shady side of life. Elisa's life and work

history obviously wouldn't hold up to scrutiny. She didn't even have a social security number she was comfortable using. It's hard to believe that Larry wasn't aware of something off about her, So why did he hire her for this vital position in his new business? Well, the answer to that probably has to do with Elisa moving into Larry's fancy condo a couple days after they met. Days. Days. Yeah. Days.

He just fell for her that hard. Not long after that, Larry leased them both matching Jaguars, one black and one white. For Elisa, it was a hell of a step up from swiping telephones. Sometimes, but less and less often, Larry would take a private jet back to Reno to stay with his girlfriend Cheryl and her kids. Cheryl hadn't been keen on Larry expanding his operation to Vegas, figuring it was a bad city for a recovering addict to spend much time in. Her concerns were well-founded. Not long after setting up in his Sin City office, Larry started drinking again, after years of sobriety. And when Cheryl met Elisa, she knew something was up, although she couldn't have any clue how far and how fast things. were moving between Larry and Elisa.

Larry showed off his new girlfriend to his Vegas friends, a lot of whom found her oddly careful and suspicious, like she had something to hide, which she did, of course. And she wasn't some experienced con artist who was well-practiced at wearing a mask. She was a petty thief who'd just landed on her feet in a big way. Another thing that made some of Larry's friends go,

huh, was when he took Elisa to an Oscar de la Hoya fight. Larry introduced her around as the daughter of a well-old. wealthy Cuban businessman and said she could speak fluent Spanish, which I assume is probably what she told him, whether it was something she told him or just something he made up himself. I mean, we don't know for sure, but my guess is that she probably told him that. It was a De La Jolla fight in Vegas, so there were plenty of Spanish speakers in the crowd, but the supposedly fluent Elisa couldn't manage more than a few phrases. You know, like somebody who was pretty good in high school but hadn't spoken the language in a decade. It must have been something to see like, so did you

enjoy the fight? Please, where must I go to the bus station? Where's the library? Don't there is a bibliotheca. A month after Larry had hired Elisa and they'd started, you know, knocking boots, the bookkeeper of his Vegas office quit. No problem. Elisa could handle the accounts. Within a few weeks, he'd made Elisa the chief operating officer of all three of his offices with authority over all their accounts. She had a rubber stamp with Larry's signature that she was authorized to put on any check. She kept it in her purse, so it would always be handy. This, remember, was someone who couldn't keep herself from the most trivial thefts even when they were guaranteed to land her in

hot water, and now she was controlling the books of a high dollar law firm. What could possibly go wrong? Hmm. Her new gig as office manager was the first time Elisa had ever been in a position of authority and she really discovered her inner robo bitch. She was cold and demanding and everybody in all three offices was kind of terrified of her. Larry still preferred to spend most of his time out on the golf course and everyone quickly became aware that Elisa was their real boss. If she didn't like somebody, they were out on their ass. When Larry did come in, he would play act as a gruff hard ass so Elisa could make on like she was acting like a buffer between her staff and their scary boss. So they were both scared of and grateful to her. She made people nervous. They never really knew what she was

thinking or planning. Like one young lawyer, Jeffrey Moore, remembers Elisa hanging out in his office a lot, leaning on his desk and complaining about her sex life with Larry. He didn't know whether she was coming on to him, or if he'd pissed her off somehow and she was trying to get him to make a move on her so she could tell Larry and Jeffrey would get canned. Sounds like a real fun place to work, right? I feel like there's an Allie McBeal joke in here somewhere, but I'm just not quite landed on it. It's like if Jigsaw designed the world's most mundane sawtrap.

Or like, I'm picturing, I'm picturing Jigsaw as Michael Scott now. Like the Saw, the Office Saw edition. The Sawfess. Oh, you guys. That's our next Kickstarter. Yes. The Soffes. I think Michael Scott would be absolutely.

terrifying his jigsaw. Yeah, I think so too. The new offices gave McNabbney and associates an expanding payroll. And the intense statewide advertising that was crucial to the business did not come cheap. And Larry had three houses, God knows how many cars, and regularly flew a private jet to Reno and back. He took the entire staff on a first-class trip to Acapulco and went on a private vacate to Porta Vyarta with Elisa, a trip which required him to somehow.

obtain a fake social security number for her so she could get a passport that wouldn't flag her as a fugitive. Wow. It's a way to live, I guess. I just can't imagine. Larry's form of, yeah, Larry's simping form is unmatched. He'd get a 10 out of 10 in the Simp Olympics. 10 out of 10, 11 out of 10. The statewide expansion of Larry's business was getting new clients, but not enough of them to offset the expenditures.

By November of 1995, less than a year after opening his Vegas office, Larry shut it down. He'd concentrate on the smaller and cheaper markets of Reno and Elko. So he moved back to Reno and, of course, took Elisa with him, which meant that Cheryl, who he dated for eight years and her kids who called Larry Dad, were kicked out of the house so Elisa and Haley could move in. Cheryl and Larry would eventually work out a friendly relationship, and he'd stay in the girls' lives, but all the same. Ouch.

In December at the staff Christmas party, an accountant mentioned to Jeffrey Moore that checks written on the client trust account were bouncing. Was this a serious problem? Uh, yeah, it sure as hell was. Thank you for bringing up at this Christmas party, where I presumably am a little oiled up. Yeah. The trust account was settlement money earmarked for clients, as in not the firm's money at all. Screwing around with that money meant flirting with disbarment, and maybe even jail time. When he started poking around, Moore found out that, surprise, surprise, Elisa had been writing checks to buy herself stuff.

One of the bounce checks had been for an American quarter horse. Elisa and Haley both loved horses. This was just a radically scaled-up version of teenage Elisa shoplifting a $5 hair color kit. She wanted something, so she took it, who gives a shit about the consequences. The whole situation put Jeffrey Moore in a tight spot. He knew he should tell Larry, but not only was he scared of Larry, he wasn't sure his boss was actually ignorant of what Elisa had been doing. He might just fire Jeffrey.

So he went to a couple of local attorneys that he knew were good friends with Larry and told them what he'd found. Larry was either shocked or gave a pretty good impression of being shocked. When he and his two friends confronted Elisa, she initially got mad and denied everything, but eventually she burst into tears and came clean, then ran out of the house. She'd stay with a friend for a few weeks. Later on, Larry called Jeffrey Moore over to his house and told him he was grateful.

You're my man, Larry said. When he saw that Moore wasn't wearing a coat, he gave him one of his own, a nice suede one with wool lining. Was he grateful? It seems more likely that Larry knew he had to keep Jeffrey Moore on his side. Larry's attorney friends were theoretically obligated to tell the bar about what they'd learned, but they hadn't. There was some indication that Larry's drink and drug-fueled past had landed him in hot water with the bar before, and any penalty

for wrongdoing would likely be harsh, so his buddies were willing to do him a favor. The risks to Larry's business were already potentially catastrophic. He could shoot all the ads he wanted with himself as a good old boy on horseback. If McNabbian associates got a rep as a crooked firm, it wouldn't matter. So he certainly didn't need Jeffrey Moore running his mouth. to the bar or anyone else. Larry spent three weeks trying to put out fires that Elise had started, taking out a hefty loan to cover the amount missing from the client trust account and hiring an auditor to go through the company books.

And then he did what anyone would do when they found out their girlfriend's been stealing from them, putting their business and future livelihood at risk. He took her down to the Reno Hilton and married her. My dude. No. No. No, just no. So what was going on here?

When friends quizzed Larry about why the hell he'd marry someone who'd used him and stolen from him, he was just like, I love her. Oh. And for a particular toxic, codependent definition of love, that was certainly true. But there was more to the story than that. After she'd run out of Larry's house in tears, but before they got married, Elisa had asked one of Larry's lawyer's friends if she could be forced to testify against him if they were married. And in late December, right before everything came out into the open, McNabbian Associates were $100,000 behind on payments to their advertiser.

Larry got the money together, apparently from nowhere, and paid them off to keep his ads on the air. Had Larry told Elisa to take money out of the client trust account so he could pay his advertisers? He could top it up later when more settlement money came. But Elisa, being who she was, couldn't resist using some of the money in there to buy herself a horsey and some other things and those checks started bare. It's a plausible theory, and it would give Elisa something she could hold over Larry forever. Years later, he'd tell one of his kids that Elisa could ruin him if she wanted. Maybe this little scam with the trust account was what he was talking about, because that could end Larry's legal career and possibly put him in jail.

And if Elisa held something over Larry, the reverse was true, too. It's likely that Larry knew exactly who he was getting married to. I'm not sure the kind of guy exists who's willing and able to get a fake social security number for his girlfriend, but has no further questions. That certainly wasn't Larry. The year before they'd gotten married, Elisa had gotten in touch with her old Florida attorney to try and work out some kind of deal where she could clear her record down there while avoiding more jail time. This was probably doable, given the pettiness of her crimes, as long as she could make restitution and pay some fines. The total sum would be about five grand. But Larry talked her out of it,

told her not to trust her attorney or talk to him again. Seems as if if he liked the leverage, Elise's criminal past, gave him over her. This sort of mutual blackmail probably explains why they started calling each other Blanche, which is something that needs a little unpacking. They had a friend Nancy who enjoyed quoting movie lines for comic effect, and one of her favorite sources was whatever happened to Baby Jane, which is a psychological horror movie with a seam of pitch black comedy. It's actually a great movie.

Blanche, played by Joan Crawford, is confined to a wheelchair, and basically psychologically tortured by her sister Jane, who's played by Betty Davis. The most famous couple of lines are when Blanche says, You wouldn't be able to do these awful things to me if I weren't still in this chair. And Jane comes back, but you are, Blanche, you are in that chair. So all three of them, Larry, Elisa, and Nancy were having lunch at a seafood restaurant when Nancy did this bit, and Larry and Elisa cracked up till they cried. And from then on, they called each other Blanche.

which certainly got him more than a few weird looks over the years, but I think it's telling. They're both blanche, trapped and tormented by the person they're closest to. Larry certainly wasn't making the best decisions around the end of 1995. As his firm bled more money, his drinking and drug-taking ramped up. Each of his previous four wives had, with greater or lesser success, tried to put the breaks on Larry's substance abuse. But not Elisa. If anything, she encouraged his wild side. A drunk and high Larry was easier to control and less curious about checking the company books.

And Elisa certainly didn't have any problem with drugs. One time, when he was on a trip down to Vegas, Elisa invited Jeffrey Moore to come and hang out in the condo hot tub with her and one of her girlfriends. Jeffrey, remember, was the young lawyer who Elisa was always complaining to about her unsatisfying sex life with Larry. And you'd think a lawyer would be better at picking up hints because apparently Jeffrey still couldn't tell if Elisa was coming on to him. and thought this little hot tub bikini party was just, I guess, entirely innocent. It's like, Jeff, dude, honey, she's trying to bang you, I promise. Bless your heart. Anyway, Elisa's friend casually offered Jeffrey some crystal meth to get the party going.

And it was pretty clear Elisa was hitting the stuff too. So, yeah, don't get no classier than meth in a hot tub, baby. Yeah, fun fact, they call it ice soup in Reno. Okay, no they don't, but it sounds good and they should, okay? They should, yeah. To the astonishment of everybody who knew what she'd done, within a couple months of her marriage to Larry, Elisa was right back running the McNabbinian Associates offices.

What the fuck? I just can't with this story. Jeffrey Moore, as well as his assistant and the accountant who'd first noticed Elisa's bouncing checks, could see the writing on the wall. They started making copies of everything Elisa had signed or stamped Larry's signature onto, going back months. Elisa's assistant caught him at it, and they were all fired days later.

Now, folks, is that a good idea to fire an attorney who knows all about your wrongdoing and who you know has been gathering evidence to back himself up? Spoiler, it's not a good idea. Jeffrey Moore right away started putting together a letter to the state bar, spilling the beans on Elisa using the client trust account for, quote, an extravagant lifestyle, which included routine trips and Lear Jets, leased Jaguars, purchase of jewelry, a fur, trips abroad, and purchase of equine. It's the most lawyer, like, she bought a fucking horse. She bought horse.

Yeah. Purchase of equine. Purchase of equine. The state bar's investigation and subsequent hearing banned Elisa from holding any position at the firm, and Larry got one public reprimand and two private ones. It took a while, but that was pretty much it for McNabney and Associates. Not so much because of any scandal, but because Larry's heart just wasn't in anymore. Reno was one of those places where the attorneys all know each other, and Larry was embarrassed. Embarrassed by the reprimands and the fact that everyone thought his pretty young wife was running rings around him.

He withdrew from his friends and family becoming more isolated as he and Elisa quickly downgraded to a smaller house than a rental and then an apartment. He was depressed and he was going on Bender's more. and more often. Again, Elisa didn't try to get him help with any of his problems or encourage him to get in touch with the friends and family who'd been helping him face his demons for years. She encouraged him to separate from his previous life until it was more or less just the two of them. Blanche and Blanche trapped together. Yeah, she's a scumbag for that alone, like just to encourage, not just enable, encourage somebody to just fall deeper and deeper into their addiction. that is pure evil.

Yeah. Because it suits you. That's just disgusting. Larry had never had much trouble with picking up his life and starting over somewhere new, and toward the end of 1998, he and Elisa moved to Sacramento to try and start out McNabbian Associates Part 2. Larry's Western-themed ads would work just as well in California as Nevada, with the text and phone numbers changed. The main difference was that Larry's limited involvement running the whole deal would be even less. He gave the new company, his name, and theoretically owned it, but Elisa was running the whole show. Larry played golf and drank while Elisa, who didn't have any official legal training and

had crashed and burned Larry's previous business in a matter of months, was in charge of everything now, including the banking. Oh, my Lord. What do they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Hmm. Yeah. Their fresh new start in California wasn't exactly all peace and, like. light. Elisa's daughter, Haley, had never gotten along with her new stepdad, and that relationship

got worse the more Larry drank when he got verbally abusive with her. One time, during an argument, he grabbed her by the throat. Elisa, parent of the year, solved this by moving Haley out to stay with friends and then getting her an apartment of her own. Kid was 15 at the time, by the way. Way to make your priorities clear, Mom. By January of 2000, the new firm was chugging along. although not reaching the same heights as its previous incarnation in Nevada. It was then that Elisa hired a new receptionist. This was Sarah Dutra, a cute blonde 19-year-old, a sophomore art student at Sacramento State University.

Sarah thought she'd struck gold with her new gig. It was close to campus, and it paid $2,000 a month, which is a hell of a lot of scratch for a teenage art student. Oh, yeah. She was a bright, middle-class girl, easy to get along with, and with real artistic talent. In early 2000, it would be crazy to imagine her as the spark that would cause the volatile relationship between Larry and Elisa to explode into betrayal and murder. But that's what would happen.

So we're going to leave it there for part one, campers. This is a big story, but we'll have part two for you next week. In the meantime, 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 of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Heidi R.N. Hope, Anna, Rachel, Ashlyn, Melissa Diadra, ooh, that's pretty, and Bronte. We appreciate y'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 two, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a raddy enamel pin while supplies last at $10. virtual events with Katie and me,

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