True Crime Campfire - Repeat Offender: The Murders of Elaine and Maryann Boczkowski

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Thanks to books and movies, and very occasionally real life, the idea of the genius killer has become pervasive. But most murderers are not dazzlingly creative schemers. If they have a plan at all, it’s usually simple and dumb—but unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean the plan will fail. This week’s story is about a man who got away with one murder, and then tried to repeat the trick almost exactly. Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027. If you want to see TCC live but would rather stay on dry land, come to Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026, 9/10-13th in Equinunk, Pennsylvania. Visit badmagicproductions.com for full info and to buy tickets. Sources: Please Don’t Kill Mommy, Weinstein & Schumann https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triad/news/2018/12/13/prison-time-after-parole-for-man-who-strangled-wives-in-tubs https://katv.com/news/nation-world/man-who-killed-two-of-his-wives-in-two-states-considered-for-parole Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, tons of extra content, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com

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. Thanks to books and movies and very occasionally real life, the idea of the genius killer has become pervasive. But most murderers are not dazzlingly creative schemers. If they have a plan at all, it's usually simple and dumb. But unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean the plan will fail. This week's story is about a man who got away with one murderer and then tried to repeat that trick almost exactly. This is repeat offender, the murders of Elaine and Marianne Boskowski.

So, campers, for this one, were in Greensboro, North Carolina, November 4th, 1990. Shortly before 3 a.m., Tim Baskowski dialed 911. He told the operator that he'd found his wife Elaine submerged in the bathtub, and although he'd pulled her out and tried to get her to start breathing, she wasn't responding. Two firemen were there within minutes and hurried upstairs to find Tim trying to perform CPR on his wife in the bathroom. They carried her out into the hallway to give themselves more room to work. Two paramedics arrived, and the firemen helped them get Elaine downstairs and hooked up to a heart monitor. It showed a flatline, with no activity at all. They set up an IV and injected her with cardiac drugs, but nothing changed.

They called Wesley Long Hospital, and a doctor there told them to bring Elaine in immediately. As they loaded her into the ambulance, Tim hurried to his neighbor's house and hammered on their door, then asked them to look after his and Elaine's three kids while he was at the hospital. Everyone in the emergency response worked quickly. They got Elaine into the ER at 325, but despite the doctor's best efforts, they just couldn't get her heart started again. She was pronounced dead at 4.16. Because it wasn't clear how Elaine had died, an autopsy would be performed, and Tim was asked to come down to the police station and give a statement. He told the police officer he spoke with that he and Elaine were amicably separated, but still

living together. The previous night, they'd both gone to a church dance, although not together. Tim had come home first while Elaine stayed behind to help clear things up after the dance. He'd fallen asleep while listening to his walkman, but at around 2.30 a.m. He had been woken by some kind of heavy thud. He went downstairs to get a glass of water, and when he came back up, he saw that the bathroom door was closed with the light on inside. He hadn't heard any sound coming from in there, and he just had a weird feeling that something was wrong. So he knocked on the door. Elaine, there was no reply. He tried to turn the doorknob, but the door was locked, starting to panic, Tim ran to get a screwdriver.

He jiggled it in the lock and managed to pop it open. Inside, he found Elaine totally submerged in the bathtub. Tim lifted her head out of the water and pressed on her stomach, trying to force out any water inside her. Vomit oozed out of Elaine's mouth. He lifted her out of the tub, drained the water, and bent her face down over the side trying to clear her airway, but it didn't work.

He pulled her down onto the bathroom. bathroom floor and pressed on her stomach again. Once again, vomit came out of Elaine's mouth. So Tim ran and called 911, then came back, cleaned up around Elaine's mouth, and tried giving her CPR, which he was still doing when the firefighters arrived. That, anyway, was Tim's story, but Hull started appearing in it immediately. The firefighters who were first on the scene noticed that both the bathtub and the bathroom were dry, which was impossible if a fully-sufficient, submerged person had been lifted out recently. Tim also told them he and Elaine had argued earlier in the evening, something he thought better of and left out of his later versions of events.

Brenda Vance was one of the first police officers on the scene, and she also noticed that the bathtub and bathroom floor were dry. There was just something off about the whole scene. She'd noticed that Tim and Elaine's bathtub looked just like hers. In fact, she thought it was the same model. So when she got home from work, she did a little experiment. Brenda was about the same height and weight as Elaine. So she lay back, relaxed in her tub, head on the bottom, and started the water running. The natural buoyancy of her head kept her mouth easily above the water until it started to drain out of the overflow. Even if Elaine had fallen and knocked herself out or passed out for some other reason, it didn't seem like she could have drowned in the tub on her back like Tim Settie found her.

The next day, news of Elaine's death spread through the community. Her best friend, Mary Ann, and her husband, Kevin, came over to see if they could help. Tim told them the same story. Except this time, instead of saying he popped the bathroom door lock open with a screwdriver, he said he'd opened it by taking it off the hinges. Something about this didn't sit right with Kevin, so he went upstairs to take a look. Not only was the bathroom door still on its hinges, which meant Tim would have had to take the time to fix it right after his wife's death, but the hinges were on the inside of the door.

There was no way he could have gotten at them with a screwdriver. What a weird and unnecessary thing to lie about. Kevin was an attorney. That same day, less than 10 hours after Elaine had died, Tim asked him how quickly he could get the money from Elaine's life insurance policy. Later, Tim asked Kevin to come outside with him and held out his arms with his palms up. Do you know, notice any marks, Tim said. Kevin did not. Well, the police were taking pictures of my arms. Tim kept insisting to Kevin that he had bruises on his arms from a motorcycle accident.

Kevin couldn't see any bruises, and as far as he knew, Tim didn't own a motorcycle. I'm sure it's with his girlfriend in Canada. Mary and sister, Jerry, had come over to help with the kids and talked with Tim and Elaine's seven-year-old daughter Sandy, whose room was right next to the upstairs bathroom. Sandy told her she'd woken up to the sound of her mom and dad arguing. She'd heard Elaine shouting out, No, Tim, stop, no. None of that sounds good. Mm-mm.

Everyone in Tim and Elaine's orbit in Greensboro was convinced Tim had murdered his wife, but he wasn't the type you'd normally expect to end up a killer. Tim Baskowski was born in 1955 and grew up in a normal middle-class home in the Pittsburgh suburbs, in a household that almost sounds like a sitcom set up. A big Catholic family with a warm mom and a gruff Navy vet dad. Tim was an easygoing kid who never had any trouble making friends, and he coasted through school on a steady stream of bees and an occasional A. But after graduation, he'd had enough of school and wanted to get straight into business.

He attended a trade institute and studied how to make dental products, bridges, denture, crowns and dental appliances. He got a job with a local company, but soon left to start his own business, Baskowski Dental Laboratory, which was kind of a grand name for an operation he ran out of his parents' house, where he still lived.

So he was 20 years old, had his own business, and was making decent money. It's not nothing. In 1976, Tim set up a singles group at his Catholic Church in Pittsburgh, which turned out to be a huge success. A couple of takes.

friends met their wives there, and so did he. A cute, petite blonde named Elaine Pegger. They started dating soon after they met, and within three years, they got married. Starting in 1981, they had three kids, two boys and a girl, Randy, Sandy, and Todd. Tim's business continued to thrive, and they bought a nice three-bedroom house out in the country about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh. It was kind of an idyllic spot on an acre of land beside a dairy farm, and they were a happy family. Most people described Tim as a good parent, although that seemed to be more about quantity than quality. He was a control freak, so he organized his kids' lives and did a lot

of stuff with them, which would probably have led to some ugly scenes as soon as the kids were old enough to think for themselves. He was controlling with Elaine, too, always the one to make decisions about their lives. At least early on in their marriage, though, she seemed content with that. It was the way she'd been brought up. And in 1986, Tim made one of those big decisions. The family would move down to Greensboro and he would start a new career. Tim's reasons for this were, at least on the surface, understandable. He'd been diagnosed with a congenital heart murmur at the age of six, and according to him, a cardiologist had recently told him that he might have to have a heart valve replaced, which would leave him unable to work for a while. Elaine had learned how to make crowns

and dental appliances and stuff, but she wasn't certified to do so professionally. So Tim decided they needed a business that Elaine could operate by herself if he was ever laid up for a long time. He announced that they would open up a restaurant. Now, Tim certainly did have a heart murmur, but the cardiologist threatening a valve replacement might have just been a straight-up lie. I'm sure there are some people out there who love it, but I think most of us would agree that making dental supplies, you know, it ain't the most glamorous career path, right? Tim was bored. So he moved his family to North Carolina into a little rental house, which was all they could afford after he sank all their money into the restaurant. But that was just temporary, right? As soon as the restaurant took off, they'd get a nice big house and everything would be peachy keen. And Tim was certain the restaurant would take off. Tim was certain about everything. Even if the people starting it know what they're doing, a new restaurant is more likely to fail than not. It's just the nature of the business. And Tim didn't know what he was doing.

He and Elaine built their place, King Cones, from the ground up on Highway 220, a few miles north of Greensboro. It was an ice cream stand with a small attached restaurant, sort of a homebrew dairy queen kind of deal. And good luck with that, because if there's one thing American highways are not short on, it's places to get ice cream and burgers, right? And if you're setting yourself up in competition with McDonald's, you better come correct. Tim did not in fact come correct, though, because Tim was an easily bored, lazy Dufus, and he half-assed the whole thing. You got to bring your whole ass. You really do. Yeah.

You got a whole ass everything you try. Even when it was brand new, King Cones managed to look kind of shabby. Tim's family helped him build a mini-golf course behind the place as an added attraction, but he half-assed that too. Every hole was just a straight shot from T to green. Ooh, fun. It's like a Vulcan designed mini golf course. Like a straight line. Made it.

Made it. Made it. And he didn't take care of the place. Only mopped the floor maybe once a week. So if you went in there, there'd be like straw wrappers and stuff all over the linole. It was just grubby. It didn't look clean. One time after King Cones had been open for a couple of years, one of Tim's buddies played the miniature golf course with his kid.

And when he went to pick his ball out of the first hole, he saw that it was home to one big fat spider and hundreds, hundreds of her tiny babies. When he told Tim he might want to clean out the holes, Tim was just like, eh, it's just a few spiders. Really? Quick survey, okay? Would put in your hand in a hole full of spiders make you more or less likely

to go back to a restaurant? In fact, when Ray Kroc was coming up with a business plan for McDonald's, spider hole was the first thing he crossed off the list. You know, sometimes you just brainstorm ideas and jot them down, drive through free refills. Spider hole? No spider hole, please. No spider hole. No, thank you. So King Collins was almost immediately a money pit.

Four years later, the family was still living in that same little rented house. Tim and Elaine argued a lot about money. In fact, they just argued a lot in general. Apparently, all of Tim's time and energy went into King Cones, although given the state of the place, he was presumably just sitting behind the counter with this thumb up his ass. It's not like it was going well, and it's not like he cleaned. Elaine certainly wasn't getting any of his attention.

Right after they moved to Greensboro, Tim and Elaine joined a new church and quickly made new friends. Well, Elaine made fun. friends, and those friends kind of accepted Tim hanging around as the price of a relationship with her. None of them liked him very much. Elaine was witty and smart, whereas Tim was an incurious oaf who hadn't changed much since high school. If you didn't want to hear about burgers, dental appliances, or Jesus, then Tim had nothing to offer you. That was it. He was tapped out at those three topics. And he had a greedy money-grabbing side that really turned people off.

Elaine's best friend was Marianne, and her husband Kevin was a lawyer. One day in 1989, while Elaine was driving home from King Cones with the kids in the car, the car ahead of her stopped suddenly to make a left. Elaine slammed on the brakes, but the driver behind her wasn't so quick, and her car crashed into Elaine's. It wasn't like a huge collision, and Elaine and the kids just had a few bruises, but it was still scary. Tim's main reaction was, how can I make money out of this? A few weeks later, he asked Kevin if he had a case against the other driver, because since the crash, Elaine had become more sexually uninhibited and Tim didn't like that.

I'm sorry, excuse me. What? That's got to be one of the weirdest-ass questions that that attorney had ever gotten in his life. Like, what do you, like, so she has a minor fender bender, and now she's two sex. and I don't like it. Tim and Elaine were in their mid-30s now, and to put it as generously as we can, Elaine had aged a lot better than Tim has.

As he slowly morphed towards his final form as an unseasoned boiled potato. The idea of putting Tim in front of a jury to say, hell, my sexy wife is too confident in bed was, you know, laughable. And also, it had nothing to do with the car, accident, I suspect. She's in her mid-30s. This is what happens to women in their mid-30s. Okay. That's why they call it the dirty 30s. Yeah, like, help, my steak is too juicy.

My lobster is too buttery. My bitch is too fine. Like, what are you complaining about my guy? The crash had definitely caused some changes in Elaine. It was a life flashing before your eyes type moment, the kind of experience that makes you look at your situation with fresh eyes. So probably not the best time to be an oblivious loser of a husband. Although Tim was not entirely oblivious, he was jealous of the time Elaine spent with Marianne, but was more concerned with someone else she met at church, one of the priests, Father Jim Wisner. Father Jim was tall, handsome, and mustachioed. Our main source for this story is a good book with a terrible title. Please Don't Kill Mommy by Fannie Weinstein and Ruth Schumann.

And they describe Father Jim as the Marlboro Man with a clerical collar. He'd gone to law school and liked rock and roll, a smart, popular priest that plenty of ladies in the congregation had a sexly forbidden crush on. And that definitely included Elaine. Oh my God. The romance novel just writes itself, doesn't it? I don't know. I might have mentioned this one time before. sure, but when I was in high school, one of my friends' moms had an affair with a priest, like a Catholic

priest. Like, this dude was not supposed to be knocking anybody's boots, much less those of a married lady in his congregation. So, you know, it was all very torrid. And she ended up writing this, like, really long, sexy poem about him, and she let us read it, which was probably not the most appropriate thing to show your teenage daughter and her friend, but, I mean, I enjoyed it. I got my popcorn out. It feels very... Yeah. Yeah. It feels very... Yeah. It feels very like aiming polar and mean girls. Like I'm not, I'm not just a mom. I'm a cool mom.

Like I have the hots for a priest. Yeah. And vice versa. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Like the poem?

Yeah, Father Jim. The poem mentioned his collar lying on the floor by the bed. Okay. I've seen that one before actually. So it's fine. No, I, I, because Father Jim was also. Catholic priest. I know.

Like, it's the same situation, except I don't think they actually did anything. But in this case, they definitely did, you know. Although, you know, have you seen the new Benoit Blanc, uh, Knives Out film? Not yet. I'm excited. That features a very hot priest. There's something about priest. I don't know what it is.

But like if you've, if anybody's ever seen that TV series, The Exorcist, like, who Lord. There's a couple of them in there that, you know. And this isn't really spoiling anything. This priest also is a boxer and accidentally killed a man. So he's got that whole like brooding sad boy thing going on. It's hot. Sorry.

Everyone go watch the new Knows Out movie. And just to be clear, there is no suggestion outside of Tim's mind anyway that anything inappropriate happened between Elaine and chased Father Jim. Okay, he is, he's just a cool guy. Okay. He's just awesome. He was wearing like a leather jacket over his priest uniform. But they absolutely did have a connection and they spent a lot of time talking together. And Elaine was attracted to the father.

She wrote about it in her journal. And surprise, surprise, Tim took it upon himself to read it. After that, Tim became convinced they were having an affair, which is just dumb, honestly. If she's writing in her private journal that she has the hats for teacher, I mean priest, then she'd be writing in it about her affair too. That's a good point. Yeah, why would she leave that part out? That's true.

Yeah, that actually should have reassured him. Yeah. She's not cheating on. Tim confronted poor Father Jim, and he called Elaine's bestie, Marianne, to complain about the amount of time Elaine was spending with her. During that call, he admitted to Marianne that he'd read Elaine. Elaine's journal. And of course, because Marianne is a down-ass bitch, she told Elaine. Like, any wife would be, Elaine was both furious and embarrassed. Like, she's probably already guilty about having these, like, the crush feelings about, you know, a man while she's married

and also an unattainable man while she's married. And then she finds out that her husband knows about it. That's horrifying. And talked to the priest about it, which is just, like, I've feel that in my good. That's just the embarrassment. Now he knows I have the hot school. It's like your best friend going up to your like middle school crush being like, Whitney has a crush on you. God awful. That wasn't the only misstep to made. Always looking to make an easy book. In early 1990, he became obsessed with Amway because what every failing businessman needs is to dive headfirst into a pyramid scheme. Oh my God, dude. We have to do an episode about Amway sometime. It

is the craziest story. I watched a documentary about it a while back. That company ruined people's lives, like, ruined. And by the end, I got to say, it bore a striking resemblance to a cult. Like, I would not be surprised if it met most of the criteria. So, anyway, rabbit hole for another day, but holy shit. It's still around. Like, I had, yeah, I had a friend try to lure our entire friend group into a sales call with her boss, aka her upline. It was, it's crazy. I don't, I do not understand. I think they've restructured, but like, it's still, like, any time that you have to, like, convince other people to join to make any money, it's a bad deal.

Yeah. It's a bad deal. Absolutely. Tim was so excited about his first Amway meeting that he just forgot to pick up the babysitter and left the kids home alone for hours while Elaine worked at King Combs. She was, again, furious. friends who visited from Pennsylvania couldn't help and notice the tension between the two of them, or that Elaine wasn't the yes, dear, kind of wife she'd been up in Pittsburgh.

When Tim asked her to get him a drink, she just said, get it yourself. In her journal, she started wondering if the marriage could be salvaged. Hell yes, Elaine. And then in the summer, Tim, recognizing it was a losing proposition, sold King Cones and the miniature golf course, the spider-infested mini-golf course at a loss without consulting Elaine on the deal at all. Now, this was the last flipping straw, not because she'd been so eager to keep the restaurant, but because it just showed a total disregard and lack of respect for her. No one's going to tell me how to run my business.

That's what he said to her when she complained. Ugh. Yeah, it's not your business, jackass. She put just as much time and effort into it as you did. So Elaine asked for a divorce, and they separated, although not quite physically. Money was so tight that they kept living together, taking turns sleeping on the couch, with the agreement that Tim would move out in the new year. This sounds like a poisonously uncomfortable situation,

but Tim and Elaine apparently settled into a fairly amicable routine. Her friends thought Elaine seemed more confident and happy than they'd seen her for a long time. She was excited about getting a new job and about dating again. She got a prescription for birth control pills, which she hadn't needed before because Tim had a vasectomy after their third kid. So, you know, my girl Elaine, she was getting her groove back. On November 3rd, for the first time, they were going to go out to the same social event, a church dance, but not as a couple. Tim spent most of the day beforehand fishing in the park with the kids. Elaine stayed home and wrote in her journal.

She had a lot to process because she'd woken up in a sweat at 1.30 in the morning after a steamy dream about Father Jim. In the dream, they'd been at a party when Father Jim told Elaine he planned to leave the priesthood and open a bookstore. I walked over to him and stroked his hair, Elaine wrote. He said, let's leave and head back to my house. At his house, they sat on the floor beside a Christmas tree and talked for hours. Then, quote, all of a sudden, he started kissing me. When she asked why now, he said he was hurting and he needed her. Take a second, y'all. Damn, this was a woman who was ready to move on with her life, clearly. Hi, I'm Brian Lucci, a former Chicago cop.

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Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. The church dance was a lively polka-themed affair, and both Tim and Elaine seemed happy. although Tim's good mood definitely seemed to have a little edge to it. He'd cheerfully ask anybody who'd listen, did you know Elaine and I are going to separate? Awkward. And he said to a group of women,

I'm available, any takers? There were not in case you were curious. Just zero game whatsoever. If you have to go up to a group of like, you know, the kind of people you're attracted to and go, any takers, it's a bad deal. You don't. No.

I really don't. They're an art. Why do you expect the response to be? Like, God grant us all that confidence, right? Of a mediocre Mr. Potato ad of a man. It's just, it's literally like imagine a matter. Because like what other response aside from, no thank you is there? Like there's no other response.

Any takers? Because imagine me, the girl. that says yes. Right. Yeah. Well, his wife is there. Like, she's still his wife at this point. They're still living together. Like, dude, keep it in your pants for 10 more minutes until you guys are living apart, you know? Elaine was bubbly, but after Tim had gone home and she stayed behind to help Marianne and Kevin clean up the tables and chairs, she said a couple of things that seemed to come out of the blue. Will you guys take my kids if anything happens to me, she said. And before they could answer, she said. She said, said to Kevin the attorney, I want to talk to you Monday morning about changing my will.

But by Monday morning, Elaine would be dead. Why? Her life was insured for $25,000, not a whole lot compared to most murder-for-profit crimes we've seen. Certainly plenty of people have been killed for less, but insurance-motivated killers usually take out a big policy before their crimes. I think what was going on here was just anger and jealousy. We know. We know. No, Tim was a snoop, we know he read Elaine's journal. When he got home from the dance, did he read about her sexy dream about Father Jim? Did he snoop and find her birth control pills? It's one thing to be separated.

It's something else altogether to really face the fact that your wife is soon going to be in bed with another man. Like we said earlier, just about everyone who knew them in Greensboro thought Tim had killed Elaine, and that included the police. But the medical examiner's report listed Elaine's cause of death as undetermined, and as long as that was the case, prosecutors were unwilling to move forward. It looked very much like Tim Baskowski had gotten away with murder. He was essentially a pariah, though, and just a couple of months later, he took the kids and scuttled back to Pittsburgh, where he could control whatever version of events people heard. To people who hadn't known Elaine, he said she'd been depressed and then died, implying, not saying outright, but implying that she'd killed herself.

To people who had known her, he said Elaine had gotten drunk at the party and drowned in the bathtub. Elaine's autopsy, by the way, showed no alcohol in her system at all. Hmm. Tim quickly reestablished his old dental appliance business and basically set about reconstructing his life from before the move to Greensboro. That, of course, would require a new wife. Just a few months after her death, he was telling friends, I really miss Elaine, but I really want to get married again. His criteria was pretty loose.

She had to be taller than Elaine and with smaller boobs. Priorities, right? Yeah. Tim was nothing, if not predictable. Just as he had 15 years ago when he was 20, he joined a club for Catholic singles. And in the spring of 1991, he met a 32-year-old insurance claims rep named Marion Fullerton. Like Elaine, she was a petite blonde with a megawatt smile. In fact, the two women looked so much alike that they could be sisters.

My dude definitely has a type. Like, I watched this forensic files with my parents and we were all like, oh, my, that's the same woman. It's eerie. It really is. It gives you a little when you see. They're so, so similar. Marianne had much of the same suburban Pittsburgh childhood as Tim, although with a wilder streak. often getting into trouble with the nuns at her Catholic school.

She'd had a freewheeling, bar-hopping kind of life in her 20s, but now she was looking to settle down and have a family. She and Tim hit it off immediately, and she got on great with his kids, too. She was excited about the new relationship, and most of her friends were glad to see her happy, although her two best friends did have some reservations. One friend said she'd always dated decent-looking guys, and he was kind of dorky.

Another said, the first time I met him, I couldn't help but think she could do a lot better. Marian was so pretty and so outgoing. Sorry, we're not, we are making fun of his appearance, but it's fine. I'm sorry, I'm just saying it. No, yeah, yeah. Unbutter toast. Okay. Salting cracker.

And she was so, she was so hot. Her friends thought Marianne had fallen for the kids as much as she had Tim. This was a ready-made family for her. She always spoke about what she'd done with Tim and the kids. She never just talked about her and Tim. Still, dorky or not, Tim seemed nice, and he was affectionate with Marianne. She was happy, and who could begrudge her that? They planned to get married in the summer of 1993,

and a few months before that moved into a brand-new four-bedroom house. They got married in June, and Marianne started the process. of adopting Tim's three kids. Their new married life wasn't entirely free of trouble. Tim continuously undercut Marianne with the kids. Like one time she grounded Todd, the youngest boy, and later that night, Tim took him out for ice cream. Like, stuff like that happened again and again.

And, you know, that's especially loathsome to me because he, he as much as told people that he'd brought her in to be, like, new mom. to these kids. She even looked like their mom. And the kids adored her. Like there was none of that tension that there would sometimes be like, I think the kids really grasped onto that because they were so young when their mom died. And it just must have felt really good to have a new mother figure around. And then for him to do this dumb shit, yeah, he's the worst. Well, and it's like if you if you want a step parent to be a parent, you can't do that shit. And if you don't want a step parent to be a parent, you have to establish those boundaries early. Like it's just,

It just shows how, like, selfish and stupid he was because he was only setting her up for failure. Because you can practically hear the kids saying, well, you're not my real mom, right? And it would be their fault. They're getting mixed signals. And Tim was or claimed to be concerned about Marianne's drinking. Marianne did enjoy a drink, but Tim hugely exaggerated how much she drank to her friends and neighbors. He told them she passed out a lot and would send the kids to take her empties out to the garbage. This was all made up, but Tim got everyone riled up enough that they held an intervention for Marianne at the church.

She tearfully told them she didn't think she had a problem, but she said she'd go to see a counselor. The counselor agreed, Marianne did not have a drinking problem, although she might have been at risk for developing one. Tim kept on spreading lies of drunk Marianne and how worried he was about her, but at every party they had, people noticed how he was always bringing her a fresh glass of wine without her asking for it. How worried about her drinking could he really be? Yeah, and we've seen this before, a lot, especially in spouse murder cases. It's what I call priming the pump, where somebody will go around and say to their friends, oh, she's been so depressed lately. She's been talking about taking your own life or something like that. And I wholeheartedly believe that this man intended to kill

this woman, maybe from before he married her, but certainly very soon after. And this was prime in the pump. He was getting people ready to accept some kind of a drunken accident, right? Before they'd gotten married, Marianne had been upset to learn about Tim's vasectomy. She loved his kids, but she wanted a child of her own, too. So in 1994, she broached the possibility of getting pregnant via artificial insemination. Tim was dead set against it, but then out of nowhere, later in the year, he relented. Mary Ann was so excited. She started the test to prepare for the procedure, and Tim, meanwhile, decided to have another intervention in November about Marianne's drinking. He called friends to arrange it and casually mentioned to one that he changed his mind

about the artificial insemination once again and didn't want Marianne to go through with it. He hadn't bothered to tell Marianne, though. He said he'd do it at the intervention when everyone was together. And just let that sink in, how callous that is, to deliberately choose to drop devastating news like that on somebody in a public situation where you know they'll already be like embarrassed and shattered and crying, you know. And Tim was apparently just oblivious. to what a shitty thing to do that was. Tim, though, already knew that intervention was never going to happen. Mary Ann spent the day of November 6th, shopping and talking on the phone with her friends.

Tim put the kids to bed around 9 and settled into the family room to watch the hand that rocks the cradle on VHS, which was a really interesting choice, because if you've ever seen that movie, I mean, just think. According to him, after the movie was over, he suggested he and Mary, Mary Ann go out to the hot tub on the back deck and split a bottle of white Zenfindel. After an hour or so, Tim got out and went upstairs to have a long shower. When he got back down, he looked out, expecting to see Marianne still relaxing in the hot tub. Instead, though, he saw her floating on her side, her head under the water. Tim rushed inside and made three calls, one to 911, one to his parents, and one to his neighbor, West Semple, asking for help.

When Wes got over there, he and Tim tried to lift Marianne out of the hot tub, but it was hard to get a good grip on her and they couldn't. Tim had a plastic CPR mask that he put over Marianne's mouth and started breathing into. In fact, he'd put it on the wrong way around with the tube you're supposed to blow into inside Marianne's mouth. The way it was, no air was getting into her lungs. With the shape of the mask, that would be a really unlikely mistake, even for an amateur to make. Tim, as it happened, was a volunteer fireman and been well trained in CPR. Also, it's weird to put a plastic shield over your wife's mouth. Like, if it was a stranger, sure. But do you need that

barrier with your wife? The neighbor thought it was really strange. A couple of cops and a paramedic were quickly on the scene. They lifted Marianne out of the hot tub and attempted some proper CPR. They set up an IV to administer cardiac drugs and put a tube down Marianne's throat in case she threw up. Tim's parents arrived about this time. One of the cops overheard him talking to his mom in the kitchen. What happened? His mom said. We had an argument, Tim said. About what? You know, her drinking. It's always her drinking. She had about 13 or 14 beers and we argued. But then we went out to the hot tub and we made up. Tim noticed the cop stand in there and said, I wish Gary Waters was here.

I don't want none of this coming back at me. Now that was weird. Gary Waters was a detective with the local PD. What did he have to do with Tim Boskowski? One of the paramedics tried to get a picture of Marianne's medical history from Tim. He told her she'd had a bad cold and taken a prescription decongestant, and he also mentioned that he and Marianne had been in the hospital. hot tub celebrating an upcoming event. The only upcoming event on his schedule was the intervention

where he was going to blow up Marianne's life. The paramedics moved Marianne away from the hot tub and used defibrillators to try and restart her heart, but to no effect. They had to get her to a hospital and told Tim they were going to take her to the nearby Passivant Hospital. No, Tim said, I want you to take her to Allegheny General. That was a bigger hospital and better equipment. for trauma response, but it was also at least five minutes further away, and those minutes could be vital with a patient with no pulse. But Tim insisted, and the paramedics didn't have time to argue with them. They took Marianne to Allegheny General, where at 1.40 a.m. she was pronounced dead. Tim showed no emotion at all when he was told. Tim's mom had gone to the hospital with him.

His dad, Buck, stayed back at the house with West Simple and two of the cops. When they learned Marianne was the kid's stepmother, the officers asked how they could get in touch with their birth mom. She's dead, West said. She died when they were living in North Carolina. One of the officers asked Buck how his daughter-in-law died. I don't want to talk about it, he said. Why? The cop said. I just don't. We'll find out what happened, the cop said. She died under similar circumstances. Buck eventually admitted.

She drowned in the bathtub. The cops. obviously, were now deeply suspicious of Tim, and that included Detective Gary Waters, who they'd called, seeing as Tim mentioned him. It took him a while, but Waters did eventually remember that he'd gone to high school with Tim Boskowski. But that was all. They'd gone to high school together. They hadn't been buddies or anything, and Gary hadn't heard of or thought about the man at all in the decade since. He had no idea at all why Tim had mentioned him, but that became clearer at about 3 a.m. when Tim and his mom got home from the hospital.

You know about Marianne's drinking problem, Tim said. You used to date her. What was her maiden name? Waters asked. Fullerton, Tim said. Gary Waters had in fact dated Marianne 12 years ago in 1982 for all of four months, and he'd never noticed any kind of drinking problem. Like this man was trying to gaslight a detective who didn't even remember either person in the case. It's crazy. But that's clearly what he was trying to do. And if you think back to way back to season one with Bill Bradfield, this was a common habit of his. He would always try to plant memories in people's heads. Yeah, except this guy wasn't friends with this one.

Right. So he couldn't do it. He asked to look around the house. Down in the basement, he found a case of Strow's light beer filled with empty cans. Remembering Tim had said Marion had drunk 13 or 14 beers, waters checked every can, but they were all completely dry. They'd been empty for a while. In the fridge was one unopened can of stroze. If Marion drank as heavily as Tim had claimed, would she keep just one can of beer in the fridge? No, because every alcoholic knows you are always planning ahead, trying to plan ahead for the next.

And seeing as we're on the subject, it would turn out that Marianne's blood alcohol was at about double the legal limit for driving. But she wasn't driving, of course, just relaxing at home. And that amount was not enough for her to just pass out and drown in the hot tub, which is what Tim was clearly driving at. The officers had Tim take off his shirt. They noticed scratches on his side and back and one on his finger, just little marks, but definitely, there. Tim said he'd been sunburned on a recent cruise and that Marianne sometimes gave him what he called a scratch massage where it itched. They had been on a cruise recently, but Tim had worn a ridiculously huge straw hat and heavy-duty sunscreen the whole time. Standing there with a shirt off,

he looked as pale as mushroom. He looks like a mushroom in general, a little insipid mushroom room with a tiny little face drawn on it. Yeah. Boiled potato was an accurate description. He looks like he comes from the ground. He's some kind of root vegetable or fungus. But he's not a fun guy to be around. So potatoes probably better.

See what I did there? I mean, look him up. You're going to completely agree. Like he's just salting crackers. He's. you know, unt toasted, unbuttered bread. Yeah. He looks like a schmuck. Like, you just know he's a schmuck immediately upon sight.

It's just... Right. Like, I don't think he can help it. It's just who he is. But it's his fault he murdered two women and now we have to make fun of him. Tim agreed to go down to the Ross Township Police Station for an interview. A detective there asked if he'd be willing to take a polygraph test. Tim said, sure.

I'll do it if I can take it right here. hear. The detective got the impression that Tim had a pretty high opinion of his own intelligence and that he was sure the small department wouldn't have the capacity to immediately administer a polygraph. He was right about that, but the detective had already called ahead to the state police. It's your lucky day, he told Tim. Someone's coming over with one right now. Oh, great. I would pay. There's no limit to the amount of money. I'd pay to see his face in that moment. To see his face in that moment.

A state trooper, Richard Ealing, arrived shortly after 8 a.m. to administer the test. Tim said no to each of the following questions. Are you attempting to withhold any information concerning this investigation? Did you drown your wife? Did you get into a physical argument with your wife last night? Were you in or near the hot tub when your wife died?

The machine indicated deceptive. response for each one. Trooper Ealing said, I know you cause the death of your wife. Tim didn't say anything, but he slowly nodded his head up and down. When the detectives received the polygraph results, they had more questions. Were you responsible for your wife's death? That same slow nod. Do you know how she died? Nod. Do you want to talk to us about that? A nod, but then words. I'll tell. I'll tell. tell you what happened after I talked to my attorney. That was it for the interview, and when Tim's attorney arrived, he wisely told him to shut his damn mouth. The shock of Marianne's death spread through her friends and family. Grief can hit people in weird ways, and in Marianne's mom,

Pat, it quickly settled into denial, even when the news caught wind of how similar Marianne's death was to that of Tim's first wife. A detective called and told me. Mary Ann's mom and dad that they viewed Mary Ann's death as suspicious, that Tim had failed a polygraph test, and that they'd just learned he'd taken out a $100,000 life insurance policy on her.

He said they should avoid any contact with Tim. Oh, the poor guy, Pat said, why did the police keep him there so long? Her sister Ruth, Marianne's aunt, said, he killed her. That's why he's been at the police station. Don't say that, Pat said. Don't even think that. He loved her. Why would he kill her? That just breaks my heart. I can only imagine how hard this would be. Because A, you just lost your daughter. If you had affection for your son-in-law, obviously that would be hard. But I also think there would be maybe some complicated guilt involved. Like, should I have seen this? Because I've heard that come from victims loved ones before. Why didn't I see it? Why didn't I stop it? You know? So I think there'd be a lot of complicated feelings. involved in this. I just really feel for her.

Yeah. Marianne's autopsy showed bruising on her face, neck, arms, side, and chest. The kind of bruises someone gets from fighting for her life. The pathologist found no evidence that Marianne had drowned. She had died from asphyxiation due to blunt force trauma to the neck. She'd been strangled. Tim was arrested and the detectives who put the grab-as on him

got the impression that Tim thought the whole thing was just a nuisance, that he was way too smart for any prosecutor to nail. Bold plan, Tim. Detective Gary Waters went over to tell Marianne's mom and dad about the arrest. Do you really think he did it? Pat said. Yes, Gary said right away. There's no doubt in my mind. Maybe she fell getting out, Pat insisted. Tim's arrest for a crime that so closely resembled the death of his first wife Elaine caused the North Carolina chief medical examiner to take another look at the evidence in that case. Her manner of death was officially changed from undetermined to homicide, and within minutes of that change, another warrant was issued for Tim's arrest. An appeal to the state Supreme Court caused a lengthy delay in the Pennsylvania trial, but that just meant that

North Carolina would get the first shot Lock and Tim away forever on charges of murdering Elaine. After the judge ruled that details of Marianne's death could also be introduced in court. Tim's goose was already well and truly cooked, but the prosecution hadn't ace up their sleeve anyway. Tim was a big old dummy who thought he was clever, and that's exactly the kind of dumbass who doesn't know better than to flap his frickin' trap in jail. Yet again, my prison buddy is my buddy, my new best friend. For a couple of weeks in the Allegheny County Jail, Tim had shared a cell block with a guy named Randy Irwin. Randy was a small-time crook who'd eventually racked up enough shoplifting and burglary convictions for some real prison time and it spent most of the last

decade behind bars. He was polite and freely admitted to what crimes he remembered. He was 39 and there'd been a lot of crimes and some of them got little hazy. It was clear the jury found him to be a convincing witness. He and Tim had become kind of friendly. Randy testified, one day I was reading a newspaper that his picture was in and he came running down the range cheerful and smiling. He says, I should charge you for reading that. And I says, what do you mean? He says, that's me. I'm the hot tub man. I'm famous. Like it was a joke or something. And we got to talk in and I was like, well, why did you kill both women the same way? And he said, I don't know. That was stupid, wasn't it? Yes. Yes, it was. When a guy like Tim with a towering but fragile ego goes to prison, they'll often try to impress the people in there by playing Billy Badass, which is why we see so many of these steamed hams admitting to their crimes to guys they hardly know.

The fact is hardly anyone in prison is there for murder. Most aren't there for any kind of violent crime at all. The vast majority of inmates won't be impressed by you bragging about killing your wife. They'll be disgusted. Like, yeah, what a badass. He overpowered two small women. Great. Good job.

Tim was found guilty of Elaine's murder and given a life sentence. Then he went back to Pennsylvania for essentially a carbon copy trial with the same conviction but a different sentence. With his conviction for Elaine's death as an aggregating factor, Tim was sentenced to death, although because of some problems with his initial extradition to North Carolina, that was later reduced to life. on appeal. He was actually paroled in North Carolina in 2018 after serving 22 years, but that didn't mean he went free, just that Pennsylvania got their little hands on him. And in Pennsylvania, there were only two available sentences for first-degree murder, death or life with no possibility of parole. Tim is not getting out of prison.

As we said earlier, Tim's murder of Elaine was probably driven by simple jealousy and anger. But what about Marianne? Unlike with Elaine, Tim did take out a sizable life insurance policy on her, but I kind of suspect that was just a bonus. The same money-grubbing instinct that put so many people off Tim's personality. The fact that Marianne looked so similar to Elaine and that Tim killed her in such a similar fashion after they'd only been briefly married, it makes you wonder if the motive here wasn't far darker.

that Tim had enjoyed killing Elaine and immediately afterwards started working towards a way to experience that same excitement again. Yeah. And another thing that makes me think that is that she didn't want that hot tub. He kept pushing and pushing to get that hot tub. She didn't want it, wasn't interested in it,

and he just kept on pushing. And they got it. And I think, you know, that was intended to be a murder weapon. from the day he brought it home. I mean, that's my suspicion anyway. There's no way I can prove it. But I agree that he probably enjoyed killing the first time.

And just think for a second about that. This man was a father of three. He takes their mother. Then he brings a new mother figure into their lives, one who even looks like the mom they lost, which is just extra cruelty, in my opinion, on his part. To pick somebody who looked just like their mom. Mary Ann came into that house and she did a lot to help these kids, you know, heal their grief.

And that didn't stop Tim. The kind of mind that you'd have to do something like that, I just hope that I never, ever get to see that up close. Now, before we go, don't forget about our two amazing live shows coming up. First, we've got summer camp, September 10th through 13th, an amazing four-day festival hosted by Dan and Lindsay Cummins, of time suck and scared to death. We'll be performing live alongside them and the podcast Astonishing Legends, in addition to a roster of amazing stand-up comedians and local bands. For more information and to buy tickets, go to Bad Magic Productions.com.

And then we've got our True Crime Cruise, Crime Wave 2.0, February 8th through 12th, 2027. If you want to come on vacation with us and some of the biggest true crime and paranormal podcasts in the world, like case file, true crime garage, no sleep and scared to death, here's what you got to do. Tickets are on sale now and they are going super fast. They actually had to add more cabins, you know. So if you want to go, make sure you get over to crimewave atc.com slash campfire and book your cabin ASAP. You'll get $100 off plus a private meet and greet with us. The great thing is you can pay all at once or you can set up a payment plan and pay it off over time.

So go get on it, y'all. crime wave at sea.com slash campfire. And we've got a special shout out today for our camper, Axel, from her mama, who loves her to pieces and thought she'd get a kick out of having two of her favorite podcasters, wish her happy birthday. So happy birthday, Axel. I hope it is a perfect day. I hope you get lots of cake.

I hope you blow all your candles out at once and that you get everything you could possibly want. 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 to a few of our lovely Patreon supporters. Thank you so much to Lisbeth, Catherine, Jordan, Kylie, Melissa, and Paul. 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 more, plus tons of extra content, like Patron's only episode. and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you join the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker, a rad enamel pin or fridge magnet while supplies last virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. For eight years, we've been asking the same question over and over again.

How did this happen? My name's Mandy. And I'm Melissa, and we're the host of Moms and Mysteries. the true crime podcast with over 55 million downloads. We're two Florida moms who are obsessed with mysteries. Each week, we do deep dives into fascinating true crime stories. We cover everything from infamous cases like Casey Anthony to the bizarre and complex crimes right here in our home state, like the shocking murder of FSU professor Dan Markell. We bring you the facts, but with warmth and width, you'd only get from two friends who have been hooked on mysteries since childhood.

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