True Crime Campfire - Sleeping With the Enemy: The Murder of Bill McLaughlin

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

It’s hardly a revelation that physical attraction can cloud judgment. It’s one of the oldest traps in human nature—that spark of chemistry that overrides caution, turning common sense into background noise. For most people, the fallout is little more than a red face or a broken heart. But every so often, that same impulse leads someone much farther—into danger. Because behind the charm, the warmth, and the allure, there are those who hide something far darker: a heart devoid of empathy, and intentions that are anything but loving. When desire blinds you to the truth, the price can be more than heartbreak — it can be fatal.Sources:I'll Take Care of You by Caitlin RotherABC News: https://abcnews.go.com/US/convicted-killers-millionaires-love-triangle-murder-case-maintain/story?id=80014616OC Register: https://www.ocregister.com/2012/05/18/girlfriend-gets-life-in-millionaires-murder-2/ https://www.ocregister.com/2012/01/11/an-ex-tells-of-a-yes-yes-nanette/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=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

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. It's hardly a revelation that physical attraction can cloud judgment. It's one of the oldest traps in human nature, that spark of chemistry that overrun caution, turning common sense into background noise. For most people, the fallout is little more than a red face or a broken heart, but every so often, that same impulse leads someone much

further into danger. Because behind the charm, the warmth, and the allure, there are those who hide something far darker, a heart devoid of empathy, and intentions that are anything but loving. When desire blinds you to the truth, the price can be more than heartbreak. It can be fatal. This is Sleeping with the Enemy, the murder of Bill McLaughlin. So, campers, for this one, we're in the wealthy coastal city of Newport Beach, California. Thursday, December 15th, 1994. A little after 9 p.m., all seemed peaceful in Balboa Cove's, a waterside, gated community of multi-million dollar homes. Bill McLaughlin was supposed to be home alone. His live-in girlfriend, Nanette, was

out at a soccer game with her two young children, and Bill's 24-year-old son, Kevin, usually went to his AA meetings on Thursday nights. But for some reason, Kevin skipped the meeting this time. He and his dad had dinner, then Kevin went up to his room to listen to some mega-death on his walkman, while Bill did some paperwork at the dining room table. Suddenly, Kevin heard a series of loud, popping sounds from downstairs. Gunshots, six in all, divided into three quick two-shot bursts. Their golden retriever, Goldie, started barking frantically. Kevin stumbled downstairs as best he could.

A few years before, he'd been hit by a drunk driver while he was skateboarding and he suffered a brain injury that put him in a coma for four months. He still had significant difficulties with his motor skills and speech. He'd had a tough recovery that led to some abuse of alcohol and weed, thus the regular AA meetings. Kevin found his dad on the kitchen floor in his robe and slippers, blood and bullet casings beside him on the white tile floor. Kevin frantically dialed 911, and the call is heartbreaking because Kevin's speech impairment got worse when he was agitated or upset. and he just could not clearly communicate to the dispatcher what a serious situation this was. So she sent a couple of nearby bike patrol officers to see what was going on

because she just didn't get it and he was having such a hard time getting it out and it just must have been so frustrating for him. So there was actually some delay in getting paramedics to Bill McLaughlin's side, but, you know, in the end it wouldn't have made any difference. One of the hollow point rounds had torn right through his heart, a devastating, fatal wound. The only evidence the killer left inside the house were the bullets and shell casings. Bill had been shot with 9mm rounds,

but forensics technology at the time couldn't narrow down what kind of gun they'd been fired from. 9mm was by far the most commonly used pistol caliber in the U.S. The shell casings didn't have any fingerprints on them. There were no unexpected fingerprints anywhere in the house. Outside, though, there were clues. A key was stuck in the front door lock, which the family knew could be finicky. Another key lay on the mat by the pedestrian gate into the Balboa Cove's community. The key in the door was freshly cut and stamped with the Ace Hardware logo.

The one for the pedestrian access was an original, with do-not-duplicate stamped on it. Investigators thought the key on the mat had been dropped by the shooter as they fled in a panic. The gunshots were loud, and the houses on Balboa Cove's were, were tight together. Neighbors would be looking to see what was going on and the killer had to get out of their fast. The keys were hugely significant because the only people who should have access to them were the family, their housekeeper, and Nanette. This had to be an inside job. The shooter certainly wasn't Kevin. Bill had been shot with a careful accuracy that would be impossible for him with his motor skill difficulties and his hands came up clean for gunshot residue. His two

sisters were respectively in Japan and San Diego, and his mom was in Hawaii. The housekeeper had nothing to gain from Bill's death. And so that left Nanette. Nanette, a young, attractive blonde, turned up around 10 p.m. in Bill's Cadillac convertible, and told police she was Bill's fiance and had been Christmas shopping at the mall. A couple of detectives sat her in a cruiser to get a more detailed accounting of her evening. She'd taken her young son and daughter. She'd taken her young son and to Diamond Bar, about 30 miles away for the son's championship soccer game. The game had been supposed to start at six, but was delayed until 6.30 and then went into overtime. The game wasn't over until about 8.30. Late enough that Nanette decided the kids should stay with

their dad, her ex-husband, because both his house and the kids' school were nearby. With the kids elsewhere, she'd decided to do some shopping at the mall in nearby Costa Mesa, and when detectives asked, she produced a couple of times. stamped receipts, which always makes me prick up my antenna. Anytime people can just whip those receipts right out, I mean, maybe you could, but I find that my receipts disappear instantly, like they hand them to me, and then they go into like a wormhole in the universe, and I never see them again. So, like, you have to hold on to them very intentionally, and that's clearly what's going

on here. The earliest was from crate and barrel at 929, which, didn't actually put her in the clear. The mall was just five miles from Balboa Cove's, and if she'd had the pedal to the metal all the way, Nanette could conceivably come back from Diamond Bar, shoot Bill, and make it to the mall. It didn't seem likely, but the officers went ahead and swabbed her hands for gunshot residue. The swabs came back negative. Still, something seemed off about Nanette. People react to shock and grief in different ways, but Nanette seemed strangely unaffected by her fiancée's death.

The closest she got to an outburst of emotion was saying, This is too much to comprehend in a flat monotone. This is too much to comprehend. Well, I got to go pick up my dry cleaning. According to her story, if the soccer game had started and finished on time, she and her children would have been home at the time Bill was shot, but she never expressed relief at how lucky. the kids were not to have been there, and her key chain was missing the key for the pedestrian

entry. It's fair to say that investigators were suspicious of her immediately. After Bill's funeral, those suspicions ramped up even more. Bill's brother Patrick and his sons were chatting to Nanette's six-year-old son, Christopher, when the kid piped up, my mom's boyfriend plays football. He was not talking about Bill, who'd been 55 and hadn't played ball since college. Patrick Patrick told the police about this tidbit as soon as he could. They already had Nanette under surveillance, and the officers watching her were told to watch out for any interactions with a guy who looked like a football player. So it was starting to look like, under the surface, Bill and Annette's relationship was a big old hot mess express.

How did they get there? After growing up on the south side of Chicago, Bill McLaughlin had a stint in the Marines, then became the first person in his family to go to college. That's cool. In 1966, he married his girlfriend Sue, a flight attendant, and then a substitute teacher. They had two daughters, Kim and Jenny, and one son, Kevin. After college, Bill got into the biotech field, which exploded in the 80s. Together, he and a business partner developed the plasma cell C device, which efficiently separates blood and plasma.

It was groundbreaking technology at the time, and it's still in use today. Wow. If you invent something that's still widely used in hospitals 40 years later, you're probably going to be doing okay financially. They sold the plasma cell C technology for a bundle, and Bill still got quarterly royalty payments of $500,000, which today would be worth more than double that amount. He was a very wealthy man with multiple properties in Newport Beach, Las Vegas, and Hawaii. Like a lot of people who have this kind of success, he could be,

kind of hard-edged and tough in business, but outside of work, he was an easy guy to like, a warm, friendly guy, gregarious and affectionate with the people he loved. But he definitely had his weak spots. In 1990, Sue filed for divorce. Bill had had several affairs, and according to Sue, he'd been kind of a controlling penny pincher. Not a great trait in any spouse, especially not one who's a millionaire. As part of the divorce settlement, Sue got their Hawaii house and decided to move there. So now, Bill was in his 50s and newly single. He was a driven energetic business guy, and he wasn't the type to gracefully accept the inevitable

passage of time. Bill worked out, ran, tooled around in a shiny new Cadillac convertible, and before you could say midlife crisis, he was dating again. Younger, pretty women. Nanette would later say she and Bill had been introduced by mutual friends while she'd been rollerblading on the boardwalk. Which mutual friends? Um, she couldn't remember who they were. Don't she just hate it when you forget your friend's names?

Happens to me all the time. In fact, Bill had responded to a personal ad Nanette had placed in Singles Connection, a local dating circular with a vibe that definitely leaned more toward bedmates than soulmates. Nanette was mostly forthright in her ad, which, as we'll see later on, was pretty rare for her. The title of her ad, below a sexy black and white boudoir shot and a teddy and feather boa, was for wealthy men only. Single white female, 25, 5, 5, 100 pounds, classy, well-educated, adventurous, fun, and knows how to take care of her man. Looking for an older man, 30-plus, who knows how to treat a woman. You take care of me and I'll take care of you.

That was my hot singles in your area, I want to talk to you, voice. Because that was the vibe, wasn't it, of her personal ad? You can see why Bill and Annette didn't exactly go blab into their friends and family about how they actually met. It's not a meat cute per se, right? There was clearly a transactional element to their relationship from the get-go. Now, obviously, wealthy older man and attractive younger woman is not a novel arrangement by any means, but this wasn't quite a sugar-dady thing. Bill wanted someone he could connect with, who shared his

interests, and he also just wanted that person to be young and cute. And when he responded to Nanette's ad and told her what he was looking for, her own response made sure to check every box. Bill had sometimes complained that his ex-wife Sue never showed much interest in his business dealings, which Honestly, I kind of understand because it sounds duller in a damp pile of laundry, but I'm sure some people find that stuff fascinating, but hey, it's okay if your other half isn't into all the same things you are. Annette said she wrote business plans for a living. Bill wanted someone educated. Annette said she had several advanced degrees. Bill wrote that he generally preferred blondes, and Nanette said she was blondeish. Bill liked her. to work out, and so did Nanette. And that last nugget was the only one that was true. When she met Bill, Nanette was actually working as a sales rep for a carpet cleaning company. Perfectly respectable job. She just evidently decided it wasn't up to scratch if she was trying to land a big fish. Nanette said she graduated early from high school in Phoenix at 16 years old as the class valedictorian.

I mean, she did leave school at 16, as in she dropped out. had to get her GED later on. She said she got a basketball scholarship to ASU, which seemed highly unlikely to anybody who saw her play, and graduated at 19 before going on to get an MBA and other advanced degrees. According to ASU, Nanette did make an undergraduate application, but never enrolled or had any classes there.

She did spend a lot of time on campus, though, pretending to be a student and picking up guys, who does this. Who does this? Her actual education was at the Bobby Ball Academy, which taught acting, modeling, and stunt work to both children and adults. Bill surely knew that Nanette's educational history was baloney. I mean, his daughters certainly figured it out. They were both teachers. Jenny taught high school science and Kim taught second grade at an international school in Tokyo. They knew how education worked, and unless your Tony Stark, you're not getting multiple advanced degrees by age 25. They had to struggle to keep from laughing when Nanette told them her LSAT score, which is the test you take to get into law school. The LSAT only goes up to 180, but Nanette said she scored like a thousand. That is so cringe. And as for blondeish, Nanette's dad was from India and her mom was a Chicago redhead. She was about as blonde as Cleopatra. But that one at least was easy. If Bill wanted blonde,

she would be blonde. Nanette Manekshaw had been born in Chicago in 1965, but her family soon moved to Maryland when her engineer father got a job at the Pentagon. When her parents divorced, Nanette moved with her mom and siblings to Arizona. When she was 17, Nanette met Kevin Ross Johnson, who everybody called K. Ross. They both worked at a health spa. Nanette as an aerobics instructor, and K. Ross in sales, which Nanette soon moved into. They dated for a couple of years and then got married. Nanette in those days was almost unrecognizable from her California form, with short dark hair and a tomboy style of shorts and t-shirts that was a million miles

from her later sort of real housewife's chic. They had two kids, Lichelle and Christopher, but they never made much money and that quickly became a bone of contention. Nanette wanted money. She wanted stuff. She wanted things. She also wanted more attention from men. The hair got longer, the skirts and shorts got shorter, and she started having lots of evening business meetings at her new sales job. Kay Ross first realized what was up when he was out walking and saw one of Nanette's business cards tucked under the wiper on a windshield of a flashy car. On the back of the card was written, you caught my eye while driving down Scottsdale Road. If you are married, I'd love to meet you. I'll be a, what's your beef

tonight looking for you? Nanette. Oh my God. What is this letters to penthouse? Like, who does this stuff? It's just like the personal ad. Oh, my God. That's so insane. It's so creepy and cringe. I can't, I can't even stand it. So first, I had no idea what what's your beef was in Tempe in the 80s. But I look. it up. And apparently it was a very kind of classy restaurant, despite the name. And they would like, you would tell them, okay, they would go, okay, what kind of, what kind of cut of meat do you want? You'd go filet mignon. And then they would like tell you, okay, how big of a piece do you want? Because their menu, their menu was entirely like priced by the, by the ounce. So like, you

could like cut up a filet mignon, which you're not supposed to do. Just get the filet. Anyway. I looked it up, but I couldn't believe that there was a restaurant called What's Your Beef? That was like a nice, like, dining establishment. This clearly wasn't the first time Nanette had strayed. That business card trick is not a rookie move. And she'd quickly moved on from picking up college guys at ASU to aiming for high rollers. If she cared at all about being found out, it didn't change her actions one bit. At Thanksgiving, she drove up in a new BMW and said some guy named Ted had given

Nett tour. Y'all, is it a bad sign for your marriage when guys you've never heard of or giving your wife sports cars? I don't know. It's certainly not a good sign. It's not a good sign. But as soon as Ted found out that his married girlfriend was cheating on him with a third guy, Doug, he had the car repoed.

Nanette and K. Ross's marriage was clearly over. In 1989, just short of their five-year anniversary, she moved out. He filed for divorce and won full custody of the kids in family court. Before the end of the year, K. Ross and the kids moved to California. He was hoping for a fresh start, but no such luck. Before long, Nanette got in touch and said she wanted to try and fix their relationship. Keros flew back to Arizona, helped her pack up a U-Haul, and drove it and her back home to California. Yeah. I know. This is going to shock you. But Nanette was actually running away from some check fraud trouble. Plus, she wanted to ghost her latest boyfriend. She and K. Ross were back together again for less than a month before he found out she'd been taking out singles ads. And Nanette split.

Oh, my God. Her love life quickly developed two distinct strands. She picked up guys at the gym for casual flings, which was a lot healthier than her other route. That was to glom onto guys she thought had money, basically move herself into their apartments by sheer force of will, and mooch and steal from them until they got wise and kicked her out. Jesus. And when her, for wealthy men only, personal ad, landed her a genuine big fish in Bill McLaughlin, her behavior didn't change. It was just that he was so rich, it took a lot longer for her light fingers to be noticed. They were together for four years before his death. Nanette wanted a permanent connection to Bill and Bill's bank account. He'd had a vasectomy, and she nagged him to have it undone so they could have a kid together, but he wouldn't.

She pressured him to get married. In Bill's last year, she was telling everyone they were engaged. Bill told his friends he'd bought her a companion's ring, which to me sounds like, now will you shut the fuck up about this ring? That is what it is. Yeah, she got to believe it was a wedding ring, but no, no, no. That's a shut up ring. Companions ring.

What the fuck is that? I got to hand it to Bill. He never lied to her, you know? No, yeah, that's true. I don't want to have your kid and I don't want to be married to you. They certainly didn't have an engagement party or set a date or anything, although Bill did get her the present she wanted. A boob job. As an investment, Bill had bought a beach house within walking down.

distance of the Balboa Cove's home. Nanette certainly didn't see any reason to give up her gym boyfriends and brought them back to the beach house. When Bill was out of town working, which happened a couple of days every week, Nanette would bring her boyfriends back to Balboa Cove's, but keep them downstairs, because Kevin, sometimes Nanette's kids were sleeping upstairs. Classy. After Bill's death, when her affairs were quickly uncovered, Nanette would say that she and Bill had an unspoken agreement that she could date younger men on the side, which is a phrase where the word unspoken is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If the agreement is you banging gym rats in the beach house, I feel like that probably has to be spoken, you know? That's something that

needs to be clearly articulated. Articulated, written down, notarized. I feel like any and all extramarital boning needs to be verbalized. Yeah, yeah. We've actually seen this more than a few times where a partner's cheating is revealed after someone's death and they claim the relationship was open. And it's hard to disprove because it's something most people would keep secret. Bill McLaughlin wasn't going to tell his friends he let his girlfriend screw around because he couldn't satisfy her. But it's also equally hard to prove. No one who knew Bill thought he'd go for an arrangement. arrangement like that. sure. There were endless, expensive gifts, luxury vacations, high dollar monthly allowance. Bill had

maybe learned a painful lesson from trying to keep a tight hold on Sue his ex-wife. Nanette got whatever she wanted. At one point, Bill's daughter told him, Dad, it is quite obvious she's using you for money. I know that, Bill said. He knew it, and he was apparently comfortable with it. For the moment, anyway. There were reasons Bill wasn't jumping into marriage or having a kid with Nanette. She clearly was not his idea of an ever-after partner. But he had no idea that Nanette was by now looking for an even quicker end to their relationship. Nanette initially stated the beach house after Bill's death, and soon after the funeral, the police surveillance team saw an SUV pull up and a big, hugely muscled dude come

out. Nanette's kids greeted him like he was a favorite uncle, and Nanette, with her supposed fiancée, still warm in the grave, basically frenched him out there in front of the house. His name was Eric Naposki, and conveniently for the police, he hadn't bothered to appear in court over a $343 traffic violation, so he had an outstanding warrant. Bing, bang, bang. It was such a low-wadage offense that in the normal run of things only an extremely bored cop would run it down, but it meant they could arrest him and interview him. True crime books are written around low-stakes offenses being turned into arrests. That is why you only commit one crime at a time, campers. Don't get greedy. The investigators

would have gotten around to Eric anyway. They interviewed K. Ross, Ninette's ex-husband, who had also been at the soccer game on the night of Bill's death, and he said, Nanette had been there with her boyfriend, a big guy named Eric. Not long after Bill died, Nanette told Kay Ross, don't tell police that Eric was with me, because Eric had nothing to do with this. Not suspicious at all, right? Kay Ross did, of course, tell police everything he knew as soon as they asked. It's maybe a little unkind, but not inaccurate to say that Eric Naposki was a big, dumb idiot.

But he did definitely have some. some talents. He had a stent in the NFL as a backup linebacker, but there's a reason people say that NFL stands for not for long. Eric started getting hurt, his ankle, his hand, and a recurring groin injury. His NFL career spanned five games off the bench. He then played four injury-interrupted years for the Barcelona Dragons of the World League of American Football, which is not nothing, but it wasn't the NFL, and it certainly didn't pay NFL money. Eric had gotten married when he was a college sophomore after his girlfriend got pregnant. That's not usually the strongest foundation for a marriage, and in 1991, his wife filed for divorce.

Eric showed next to zero interest in the lives of his two young daughters and had even less interest in paying child support. He ran away to California in 1993 to try and escape more than $20,000 in unpaid child support and found work as a nightclub bouncer. In January of 1994, less than a year before Bill McLaughlin's death, he started dating a woman he knew from the gym, Nanette Johnston. Eric could still afford gym membership and nice clothes and a nice car, just not child support. Isn't that the way? He was working the door at the Thunderbird Nightclub when police arrested him on that traffic warrant. He'd also been working there the night Bill had been shot, but that was the opposite of an alibi. The Thunderbird was just across the bridge from Balboa Cove's.

You could walk there from Bill McLaughlin's front door in less than a minute. When they searched Eric's car, investigators found a notebook he used as a journal and planner. My dude was clearly stressing about his bank account. He wrote, Once you get your ass out of this financial disaster, do not extend yourself anymore. He also wrote, Look into work positions in Lido. That was the name of the mall where the Thunderbird Nightclub was.

Eric had deliberately been looking for employment close to Bill McLaughlin's house. Oh, that's creepy. He was clearly serious about Nanette, writing, Get Nanette a Ring, $2,500 so far. And as if Eric didn't already look suspicious enough, he'd scribbled down the license plate of Bill's white Mercedes. Eric was one of those suspects who treat the right to remain silent as a challenge. He was a talker, a bullshitter, and he clearly had no clue the police had gone through his car.

Nanette, he said, was just a pretty good friend. Then later in the interview, he obviously forgot about that and said he hoped they'd get married soon. Bro, buddy, pal. She's the best kind of friend, I guess. He'd never met Bill McLaughlin, never been to Balboa Cove's. He'd only been to the beach house once when he and Annette first met. Police, in fact, had surveilled him there earlier that same day. He said that as far as he knew, Bill and Annette were just business partners.

You know how businessmen invite their hot, younger partners and their two young kids to live with them in a purely professional capacity? right? Happens every day. Sure. It was kind of a mentor, almost a father-daughter type thing, Eric said. Ew. You know, kind of like a, I don't know what you'd call it, apprentice or someone, you know, like that, or higher stature. Oh, boy. Asked if he owned a gun, Eric said no. And then later on remember that he'd bought a 380 that he mailed to his dad back in New York. But that was all, except later still, completely unprompted.

He said he'd bought a 9mm beretta four or five months ago, but it had been stolen after he'd loaned it to a friend. Eric hadn't reported the theft because he'd been hoping the gun would show up. Berettas are basically like the animals and homeward bound. They'll find their way home eventually. After this complete train wreck of an interview, Eric was released, but not before the police had put a tracking device on his car to help their continued surveillance. Eric thought it had gone great.

He said later that he'd mind-fucked the detectives. Eric is like the dog and the meme sitting at the table while the room is just in flames around. This is fine. Bless his heart. Yeah, they were certainly mind-fucked with how stupid he was. Meanwhile, Bill's daughters were kicking Nanette out of the Balboa Cove's home. They'd never liked her, which I guess is kind of inevitable when your dad starts dating someone your own age. But it wasn't just that.

Nanette was cold and weird and now she was a suspect in Bill's death. And it's not like they were throwing her into the street. Bill's will expressly said she could live rent-free in the beach house for one year after his death. So she had a fancy place to go. Nannette's main contribution to the decor in Balboa Cove's was a bunch of sexy photos of herself in skimpy clothes. Remember how her personal ad said she was classy? I am not judging ladies who take badoar photos. I'm saying that having them hung around when guests come over for tea is maybe not the classiest.

And like not just one. Even like just one would be kind of cool. Yeah. Everywhere. Huge pictures of Nanette. It's just wild. Just ass everywhere. Ass and tits everywhere.

How could you sit there at like the kitchen table and look her in the eyes when just to your left and just in the periphery of your vision is her giant tits like right in your face on a poster on the wall? No. She took these with her to the beach house now, but she left behind the pictures of her and bill together. She also took as much office equipment as she could cram and see. the Cadillac, which she helped herself to, despite the will only granting her the much less flashy infinity. In Bill's closet, so obviously displayed that it seems clear she meant for his daughters to find them, she'd left a pair of red high heels, a red teddy, and a vibrator. Oh my God. Was this woman written by Larry Flint? Yeah. That's what, like, yeah,

letters of penthouse. She is a character from like a bad 80s like kind of softcore porn smutty lifetime movie or something. Nanette set up home in the beach house where she felt sufficiently liberated to add

some full nudes to the photo portraits on the walls. Her kids were living there half the time. Imagine if they wanted to bring their friends over. Like the poor kids. Investigators soon learned that not long before Bill's death, Nanette and Eric had been looking at million-dollar homes together. They were clearly expecting to come into a lot of money soon. But how? Eric was at the tail end of a minor athletic career and had huge debts and

negligible income. Nanette had almost no money solely of her own, but Bill McLaughlin had a million-dollar life insurance policy, with Nanette as the beneficiary. Investigators thought they had the simple outline of what had happened. Nanette had talked Eric into killing Bill, so the two of them could live the high life together. A brighter bulb than Eric Naposki might have realized that Nanette herself would get rich from Bill's death, and Eric would get nothing but whatever she wanted to share with them. And sure enough, they had a few weeks of shopping sprees and partying, and then Nanette was done with them, They broke up, and Eric scuttled off back to Connecticut.

Before then, though, Eric made a dumb mistake that would ultimately help put both him and Nanette behind bars. I know what you're thinking. Wait. Eric? Dumb? Get out of town. In the summer of 1994, Eric met a good-looking blonde at the pool of his apartment complex. Her name was Suzanne Cogar. Two smoke shows in swimwear. There was a little spark there, but it was a spark that was snuffed out on Suzanne's side pretty much as soon as they started talking. She liked guys who, you know, had a brain in their head, and if Eric nodded too fast, you could hear the rocks crashing around in there. Still, though, they became friendly. In November, a month before Bill's death, Eric came over to Suzanne's apartment to talk.

He said he was getting serious about Nanette and was furious because Bill's, her older wealthy business partner had come into Nanette's room one night and tried to make her have sex with him. She's living with this guy, Suzanne said, surprised. When Eric explained Nanette's living arrangements, it was obvious to Suzanne, who did not have rocks in her head that Bill and Nanette were not just living together as business partners. Bill was the main guy. Eric was the side piece. She thought this story about Bill trying to force himself on Nanette might it had just been a way to make Eric feel jealous and protective. What it did was make him angry.

Bill had a pilot's license and his own plane, which he usually flew every week when he went to Las Vegas. I'm going to have him killed, Eric told Suzanne. Blown away. I'm going to have his plane blown up. Suzanne was out of town visiting family for the holidays when Bill was killed. When she came back in January, she saw that Eric had moved out. Still, though, he came by a couple of weeks later. later to talk to her. Have you seen any cops around here? He said. Susanne had not. Well, if you see any,

just don't talk to them. Don't tell him that you know me. Did you hear that man is dead? What man, Suzanne said? Bill McLaughlin, the guy that Nanette was living with. Somebody shot him and he's dead. Suzanne immediately remembered what Eric had said about blowing up Bill's plane. Because, you know, you tend to remember stuff like that. I don't even want to know if you did it. she said. Eric smirked. I didn't do it, but I might have had somebody do it. Suzanne was scared now. She said again, I don't even want to know. With that same smirk, Eric said, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Then he told her that police had tracked down the freshly cut key stuck in the front door at Balboa Cove's. It had been made at the Ace Hardware just

down the street from Suzanne's apartment complex. Eric also said, the gun that was used was the same kind of gun that I own, but they're not going to find it on me because I don't have it anymore. Scared and creeped out, Suzanne pretended to agree not to talk to detectives, then just suddenly got Eric out of there as fast as she could. We can't overstate how physically intimidating Eric Naposki was. I mean, you've seen linebackers. They're the size of refrigerators. And if he'd killed one person, he could kill Suzanne. She was too scared to go to the police right away, not until Eric and Annette broke up and he left town. But the cops kind of gave her the runaround and didn't take her seriously.

She wouldn't make a full statement until three years later, because why would the cops want to make it easy on themselves? Most likely, Eric had remembered he'd told Suzanne he wanted Bill dead, and had come over to try to scare her into keeping her mouth shut, but you can also kind of see it as him trying to impress her with his big macho machoness. Like, he'd strongly imply he killed the guy. And Suzanne would just go, that's so hot, and start tearing her clothes off. The way Suzanne was treated by authorities is kind of indicative of the investigation as a whole.

It was a half-assed mess with the Newport Beach PD and the DA's office getting all snippy with each other about their respective authority. Oh, my God. I hate it when they do this. Why don't you just piss in the corners, guys? Just mark your territory and be done with it. God almighty. Both the cops and the prosecutors later said they thought at the time there was enough to charge Nanette and Eric with murder. And yet somehow, no murder charges were filed.

Nanette, though, was tried and convicted of stealing about half a million dollars from Bill before his death. She got a one-year sentence and had to pay back the money to Bill's kids. Because no murder charges had dropped, she'd received Bill's million-dollar life insurance payment. But after legal fees and restitution, she only had about $200,000 left, which, God forbid, right? Primeer River. That was no problem. She would just go on repeating the same game until Southern California ran out of rich, horny suckers. Four months out of jail and using the impenetrable alias,

Annette. She answered a singles ad by a wealthy real estate developer, John Packard. They got married 10 months later and soon had a daughter together. Nett's life with Packard was even more luxurious than with Bill. She later estimated that basic monthly expenses for her and her children during this time were $37,000. She's Louise. I'm sorry, just Annette. Oh my God. Both of the bad guys in the story are just absolute cabbages, Annette from Nanette. Yeah, that's an uncrackable code. Of course, she cheated on this guy, too. Most notably with Billy McNeil, who was six years younger than her and a financial analyst for PepsiCo.

He was also married, but separated from his wife one month after meeting Nanette. They were soon divorced, and once he found out about the affair, so were Nanette and John Packard. Nanette and Billy got engaged in 2005. He bought her a three-carat diamond ring, but that wasn't enough for Nanette. Sorry, Annette. She made him buy a few diamond-studded bands to wear on either side of the ring. Now, that is what they call a red flag, Billy. When Nanette took Billy home to meet her family, her siblings had some fun

by showing him pictures of Nanette and her teens in early 20s when she was short-haired and flat-chested. She was very much not flat-chested now, but when Billy asked her if she'd had enhancement surgery, Nanette intensely insisted, they're real, they're real, they're real. She apparently wanted to convince herself, too, for some reason. In her closet, in whatever house she lived in, Nanette always kept up a little sparkly poster that said, yes, they're real, which might be the dwebiest thing I've literally ever heard in my life. Oh, God. It's straight out of,

Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret. Yeah. We must. We must. We must increase our bust. I know. Like, no shade whatsoever for getting implants.

Most of the women I've known who've gotten them are proud as hell of them. Look, you want to touch them, who, you know? They're proud of those things because they cost good money. But, Nanette, just, man, if you, if you, like, insinuated that they were fake, she would get pissed. And by the way, Billy told this story to author Caitlin Rother, whose book, I'll Take Care of You, was our main source for this episode. Billy and Nanette had a son, Anton, at the end of 2008. Before he was six months old, Nanette had been arrested and charged, finally, with murder.

Eric Naposki was arrested on the same day. Back in Connecticut, he'd picked up where he'd left off, as in he got married again, had two daughters again, got divorced again, and didn't pay child support again. What a flippin' loser. A new deputy district attorney, Matt Murphy, had been convinced that the Bill McLaughlin case could be solved. He had an investigator look at the case again from top to bottom and had the evidence all re-examined. This included testing the bullets from the crime scene.

Modern forensics were now able to identify the model of gun the bullets had been fired from, a Beretta 92F. This was exactly the type of gun Eric Naposki had bought a few months, months before the murder, then claimed to have lost through theft. Suzanne Cogar and other witnesses were re-interviewed. Murphy felt like he had a solid case, a largely circumstantial case that was very light on physical evidence, but as we've said many times before, circumstantial does not mean weak. If you looked at everything together, there was really only one story that made sense.

Nanette and Eric conspired to murder Bill McLaughlin. Eric Naposki's trial for first-degree murder started in May 2012. He was convicted and sentenced to life with no possibility of parole. Nanette's trial started in September of 2012, by which time Billy McNeil had become convinced of her guilt and divorced her, being granted full custody of their son. Nanette was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy and also sentenced to life without parole. They're both still loudly declaring their innocence.

with friends and families still believing, or pretending to believe them. It seems to me like just about every relationship in its life was transactional. Her primary criterion for a partner was, he's rich and he's willing to spend it on me. Pretty empty way to live your life. And after bleeding him as dry as he'd let her, she repaid Bill McLaughlin's generosity in blood. So that was a wild one, right, campers?

You know, we'll have another one for you. 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 patrons. Thank you so much to Dale, Viblet, I love that name, Christy and Jordan. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you are 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 episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you join the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff.

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