True Crime Campfire - Poisonous: The Story of Marie Hilley

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Family. Whether it’s the family you choose for yourself or the one you’re born into, family is vital. When we’re with our families, we’re supposed to feel safe, loved, supported. A family should be a soft place to fall, for everybody in it. A shelter from the storm. But when the nucleus of the family is a parent like the one in this week’s story, home becomes a cesspit of paranoia and fear. Your protector is revealed to be a predator instead—and you soon come to realize that any storm that might be raging outside can’t be half as bad as the one you’re already in. Sources:https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1987-03-09-0110350063-story.htmlTV show "Unsolved Mysteries"Investigation Discovery's "American Monster," Episode "Alabama Murder Mystery"Investigation Discovery's "Southern Fried Homicide," Episode "The Perfect Poisoner"Oxygen's "Snapped," Episode "Marie Hilley"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] 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. Family. Whether it's the family you choose for yourself or the one that you're born into, family is vital. When we're with our family, families, we're supposed to feel safe, loved, supported. A family should be a soft place to fall for everybody in it, a shelter from the storm. But when the nucleus of the family is apparent like the one in this week's story, home becomes a cesspit of paranoia and fear. Your protector is revealed to be a predator instead, and you soon come to realize that any storm that might be raging outside can't be half as bad as the one you're already in. This is poisonous. story of Marie Hilly.

So, campers, we're in Brattleboro, Vermont, January 12, 1983. An FBI agent and a local detective stopped an attractive blonde woman as she headed to her car in the parking lot of her workplace. They'd gotten a phone call a day or so earlier from some of her former co-workers who told them a weird story. They said they suspected that this woman, who was going by the name Terry Martin, was lying about who she was. They had some compelling evidence. We'll get into the specifics of that later. For now, we'll just tell you that when the agent and the detective approached the woman and said,

We know you're not who you say you are, and we're going to find out who you really are before this day is over. The woman dropped her head in defeat. She said, you're right. I'll tell you everything. My name isn't Terry Martin. It's Audrey Marie Hilly. They want me in Alabama for some bad check charges. On the lamb, with this degree of effort for a few bad checks, the agents had a feeling this was about something bigger. And oh boy, were they ever about to find out they were right. But let's put a pin in that for now and talk a little bit about Ms. Audrey Marie Hilly. Marie was born in 1933 in Blue Mountain, Alabama. Her family didn't have tons of

of money, but Marie managed to be spoiled rotten anyway, because whatever they did have, they showered on her. Marie was their golden child. Never punished, never told no, given pretty much everything she wanted. Yeah, this is going to work out great. Good parenting choices, folks. Marie was your quintessential popular girl in high school, which probably explains why Frank Hillie fell for her so hard. Frank was every bit as cute and all-American and well-liked as she was, and the first time he saw her, it was like getting fragged right in the solar plexus by a wrecking ball. But like, in a romantic way. It didn't take long for Marie to become Frank's whole universe, and they married in 1951, not long after high school. Marie got a job as a secretary,

she was great at it. Frank was a foundry worker, and before long, they had the requisite two kids as required by law in 1950s America, a boy named Michael and a girl named Carol. The people who knew Marie Hilly, well, I should rephrase that, because I doubt anybody ever really knew Marie. But the people who were acquainted with her knew that it was important to Marie for her family to show well. And so they did. Everybody around the town of Anniston, Alabama, pretty much considered them the perfect family. That's Southern perfect, for the record, which basically means everything looked great from the outside, but inside there were some toxic storms on the horizon, figuratively and literally.

But nobody knew any of that just yet, and that's because Marie worked hard on their image. She was what most southern ladies wanted to be at that time. Gentile. Marie and Frank made good money, but Marie spent way more than they made, especially on clothes and jewelry for herself, but also on sprucing up the house and entertaining. And they had to have a nice car, obviously. Whenever Frank tried to get her to rein in her spending, Marie's methods varied. Mostly, she just refused to talk about it, but she was also prone to ultra-dramatic scenes where she'd clutch at her chest and say, oh my heart my heart basically if you keep

questioning me about my shopping I'm probably going to drop dead then you'll be sorry so you better just stop right this was a favorite method for Marie whenever she needed somebody off her back about something she was a huge clothes horse always dressed to impress

and it irritated her that her daughter Carol was not Carol was a huge tomboy and she couldn't have cared less about clothes She was happy in T-shirts and jeans and baseball caps. And Marie hated it like it was on fire. Yeah, she wanted her little doll to dress up. She was also jealous of the bond between Carol and Frank, which just blows my mind.

That's ridiculous. You're mad because your husband and your daughter are clothes? Like, what did we say a few minutes ago? Toxic? Yeah. Carol was a dad's girl, and Marie resented it. And she often trotted out her, oh, my heart, routine when she thought, that's my Southern accent campers.

So she did that when she thought Carol was getting more of Frank's attention than she was. Drama queen? More like Drama Empress. Unfortunately for poor Carol, once her older brother Mike left home for college, she became the focus of her mom's pissy, controlling attention. They fought a lot. Needless to say, this did not do one. wonders for the Hilly's marriage. Frank dealt with it by drinking a lot and Marie started spending

more. She couldn't seem to stuff her closets full enough of designer clothes. To try to make some extra money to support her apparent shopping addiction, Frank made the super smart decision to start playing poker with his friends. Yeah, note to campers, if you're ever in financial trouble, the way out is almost certainly not start gambling a lot. May seem like a good idea at the time, but it's just not. So shut that down. Yeah, if gambling didn't work for the MIT blackjack team, it's not going to work for you. Yeah, MIT blackjack team. Are you smarter than they are? No, me neither. Shut it down. Marie was pissed about the gambling too. She'd march into wherever they were playing and basically haul Frank out by his year, which must have been just like a

blast for him in front of all his friends. It was a bad scene. Things were really deteriorating between them. And then one day, Frank came home early from work and found Marie naked in bed with her boss. Yeah. What is it that you say? Womp, womp, wom. Turns out they had a bit of a business arrangement going on. Oh, dear.

Marie provided sex. Boss man provided money. Sort of a sugar daddy thing. And bless his heart, Frank decided. to stay with her, which for someone like Marie just translates to, oh, I can do whatever I want, you'll put up with it. Great. Exactly.

Yep. And then there was a small, suspicious fire in the Hillies house. Arson investigators came in to check things out, and they all felt like something was fishy, but they couldn't prove it. Not long after Frank walked in on Marie in bed with her boss, he started feeling sick. It was weird because he was one of those people who never, ever got. sick. But now he was exhausted all the time, achy, pale, his eyes were bloodshot, he was sick to his stomach all the time, he could hardly keep food down. His doctors couldn't figure it out. This one for

six months with no clear answers. And then one night, Marie woke up to an empty bed. She found Frank wandering around in the backyard in his pajamas, disoriented and confused and seemed unaware of where he was. He was admitted to the hospital where the doctors immediately noticed that his skin had a weird yellowish tint. He was in a bad way. His organs were failing, left and right. The doctors tried everything they could think to try, but they had no idea what was wrong, so ultimately they couldn't save him. And on May 25, 1975, Frank Hilley took his last breath. He was only 45 years old. Michael and Carol were devastated at the loss of their dad, Carol especially. She was still living at home and with the contentious relationship between her and her mom,

she says she felt like she was all alone once Frank passed away. Frank's autopsy showed an enlarged liver, pneumonia, and inflammation of the stomach. These are all classic symptoms of hepatitis, so the medical examiner ruled his death natural, with hepatitis the cause. They thought it must have been something environmental at the foundry where he worked. Away from home now, Michael worried about his mom. He said, she was alone. She was kind of this defenseless person who didn't have a husband around anymore. Defenseless. Yeah.

Eventually, the Hilly family would find out just how defenseless Marie was. For her part, well, Marie was smart and upwardly mobile, and she had a stiff upper lip. It didn't hurt that she got a $42,000 life insurance payout from Frank's death. She seemed excited about it, told people, that's more money than anyone in my family's ever had. And remember, campers, this is 1970s money, so that would be. about 170K nowadays I think. Damn. And Marie didn't waste any time. She spent

that money like the meteor was going to hit the next day. She bought new cars for herself, Carol and Michael. She went full on nuts with the clothes shopping. This was enough money in 1975 that you really had to work at it to blow through it in just a couple years, but Marie managed it.

And she told people that she was paranoid about death now. So she took out $25,000 life insurance policies on Michael and Carol, too. Just in case. You know, it's totally normal to take out huge life insurance policies on your kids, right? With you as the beneficiary? Mike and Carol knew about the policies, but they didn't know one detail. Marie had taken out an accidental death writer on Carol for an additional $25,000. Double indemnity, anyone? Yeah, and again, in 70s money, so we're talking

$200,000 thereabouts on your teenage daughter. Yep. Right? Weird. So before long, the family got some sad news. Marie's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. They tried a brand new cutting edge treatment on her and at first it seemed to take. She recovered from the surgery really fast. Everything was going great. But then the cancer came back and she needed a lot of extra care. So Mike, good son that he was, decided to move back home and help out. I know, bless his heart. As if all this wasn't bad enough, Marie started blowing up the 911 line, so often that everybody at the police department knew her on a first name basis.

Marie said she was being stalked. Her house had been broken into. She was getting threatening phone calls, and then creepy threatening notes that looked like somebody had scrawled them with their non-dominant hand to disguise the handwriting. So, of course, the cops came every time she called. called once they found one of these notes taped to the back door. And that creepy loopy handwriting it said, you better leave now or we will get you. Oh, yeah, yeeks. Marie said she thought it was

related to Frank's gambling. When he was still alive, she said he'd run up some pretty big debts and crossed some unsavory people in the process. Now, Mike and Carol have since said that this is total nonsense. Frank played poker with his buddies at the Elks Club sometimes. That was about it. This seems to have been yet another manifestation of Marie's need for drama and attention. The police investigated, but they couldn't find any evidence whatsoever of someone stalking the hellies. And then, Marie called to report another fire. Again, a small one, not too much damage, just a lot of high drama. The interesting thing about this wasn't so much about the fire itself, but the fact that when the arson investigators came out to the house to investigate, Marie offered

them all something to drink, and they all got violently sick after they drank it. They didn't think anything of it at the time, though. Only years later would this take on a sinister significance. The arson investigators weren't the only ones to get horribly ill after eating or drinking something offered to them by Marie. Several neighbors, including some of the neighborhood kids, had the same experience. Two kids in particular were chronically ill during the last couple years they lived next door to Marie. She was such a nice neighbor, you know, always offering them cookies and milk. How kind! These poor kids suffered from the same kinds of symptoms that Frank Hilley had before he died. Years later, during Marie's murder trial, their parents realized that the kids had both gotten well

and stayed that way after they moved away. But apparently, these incidents were few enough and far enough between, and Marie had done a good enough job maintaining that perfect Southern Lady routine outside the closed doors of her family's home, obviously, that nobody connected the dots at the time. So it's Marie Hillie's fault that our parents had to check our candy at Halloween. For the record, the only documented candy poisonings were done by the victim's own parents, but still check your kid's candy. But it's way less common than the media suggests. And no one is slipping your kids' edibles, by the way. That's not a thing. That shit's valuable. How expensive that stuff is?

Nobody wants to give it to your kids. And if they do, they're upset about it. It was an accident. Yes, absolutely. Four years after Frank's death, Carol decided she wanted to go to her senior prom. And because it was prom night, Carol finally decided to get a little girly, put on a pretty dress, and then her mom do her hair and makeup for her. Marie was thrilled. And Carol says they had a great time getting ready for the dance. It was a real mom-daughter bonding experience, the best one they'd had in years.

and Carol had a blast at the prom. The next morning, though, she was sick, dizzy, horribly nauseated. She did have a few drinks that night before, and she really wasn't used to alcohol, so she thought she was just hung over. And she felt better in a couple days. But the next weekend, the sickness came back with a vengeance, even worse than before.

And this time, it didn't get better. It got worse and worse. She was nauseated all the time. She could barely keep anything down. Then she lost feeling in her feet and hands and developed a palsy in one foot. The family had seen this before. It was eerily similar to the way Frank had died, but no one could figure it out. Marie, however, said she was determined to nurse her daughter back to health.

She took extra care of Carol, spoon-feeding her and helping her to the bathroom. The doctors, unable to figure out what was going on, did what so many, doctors tend to do in the situation and decided that her symptoms must be psychosomatic. Or it was all on her head. Oh, sure. Understandable. Yeah. I mean, if you can't figure it out, it must not exist, right?

Oh, and a couple of them also diagnosed her with anorexia for some baffling reason. I mean, she lost a lot of weight because she couldn't keep food down. So these docs just decided she must be doing it on purpose. Just, jeez, Murphy. The ego. So these doctors took this teenage girl who was constantly nauseated, couldn't feel her feet in hands, and had a dropped foot from nerve damage, and sent her to a psych hospital in Birmingham. Oh, crazy. Good job, y'all.

Close the books on that one. Well played. Of course, somewhat in their defense, they were running on some bad intel. Specifically, Marie had told them that Carol had been isolating herself from her friends. bullshit, and that she'd been pulling her own hair out, also bullshit. And I'll be damned if it wasn't the flippin' sight doctor who finally figured out what was probably going on. He told Marie that he believed Carol was malnourished from all the vomiting and diarrhea, but more importantly, he suspected she might have heavy metal poisoning. Rout row.

Not to be thwarted by a clever doctor, Marie whisked her daughter out of there before the docs could, like, order any pesky test or anything like that, and put her up in a different hospital with less perceptive doctors. Marie's mom died at this point, and Marie moved in with Frank's sister Frida. Why? Well, we mentioned how fast Marie had gone through Frank's life insurance money, right? And never a woman who could deny herself anything, Marie had just kept right on spending as if money was still in her bank account. Now, she was in serious debt. She had maxed out her credit cards and she wasn't paying her bills.

So she had no credit left. She couldn't afford the mortgage payment anymore. Then she started writing bad checks. And amusingly, one of the bad checks she wrote was to the life insurance company that had written the kids' policies. So Carol's life insurance policy got canceled. And when the bad checks piled up enough, Marie got arrested. This blew everybody's mind in Houston, Alabama. The hilly's had always seemed to the outside world like the perfect family.

But now, genteel Southern Lady Marie had been to jail. God, many pearls were clutched that day. I can tell you that for sure. She got out on bail pretty quickly, though. I bet her sugar daddy boss bailed her out, don't you? Oh, I'm almost certain of it. And suddenly, her pristine reputation was tarnished. Michael, who was by now working as a minister, was stunned. He confronted her about it, insisted that they go to the bank the next day and straighten it all out. And Marie was not happy about that. She didn't like to be questioned at the best.

of times, and now Michael said it was like a switch flipped. She got so angry. It shook him up quite a bit. This sneaky, check-hiding, pissed-off woman in his face was the helpless mother he'd been so worried about after his dad died. Huh. That evening, Mike got violently sick after eating something his mom had made for him. He was still miserable the next day. No trip to the bank after all. It was around this time that Michael got a phone call from Frank's sister Frida. She'd been to visit Carol in the hospital, and she was in a really bad way. The doctors weren't optimistic about her chances, and they still couldn't figure out what was wrong. Frida said,

Mike, something's been on my mind. Right before your daddy died, he told me your mama had been giving him injections. Some kind of vitamins or anti-naugia drugs or something like that. He said the doctors had taught her to do it so she could take care of him at home. He told me right before they admitted him to the hospital that last time, right before he died. she said she'd never said anything about it before although even at the time something about it had hit her wrong but now she said Mike I was just over visiting your sister and I walked in on Marie giving Carol an injection and when she saw me she seemed kind of flustered like I'd caught her doing something wrong

I asked her what she was doing and she said she was just helping out the nurses because they're so busy Mike that just doesn't make sense to me I'm not trying to cause trouble but Carol's symptoms are so similar to your daddies. As Frida told him about all this, Michael's blood slowly turned to ice. The certainty that something was badly, badly wrong hit him like a slap. That day he got so sick right after eating that meal his mom made him. Conveniently, the night right before he was planning to drag her to the bank to answer for the check fraud. And in that moment, his only thought was to protect his little sister. So he called her at the hospital. She didn't have a phone in her room, so Anytime she got a call, she had to make her way torturously down the hall and kind of brace herself against the wall to talk on the phone at the nurse's station.

When she got to the phone, Mike didn't waste any time. He said, Carol, is Mama giving you injections? Carol hesitated and then said unconvincingly, no. And then Mike remembered how Marie rarely left his sister's bedside these days and she always helped her whenever she needed to walk anywhere. He said, are you sure? Carol said, nope. Mike said, she's standing right there next to you? Yes. Okay, I'm going to call you back later.

And later, when he knew his mother wasn't at the hospital, he called back. Carol, has mom been giving you injections? This time, Carol said, yeah. Maria told her she'd gotten hold of some special medication from a nurse friend of hers. But she said, you cannot tell anybody I'm giving you this. my friend would get in huge trouble for giving it to us. So Marie had made her promise to keep it a secret, and Carol had promised. Mike's heart sank.

And then he shook it off, called the hospital and told them to check his sister for signs of poison. That afternoon, one of Carol's doctors asked to take a look at her fingernails. And immediately, he noticed a classic sign of heavy metal poisoning, what they call Aldrich Mies lines, white horizontal lines across the fingernails. The doctors ordered tests on Carol's hair and found a huge amount of arsenic in her system, administered over quite a period of time. It was a wonder she wasn't already dead. Oh, yeah. I can't imagine what it would be like to find out as a teenage girl that your mom has been poisoning you.

In Carol's case, and I think this is totally understandable, the first reaction was basically denial. She was convinced her mom had just been trying to take care of her, and she didn't want to get her in trouble. She asked the investigators, If I don't press charges, will y'all leave her alone? After all, her mama had already gotten hauled back to jail that very day on more check fraud charges. Carol didn't want to make it worse for her. Bless her, that just kills me. I know.

Meanwhile, as Marie sat in jail for the second time waiting on bail, Frida was getting a little house cleaning done. Marie was staying with her at the time, remember? and as she was cleaning out Marie's little corner of the kitchen, Frida found a collection of items that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A jar of baby food. She'd been feeding that to Carol at the hospital. A spoon and a bottle of rat poison.

Ugh. She rushed it all over to the investigators and, lo and behold, campers, arsenic. With that, it finally became real for Carol, who now had to deal with the fact that her own mother had actually tried to kill her. Jeez, please. And for the investigators, it made the next step obvious. They needed to make sure Frank Hilly had died of natural causes. And while they were at it, they were going to double-check Marie's mom.

A judge signed in order to get both bodies exhumed, and it didn't take long for the results to come in. Both were positive for arsenic poisoning. In Frank's case, a lethal dose. In the case of Marie's mom, not quite. Obviously, she'd been given the poison, but probably not in sufficient quantities to cause her death. Yeah, this bitch was poisoning her own sick mother. That is some cold-blooded shit right there. And if you add that to the creepy stories about the arson investigators who got sick after they drank coffee at her house

and the neighborhood kids who got sick after eating her cookies, a very disturbing picture starts to emerge. Because some of these poisonings obviously had a financial motive or some other clear. reason behind them. Like, obviously she poisoned Frank for the life insurance. She was poisoning Carol for the same reason. With Mike, it was to get out of having to explain herself to the bank. Understandable. But with these other people, Marie just seemed to be doing it for funsies. Just poisoning for fun and profit. And that's important to know because it makes her, in my opinion, a very different kind of animal than what we may have thought she was before. Because this was not just about profit for her. She enjoyed this. Absolutely.

I could not agree more. So fucking creepy. Ugh. So finally, in 1980, almost six years after Frank Hilly's death, Marie was arrested for the attempted murder of her daughter Carol, since that's what they could prove at the moment, while the cops continued their investigation into Frank's death. The town of Aniston was flabbergasted and p-est.

Marie Hilly, damn her hide, was giving their picturesque little southern town a bad name. Yeah, like now all the... other towns are going to start bullying them. They're not going to get invited to any of the good parties. No way would Ogdenville or North Haverbrook want to go out with them now. And John Cougar-Mellon camp's probably not even going to write a song about them either. It just sucks. Yeah, they probably won't get to host the Olympics either.

Damn, that Marie Hilly. That bitch. Marie was cool as a fridge full of cucumbers during interrogation because, of course, she flipping was. Oh, yeah. Aren't they all? Mm-hmm, yep. She insisted that she'd never hurt anyone in her family.

This was all some kind of terrible mistake. At arraignment, the judge set her bail at $14,000, which is just ridiculously low for an attempted murder charge. Yeah, that Southern charm, y'all, it works. And some generous benefactors, whom we can only assume were poison enthusiasts, quickly gathered up the money. Sugar, Dad. Oh, you have something in your throat? And before you knew it, she was out and keeping a low profile. To get her away from the seething ire of her neighbors in Anniston,

I get the impression people were hissing at her in the streets like angry cats. You're so good at it. Marie's lawyer moved her to a hotel in Birmingham to wait for trial. One day, a few friends decided to visit her there. But when they arrived, I know this is going to shock you to your core. So brace yourself. Marie was gone. Her stuff was there, her clothes, her toiletries, and her purse had been dumped out on the bed.

The only thing that seemed to be missing, aside for Marie herself, was her ID. There was also a note. It said, you let us straight to her. Oh, Marie. Oh, honey. Boy, you must think people are dumb. kidnappers would be sure to take your driver's license, right? So her lawyer made much of this note, insisting that she'd been kidnapped by these

invisible people that she'd claimed were stalking her for years, but nobody else believed that. Marie Hilley was on the run, and things were about to get, I think the scientific term, is fucking bananas. About a week later, on November 19th, Marie's aunt came home to find that her house had been broken into. A car, some women's clothes. clothing and an overnight bag had been stolen.

Investigators found a note on the kitchen table that said, do not call police. We will burn you out if you do. We found what we wanted and will not bother you again. I'm sure Marie, as she was writing that note, thought, no one will make the connection. Oh, of course not. Preposterous. So what was it we said? Fkin bananas? Yeah.

In the meantime, the cogs of justice kept on turning. Just like that Texco sign right outside town. This one's making me Southern. I don't know what it is. Like, as I was writing the script for this one, I just got all Southern. I was like, my accent was coming out. The DA convened a grand jury to look at the death of Marie's husband, Frank, and Ms. Marie was indicted in absentia for his murder. The FBI and the state police launched a woman hunt, but Marie was in the wind.

Meanwhile, 700 miles away, 33-year-old John Homan sat in a dive bar in Fort Lauderdale one night, drinking away his sorrows. John was a sweet guy. One of the investigators involved in this case describes him as quiet, easygoing, and a successful person in a lot of ways, but also lonely and a little bit gullible. Trusting.

John built boats for a living, and he'd recently sold his business for a nice little pile of cash. He was just minding his own beeswax at the bar that night when a pretty, dark-haired woman sidled up to him and asked if she could take the stool next to his. She introduced herself as Robbie Hannan. as they fell into conversation she told him she'd move to Florida to get a new start hey just like he had

she'd been through some hard times she said she'd been married to a rich Texan and they'd had the perfect life for a while but then one day he'd taken their two young kids on a car ride and had an awful accident they all died her whole family just gone in one fell swoop well as you can imagine this just floored john how could this sweet-looking woman have survived so much tragedy really played on a his heartstrings. What a beautiful, brave lady. And before long, John was hooked. He and Robbie were joined at the hip. John had a brother up in New Hampshire, and he told Robbie he'd been thinking about moving up there to be near him. Did she want to go with him? Robbie said, sure, and they made the move together. Once up in New Hampshire, Robbie got a job as a secretary where she quickly

charmed the daylights out of everybody with her southern accent and charm. Remember, charm is a verb y'all be careful around it absolutely and in may of 1981 john and robbie got married unfortunately robbie's entire family missed the nuptials even her identical twin terry who couldn't make it up from texas but despite robbie's apparent estrangement from most of her family she and john seemed really happy together john absolutely doted on robbie she was his dream girl and he loved showing her off to his friends. Meanwhile, back in Anniston, people were all at Twitter. They pretty much thought Marie was a Professor Moriarty level, an evil genius. They thought maybe she was in town right then, waiting for the next victim to come strolling across her hiding spot. Yeah, not sure that's

how poisoners work, but okay, Anniston, we understand you've been through some shit. So you do you. I mean, we do tend to turn bad people into boogeymen, especially when they do a runner and we can't keep an eye on them. But I'm not sure Marie deserves quite that much credit. Yeah, she was clever, but I'm not so sure it would take a genius to just, you know, leave a hotel. Yeah, and as y'all will soon see, she's about to commit some top-tier dip shittery and get herself caught. So let's all just calm down about the criminal genius of Marie. And this is weird and sad. Marie's children were the target of some really weird blame around town, too. Carol especially. She said later that, everybody acted like they hated her. People wouldn't serve her at some of the local

businesses. Just what the hell? Shame on them. Yeah. It wasn't her fault. For God's sake, her mom tried to kill her. She was just a kid. That just floors me that people were mean to Carol. I know. I really pissed off on her behalf because she seems like a lovely person. She seems so nice. I know. Just, you know, fuck you, you people that were mean to her. Anywho, the people in Aniston locked their doors and windows and waited for Marie to get caught. And back up in New Hampshire, Robbie Holman broke some tough news to John. She'd been feeling bad for weeks, and she'd just been to the doctor to have some tests done. She told John, I got the results today, and it's bad. Really bad.

The doctor had said there was something wrong with her blood. Seriously wrong. Shit. It's blooditis. Got to be. No, not the blooditis. Yeah, I'm afraid she's got the blooditis, just when things were going so well. The doctor had told her it was most likely terminal, she said. But there was a glimmer of hope. There was a brand new experimental treatment in Dallas, Texas, and they were going to let her try it. The doctors were optimistic, she said.

And the best part was, Dallas was where her twin sister Terry lived. She could stay with Terry for the whole course of treatment, and Terry would take care of her. So, of course, John was terrified and devastated, and, stated and wanted nothing more to be there for his wife. He'd take a leave of absence from work, he said. He'd start packing their bags now. But Robbie stopped him. She said she didn't want him to drop his whole life and come with her.

She wanted to do this herself. Now, I'm not married, as campers may know. But this would raise some red flags for me, but maybe I'm just built different. Oh, heck, no, you're absolutely right. This is weird as hell. I mean, for most married couples, I think this would be totally out of the question. question. But as we're about to see, John, bless him, isn't necessarily the best critical thinker when it comes to this kind of stuff. I think he just had the love goggles on with Robbie big time. So of course he protested, but Robbie strong-armed him into staying home. And the next day, she was all packed and out the door headed to Dallas for treatment. And for two months, John's only interaction with his wife was sporadic phone calls. Then finally, one sad day, he got a devastating.

stating call from Robbie's twin sister Terry. Robbie was dead. Oh, Lord, the blooditis got her. Poor Robbie. And especially poor John. Twin sister Terry told him that Robbie hadn't wanted a funeral or any public acknowledgement of her death at all. She wanted to donate her body to science.

John would never see his wife again. But one afternoon, not too long after that terrible phone call, John answered a knock at his door. And as he opened it, his lowly. jaw must have hit the floor. It must have felt like seeing a ghost, because standing on his front doorstep was Robbie, except blonde, and thinner. There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the woman said, John, hi, I'm Terry Martin, Robbie's twin sister. We spoke on the phone, and campers, it was just like magic. Terry, who felt bad about having to break the news of

Robbie's death over the phone, told John she just wanted to come visit her late sister's husband and let him know she was thinking about him at the end. And it hardly took any time at all for sparks to fly between John and Terry. They got along like gangbusters. That romantic really quickly. And before long, Terry moved in. Now before we judge John too harshly here, I can kind of see this. I mean, your wife dies suddenly, you were madly in love with her, and now here comes this woman who looks just like her. I mean, it's creepy for sure, but I think it's kind of understandable that a grief-stricken husband could be taken in by his dead wife's twin. I kind of get it. Sure.

Eventually, Terry asked to meet some of her sister's coworkers who all seemed to buy her story, except for a couple who were clearly honorary campers, despite the fact that TCC was not yet a twink. ankle in anybody's eye. These ladies were highly suspicious. See, Terry had the exact same mannerisms as her sister. If you've ever met twins, you know that this is weird. They never act exactly the same. They have similar mannerisms and similar features, but they aren't the same fucking person. They're not clones.

I wonder if she had sex the same way. Oh, no. I mean, obviously she and John were doing it. They were living together. So I'm wondering, like, did she change it up? Because I feel like above all else, that would probably be the thing to give you away to your partner. Like, if you're just exactly the same in bed. And you would, like, smell the same, you know?

Like, would you smell the same? Do twins have the same smell? I don't know. I just wonder about that kind of stuff because I'm an odd person. Actually, one second. One second. I'll be right back. Hey, Whitney.

Yes. This is Katie's twin sister, Sadie. Um, she's dead now. The blood I just got her. And, um, I'll be doing the podcast now. All right. Well, do you have a giant dog that's going to rattle his collar and make us have to start over? Yeah. Uh-huh. Shit. Okay. All right. Jump in. Dive in, Sadie. There were certain traits that were different. Robbie and Terry smoked different brands of cigarettes for one thing.

Robbie liked reading and Terry liked TV but these are not the same as speaking the same or having the exact same smile these are easier to fake yeah if you're going to pull off a fake twin caper y'all you got to come correct you got to learn to walk different talk different have slightly different mannerisms

you got to carry yourself different you know you can't just dye your hair and lose a few pounds and start calling yourself Terry you might fool your grieving husband who's in no shape to think straight but you ain't going to fool everybody because every town and every workplace has its share of suspicious bitches like us, right? And the suspicious bitches at Robbie's old workplace did some investigating, and they did pretty damn good for a couple of broads operating sands Google. Remember, this is the early 80s. You had to do

your research the old-fashioned way. First, they found some odd discrepancies in Robbie's obituary, the obituary that Terry had helped John Wright, by the way. One of the things the obituary mentioned was that Robbie was a member of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church from a specific neighborhood. One of the co-workers knew someone from that neighborhood, and she asked them to confirm if the church was there. It wasn't. It didn't exist.

Oh, smart. It never existed. They then checked out the other details in the obit and found out that none of it was true. sake. The whole thing was made up out of whole cloth. So they called the cops. The police weren't able to confirm anything in the obituary either, nor could they confirm that either woman even existed. By this time, though, possibly smelling trouble in the wind, Terry had moved to Vermont and found a new job. There, on a chilly January afternoon in 1983, an FBI agent whose name, I shit you not, was Agent Steele.

I love that. And a local detective confronted her and asked her who she was. The detective later said that in that moment, all the fight seemed to go out of her. And she kind of dropped her head and said, My name is Audrey Marie Hilly. I'm wanted for Czech fraud in Alabama. Back at the police station, they got her fingerprints and ran her name through the system. And oh boy.

She was wanted for a lot more than check fraud. She had a warrant out for one murder and one attempted murder. And about a week later, Marie Hilly was delivered back into the loving arms of the Alabama authorities who were absolutely tickled pink to have her back. Aniston's Professor Moriarty had returned. Time for sweet, sweet justice. But before we get to the trial, can we just talk for a second about why in the name a sweet fancy Moses she pulled this twin nonsense? I just don't get it. Why?

She was doing fine as Robbie. So, did she just want to get away from John? But then, like, if that was the case, then why'd she come right back to him as Terry Martin? I mean, just months later. I think if she hadn't pulled this twin bullish, chances are she'd have remained successfully on the lamb for God knows how long. So this was just, you know, not smart. But I kind of suspect that one of Marie Hillie's fatal flaws is boredom. She loves drama.

She loves to be the center of attention. Could it be that she just got bored being Robbie and she just wanted to do it. Try being somebody else? I mean, that has to be it, right? My first thought was that maybe she took a life insurance policy out on herself, but you can't get a life insurance policy on someone who didn't exist. I mean, you can, but you do need a death certificate, and she didn't get one of those. This is just bad, like, it was just a baffling move to make on all counts.

I don't think she had the skills to do that, you know? Like, she really, people say, oh, she's a criminal mastermind, but I think this proves that that's not the case, because this was probably the least clever thing she could do is to pull this nonsense. And, you know, she got caught immediately because people weren't buying it. So, yeah, I don't get it. If anything, she was just really lucky. Like, she got the right judge that gave her a super low, like, bail. And then she was put in a hotel in a town where no one knew her.

She just got lucky. Yeah. And I really do think that it was probably she just was kind of sick of John and sick of and Robbie and I suspect what she was planning to do is go and hook up with some new guy maybe who was a little bit richer or something and then when after a few months that hadn't happened and she was starting to run out of money she was like all right screw it I'll go back to John for the time being but shit I already told him that I was dead so I got to go as Terry my twin sister I don't know she's a loony I don't understand why she didn't use of shit

so that spring Marie's trial was the most exciting thing to happen in town her defense team tried to make Carol seem like she was cuckoo for cocoa puffs she was lying her mom didn't give her any injections this is just a troubled paranoid young lady who was doing god knew what to herself because of her terrible mental state which is offensive this as i'm sure you can imagine was hard for Carol to take and shocker it didn't work that July Marie was convicted of the murder of Frank Hilley and sentenced to life in prison she was also convicted of Carol's attempted murder and gotten additional 20 years for that that. Okay. Now, I hope y'all are sitting down right now because we've got a bomb to drop on you. If you're not sitting, sit. We'll give you a second. Okay, everybody's sitting comfortably good, because get this shit. John Holman, right? Robbie slash Terry's guy, he stayed loyal to her. Even after he found out she was a murder fugitive named Marie Hilly, and even after she was convicted of said murder and attempted murder. This dude moved to Alabama to be closer to her. Just what in the flippity flappity fuck, John? John, honey. What? I, dang, I just don't get it.

She didn't murder him. So, so. She's never murdered anyone I care about, so therefore, she must have been dynamite in the sack. That's all I can say about that. Must have been. Lord have mercy. So, anyhow, Marie was a model prisoner, which doesn't surprise me in the least. People like her often seem to do well in a prison environment where the rules are clear and they can turn on the charm for the guards and the fellow inmates. And for some reason, probably because our system is very broken, she ended up getting some furlough time because of it, which means the warden authorized a three-day pass for her to go and visit John. Just, ugh. Now, I'm not against the furlough program. It makes sense for people who

are non-violent and haven't been convicted of, I don't know, murder. Exactly. And the ones who haven't changed their identities and gone on the lamb. But, hey, I'm not a prison expert. What do I know? We're not prison experts, but it seems like a bad idea. So Marie used her furlough time to spend some time with John at a nearby hotel. Ew.

And on the last day they were there, she told John, I really want to go visit my mom's grave, honey. and I really want to go by myself. Is that all right with you? And John, being the supportive guy he was, said, sure, my turtle dove, I'll just go watch the game down at the bar, or whatever kind of shit mended in the 80s. This was February 22, 1987. So Marie had been in prison for like three years in change. When John got back to the hotel room, now brace yourself for this utter shock, campers, Marie was gone. She'd left a note that said, John, I hope you will be able to forgive me. Please give me an hour to get out of town. Well, whoopsie doodle.

This is the parable about the frog and the scorpion. A scorpion's nature is to sting, and Marie Hillie's nature is to run away from consequences like a little bitch. And you shouldn't expect anything different, no matter how much she bats her old eyelashes. When people show you who they are, for God's sakes, believe them. So here began yet another manhunt, and it was initially, unsuccessful. Because our girl chose February for this tomfoolery, it was fucking cold and rainy, and Marie was on foot. Again, criminal mastermind? I think not. And four days later, police got a call from her hometown of Blue Mountain, Alabama. A woman had looked out her kitchen window to see a woman

crawling up her porch on her hands and knees and scratching at the door. She was bloody and bruised and her clothes were torn practically to rags. She was freezing cold. blue at the lips, couldn't speak. So they took her to the hospital for treatment for hypothermia, but she died on the way of heart failure. That's a sad and lonely death, is it not? But karma has been widely reported to be a bitch. And she seems to have bitten Miss Audrey Marie Hilly right in the tushy.

Yep. By the time she reached that stranger's house, her body temperature was close to 81 degrees Fahrenheit. Yikes. So apparently, Marie hadn't managed to find her way to shelter after her great escape and had just been kind of wandering around in the woods. In February. I don't know why the hell she didn't just wait for summer to do this,

but as we have seen before, people like Marie tend to be completely incapable of putting off gratification. Seems to be an anticlimactic way for someone who was the great escape artist to die, said Calhoun County District Attorney Bob Field. This goes against everything she's done in the past. The biggest escape artist in this area in 10 years, and what does she do? She ended up crawling around in the woods. Yep, that pretty much sums it up, Bob.

Oh, Bob. For Marie's daughter Carol, her death seems to have been something of a relief, or at least kind of a non-event. She says she went through a period of hating her mom and feeling all the hurt you'd expect her to feel about the woman who brought her into this world trying to take her out of it. But in recent years, she's gotten perspective on the whole thing, and now she says she doesn't feel hatred anymore.

She doesn't feel love either. She just doesn't feel anything much about Marie. Carol told one journalist, she's just somebody I once knew, and that's about it. And I say good for her. We hope she and Michael are both doing great. Yep. And I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes

from the source material on this case. One of the detectives, after describing Marie's penchant for poisoning the neighbors, said with a totally straight face, there's a lot of sweet ladies. She just won one of them. there's a lot of sweet ladies she just wasn't one of them standing up for our honor you know goodness that I'd better myself man

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 thanks by the way to Apple podcast users Sand Ship 465 for suggesting this case. It was just bananas enough to be perfect for us. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Becky, Samantha, Shelley, Veronica, and Dan. We appreciate you all to the moon and back.

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