True Crime Campfire - One Night in Hell: The Richmond Hill Explosion

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed—only transferred from one form to another. For example, dynamite explodes when chemical energy is converted to kinetic energy. It’s an interesting metaphor for a kind of killer we see a lot on True Crime Campfire: the smart, dynamic charmer with everything going for them, who throws it all away by putting their energy into all the wrong stuff: Revenge, or greed, or a lust for power. And like a stick of dynamite, when these people go off, they tend to take innocent people with them. Monserrate Shirley was a bright, attractive ICU nurse with a loving daughter and a beautiful home. She had the potential to do anything she wanted to do. What she did instead was hook up with a guy named Mark Leonard, a con artist with a faux tan and a whole lot of bad ideas about how to get rich quick. Join us for the bizarre true story of a plan gone horribly wrong. Sources:CNBC's "American Greed," episode "Neighborhood Inferno"Oxygen's "Killer Couples," episode "Monserrate Shirley and Mark Leonard"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Hill_explosionhttps://www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/monserrate-shirley-sentencing-starts-monday/531-c1efed7f-5eff-4f1f-b989-d88067ee5a51https://www.wrtv.com/longform/but-for-monserrate-shirley-she-was-a-neighbor-a-friend-a-nurse-she-betrayed-it-allhttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiYqL-BnKD2AhU0JEQIHVx5AcQQFnoECAQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indystar.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2F2016%2F12%2F20%2Frichmond-hill-suspect-monserrate-shirley-gets-50-years%2F95657520%2F&usg=AOvVaw3jMrZL-YLV1R88znU7pUajhttps://fox59.com/news/richmond-hill-explosion-culprit-mark-leonard-dies-at-indy-hospital/https://fox59.com/news/cause-of-death-of-richmond-hill-conspirator-mark-leonard-determined/https://www.in.gov/apps/indcorrection/ofs/ofs?lname=Shirley&fname=Monserrate&search1.x=40&search1.y=12Follow 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] 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 first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred from one form to another. For example, dynamite explodes when chemical energy is converted to kinetic energy. It's an interesting metaphor for a kind of killer we see a lot on true crime campfire,

the smart, dynamic charmer with everything going for them, who throws it all away by putting their energy into all the wrong stuff, revenge or greed or a lust for power, and like a stick of dynamite, when these people go off, they tend to take innocent people wet them. This is One Night in Hill, the Richmond Hill Explosion. So, campers, for this one, we're in Richmond Hill, a quiet subdivision in Indianapolis, Indiana, November 10th, 2012, around 11 o'clock p.m. Liz Kelly was all snugged up in bed, sleeping peacefully, when suddenly she was jolted awake by a noise like nothing she'd ever heard in her life.

It shook the whole house. Later, her home surveillance cameras would show pictures falling off the walls and the microwave door flying open. You can see the walls shuddering. Moments later, the local 911 dispatch was flooded with calls from Richmond Hill in the surrounding neighborhoods, rattled sounding callers talking about a big boom, a huge bang. One caller seemed to understand what must have happened. He said, does anyone have any idea what exploded? And an explosion, it was.

A powerful one. so powerful that an earthquake detection system almost 30 miles away registered it. And as fire trucks sped toward Richmond Hill, the neighbors who could were making their way outside to see what in the hill was happening. It had been a beautiful sunny day just hours before, but as the residents stumbled out their front doors and into the street, they must have felt like they'd somehow been transported into a hieronymus Bosch depiction of hell. Little bits of fiberglass insulation were falling from the sky like rain. people were running around in panic covered in blood there were flames screams someone yelled everybody get back there could be another explosion amid this scene of total bedlam a few scraps of information were flying around from neighbor to neighbor it could have been a plane crash there was an airport nearby or maybe it was a gas explosion if so could there be more coming one family the olvis got one of the closest looks at the ground zero point of the chaos glen olvey later told the show American Greed

that he was just standing, watching TV holding a soda, total dad pose, when, without warning, he just flew across the room. He could hear his youngest daughter screaming, I'm bleeding. His wife yelled something back to her, and then Glenn passed out.

Fortunately, a couple of brave neighbors got Glenn and his family out of the house before the fire engulfed it. And Glenn and his family would soon find out what a miracle it was that they all got out alive. Another pair of neighbors, a young couple named Jennifer and Dion Longworth, were not so lucky. School teacher Jennifer and audio engineer Dion had lived in the neighborhood since 2005, built their house from the ground up, and they loved Richmond Hill.

Dion loved gardening, had turned their backyard into a little paradise of blackberries and raspberries and apples and pears, not to mention a profusion of flowers that Dion knew all the Latin names for. He and Jennifer loved the villagey feel of the neighborhood, where everybody knew everybody and stopped to chat in their driveways on warm afternoons. Now their peaceful world was in ruins. The two-story home they'd so lovingly built seven years earlier had collapsed on top of them. Jennifer was killed instantly, but Dionne... Dion was still alive and trapped underneath a pile of twisted rubble.

One of his neighbors heard him yelling for help, and when the firefighters arrived, they rush straight to him. As anybody would be, he was terrified, begging for someone to get him out. As a group of firefighters worked to try and free Dion from the complicated pile of debris pinning him down, one of them lay down on the ground and reached through a little opening in the rubble to grab hold of Dion's hand. He talked to him, trying to reassure him as his colleagues worked on the pile of rubble, frantically trying to get Dion out of there. There was smoke all around them, and Battalion Chief Mark Culver quickly realized that the fire was moving too fast,

racing toward the men and the huge pile of flammable material they were working on. It would be right on top of them in seconds. And in a moment Culver will wrestle with for the rest of his life, he was forced to make an unthinkable call. He ordered his people out of there. There was no way they could save Dion Longworth. If they stayed, they'd die right along with them. Chief Culver had to physically drag the last couple of firefighters away,

kicking and shouting as Dion kept screaming for help. They barely made it to safety before the fire engulfed the collapsed house, and the desperate man trapped under it. Before long, it was pretty clear where all this mayhem had started. The house that sat between the Longworths and the Olives had exploded into smithereens. Liz Kelly, who'd been jolted awake by the boom a few minutes earlier, later told American greed that her husband ran outside to see what was going on. And when he came back, he said, it's gone. It's gone. What's gone, Liz said. The house! The house is gone!

Still half asleep in kind of days, Liz said. What are you talking about? I'm standing in the house. Her husband shook his head. Not our house. The neighbor's house. It's gone. The house in question belonged to Montserrat Shirley, a nurse everybody called Moncey. She lived there with her daughter and their fluffy white cat snowball, and as the neighbors realized what had happened to her house, they felt sure that all three must be dead. Firefighters worked all through the night to get the blaze under control, and at dawn, the sun rose on the scene of utter destruction.

Dazed residents wandered through the ruins of their pretty neighborhood. Their faces stained with tears and soot and in some cases blood. People were crying and hugging each other. It was surreal, like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. I can't even imagine. The neighbors didn't know it yet, of course. It would take a while to assess all the damage, but all told, 80 homes were damaged in the explosion, 30 of them so badly that they'd have to be torn down. Three houses, Moncey Shirley's, the Olvys, and Dionne and Jennifer Longworths, were completely destroyed.

Even the houses that looked okay weren't. The explosion had cracked foundations to the point where the houses had actually twisted off of them and weren't fit for habitation anymore. all the houses would have to be inspected, and a total of 200 residents would end up displaced. In addition to the two dead, a dozen residents were hurt in the blast. Arson investigators were already getting to work early that morning, and they'd soon discover the cause of the disaster. A natural gas explosion at Moncey Shirley's place, the equivalent of five tons worth of TNT. Everybody assumed Moncey and her daughter had died in the blast, but that morning, walking around surveying the damage,

Liz Kelly saw Moncey standing outside the crater that had once been her home. Liz ran up and hugged her, thrilled to see that she was okay. I'm so sorry, Moncey said. It broke Liz's heart. I mean, God, it wasn't her fault her house blew up. She said, why are you sorry? Your house blew up. You're a victim just like me.

Moncey looked devastated. She said, The neighbors are saying horrible things about me. me. Liz couldn't believe it. What a cold-hearted reaction. She let Monsie know she and her husband were there for her and told her not to listen to any of that crap. Weird, though, that people would be saying bad stuff about Monsie right on the heels of her house exploding. Yeah. It seems like from minute one, many of her neighbors didn't see her as a victim. There was suspicion in the air already, but why would that be? Well, let's put a pin in all this for a minute, and I'll

I'll give you some background info. Montserrat grew up in Puerto Rico, in a family that struggled a lot financially, but she spent a lot of time watching the rich American tourists who came to the island on vacation. She daydreamed about living that lifestyle herself someday, and all that dreaming eventually shaped her worldview. Happiness equaled money, designer labels, and fancy homes, and she was willing to work hard to chase after that dream, spending countless hours hold up with her books.

She felt like a career in health care would be, a good pathway to money and success, so in 1990 she applied to study nursing in Michigan and got accepted. She thought she might want to transition eventually from nursing to med school. A lot of rich tourists she'd seen on the island as a kid were doctors. A shiny career was part of Moncey's plan, but it wasn't the whole plan. She wanted a hot husband too, and it didn't take her long to find him. His name was John Shirley, a manufacturing tech with a drive to succeed that matched hers. John helped put Moncey through nursing school, and after she finished, they got married. They bought a house in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Moncee got a job as a nurse in the ICU at a local

hospital. Before long, they added a little girl to the mix, and everybody seemed happy as a bucket of clams. But Moncey's champagne wishes and caviar dreams were never far from her mind, and within a few years, she started feeling a little bit disgruntled about the middle-class life she and John were building. Here we go. And we're right? Yep. Y'all know this is going to end in tears. Anywho, John was a hardworking guy, but his job didn't exactly pay brain surgeon money. Nevertheless, Moncey had ants in her pants to upgrade their digs, and she kept at John about it until he finally caved. And in 2003, they bought a lot in the nice upper middle class neighborhood of Richmond Hill, and built a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half

bath house from the ground up. Moncey was right there with the architect for every step of the process, picking out the best fixtures and cabinets and flooring. The end result was 2,800 square feet, nice and spacious, with a big gas fireplace in the great room. Moncey had her dream house, or at least the dreamiest one they could manage right then, but the fact was they really couldn't afford it. John had let Moncey browbeat him into building it, and she'd gone way over budget. Now they were barely squeaking by every month, which for some reason still didn't stop Moncey from buying designer this and designer that, making sure she did everything possible to keep up with the Joneses.

Now, that's enough to inject about a thousand cc's of pure stress into even the most loving relationship, and Moncey and John didn't survive it. John told Moncey, look, this is not a tenable situation. You're going to have to choose. Either you keep the house or you keep our marriage. Take a wild guess which one she chose. Yeah.

By 2010, Moncy and John were divorced and bankrupt. The terms of the bankruptcy allowed Moncey to keep the house in Richmond Hill, which was a huge relief for her. John moved out and Monty stayed in the house with their 11-year-old daughter and their white Persian cat snowball, which phoning it in a little on the cat names here, Monty, right? Like, poor cat. Needed a firm name, like Samson or something, for God's sake. Yeah, like Gene and Jorts are acceptable names. Oh, yeah. Craft single is an acceptable name. I, I, you say so. Yeah, it is. Don't question me. Once knew a white fluff ball named Riccada, but that's as fancy as cat names need to be.

Ricotta. I kind of like Ricotta, yeah. It was a great name. It's like a confident Italian lady. Mm-hmm. Now, you might think, okay, Moncey's actually kind of sitting pretty now, at least as pretty as you could hope to be in her situation. At least she still had the dream house. But Moncey's the type who can't stand to be alone.

John hadn't been gone long before she started casting around for a new. guy to fill his shoes. She became a regular at a local bar called Crazy Street. Crazy with a K, so you know it's extra crazy. And one night, about four months after her divorce from John Shirley, Moncey caught a guy giving her the old eyebrow waggle from the other side of the bar. His name was Mark Leonard and who campers. Y'all got to get a load of this specimen. Flashier and a set of hazard lights. Mark had blonde hair, piercing blue eyes. and a carefully cultivated tan. He wore tight designer jeans.

He drove a Humvee and he liked throwing money around. And he kind of had that way about him. You know what I'm talking about? Like the kind of guy that can get you pregnant just by looking at you sideways. But like, not in a sexy way. Like a skanky way. From the moment she laid eyes on him,

Moncey was warm for his form. That first night, they talked for hours at the bar. Mark told her he owned his own construction company and bought and sold cars as a side hustle. And he told her his philosophy on dating. He was all about pampering his women. You go out with Mark Leonard, he said, and you're going to be treated like a lady. Oh, God. This all sounded pretty sweet to Moncey, who loved the idea of a man who could take care of her. She brought Mark home with her that first night, and they were pretty much super glued to each other after that. hot and heavy.

And Moncee learned even more fascinating info about her new man, like the fact that he used to be an exotic dancer with a group called the Indy Playboys. My, my. Less than a week after they locked eyes across the bar at Carazy Street, Mark moved in to Moncey's place. Crazy Street is right. Less than a week. Damn.

Yeah, I mean, we're not. your moms. Do what you want to do. But that's kind of fucked up when you have an 11-year-old daughter at home. Yeah. You just met this guy, Moncy. Yikes. Yeah. But that was the power of Mark Leonard's, I guess we're going to call it charm. And Moncey wasn't the first woman to be taken in by it. The TV show American Greed interviewed another one of Mark's ladies, his ex-girlfriend Joanne. Joanne met him on plenty of fish, and he gave her the same spiel about how a woman deserved to be treated like a princess. Joanne was a single mom of a disabled son. She was also a nurse, somebody who was always taking care of others. So the idea of somebody taking care of her

for a change was really seductive. At first, Mark seemed to do just that. He insisted on paying for everything on their dates. But before long, he asked Joanne if he could, could borrow a small amount of money. She was pretty invested at that point. She was falling for the guy, and she had no reason not to trust him. Oh, no. So she said, sure. And Mark paid her back right away. No harm, no foul. Then he asked for a much bigger loan, $10,000 to buy a new piece of equipment for a construction job he was working on. He told her the job would eventually pay $300,000. He could pay her back no problem. Joanne gave him the money, but Mark wasn't done. Before long, he asked for yet another loan, $30,000 this time. Joanne had hit her limit. She told him no, and he dumped her the same day.

The 10 grand she'd loaned him ended up being the tuition cost for a painful lesson. Joanne was left high and dry, heartbroken and betrayed. But it was all in a day's work for Mark Leonard. He was old had at this con. His favorite M.O. was to find older women who'd been single for a while. Then he'd lay on the charm and take them for everything they had. Even his own family members describe him as a swindler and addicted to money. Addicted to money. Well, at least he and Moncey had that in common. And just a few weeks into their whirlwind romance, they were having plenty of fun together. They went out for lavish dinners and went gambling at the local casinos. They tooled around on Mark's Harley Davidson motorcycle. Vroom, vroom. And Moncee proved she really cared

about him too. When he came down with some kind of nasty bug, Moncee took care of him like the train nurse she was. Unfortunately for Mark, though, Moncy wasn't turning out to be the cash cow he'd been hoping for. She was almost $65,000 in credit card debt. She'd declared bankruptcy, and she owed more on her house than it was worth. Yikes. That credit card debt alone's enough to pucker your butt, because you know what the interest on that's got to be. That's the kind of debt you can spend the rest of your life trying to dig yourself out of. But as we've seen so many times before on True Crime Camp Fire, you can't keep a good con man down, and Mark had a plan. First, he convinced Moncey to up her personal property coverage, basically insurance to cover your furniture,

electronics, jewelry, stuff like that, from 100 to 300K. And then he let Moncey in on the rest of the plan. It was real simple. Nothing to break his sweat about. All he wanted her to do was let him destroy her house. It was perfect, Mark told her. If she lost everything, they could collect that $300,000 in property coverage. She could pay off the two mortgages on the house, pay off her credit cards,

and have a nice chunk of change left over for them to play with. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. But Moncey wanted no part of this Wiley Coyote bullshit of his. She hadn't sweated her ass to the bone build in that house, just to see it raised to earth for the insurance money. She loved her dream house. She wanted to keep it. Also, forgive me for talking shop a minute here, campers.

But this always kills me about, like, arson insurance fraud cases. People always seem to forget that if they destroy all their shit, they're going to have to buy new shit to replace it. Right. Like, even if you overinsure your property, you can only make so much of a profit. A claims adjuster is going to do their best. to find out what your stuff was actually worth. So just because you inflate the value of your property and say like, oh, this set of shelves is actually worth $10,000, that doesn't mean the

insurance company is going to pay that. The plan was flawed from the start, dipshits. Yeah, well, maybe that was part of the reason Moncey didn't bite at the plan at first. But Mark would not let it go. He brought it up relentlessly. Come on, come on, it'll be so easy. We'll get away with that for sure. And all it'll take is a small fire. Nobody will get hurt. Mark kept at Moncey about the insurance fraud scheme like a bratty kid at Toys R Us. And she caved. God forbid we say no to Mr. Humvee spray tan on his tight jeans. Ugh. On the day the caper was supposed to take place, Moncey dropped Snowball off at the kennel, where I hope he was treated like the little prince he was. Let's all remember, none of this is Snowball's fault. I'm sure he thinks these people are twats.

Moncy's daughter stayed over at a friend of Mark's, a guy who was in on the plan, too, and helped Mark talk Moncey into it, which, yikes, Moncy, nice babysitter you picked there. Ugh, ugh, right? To make sure they had a rock-solid alibi, Mark and Moncey went to one of their favorite casinos. Plenty of surveillance cameras, plenty of people to say they were there at the time of the fire. And while they were playing the slots, Gary Thompson, another one of Mark's friends, this guy seems to have quite the posse around him, was supposed to go pour gasoline all over. the house and light her up. Mark and Muncie had agreed to pay him five grand, but Gary, apparently the smartest one of the group, chickened out at the last minute. Good job, Gary. Now, go us one better, and go make a call to the cops. No? Well, for fuck sake, Gary, you're an idiot.

Mark was not pleased when they drove back to Monsie's place and found it strangely intact unlike not doused in gasoline. But never a man to be thwarted in the midst of a good caper, Mark decided to try again. And a week later, they were back on that horse. This time they tried a different plan. They were going to use the gas fireplace with an old thermostat as a spark. Once again, Moncey's daughter went to the sitter's house. Poor Snowball went back to the kennel where I hope he was given plenty of treats. Moncey and Mark went back to the casino, paraded around in front of the surveillance cameras, yada, yada, yada, and it didn't work.

Frustrated, Mark decided to bring in a ringer, his half-brother Bob, whose help he promised $10,000 for. On November 9th, Mark and Bob went to the aptly named Gaslighter Inn. Oddly enough, they knew the bartender there worked for the gas company, and they wanted to pick his brain. Later, investigators would pull the security footage from the Gaslighter Inn that night, and it is wild. You can actually see the bartender gesturing with his hands, miming an explosion. He'd later explain that he was telling Mark and Bob how a house full of gas could pop like a balloon. The next day, November 10th, the whole thing played out again. Snowball went back to the kennel, which by now must have seemed like his home away from home.

Moncey's daughter went to stay with Mark's creepy friend. And Mark and Moncey went back to the casino. Later, the investigators would notice how they didn't seem to be doing any actual gambling there. They just wandered around, doing nothing except making sure the security cameras saw them. Smooth, guys, very smooth. These two are a crack team, boy. The A team. Tragically, this time, the plan worked.

And before long, Monsie was getting calls from worried neighbors who thought she and her daughter might be dead. And as she listened to their frantic descriptions of the scene back at Richmond Hill, Moncey realized she might have bitten off more than she could chew. Her house hadn't just been damaged. it was gone. And so were the two on either side of it. Two people were dead, a dozen more injured, and a huge chunk of the neighborhood was uninhabitable. Which Mark and his brother Bob had to know was going to happen, right? I mean, they were the ones talking to the bartender at the gas later in the night before getting an impromptu lesson in combustion. But Moncee may have actually

thought the damage wouldn't be this severe. Not that that makes her suck any less, I'm just saying. So, of course, the investigators wanted to talk to Moncey and Mark as soon as possible, since it was clear that their house was the origin point of the blast. They said they had no idea what had caused the explosion, but they had been having some trouble with their heating system lately, and Moncey said her daughter had come to her a few times in recent weeks, saying she smelled gas. She said they'd even had to stay at a hotel a couple times lately

because the house was too cold. Sounds plausible, right? but as they sifted carefully through the ruins of Moncey's Dreamhouse, the arson investigators were already starting to smell a rat. For one thing, they noticed the most expensive stuff people usually have in their homes, TVs, stereos, jewelry, computers, all seemed to be missing. Not in pieces, just not there at all.

One telltale sign was that the TV remotes were still there, but the TVs were gone. Red flag. Had somebody made sure to remove all the good stuff, before the explosion? Investigators knew that the arson investigation could take weeks. There was a lot of debris to go through. So they tried to be patient in the meantime, and learn what they could about Monsie and Mark.

Whispers were already spreading amongst the Richmond Hill neighbors. Rumors that the explosion that destroyed their happy little world might not have been an accident. And Monsi's performance at a press conference not long after the blast didn't do much to reassure anybody. In a weepy interview, one of her neighbors would later describe as her fake tears interview. Moncey swore that she had nothing to do with what happened, and she took her neighbors to task for doubting her. She said, it feels horrible when everyone's like putting it on you, like we did something wrong. Moncey's big, snotty tears seemed real enough, but it seemed like she was upset about the wrong things.

not the deaths of Jennifer and Dionne Longworth, but the fact that she was now facing difficult questions. When claims adjusters sat down with Moncey to talk about her insurance claim, they knew right away that something was way, way fishy. The place was insured for three times what it was worth, and Monce's explanation just didn't sit right at all. She had a few really expensive items, she said, including, y'all, I shit you not, an original Picasso.

You had it on display, the adjuster said. Oh, yes, on the wall. Okay, so you just bought a genuine Picasso and hung it on the wall over the couch with no security system. Oh, and you don't have paperwork to prove it. Great, gotcha. Yeah, here's something to know, just for future reference. Unless you live at the Biltmore Estaboard. state, you don't buy a Picasso to hang up in your fucking house. You buy it so you don't have to pay

taxes with the money you use to buy it with. Also, also, purchasing a fucking Picasso creates a paper trail. Yeah, I would think so. So, and I know this is going to shock you, the insurance company's response was basically no. They told Moncey where she could stick her fictional Picasso and they denied her claim as fraudulent. Shove it up your Guernica, Moncey. That must have been a blue period for her.

See what I did there? I'm a scamp. Excellent work, Witt. I'm impressed. Oh, thank you. Anyway, while all this was going on, Mario Garza and his team of fire investigators had continued their work. And a few weeks after the explosion,

they found their smoking gun. They found that someone had taken the step-down regulator off of the gas manifold at Moncey's house and replaced it with a piece of straight pipe. Now, this regulator is a valve that, as the name would suggest, regulates the pressure of the gas coming into the house. Take that thing off and put a piece of plain pipe in its place and the house is going to fill up like a balloon with natural gas.

There's no other reason on earth why anyone would do it. So this was mega-sispish. but of course gas can ignite without a spark, and it didn't take them long to figure out the source of that. A charred microwave that had clearly blown apart from the inside, and nearby, a metal can. Now, y'all know what happens when you put metal in a microwave, right? Badness, noise, smoke, and most importantly, lots and lots of sparks. And if you set that microwave on a timer and got out of the house, you could be at a safe distance by the time the house filled up with enough gas for that spark to ignite.

night. Simple, deadly, boom. That was some pretty sweet physical evidence, and the detectives were finding some good dirt on Mark Leonard, too. The guy was a seasoned fraudster, and he was deeply in debt. When they dug into his background, they found that quite a few members of Mark's family had been involved in arson cases over the years. Was the Leonard family love language insurance fraud by arson? The detectives also tracked down a friend of marks named Mark Duckworth, another former exotic dancer who'd met Mark Leonard in the 80s. They became buds and had kept up with each other off and on over the years. Duckworth had reached out to Mark Leonard around the time of the Richmond Hill explosion,

just to check in, and while they were shooting the breeze, Mark said, hey, check this out, I'm looking online for a Ferrari. Duckworth was like, a Ferrari? How in the hell you're going to afford one of those? Mark said, oh, our house blew up. Tsunami winds came in and blew the fireplace out. We're getting $300,000. Now, the important thing about this conversation, campers,

is that it happened before the Richmond Hill explosion, not after. Listen, I don't want to critique arsonist's form because, like, it would insinuate that there's a right way to commit arson and there isn't. But this happens so fucking often. People don't stick to their timeline and overplay their hand. Like, I have to tell you guys this. story. This is my favorite story of insurance fraud, like, getting cracked. And it's actually courtesy of my dad's run as a claims adjuster. Hi, Dad. Oh, awesome. So the year was 1990, right?

And a young couple named Frank and Betty, names changed, claimed that someone had stolen their TV, their sound system, and a ton of Betty's jewelry. My dad was assigned to the case, and after a preliminary investigation, something about their story just didn't quite add up. So he asked them to provide photo evidence of the missing items if they had it. And boy did they provide. Frank provided a photo, a single photo, of Betty, who was on the phone, wearing all of her jewelry, all of it with the TV. Like you do. Yeah, with the TV and the sound system, like just perfectly framed in the background. No Picasso? No, no Picasso. No, no also in this scenario.

And it's like basically everything that was missing was in this photo. Oh, for God. Yeah, it's try a little harder. There was something a little extra in the photo, though. Betty was drinking out of a Dick Tracy movie promotional cup from Burger King. Remember those? Like I had the whole Disney movie set. Anyway, my dad, who is an OG camper.

called up Burger King to find out when the promotional cups became available. And wouldn't you know, they came out days after the alleged theft took place. So the pick was taken after the claim was filed. Therefore, the items weren't stolen after all. And my dad went out that day and got a Dick Tracy Cup from Burger King. He still has it. Guy's like a detective. That's amazing. Yes. He was a true Dick Tracy, right? Right on Katie's dad.

So Mark Duckworth had this conversation with his old buddy Mark Leonard, and then when Duckworth saw the disaster on the news, he felt like he'd been hit upside the head with an ice bucket. Later, he told American greed, I knew too much. Anybody with common sense would know I knew too much. He said too much, told me too much. Duckworth was freaking the fuck out, and he called the police. immediately. You can imagine how delighted they were to hear from him. This was a primo piece of circumstantial evidence, and it was not the only one they had. First, there was the fact that some of Mark Leonard's family had seen Mark and Bob systematically taking everything of value out of Monty's house in the days before the explosion. Then they found a witness who had seen two men get out of Mark's white van and go into Moncey's house right around the time

when that microwave timer must have been set. Not to mention Snowballs, three trip to the kennel. Why bored a cat if you're only going to be gone for a day? Last but not least was that hilarious security tape from the casino, showing Mark and Moncey just kind of aimlessly faffing around looking up at the cameras, you know, and as 11 p.m. approach checking their watches. They definitely weren't there to gamble that night. They were just marking time. On December 20th, about five weeks after the Richmond Hill explosion, investigators put the habeas gravis on Mark Leonard, his brother Bob, and Moncey Shirley. They charged all three with conspiracy to commit arson,

45 counts of arson, and two counts of felony murder in the deaths of Jennifer and Dianne Longworth. Mark Leonard was well aware that he could be facing life without parole. He also had access to court filings, which showed that his good friend Mark Duckworth had ratted him out for that Ferrari conversation

the week before the explosion. And our boy was pissed. Pissed to the point where he started to fixate on Mark Duckworth as the reason he was sitting in jail. Because, you know, that was the only reason he got caught. Not because of all the other stunningly stupid shit he did. In jail, Mark met a guy named Smitty. Smitty told him he was a member of a motorcycle gang. And this got Marky Mark's attention. see our boy had decided that if he could get his old buddy duckworth out of the picture he'd be sitting pretty when his trial rolled around oh for god's sake i know he is not the

brightest bolt in the box but this is what he convinced himself so mark went to smitty like hey can we have one of your boys kill this guy for me i'll make it worth your while Smitty, always up for lending a helping hand to a fellow traveler in need, was all for it. I'll talk to my guys, he told Mark. First, he had Mark Leonard draw him a detailed map of Duckworth's house. And soon, Smitty was hooking Mark up with his boy Jay, Hitman extraordinaire. They scheduled a phone call and, in another stunning display of criminal mastermindery or whatever, Mark called Hitman J from the jailhouse phone,

which, as you probably already know, because you have two neurons banging around in your skull, fucking records all the calls. Yeah. And here, Camper's, is the conversation it recorded. Whitney, I can't handle this guy. You be Mark Leonard. I'll be Hitman J.

Oh, goody. Okay. I want to make it look like a suicide. Oh, for real? Yeah, because this is what? See, it'll get me out of jail pretty much instantly. If you have him call 911 from his cell phone before you do it, and I got three sentences that I wrote down, and if you say these three sentences inside that 911 call...

No shit. What do you want him to say? I want him to say, I did not mean to frame Mark and Moncey for their own house in Richmond Hills. that last part is hilarious to me why why would mark duckworth say that under any conditions why would he why would why why because oh my god it it just really goes to show that mark thought of people like little dolls he could manipulate not like as like individual people with thoughts and feelings oh my god just make him say these sentences and i'll be scott free. Jesus.

Breathing through it. Anyway. He told Jay that he could pay him $15,000 up front, and if he pulled it off just right, he'd get a 5K bonus afterwards. Now, I hope you're sitting down, y'all, because this next M-night Shammalon twist is going to knock you off your feet. Fellow inmate Smitty actually wasn't Mark's but. Buddy after all, the fucking Benedict Arnold had gone right to the cops the minute, Mark asked him to find a hitman. And Mark's new buddy, Jay, get this, he wasn't a hitman.

No, he wasn't. He was an ATF agent only pretending to be a hitman. I know. Just take a minute, campers, we know this has come as a shock. So instead of eliminating a witness and waltzing out of prison, Mark got an additional charge, conspiracy to commit murder. Wamp, won. Man, Duckworth dodged a bullet, didn't he? Like, literally, probably. And, I mean, he obviously knew he was in danger, too. That's why he went to the cop so fast when he saw the explosion on the news.

He knew exactly what his old buddy was. After that, it got worse for our boy, Mark, when Moncey, seeing the writing on the wall, decided to strike a plea deal. She agreed to testify against Mark and tell the investigators everything. At trial, Mark Leonard's defense attorney tried the old, I'm just a big dumb baby gambit. He said it was just a selfish, horribly ill-advised insurance fraud that went as wrong as it could possibly have gone and that their intent was never to hurt anybody. They were just dumb. You know, the whoopsie-dazy defense, essentially. You can imagine how that went over with the jury. You mean jurors don't buy it when you provably blow up a house and murder two innocent people

and act like you're just a lovable down-on-his-luck idiot? They don't like that? This one didn't, anyway. Meanwhile, prosecutor Denise Robinson pointed to the fact that Moncey's daughter and cat were both kept far away every time the explosion was supposed to happen, showing a long period of premeditation and an awareness of the danger involved. And after a whopping four whole hours of deliberation, the jury found Mark Leonard guilty on all charges. Now, that's about 12 minutes per charge, by the way.

So they must have just been flying through those deliberations. It's like, they sat down and everybody's just like, dude's guilty as shit, right? Right. Want to play cards? At sentencing, the judge called Mark the worst of the worst and sentenced him to two life sentences without parole plus 75 years. Damn. Nice. Incidentally, Mark died in prison in 2018 of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage. Gary Thompson, the dude who was originally promised five grand to set Moncey's house on fire

and helped Mark and Moncey with multiple parts of the scheme, pled guilty and got 20 years in prison. Mark's brother Bob got two life terms plus 70 years. And as for Moncy Shirley, her attorney argued that she had a history of abuse that left her vulnerable to manipulation. The prosecution disagreed, pointing out that Moncey had a support system behind her, and she'd been a full and willing participant in the explosion. Moncey ended up sentenced to 50 years in prison under the terms of her plea deal. Her earliest release date is in 2036. We think it's worth mentioning that over 500 people attended the funeral of Jennifer and Dion Longworth. That was the impact these people had on their community and on the people who loved them.

And they lost their lives. For what? A bunch of dipshit greed goblins who didn't walk away with Penny. Moncey had so much going for her. A great career in nursing, a daughter who loved her, a beautiful home, a sweet, fluffy cat. She was working to get back on her feet from the bankruptcy. She had a beautiful roof over her head, and she had people who loved her. But that wasn't enough for Moncey. She had to have a bunch of pricey designer crap to shove in her neighbor's faces. And at the end of the day, that was more important to her than all the rest of it put together. Look where it got her. As of the last source we could find on the case, Moncey's old house, as well as the Longworth's next door,

were still just empty lots, just dirt and nothing, where Dion's blackberries used to be. And if that ain't a metaphor, Camper's, then we don't know what is. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe, until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout-out

out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Second Chances Animal Rescue, bless you for what you do, Ashley, Lauren, Emily, Katarina, Jen, Jody, Ashland, and yet another Emily. We appreciate you 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 even two,

plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. a free sticker at $5 a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10 virtual events with Katie and me we've started doing those like a couple times a month and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you so if you can come join us