True Crime Campfire - Respawn: A Grab Bag of Deaths That Weren't What They Seemed

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Death is not always the end. We’re not stepping into any kind of spiritual territory here, though, we’re talking about the very earthly fact that just because someone appears to be dead, it doesn���t necessarily mean that that is the case. Maybe someone needs to escape an upcoming personal disaster, maybe they need the insurance money, maybe they’ve tied their life into such a knot that it’s easier to just quit and start again. Faking your own death has an age-old history, and it almost always causes pain and damage all around. Tickets are on sale now 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. Sources: Forensic Files, S8E31, “Past Lives” https://mycolumbiasc.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/what-do-you-want-on-your-tombstone/ Forensic Files, S14E5, “A Squire’s Riches” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-16-adna-fakedeath16-story.html https://www.dailyherald.com/20080306/news/police-lake-barrington-man-committed-murder-to-fake-own-death/ Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Death is not always the end. We are not stepping into any kind of spiritual territory here, though.

We're talking about the very earthly fact that just because someone appears to be dead, it doesn't necessarily mean that that is the case. Maybe someone needs to escape an upcoming personal disaster. Maybe they need the insurance money. Maybe they've tied their life into such a knot that it's easier to just quit and start again. Faking your own death has an age-old history, and it almost always causes pain and damage all around. This is respawn, a grab bag of deaths that aren't what they seem. So, campers, for this one, we're outside of Monterey, Mexico.

July 11, 1998. The smoking remains of a burned-out Chevy Suburban sat in the bottom of a ravine beside a highway. It had been an intensely hot fire. When authorities opened the driver's side door, the only evidence that a person had been in there was a few bone fragments and some teeth. Among the remains were a medic alert pendant and a wristwatch. On the back of the watch was a barely legible inscription. To Madison Love Reni. It didn't take long for the Mexican authorities to identify the owner of the watch and the man who had rented the burned out car. Madison Rutherford, a wealthy financial consultant from Connecticut.

Madison was 34 years old and to outward appearances had everything going right in his life. A successful career in finance had given him wealth and a beautiful home, and he'd been married for almost 20 years to his wife Reni. They enjoyed the high life, traveling and indulging their whims, which included buying it, expensive purebred dogs as pets. That was apparently the reason Madison had been in Mexico to buy a dog, and don't worry, there were no puppers in the burned-out car, because I know you guys worry about that. Rennie was devastated when news of her husband's death came north from Mexico. Their friend and neighbor Brigetta Beck did her best to console her. Brigetta was a German immigrant who had worked as a massage therapist and nanny. She didn't know all that many people stateside and worried about who would handle her affairs if anything happened to her. She'd given Madison the finance whiz power of attorney so he could handle things for her. Rennie was able to provide something to help complete the identification of the remains down in Mexico, a tooth that they'd kept from a dental procedure of Madison's.

You know, like you do, we have our tooth drawer right next to the silverware drawer in the kitchen at our house. The tooth was certainly useful. The hard enamel protects the core and DNA can often be extracted even after exposure to extreme heat, but at least one of the forensic investigators in Monterey was immediately suspicious about the burned car. The clasp on the medic alert chain was open. Why would that be the case if it had been around Madison's neck? And both the medic alert pendant and the engraved watch were in remarkably good condition compared to everything else in the car. Also, witnesses had seen the car earlier with a bike fixed to the back, but there were no bike parts in the wreckage. There was enough out of whack here to justify a more thorough investigation,

but it wasn't going to come from the Policilla de Monterey who were content to rule Madison Rutherford's fiery death and accident, caused by him losing control of his car and crashing into the ravine where he'd burned to death. As you'd expect for a high-flying business boy, Madison had a healthy life insurance policy. Two, in fact, one for $4 million and another for $3 million. As you might also expect, those insurance companies weren't super eager to hand over millions of dollars to Rennie Rutherford without a more thorough investigation. The big question was whether the few bodily remains in the car were actually those of Madison Rutherford. The insurers sent those remains to be evaluated by Dr. William Bass, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist. If you've ever heard of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, that's Dr. Bass's baby.

and I'm actually considering leaving my body to the body farm when I die. Like I haven't made it my mind yet, but I think that would be amazing, you know, like to help forensic science advance. The only remains intact enough to be examined were a fragment from the top of the skull and four teeth. Just the fact that he'd received a piece from the top of the skull was enough to make bass immediately suspicious. If your body's in the driver's seat of a burning car, there's no reason why the top of your head wouldn't burn just as much as the rest of you. In fact, Bass determined that the only way the top of the skull could have survived

the fire was if it was pressed down onto the floor of the car. Now, obviously, no one drives like that. Probably, right? But if a lazy idiot shoved a limp body in through the driver's door, they might well leave it in a head-down position. The skull fragment had another story to tell. After birth, the individual bones of the skull gradually fused together along cranial sutures with the connection still visible as stitch-like lines across the bone. The fusing process continues all throughout life, and the degree to which the cranial sutures remain visible can be used as a very approximate indicator of age,

kind of like the rings on a tree, right? Dr. Bass determined the fragment he was examining very likely came from someone at least in their 50s or possibly even older. Madison Rutherford was only 34 years old. The teeth were also interesting. The incisors displayed shoveling, which is where the rear surface has slight raised edges beside a more hollow center,

like a shovel. It's a natural feature common in people of East Asian and Indigenous American ancestry, which includes many people in Mexico, but would be highly unusual in someone as white bread as Connecticut's Madison Rutherford. The teeth also showed serious, untrue, unfilled cavities, which were not at all likely in a wealthy financial consultant.

Dr. Bass's final conclusion was that the body in the car was very likely that of a Mexican man at least in his 50s, and the lack of dental care suggested someone who didn't have a ton of money. This person would never be identified, but there was no shortage of nearby cemeteries with above-ground mausoleums. A body wouldn't be hard to obtain if you weren't squeamish. It had been placed head down in the first of the first of the first. front of the car before the vehicle had been set on fire. The crash had been staged, and the body certainly wasn't that of Madison Rutherford. Dr. Bass wasn't the only one learning that. Brigitte Beck had given Madison full control over her savings and was starting to get nervous

about what would happen now that he was dead. Bridgetta seems like a very sweet person, but I think it's fair to say she was probably a little naive. When she'd come to the As a young woman, she'd been all but adopted by a German couple who ran a massage and medical therapy clinic in Stanford. She'd both lived with them and worked for them for decades, and when they died, they left her everything they had. She'd always had someone looking out for her, and she'd never had to learn how to navigate the world by herself. She went over to talk to Renny Rutherford about her money, and Reni got very serious and said, please don't make a sound. Don't say anything. Madison is not dead. He's in high.

And one night shortly after that, Madison Rutherford showed up on Brigitte's doorstep. He told her that his apparent fiery death had been staged to cover up his work for the FBI. All right, hands up if you thought we were going to say CAA, right? Because it's almost always the CAA with these dipships. This one just got a little creative, I guess. A little, a little. According to Madison, he'd refused to help the mafia launch. her money, and now they were trying to kill him before he could testify against them.

Like we said, Brigitte was naive. She bought this story and even let Madison stay with her for a little while before he vanished again. Bless her heart. Their other neighbors wouldn't have been so quick to trust the Rutherford's. It wasn't that they were outcasts or anything. It was just that people thought they were weird. They'd been together since Madison was a 16-year-old lifeguard at Candlewood Lake, who caught

Renny's eye. And if you're thinking this sounds like a high school romance, give it a minute. Things move quickly into deep, ew, territory when you learn that Reni was 20 years older than Madison, a self-proclaimed psychic and fortune teller who had evidently seen risking jail time in her own future when she asked Madison over to help paint her apartment. Good Lord. Ew. New euphemism unlocked. Come over and paint my apartment. They kept all kinds of animals, including chickens they let roam around in the yard. One neighbor said that Madison considered the birds to be his children. In fact, Madison Rutherford wasn't Madison Rutherford, or at least he didn't start out that way.

He was born John Sanky, the son of a New York City police officer, who by the 1980s was half a million dollars in debt, thanks to his delusions about being a competent day trader and was forced to declare bankruptcy. Probably related to this was his decision to change his name to Madison Rutherford, one of several presidentially inspired aliases he lived under. It also, like Madison sounds like someone with money. Yeah. Johnny Sanky would not have a country club membership. Madison Rutherford would.

He'd also have like an opair and a private chef and all that. Absolutely. Yeah, that is a really seriously like cliche, like funny cliche rich person. Madison Rutherford the third. Shut up. A friend named Muffy. You just know it. Yes, absolutely.

In 1993, he served six months in prison for writing $750 worth of fraudulent checks, which I think tells you how great things were going for him. And when he got out, he reinvented himself as a financial consultant. He got lucky. In the mid-90s, the stock market was booming, and any chump could look like a genius just by investing in Microsoft. But the luck didn't last, and within just a few years, Madison and Renny's high-rolling lifestyle and his incompetence as a day trader had dug them back into a deep financial hole. Well, I thought she was psychic. Why didn't she see that coming?

So together they concocted a scheme to make some serious money by insuring Madison for millions of dollars and then faking his fiery death down in Mexico. What could possibly go wrong? Insurance fraud is, of course, a crime. Shortly after Madison Rutherford told Brigitte Beck that the FBI had staged his death in Mexico, an agent from the actual FBI came to see her. His news shook her life to pieces. Madison had used his power of attorney to completely clean out Brigitte's half-million-dollar life savings and had also mortgaged her 10-room home for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

She was completely wiped out, going in an instant from a comfortable middle-class retirement to have in $500 in her checking account and $27 in savings. Unbelievable. It was only the kindness of her friends that kept her from becoming completely destitute. The next year, Madison was living large in Boston under the alias Thomas Bay Hamilton, where he'd found a job with Double Decker Studios, a small multimedia technology company that had thrived. on the widespread adoption of a radical new technology, the CD-ROM. Earlier in his life, Madison's legitimate employment had included working as a comptroller, which is the post he held at Double Decker. And despite being a wet wad of failure in most areas of his life,

he evidently did well enough in Boston to earn a promotion. Or at least, he did well enough to be considered for promotion, because before moving him into a position of real authority, the company ran a background check and discovered that Thomas Bay, Hamilton had existed for less than two years. That's got to make your butthole pucker when you realize you've got a guy working with the finances. Like that's the comptroller of the business. Uh-oh. Spaghetti. When local investigators looked into Hamilton, they discovered that the car he was driving was registered to an apparently dead man from Connecticut, Madison, whose disappearance was being investigated by the FBI. Yikes. But before he was. the feds could interview Thomas Bay Hamilton, there was a new wrinkle in the case.

Investigators in Mexico had found a backpack close to where Madison's car had burned in the ravine. In it were bloody clothes, with the shirt pierced by what looked like stab wounds. DNA testing of the blood confirmed that it was that of Madison Rutherford. Now, obviously, we know that Madison had been neither burned nor stabbed to death in Mexico. This was evidence planted to further convince the world that Madison Rutherford was dead, but it's less clear exactly what story he was trying to tell with this evidence. Someone in Mexico had stabbed him to death and stripped him naked, put the body in the car and set the car on fire? Like, why? And why would the imaginary killer put the bloody clothes in a backpack and just toss it a few feet away? If you want to

destroy evidence, there's a burning car, just right there, you know? It was so ridiculous. It a nonsense low-level scammers pull when they feel the net tightening up around them and start to freak out. My guy would have benefited from like one creative writing class. Like, one of my professors always said, keep it simple, stupid. Come on, Maddie. Get it together. The FBI, anyway, continued following Thomas Bay Hamilton. Madison hadn't made any effort to change his appearance, which was just lazy. He'd worn a beard for years and just kept it.

in Boston, like, you can't even shave. It probably wouldn't have fooled the feds to shave it off, but come on, man, at least pretend like you're trying a little bit, right? When they arrested him, he was all, what's a Madison Rutherford? What's a Connecticut? What? Who?

But the agent had a copy of Rutherford's fingerprints from his time in jail, and they were, of course, a match. From the parents behind law and order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy. Patrick Picklebottom Everyday Mysteries. Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Pickle Bottom, a precocious 11-year-old, with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life as he unravels baffling enigmas and solves clever cases. Patrick Picklebottom Everyday Mysteries is perfect for kids and is just as entertaining for grownups who love a good mystery. The whole family can listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. In his apartment, they found books such as the modern identity changer, disguise techniques, and methods of disguise, the last two presumably without a single crack in the spines. Bottom for aesthetics, I guess. I'm going on the run. I better buy some spy books. I have to read those. It's so boring.

They also found travel guides for Mexico and something that investigators must just dream about, a handwritten to-do list of Madison's criminal scheme, which for some reason, this hairy knuckle had kept with him. Like, after the scheme is done, you can throw that shit away, my guy. It was titled Goals for the Year, 1999 to 2000. And the first item was, quote, collect $7 million from the insurance company. As FBI Special Agent Joseph Mangan told forensic files, that was a pretty good clue. Is that something that needs to be written down? Surely, you can remember a task worth a cool $7 million, but I digress.

From jail, Madison called his wife, Reni, and told her to get the hell out of dodge before she could be arrested. He knew that call would be recorded. maybe the first smart thing he's done this entire time. So he tried in vain to paint Reni as completely innocent, saying, the first thing is, we have to keep you from getting picked up for anything they think you did, which you didn't, okay? So ham-fisted, like, hey, so, babe, remember how you didn't have anything to do with this crime? Right?

Right. I had absolutely nothing to do with this crime. Nice tried, dumbass. But Rennie didn't run for the hills. She stood by her man, denying any knowledge of the fraud, right up until the investigator showed her evidence that Thomas Bay Hamilton had been slamming ass all over the greater Boston area. Ew.

Oops. At that point, Rennie started talking. She told the FBI that they had to be. had planned the scheme for months. And the details were much as the investigators had already pieced together. In Mexico, Madison had opened a mausoleum and stolen the corpse of a recently deceased man, from which he removed one tooth. Then he planted the body in the rental car at the bottom of the ravine. Rutherford took his bicycle off the back of the car, doused the vehicle with gasoline, and set it on fire. He stayed to watch until the flame started dying down,

then tossed in his inscribed wristwatch and a medical alert necklace so they wouldn't be too badly burned and would allow his purported body to be quickly identified. Isn't me, y'all, or does this plan just seem just a little iffy? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, I would agree. Whitney, he wrote everything down. I know. That's my favorite part. To do.

One. And it wasn't even, well, not to beat a dead horse, but it's not. doesn't even smart goal. There's not to be specific, measurable, applicable. Like, it just, he just, got to run to the bank, collect $7 million. Oh, okay. Madison cycled back to Monterey and flew home to Connecticut, where he gave the tooth to Reni so it could be used to falsely identify the burnt body as that of Madison Rutherford. He handed it over to Reni in a baggie and said, here's my $7 million tooth. Later on, when he got wind of the feds on his trail, Rutherford had gotten into a bathtub fully clothed and carrying a knife and started cutting himself.

Nothing too serious, but enough to bloody up the clothes. He'd flown back down to Mexico to plant the backpack of bloody clothes. Again, why, man? Like, what is a backpack of bloody clothes going to do to add verse millitude to your I'm dead story. Like, are you supposed to have wrecked the car quickly taking off all your bloody clothes and stuff it in a backpack and then succumb to the flames? Or like, you said, a minute ago, some guy's going to murder you, strip you naked, like, use your head, man. You are not good at this, okay? I mean, I will acknowledge that it is fairly high effort to steal a corpse. I don't

think I could bring myself to do that. So I will give you that much, okay? That's high effort. But as for the rest of this plan, you must try harder. The two thing is just preposterous. After his arrest, Madison Rutherford initially claimed the whole thing had been Rennie's idea because she was addicted to a luxurious lifestyle. But all the recorded calls from jail clearly showed he was the one making the decisions. He eventually pled guilty to fraud and was sentenced to five years in prison, the maximum under the sentencing guidelines. The money he'd taken from Brigitte Beck wasn't given any weight in court

because she'd given him power of attorney. This wasn't considered theft. Oh. And because she had initially denied knowing that Madison was alive when the FBI visited her, Brigitte was deemed ineligible to receive financial restitution from the criminal case, which seems incredibly harsh, given that at the time she was terrified the mob might track her down while they were looking for Madison. Yeah, absolutely.

With help from her friends, Brigitte was able to rebuild her life, although on a smaller scale, living in a one-bedroom apartment. She died in 2008 at the age of 78. Rennie Rutherford was charged in connection to the fraud and sentenced to 18 months, during which time she filed for divorce. It looks like she died in 2020 at the age of 76. Madison Rutherford, meanwhile, tried to reinvent himself yet again, going by Bay Rutherford and moving to Columbia, South Carolina,

to open a restaurant called Pops New York Pizza in South Carolina. Well, technically his dad opened it, seeing as Rutherford couldn't get a liquor license as a convicted felon, but this was very much Junior's gig. Pops quickly failed and sounds god-awful. This is from Yelp, okay? Quote, if you care about your health, please do not go. There was a hole in the door of the restroom.

The toilet looked like it had never been cleaned, and the toilet paper was on the floor with flies buzzing around it. Oh. And this, by the way, was the ladies' bathroom. room, and let's not think too hard about why there was a hole in the door. Like, Glory hole? You said you didn't want us to think about it. Right, but...

I'm sorry, you're right, you're right. We're going to let it alone. After Pops, he tried again with Bayes Sports Bar, which failed even more quickly. He got sued for stealing cable and was such a piece of shit that he stole tips from his waitresses. Ew. The bar closed in 2013, and after that, Madison Rutherford slips into obscurity. Presumably, he's still miserable in making life unpleasant for others under another presidential alias. Now, moving on to Case 2. For this one, we're in Lake Barrington, Illinois, far out in the Chicago suburbs.

February 23, 2008. Denise Squire called 911 to report a fire in the garage of the house she lived in with her husband Ari. I just heard some noise and I opened the door and there's all black smoke. Firefighters were quickly there to put out the blaze, but as the flames died, they made a horrifying discovery. The body of building contractor Ari Squire lay crushed under the front of his massive diesel pickup truck. The top half of the body burned almost beyond recognition. Investigators quickly pieced together what seemed to have happened. Ari had raised the truck on a jack and had been working underneath it with a floor.

recent light beside him so he could see what he was doing. Specifically, he'd been working on the fuel filter. The jack slipped and the truck slammed down, crushing Ari as fuel from the filters spilled onto his clothes, and then the truck also smashed the light, a spark from which ignited the fuel and started an intensely hot inferno. It's like Satan's Rube Goldberg contraption, right? Just one thing after another. The upper half of the body, where the fuel had spilled directly, had been burned much worse than the lower. Investigators recovered Ari's house. half-charred driver's license from his back pocket, but his face and hands were burned beyond any chance of identification from his features or fingerprints. That's convenient. The medical examiner

was thorough and didn't just assume the body under the truck was that of Ari Squire. He wanted a positive identification via either DNA or dental records, and until then, this was just a John Doe case. The question of who was actually under the truck became even more muddied when firefighters noticed something odd at the scene. All the circuit breaker switches for the garage were set to off. The fluorescent light under the truck only worked if it was plugged in. No power, no light. No light, no spark. So how had the fire started? And then there was the fire itself. Diesel fuel can certainly burn, but it's much less likely to catch fire accidentally than gasoline. When forensic investigators examined Ari's burned clothes, they found evidence that they'd been soaked with a more volatile

Accelerant, gasoline. Obviously, this death required further investigation, and it didn't take long for detectives to hear that Ari's 14-year marriage to his wife Denise wasn't going great. The couple were apparently no longer close at all and slept in separate bedrooms. Despite that, Denise was the beneficiary for Ari's life insurance policy, which was for a whopping $5 million. Denise claimed that she knew nothing at all about this insurance policy. She didn't exactly make herself less suspicious by immediately pressing for authorities to release Ari's body so she could cremate it. Now, just a tip. Okay.

As a general rule, if somebody's got ants in their pants to get their dead spouse cremated, that's a red flag. We've seen that a bunch of times before, haven't we? Some of these people have been so eager, they're practically like there with the match next to the body. Like, I'll do it. Let's go. I'm ready. They tend to be about as subtle about it as a wet fart. And surprise, surprise, the medical examiner did not release the body.

Yeah, they always act like all high and mighty, like their spouse's greatest wish was to be cremated within 20 minutes of death. Like, chill out. You have to relax. You have to relax. That's always the fatal flaw, though. You know, the nerves get the better of people and they just do something stupid. It turned out that a lot of Ari's mind and imagination was occupied with one subject only, truck pulling. Now, this might require a little explanation, especially for non-Americans. An intensely modified pickup truck pulls a sled down a dirt track, and as it goes further, a heavyweight on a chain pulley moves forward along the sled, putting more and more pressure down onto the ground, and increasing the resistance the truck has to overcome. The point is to get as far along the track as possible.

Now, this is about as dry and boring an explanation as I could come up with to explain something that usually involves a whole lot of beers, and guys standing around going, you can do it with tractors too. Tractor pole, truck pole. As with all motorsports, the mechanics working on the trucks are vitally important, installing and adjusting custom parts that make the vehicles much stronger than they were when they rolled off the factory floor. Ari was a huge gearhead who was deeply into prepping vehicles for truck poles, so much so that he added a huge 2,300 square foot garage onto his house just so he could work on his truck in there. He was was an experienced mechanic. It didn't seem likely that he'd skimp out on the safety procedures

that would prevent a truck slipping off its jack. In fact, when investigators tried to recreate the scene, they found that by far, the most likely way for the truck to fall was for someone to deliberately release the jack. And that meant this was not an accident. It was a murder. But was it Ari Squire that had been murdered? Investigators had serious doubts, and particularly Lake County Detective Sargent, Scott Morrison. There was a Forensic Files episode about the first story in the grab bag, Madison Rutherford, and Sergeant Morrison was a fan of the show. A body burned beyond easy recognition in a vehicle fire and millions of dollars in life

insurance. The broad similarities were obvious. Madison had faked his own death and assumed a new identity. Had Ari Squire done the same? And I just love this. I just love that he was sitting around watching Forensic Files and was like, I know. This is related, I'm sure of it.

Like with Madison Rutherford, it was the teeth that helped prove the body and the fire wasn't his. This ended up being more difficult the investigators had anticipated, though, because Ari hadn't gone to the dentist in 10 years. They really had to hunt for those records. There were no x-rays in the dentist's file on Ari, but there was a record of a large silver filling in a lower right molar, which the body in the garage didn't have. It wasn't Ari Squire, so who was it?

A couple of days after the fire in the garage, a woman contacted police to report that her son was missing. He was a 20-year-old named Justin Newman, 5'6, 140 pounds, about the same size as Ari Squire. Justin worked at the local Home Depot, where Ari Squire, a building contractor, was a frequent customer. Justin hadn't been seen since the fire. He told his mom, Donna, that a customer had asked him if he wanted to make a little extra money, and Justin said, sure.

The offer was for $15 an hour, enough that a young kid would find it hard to refuse, not so much that it looked too good to be true. You've got your favorite blanket, a freshly poured drink, and a cold case burning a hole in your streaming queue. You're not just watching true crime. You're running the investigation from the crime. comfort of your couch. Welcome to Murder, She Watched, the podcast where we recap, dissect, and slightly overanalyze some of the best and craziest true crime documentaries on our favorite streamers. Did the spouse do it? Why is the shady neighbor wearing leather gloves in July? Why did this guy agree to be interviewed in this documentary? We ask the tough questions that you're

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And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a True Crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime can't be TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people, mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday you can listen to our true crime rundown where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast.

Justin told his mom that the man's name was Ari Squire. And on the morning of February 23rd, the day of the fire, Justin said he was going over to Ari's to work. On February 24th, Donna got a text from Justin. It said, Mom, gone to Missouri to work, call you next week. Donna felt cold shivers down her back. Justin hated texting. If he wanted to say something, he'd have called. She didn't think this was her son contacting her. Investigators took DNA samples from Justin's toothbrush and also got a sample from Donna. When the results came back, there was no doubt. The body burned and crushed into the truck in Ari Squire's garage was that of Justin Newman. Justin's car was also missing, a red Pontiac Sunfire, and police put out in all points

bulleted for it, assuming that it had been taken by Ari Squire. Ari was now the prime suspect in a homicide. As you can probably tell, he didn't really think through how to get it away with murder, and turns out he wasn't great at the whole pretending to be dead thing either. The day after the fire, he sent an email to his wife, Denise. My will and letter are in my file drawer to the left of my office. They are located in a priority mail envelope addressed to you, which, my guy, are you backseating this for your wife? Jesus.

So Denise knew early on that Ari was still alive, but the message didn't necessarily incriminate her beyond that. If she'd been part of the scheme, wouldn't she already know where the will was? Of course, this might have been another echo of Madison Rutherford, who tried to get his wife off the hook in a situation he knew they would be observed by authorities. A few days later, Denise got another email, and Ari was starting to get weird, obsessing about his bogus memorial service and wake. When is the party set for? When will my ashes be returned to you? When are you planning on dispersing my ashes? Where are you planning on dispersing the man?

Shut up. None of your business. You're dead, remember? It's like he wanted all the tea. Like, who's showing up to the funeral? What are they saying about me? Shut the hell up. Denise still claimed to have no knowledge of Ari's scheme or to have any idea where he was.

When the story of Justin's murder hit the news, a co-worker of Justin's at Home Depot, Sandy Lively, came forward to police. Like most people at the store, he knew Ari Squire because he was in there all the time, but Ari had asked Sandy, who was a carpenter, if he wanted to make some extra money doing construction. Unlike Justin, Sandy was a similar age to 39-year-old Ari and was a much closer match physically than Justin. That similarity became even more pronounced in the weeks before the murder. Sandy had a beard. Ari usually didn't, but he grew one. Sandy often dressed in black t-shirts and baseball caps. Ari started dressing the same way.

The construction gig Ari offered would pay $60,000 a year, and he had to be. Sandy fill out an employment application that included unusual details, like whether he had any tattoos or piercings. The employment application also asked for highly detailed information in addition to the usual stuff. Place of birth, marital history, spouse and mother's maiden names, names and addresses of family members, everything you'd need, in fact, to completely take over someone's identity. Anybody else just get a little, yeah? Yeah, me too. This was all very weird, but 60 grand was 60 grand. Sandy had agreed to meet Ari at his house on the morning of Saturday, February 23rd, but the day before had been his daughter's 10th birthday party, and she'd had a sleepover.

Ten-year-olds high on birthday cake frosting can make a lot of noise, and Sandy didn't sleep well at all. In fact, on Saturday morning, he overslept. When Sandy didn't show, Ari couldn't wait, so he called his second choice target, Justin Newman. Holy shit, just saved by the slimmest little hair's breath of chance, man. And by necessity, there's a lot of speculation around what investigators think happened when Justin showed up in Ari's garage. Other than the injuries caused by the truck, there was no sign of blunt force trauma on Justin's body. Investigators think Ari might have incapacitated him with chloroform. He then stripped Justin down to his underwear and put his own clothes and shoes onto Justin's unconscious body. Ari jacked up the truck, then slid Justin underneath it.

These trucks are big vehicles, and Ari's probably weighed at least three tons. When he released the jack and it slammed down onto Justin's unconscious body, he was killed instantly. Ari doused the body with diesel fuel and gasoline, then smashed a fluorescent light under the truck as a potential sparking source. In fact, he probably just tossed a match onto Justin's body and assumed, like so many dumbass arsonists before him, that fire magically destroys everything it touches. It wasn't coincidence that Ari tried to claim millions of dollars in life insurance at the start of 2008. He was desperate for money. In addition to his contractor business, Ari had been involved with a home health care company called AccuCare,

and over several years had racked up millions of dollars worth of Medicare fraud. He claimed salary expenses for people who didn't work for him at all, or who worked for his other company, or for his dad's landscaping business. Basically, Ari tried to funnel every expense he could think of through ACUCare and received Medicare reimbursement for it, and he wasn't subtle about it. The government started pursuing a criminal case against him in 2005. He pled guilty in 2007, and in December he was sentenced to five years of probation and six months of home confinement.

Too easy. The court mandated he pay $63,000 in restitution, and a civil case demanded he pay a further $126,000. His construction company had been successful, but the 2000's housing boom was winding down and projects were being canceled. The company was close to bankruptcy. And then there was the life insurance policy. He'd gotten it when he was younger and eligible for a good premium, about $170 a month for a $5 million benefit. But that was so low because the policy came with a sting in the tail.

When Ari turned 40, which he would shortly do, the monthly premium would increase to $1,100,000. The multi-million dollar insurance policy was about to become an anchor around his neck, unless he could get it to pay out. It's funny because the other option was just canceling the policy. But I mean... Yep, I can't do that. Just a note. Like, he could have just said, I don't want to pay $1,100.

Nah. This was really the only option, Katie. I don't know what you're talking about. You're right. You're right. I'm sorry. He was basically forced a gunpoint by the insurance agent to do this. When he'd contacted John.

Justin's mom pretending to be Justin, Ari had texted, gone to Missouri to work. Police wondered, could he really have been enough of a toenail to have shared his actual destination? Investigators who had been paying attention thought there was a good chance that Ari was exactly that dumb and asked Missouri cops to be on the lookout for Justin's bright red Pontiac Sunfire, which is a pretty distinctive little car. Ari is not good at this, y'all. He'd taken Justin's phone and wallet with him when he fled the garage. And to better fit the picture on Justin's driver's license, Ari dyed his hair brown and wore blue contacts.

Obviously, during this part of the plan, Ari had been intending to imitate Sandy lively, to whom he was a much better match. Ari and Justin had similar body types, but didn't actually look alike at all. And I hate to break it to those of you at that age, but 40 years old does not look like a 20-year-old. Shut them.

Shut up. Yes, yes, it's a bitter pill. In the end, it was just luck in general police snooping that nailed down where Ari was. On February 29th, he checked into a days in in Eureka, Missouri, a rundown motel with a sort of sketchy vibe. The kind of place where cops periodically prowl through the parking lot and run the plates of all the vehicles there, just in case they find something interesting. On March 2nd, they did find something interesting. A sunfire registered to Justin Newman. This was before the DNA testing had conclusively identified the body as Justin,

so he was still listed as a missing and possibly endangered person at this point. Officers went to the motel room and knocked, calling out for Justin several times. They heard movement inside. And then a gunshot. They hurried inside and found a dead man lying on the bed, killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The idea on the body identified it as Justin Newman, but as soon as the medical examiner ran the body's fingerprints,

it was clear that the man who had killed himself was Ari Squire, unable to face the consequences of his crimes. The whole scheme was such a stupid waste. No criminal charges were brought in this case, but Justin's mom, Donna, filed a civil suit against Denise Squire. The jury believed she'd been part of a conspiracy, to kill Justin and awarded Donna $6 million. Obviously, she would rather have her son, who was happy and hardworking, a good kid who just wanted to make a little extra cash to help out his family.

So there you have it. Two dweebs who decided that rather than try and clean up the mess they'd made of their lives and take accountability, they'd just do a factory reset and start all over again under new identities. But of course, to do that successfully, you'd have to have your shit together. and if these two had had their shit together, they wouldn't have been in this mess in the first place. Madison, honey, most people don't keep a random tooth in their nightstand so their wife can just pop right up with it if they die in a mysterious car crash in a foreign country. That was just a little too convenient. Bless your heart. Of course, at least he didn't actually murder somebody.

Ari took an innocent kid's life for absolutely no reason. So he has the distinction of being both evil and Dumber than a half done biscuit. I give both of these knobs an F-minus, and I think that's generous. Your plans were bad, and you should feel bad. I'm going to have to ask both of you to take the twisty slide to hell. Now, before we go, don't forget about our true crime crews coming up. Crime Wave 2.0, February 8th through 12th, 2027. If you want to come to the Bahamas with us and some of the biggest true crime and paranormal

podcasts in the world, like case file, unexplained, last podcast on the left, true crime garage, sinisterhood, here's what you got to do. Tickets are on sale now, but there's literally like just a handful of cabins left. So if you want to go, make sure you get over to crimewave at sea.com slash campfire and book your cabin ASAP. You'll get $100 off plus a private meet and greet with us. And the cool thing is you can pay all at once or set up a payment plan and pay it off over time. So get on it, y'all. That's crimewave at sea.com slash campfire.

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 Jamie, Carrie, Elizabeth, Kate, and Marley. 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 patrons-only-only episode.

episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you hit 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. Join us for new episodes of Moms and Mysteries every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. There are vampires out there. They walk among you, shoulder to shoulder in the dark. Heading to work, heading home, going to the bar. It's a life just like anyone else's. And I have grown used to it, to the darkness, to the moon, to the taste of blood on my tongue.

But vampires are dying out. We are a fading kind, and I am the first one created in so long. and that is a dangerous thing to be. Those who came before me, elders of all stripes, they do not want to see our kind gone, and they will do anything to keep their power. And for myself, and for grace who created me, that is a sword that hangs above our heads. And the worst person of all carries our secret,

and he will use it however he sees fit. Who do you look to when things are at their darkest? From the creators of Parkdale Haunt comes Woodbine, A podcast about monsters, dreams, and changes, those you want, and those you never saw coming. Season 2 Arise September 24th, distributed by Realm.