True Crime Campfire - Slow Burn: The Murder of Jimmy Michael

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Prey animals sometimes use camouflage to protect themselves from predators. But over millions of years of evolution, some predators have learned to do the same. Take the ghost mantis, a crafty little bug who masquerades as a leaf to get close to unsuspecting crickets. If you want to move in for a kill, there’s real value in blending in—whether you’re a leopard stalking a hare, or a cute pediatric nurse and former cheerleader who’s getting tired of her middle-class life and dreaming of bigger things. Michelle Michael: a woman whose perky personality and magazine-perfect lifestyle hid a heart as black as midnight. Join us for the true story of one of the cruelest, most brutal murders we've ever covered. Sources:John Glatt, Playing With Fire (St. Martin's True Crime)CBS' 48 Hours Mystery: Episode "Death Without Mercy"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/death-without-mercy/https://writingdeadlyaffairs.blogspot.com/2019/12/sudden-death-michelle-michael-james.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become 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. Prey animals sometimes use camouflage to protect themselves from predators. But over millions of years of evolution, some friends. predators have learned to do the same. Take the ghost mantis, a crafty little bug who masquerades as a leaf to get close to unsuspecting crickets. If you want to move in for a kill, there's real

value in blending in. Whether you're a leopard stalking a hair, or a cute pediatric nurse and former cheerleader, who's getting tired of her middle-class life and dreaming of bigger things. This is Slow Burn, the murder of Jimmy Michael. So, campers, for this one, we're in Morgantown, West Virginia, the morning of November 29, 2005. Sean Alt was just getting home from a 12-hour shift as a respiratory therapist at Ruby Memorial Hospital. He was exhausted, ready to grab a shower and change before going back to the hospital to sleep in one of the on-call rooms. But as he got out of his truck to head inside, he caught an unmistakable. scent on the air. It smelled like a house fire. Sean was a former firefighter, and he knew that

smell. It had different notes than, say, burning trash or leaves. No other fire smelled quite like it. He felt a quick little jolt of adrenaline, worried the smell might be coming from his own place. He walked around the outside of the house, looking for smoke, peering in the windows, but it didn't seem to be his house. Everything seemed fine. He went back to his driveway and looked around. Any smoke? Nope. Didn't look like it. So he thought, All right, I'm going to go take a shower, and I'll check back afterwards. When he came back outside about 20 minutes later, the smell was even stronger. But he still couldn't see smoke or flames coming from any of his neighbor's houses,

so he got back in his truck and headed back toward the hospital. As he motored down his street, he caught sight of one of his neighbors, Shelly Michael, pulling her big SUV out of her driveway. He knew Shelly, not just because they were neighbors, but also because she worked at Ruby Memorial 2 as a nurse practitioner in the pediatric ICU. And her husband Jimmy used to be a respiratory therapist there, too, just like Sean. They'd gone to school together. So when Sean caught sight of Shelley, he smiled and waved.

He knew she saw him. They made eye contact, but oddly, Shelley acted like he wasn't even there, just staring right through him, then gunning her engine and zipping away. She ran a stop sign she was in such a hurry. Huh, must be running late. Back at the hospital, Sean called a firefighter friend of his just to make sure nobody had called in a house fire in his neighborhood. Nope, his buddy said, all quiet.

So Sean was like, okay, awesome, and crashed out in the on-call room. A few hours later, a co-worker shook him awake. Hey, man, he said there's a monster fire in your neighborhood. It's Jimmy Michael's place, and Jimmy didn't make it. When Sean got home, he was stunned at the side of the Michael's singed house, and poor Shelley Michael standing outside with the police officers and firefighters, a brand-new widow. It was so sad, and he felt so bad that he hadn't realized where that burning smell was coming from

and time to help. Before long, the horrible news had spread throughout the community. Jimmy Michael, small business owner, husband, father of two, and stepfather of two more. Burned to death in a house fire, less than a week after Thanksgiving. A freak accident, devastating. Friends and loved ones rallied around Shelly and the kids, ready to do whatever they could to support them through their grief. Even if some of them noticed to their confusion that Shelly didn't really seem to be grieving. People react differently to tragedy. They knew that. she had to be in total shock, right? But behind the scenes, detectives, medical examiners, and fire investigators were busy doing what they do,

and within a couple of days, it became crystal clear that this death was no accident. The autopsy left no room for doubt. Jimmy Michael hadn't died in the fire. He'd been dead before it started, and it hadn't started by accident. But let's put a pin in that and get some background on Shelley Michael and just how the hell we got here. Shelly grew up in a pretty typical middle-class Catholic family, maybe a little stricter than most, but not like into the stratosphere or anything. And from her earliest years, Shelly was a firecracker, which is one of those high-octane people you meet sometimes who seem like they're supercharged somehow. People who do more before noon than I usually do in a week.

Y'all know the type. Her mom describes her as peppy. Ech, Lord spare us from the peppy. I am not peppy. I am whatever the opposite of Pepe is, and I've made my peace with that. Yeah, I'd describe myself as sloth-like. You want me to do what? Go somewhere?

Now? Outside the home? Yeah, without a minimum of two weeks' notice in this economy? Nah, I'm good. I'm playing Stardew Valley, and my community center is almost done. Nice. Anyway, back to Dr. Pepster. Shelly was an overachiever in every single.

thing she did, to the point where her sister Jennifer, two years younger, later said she'd felt overshadowed. Straight A's, president of this club, and that club, manager of the school store, and of course, a cheerleader. The first time she cheered in front of a crowd, it was like a drug to her. The applause, the attention. That feeling would be Shelley's kryptonite for the rest of her life. She was always chasing it, doing whatever she could think of to be the center of attention at all times, and to appear flawless to the people around her, perfectly put together. She was good at it, but she also seemed to lie quite easily. Not that that's especially unusual for teenagers,

but Shelly sometimes took it to greater extremes than your average kid, at least your average kid back then. She got in trouble for shoplifting a couple times, for example, but she still managed to be salutatorian of her high school class. Even then, Shelly was a study in contradictions. And it's interesting to see the contrast between, the way Shelley describes her life and the way other people describe it sometimes. This comes up a lot in our main source for this case.

The John Glatt book Playing with Fire, it's very, very good. You should read it. Oh, yeah. Just one example. After high school, Shelly enrolled in the University of West Virginia, majoring in pre-pharmacy. Later, she'd describe her first year enthusiastically. It was a great time, and even though I partied a lot, I still got straight A's. but her mom remembered it differently.

According to her, Shelly really struggled that year. She'd been a big fish in a small pond at her tiny Catholic high school. Now she was in a freshman class of 200, and she had such a hard time with her chemistry classes that she ended up changing her major from pre-farm to nursing. This was a pattern we noticed a lot in the Glapbook. Unless she can cast herself as the victim in the situation, Shelly doesn't seem to like talking about negative things.

You can't really cast yourself as the victim if the situation is just, you know, sucking at chemistry. But if she can be like, oh, yeah, this relationship didn't work out because my boyfriend was mean to me. She'll talk about that. It's interesting. According to many who knew her, the driving force in Shelly's life seemed to be perfection, or at least the appearance of it. Like, okay, while she was at WVU, she was rooming with her oldest best friend, somebody she'd been close with since kindergarten. But when Shelly got pregnant, her bestie was totally stunned. Despite the fact that she and She and Shelly lived together and were allegedly best, best buddies.

She didn't even know Shelly had a boyfriend. Yeah, I mean, that's weird, right? Like, I realize not everybody treats their friends to a near constant live stream of their inner monologue like I do, but really? you're living with your best friend and you don't even tell her you're dating somebody, that's just bizarre to me. Yeah, my inner circle gets a play by play of my day, my aches and pains, my annoyances, my meals. Like, I did something embarrassing last week and called three people immediately to tell them about it. I'm honored that I was one of them. And I think it was because to Shelly, being sexually active, you know, out of woodlock, clutch the pearls, was a demerit or two against her

image of Catholic girl perfection. And she didn't want her friend to know about that until her bump forced the issue. So anywho, her boyfriend at the time, the baby daddy, behaved predictably for a college-age dude and decided he didn't want any part of marriage and fatherhood. But Shelly went ahead and had the baby, a little boy, and she was back to school, lickety split. Even tried out for and made the cheerleading squad because our girl was addicted to those pom-poms in that cheering crowd. And then, not long after the baby came into the world, she went out with some friends to a Buffalo Wild Wings. I just love that this happened to Buffalo Wild Wings and met a guy named Rob Angus. She made sure to point out later that he wasn't really her type, but he was good with her

little boy, and more importantly, he treated her like a queen. Rob was a boisterous, funny guy, a life of the party type, and it didn't take him and Shelley long to get engaged. Soon after Rob put a ring on it, Shelley got pregnant again. This displeased Rob, who'd apparently never heard of such a thing as a condom, and he told her he didn't think it was the right time for them to have a kid, and she should have an abortion, which I imagine for a Catholic girl would be kind of a big deal. But Shelly went ahead and terminated the pregnancy, and after that, her and Rob's relationship really started hitting the skids. Shelly's perception of the situation was that he was a, quote, total fake, which in my opinion is an early example of her talent for projection, but whatever.

They started arguing all the time. But the wedding invites had already gone out, and God forbid, Miss Perfect embarrassed herself by calling it off, so in July of 95, she married him, thinking as she walked down the aisle that she'd probably learn to love him. Because, yeah, that's how human emotions work, right? It's going to be great. Yeah, not so much. Rather than learning to love Rob, Shelly says she soon started hating his guts, and their relationship got more and more volatile and angry with violence on both sides. But as always, She kept that to herself. She didn't even tell her best friend about how much her brand new marriage sucked. That would interfere with the veneer of perfection, you see. As with the fact that in early 96, she got arrested

for shoplifting again. Now, she claimed it was just an accident. Oh, shoot, I thought I paid for that, but yeah, I don't think so. Shelly got pregnant again a few months into the marriage, and this time she was determined to keep the babies, so despite the fact that she and Rob were pretty much miserable with each other by then, they brought a little baby girl into the world in 1996. A week later, Shelly was back in class at WVU, bragging about how little time she took off to have the baby. Again, the girl was obsessed with being perceived as superwoman. And she was a bit of a dynamo, no doubt about it. Despite having two kids in the process,

Shelly graduated as a registered nurse from WVU after six years of study and got a job in the pediatric ICU at Ruby Memorial Hospital. And from day one, she made a heck of an impression on her colleagues. She was a shameless flirt, always slapping dudes on the ass as she walked past, and I swear to God this is true, doing cheerleader routines for everybody. Like at the hospital, like they'd just be going about their normal routine in the pick you. Maybe somebody's in the corner crying because their patient just died. and suddenly Shelly start high kicking and yelling, give me a pee, give me an eye, give me a C, you. That's pick you, yay.

Kick, kick, kick, kick. And then she'd go back, hands springing down the hall, just bloop, floop, floop, floop. It's not a joke. She's not exaggerating. No, that ain't some pick me shit right there. Just, ugh, you might as well just wear a t-shirt that says, I peaked in high school.

Yeah, a grown-ass woman doing cheerleader moves is the female equivalent of those dudes. who are still wearing their letterman jackets at 40. Like, look, unless I'm at Cirque du Soleil, if somebody starts doing a flip in front of me, I'm instantly annoyed. It's like that person isn't at all the ground. Yeah. Like, an adult that's not a professional cheerleader.

I do want to clarify if any campers are professional cheerleaders. Like, of course. Sure. But not at a hospital. Keep your feet firmly on the ground and your head the right. way up. Thank you very much. Predictably, this got on the women's last damn nerve, but at least one of the men thought it was just super.

That man was a married respiratory therapist named Jimmy Michael. Jimmy's background was a lot like Shelley's. Middle class, religious family, his dad was a Baptist minister, popular in high school, good student. He and his wife Stephanie both worked at Reuben Memorial. Stephanie was a nurse like Shelley. one of the ones who found Little Miss Head cheerleader really annoying. Like Shelly and her husband, Rob, Jimmy and Stephanie's marriage was kind of circling the drain at the time. Shelly showed up on the scene.

They were having money problems, fighting a lot, and they'd separated and gotten back together a couple times. It was right after the second separation and reconciliation that Jimmy started working the night shift and met Miss Shelley. And she went after him like he was made out of cheesecake. Shelly definitely strikes me as the kind of woman who'd get off on stealing another woman's husband. So I'm sure the fact that he was already married and to a woman, Shelly could probably tell didn't like her, was catnap. Yeah. As was the fact that Jimmy had just bought a big

new house and had been telling everybody at work about how nice it was. So she set her sights on Jimmy Michael and she moved in for the kill. Jimmy's friends would later say that they felt like she played on Jimmy's insecurities. He'd always been sensitive about his weight, so Shelley would say stuff like, oh, I like a little chubbiness on a man. But if you ask me, this

kind of absolves Jimmy of any responsibility. I mean, dude was married. End one relationship before you start another one, man. Anyway, before long, Jimmy and Shelley were involved. They'd talk for hours about their failing marriages,

which, as we've said before, is the kiss of death. The second you start confiding about your relationship problems with somebody you're attracted to, it's over. Last nail in the coffin. It's a fair soup, the worst flavor of Campbell's. One night, Jimmy's wife, Stephanie, was straightening up the house when the phone rang. She answered, and there was a brief silence before whoever was on the other line hung up. Something about it just felt wrong to Stephanie, so she wrote down the number on the caller ID. And the next day, she checked it against the phone directory at work. And boom, there it was, Shelly. Shelly's husband Rob found out around this time, too, and soon both couples divorced. In her

filing, Shelly alleged that she was leaving Rob because he had a porn problem and was verbally abusive to her son. She didn't mention that she had a boyfriend, didn't tell her friends that little detail either. It was all Rob's abusive. Uh-huh. At first, Jimmy's parents disapproved of this new relationship. I mean, how could they not? And I imagine Shelley didn't help that situation much the first time she met them because you all are going to love this. During the visit, Jimmy's folks gave her a tour of their nice big house.

Shelley was clearly impressed, and at the end of the tour, she said, I shit you not. Why don't you just give us our inheritance now? Yeah. Yeah. Who does this? Holy hot buttered shit on a bun. Oh, my God. Ew. But right, right. Sorry. Okay. It's one of your southern, southern, uh, phrasing. It's just part of you. But after a while, Shelley won the Michaels over with her peppy cheerleadery charms.

And, God, again, she did backflips across. their lawn. Oh yeah. Regularly, apparently. By the way, this is totally unrelated. I just have to tell somebody, I saw someone do a handspring in an airport bathroom on Instagram yesterday, and I'm still physically upset about it, like an airport bathroom. Oh, that floor's got to be nasty. Yeah, our girl never missed a chance to backflip around the place. She was a backhand spring and machine. The Michaels were impressed with how well turned out Shelly and her kids always were. Every hair in place and how well she and Jimmy seemed to get along. Shelly was fun to be around, always full of energy. But there was another side to Shelly when she didn't let everybody see. At work, poor Stephanie

still had to see her every day, and Shelly took every opportunity to rub it in. In the break room, She would corner Stephanie and needle her about having stolen her husband. She called her a cunt. But she'd only do it when they were alone. She'd never let anybody overhear her. Sneaky. Handgroves. She and Jimmy got married pretty soon after their divorces came through, and for a while everything was picture perfect, just the way Shelly liked it. They were a modern-day Brady Bunch, Jimmy's two kids blending seamlessly with Shelly's two, two boys, two girls, and both the grown-ups working out 50-50 custody arrangements with their exes. They got involved in the local Baptist church, started hosting Bible study at their house once a week, and they did everything together, as a family. If one kid had a soccer game, everybody went to cheer them on. Jimmy started coaching the two boys' little football team, and Shelley coached the girls' cheer squad.

If you were on the outside looking in, like they always say on Dateline, you'd think, these people really have their shit together. But there were cracks. Shelley never seemed satisfied. Soon, she started pressuring Jimmy to buy her a nicer, bigger house. Jimmy didn't think they could afford it, but Shelley wouldn't let it go. She badgered him until he gave in. And Shelley's need to present a perfect facade meant they had to have designer everything,

from drapes and furniture to clothes and shoes. That adds up fast. And then there was the fact that Jimmy had always wanted to go to medical school. That dream had fallen by the wayside once before when he and Stephanie racked up way too much credit card debt and realized there just wasn't enough money for him to go. Now he was thinking about trying again, but Shelly decided she wanted to get her master's degree first

so she could become a nurse practitioner. So Jimmy put his plans on hold and agreed to put her through grad school. Money was tighter because of it, but that didn't do anything to put the kibosh on Shelley's champagne tastes. So that was a source of some tension. And then there was Jimmy's ex-Septany and the kids. Shelly never got tired of shit-talking Stephanie to the point where it made people cringe. And quite a few people noticed Shelley seemed to be a lot harder on Jimmy's kids than she was on her own, especially Jimmy's little boy. According to Jimmy's ex-wife, Stephanie, Shelley was

always criticizing the kid, nitpicking every little thing he did to the point where the poor kid was scared shitless of her. And Stephanie says she found bruises on the little guy on at least one occasion from Shelly hitting him. Really living up to the evil stepmom trope, huh? Definitely. One of Jimmy's good friends was a therapist, and her theory was that Shelley felt threatened by the kid, that his close relationship with Jimmy irritated her somehow. And I'm sure it didn't help that he was Stephanie's kid, too.

Shelly hated Stephanie to the point where she'd absolutely forbidden her to call Jimmy for any reason, not even to talk about co-parenting stuff. Like if one of the kids' hair was on fire, she had to call Shelly and Steve. debt. Everything had to go through Shelly. It was just one big jealousy-induced game of telephone. Ridiculous, but Jimmy allowed it to try and keep the peace. He learned early on in their marriage that it was Shelly's way or the highway, and the kids had to learn it too. Some of the friends Shelley and Jimmy had made at church were beginning to notice some icky stuff about She always had to one-up everybody. One friend told author and John Glatt

about a time when he and his wife were putting a new roof on his house. His wife said something about how she could never be a roofer, she'd be too scared of falling. And Shelly's reaction was to jump in, scamper up the ladder, like a narcissistic little squirrel and prance around on the roof, bragging about how she wasn't scared at all. Oh, my God. Everyone was like, okay. Like, congrats now, can you get down before you fall off and break your face? It was that important to her to prove she was better than this friend of the hers.

Yikes. Oh, boy. Other friends were taken aback by Shelley's skimpy outfits, which, I mean, my attitude on that is who cares, let her wear what she wants. But I do think it's interesting to note that this was a very conservative Bible Belt social circle. And it was definitely outside the norm to show up in a skirt so short that a slight breeze might treat everybody to a sudden anatomy lesson. Like, the church ladies do not want to see your. cervix, Shelly. Jesus.

I guess. I think Shelly enjoyed shocking people. And I think it was one more way for her to make sure she had every eye on her. Oh, for sure. No attention is bad attention. Exactly. And although Shelly went through the motions of getting involved in the church, teaching Bible classes and whatnot, some people caught a whiff of something insincere about it.

As one guy put it, she seemed like she was just going through the motions. But she wasn't going through the motions on this. A couple years into her marriage to Jimmy, Shelly's younger sister, Jennifer, came out as gay. She divorced her husband and eventually started seriously dating a woman. And although their parents seemed to accept this, okay, Shelley lost her goddamn fucking mind about it. She and Jimmy banned their kids from seeing her. their aunt Jennifer and her kids, their cousins, like gross. And this is bananas, Gwen Stefani bananas.

When Jennifer brought her partner to a family baptism, Shelly was so furious about it that she confronted this poor woman, the partner, in the church parking lot and physically assaulted her. Just because she dared to show up at her partner's family gathering. It's like she thought a lesbian would just bring. burst into flames if she set foot inside the church or something. See, homosexualism was offensive to Shelley's delicate sensibilities. Murder's not, as we'll soon see, but, you know, no homo, am I right?

This woman is such an asshole, y'all. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Being gay was offensive to Shelley's good girl values, but apparently cheating on her husband, wasn't? Because one afternoon around this time, Jimmy arrived home from work to find a package addressed to him. Inside was one of Shelly's sweaters and a note. It said, quote, Keep your whore wife away from my husband.

Oh, snap. Yeah. The note was unsigned, and there was no return address on the package. So Jimmy had no idea who sent it, but it definitely got his attention. Right? Shelly denied that there was any funny business going on, of course. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it was probably just a funny joke somebody was playing on Jimmy,

not Shelly slamming ass all over Morgantown or anything, untoward like that, because we all know she's such a good girl. Jimmy wanted to believe her, obviously, but that's one hell of an elephant in the room, and it added to the tension in their marriage. Jimmy couldn't shake the suspicion that she was cheating. She was pissy with him and the kids all the time now, and she'd started sniping at him about his weight. Like, she'd snap at him for eating an extra sandwich. Do you really need that? Ew. And she'd cut off the sex. She was turning him down like a bedspread.

Wouldn't even let him see her naked anymore. Not even one boob? Not one boob? Even as a treat? Nope, not even as a treat. Despite all the stress, though, Shelley graduated on time with her Master of Science in Nursing and Ruby Memorial hired her on as a nurse practitioner in the pick you. Meanwhile, Jimmy decided to go into the medical supply business for himself. He gathered up a few partners and launched the business in 2005, and from pretty much day one, Shelley found ways to make his and his partner's lives miserable. Jimmy was working too much and he wasn't making money fast enough for her taste because, you know, it was a brand new business and it takes a minute to turn a profit, Shelly, for fuck's sakes. But she was always getting in Jimmy's ear, firing a hundred dumb questions at him and demanding he take every one of them to the partners and report back to her, which, as you can

imagine, generated a lot of eye-rolling at the weekly meetings, especially once the business actually did start turning a profit and a pretty nice one at that. In fact, Jimmy's career was going so well, it occurred to him that it was probably time he'd take out a life insurance policy. When he floated the idea with Shelley, she was all for it. Insisted he'd take the amount up from 250K to 500K, and a 200K policy for her. She just wanted to make sure the kids would be provided for, you know, if the worst ever happened. God forbid. While Jimmy's new business was thriving, work wasn't going too well for Shelley.

She started getting in trouble quite a bit for insubordination, always for taking time off without permission. One time she took two weeks, two weeks off without authorization. Now, that might not be the end of the world if you work at, like, Sunglass Hut, but when you're one of a small number of specialized nurses in a pediatric ICU, kind of a big deal to leave your patients in the lurch, because they might, you know, die. But Shelly makes her own rule, so fuck them, right? We're going to Disney. Woo! And she had trouble getting along with her co-workers. I know, hard to believe, right? I mean, when she's kind enough to treat everybody to her Dallas Cowboy cheerleader cosplay during shift change and all, but Shelley was moody. It was hard to. to predict from one hour to the next, whether she'd be friendly or snippy. And her fellow nurses had the general impression that she didn't really want to work. She just wanted the paycheck. Now, obviously, that's the case with many people and many jobs, and that's fine to an extent.

But nurses are a different breed, especially nurse practitioners, and especially the ones who choose to work with very sick children. These people have a passion for their work, and teamwork is a crucial part of the equation. When I found out she was a nurse practitioner, I did not believe it. NPs are some of the most professional, empathetic, and capable medical personnel I've ever been treated by it. Like, my PCP is a nurse practitioner and I love her. Yeah, I think she was entirely in it for the paycheck. Yeah. Yeah, because you get a lot more money as an NP than as an RN. Shelly definitely was not a teamwork kind of person. She was a Shelley kind of person. She kept trying to cut her hours, work half time instead of full, but her boss said,

no, they really needed her full time. And she was increasingly disgruntled about it. At one point, she announced to Jimmy that she wanted another baby. This came totally out of the blue. I mean, they already had four kids between him, and Jimmy had a vasectomy years ago, which obviously she knew. He didn't want any more kids, and he didn't want to have to go through the reversal surgery either. Especially since this sudden desire for a baby smelled an awful lot like a ploy to quit working. Two of Shelley and Jimmy's best friends were a couple with the unfortunate names of Kelly and Bobby Teets.

I'm sorry. Bless their hearts. They didn't do anything wrong. No, I know. It's just Bobby Teets. It sounds like a euphemism. Sounds like a, it sounds like an adjective. Sorry. Bobby Teets. Why wouldn't you go by Robert? No, no, no, no, it's not his fault. Robert Teets is not better. Sorry.

I'm sorry. It just gets me every time. If your last name is Tees, I'm not talking about you. I'm sorry. No, and we're not talking about him. Not really. No, it's not his fault. It's not his fault. Bobby Teets. Their kids were besties with Shelley and Jimmy's kids, and the two guys both coached the boys' football team.

They all hung out together after games and on weekends. Eventually, Jimmy hired Bobby Teets as a delivery driver at his med supply company, and they got to be even better friends then. So one night, as they were all out to dinner, Bobby mentioned that a friend of his was retiring from his embroidery business and selling all his equipment. This is the kind of embroidery you do for a local sports team, teams and restaurant uniforms, stuff like that, logos, basically.

Bobby seemed excited about the idea of buying some of the equipment and starting his own embroidery biz, and he wanted to know if Shelley and Jimmy would be interested in joining him. Shelley, who must have been obsessed by now with finding a way out of her nurse practitioner job, you know, the one that she put Jimmy's career on hold to study for, she jumped on the idea. To Jimmy, this seemed pretty absurd. Shelly was making $65 an hour at her job.

She'd gone to grad school for two years to qualify for it. She studied her ass off. Now she wanted to scrap it all to go all artsy, crafty, something she'd never shown the slightest interest in before. But Shelly wasn't listening. She was all for it. And she and Bobby Teat seemed convinced they could make the business a success. Yeah, Shelly, for sure.

That's where the big money is, all right. Local church, rec leagues and high school basketball teams. There's your pot of gold, sis. Good call. She had a pot of gold. That's like the leprechaun like clutching his pot of gold and like seeing from afar like an empty cauldron and being like, there's my pot of gold. Like $65 an hour. Yeah.

So why are we telling you this? Well, because it was this embroidery business idea that got Shelley and Bobby Teat spending a lot more time together on, you know, research. Research. Is that what they're calling it these days? Mm-hmm. The research really got underway when Shelley and Bobby planned a trip to Chicago for a four-hour-long seminar on running an embroidery business, which is so specific. I can't. Jimmy and Bobby's wife, Kelly, couldn't go, so it was just Shelley and Bobby together. Oh, come on. Now, how their spouses were okay with this, I can't imagine, but they booked a hotel suite with one, count them.

One, king-sized bed. Maybe Jimmy and Kelly Teets felt reassured by the fact that there was also a pull-out couch in the room. I don't know. What I do know is that Shelley and Bobby started canoodling on the plane and pretty much didn't stop for the whole trip. That pull-out couch did not see any action. But the king-sized bed sure did. And I read enough fanfix to know that the, oh no, there's only one bad trope, results in fucking always. So, Chelly was cheating on her husband, true.

But remember, at least she's no lesbo like her sinful sister. Always remember, the real sinners are the homosexualists, obviously. God. And you know she's one of those that's like, love the sinner, hate the sin. Oh, gross, yes. You know she was, and she's out here hating the sinner, too. Jesus. One of those thought-terminating cliches is the poem.

You can do everything, but fall in love with. with someone of your own gender, according to Shelley's morals. Mm-hmm. Yeah, hypocrite. Hypocrat, Shelly. Mm-hmm. Once they got back from Chicago, Shelley and Bobby found time to sneak around and have sex any chance they got,

including one morning after Jimmy left for work, with Bobby's and Shelley's daughters both asleep in the bedroom next door. The poor kids had had a sleepover the night before. They had no idea, or at least I fucking hope they didn't. I wish you could see my face right now. Yeah. So in late November of 2005, the situation was this. Shelly's marriage was in free fall. She couldn't stand the side of Jimmy these days. During one of her pillow talk moments with Bobby Teets, she told him she couldn't bring herself to have sex with her husband anymore. She was sniping at him constantly. Jimmy had been calling up his best friends in tears lately to talk about it, which is really, really sad. And Shelley knew he suspected the affair. He was going to find out sooner or later. Plus, she was burned out at work, taking every chance she got to scor.

time off and hoping she and Bobby could make this embroidery business profitable so she could quit altogether. Basically, our girl was disgruntled, y'all. There wasn't a gruntle to be found within a countermail of this bitch. She was done. Now, most of us would take stock of all that and decide, okay, time to cut our losses and file for divorce. But if you've got a mind like Shelly Michaels, that doesn't really seem like an option. First, it'd be our second one. Ms. Perfect didn't like that idea, I suspect. On top of that, she was cheating on Jimmy. If she left him, there was a decent chance she'd come out of any divorce settlement with a lot less than she felt she deserved. She might lose her nice big house. No chance in hell she'd be able to

quit working in the pick you. She'd have to hustle to keep herself and the kids and all those designer labels and whatnot. So divorce? No, no, no. Shelly had a better idea. There's a drug called Rokuronium. It's a paralytic agent, a synthetic version of the South American poison curare. They use it to paralyze your muscles during surgery or intubation, but here's the important thing. When they give it to you, they have to immediately provide breathing support. If they don't, you'll suffocate and die within minutes. At some point during the month of November 2005, police and prosecutors believe that Shelley pocketed a vial of the stuff while she was working at the hospital. As a nurse, she had easy access to the drug and a syringe

to administer it with. On the night of November 28th, Shelley and Jimmy were home alone. Their exes had the kids for the night. Jimmy was tired after a long day of deer hunting. and coaching his son's ball game, so he went to bed early. At some point during the night, Shelly climbed into bed next to him, a vial and syringe in her hand. She pulled a 50 milligram dose of rockeroneum into the syringe and gently injected it into Jimmy's thigh. It was a tiny needle, a pediatric gauge. He probably didn't even feel it going in. But within a minute or so, Jimmy would have woken up to the powerful effects of the drug.

I'm not going to give you nearly as detailed a description of what his last minutes were like, as author John Glatt did in his book, because to be honest with you, it's one of the most god-awful things I've ever heard in my life. Suffice it to say that it took Jimmy Michael 13 minutes to pass into unconsciousness and die. And for most of that time, he was fully awake and aware, fully conscious, but paralyzed. He was a respiratory therapist. He would have known exactly what was happening to him, even if Shelley didn't lie there next to him and taunt him about it, which I wouldn't put past her for a second. She watched her husband die. And then Shelley hopped up and got dressed for work. Before she left, she poured a bit of some kind of

accelerant on the bed and the floor around it, then turned on a closed iron full blast, and laid it face down on the bed. Apparently, Shelley doesn't understand how irons work, or how fires work, or how basic safety features on appliances work, and she felt sure this would catch the place on fire and destroy every tiny piece of evidence of the murder she'd just committed. Colleagues would later remember that Shelly was in fine form at work that morning, slapping dudes on the ass and laughing. She seemed to be in quite the mood. But when a couple hours went by without a panicky phone call from a neighbor, letting her know her house was on fire, Shelly started to get nervous. Apparently her little iron setup hadn't worked. So she had to go to

Plan V. Apparently, unaware of the security cameras all over the hospital and parking garage, she snuck out of the hospital, got in her SUV and headed back home. As the prosecutor would later put it, she headed upstairs and flicked a bick, lighting the bed on fire with Jimmy's body in it. Then, closing the bedroom door behind her, she left the house, climbed back in her car and headed back to the hospital. As you might remember from the beginning of the episode, she saw one of her neighbors on the way. He waved at her and she gunned it to get away from him as fast as she could. It took another couple hours for that fire to reach the point where somebody noticed it and called it in. Fires need oxygen, Shelly.

Don't close the bedroom door next time. Jesus. And so the investigation began. And from pretty much minute one, Jimmy Michael's death looked suspicious as hell. The first thing that got the investigator's spidey senses tingling was the state of Jimmy's body. The fire really wasn't that bad.

It was mostly localized in the bedroom. And the investigator's experience, it should have been easy for Michael to roll out of bed and escape. But he was just lying there, like he'd been sleeping when it started, and for some reason hadn't woken up. Why hadn't he? Well, because as an autopsy soon showed, there was no soot in his lungs. He was most likely already dead before the fire started.

Then there was the fact that a good boy named Bailey, a trained sniffer dog, for the arson squad, found traces of accelerant all over the bedroom. And despite Shelley's repeated attempts to continue, Vince everybody. Oh no, I think I left the iron on. That must have been what caused the fire. They knew that wasn't it. This fire was deliberately set. And then there was this creepy little detail. A few days into the investigation, the Morgantown PD got an anonymous call, suggesting that in the death of Jimmy Michael, they might want to test for a paralytic drug called rockeroneum. Interesting. Somebody's got Shelley's number. Yeah, based on the sources we saw, I think it was Shelley's ex-sister-in-law, Rob Angus's

sister, but I'm not 100% sure. At any rate, when Rob himself came in for an interview later, he suggested the same thing. They were healthcare folks. They knew exactly what kinds of drugs could quickly shut down a healthy 33-year-old man, and what kinds of drugs a nurse in Shelley's unit would have easy access to. So they sent samples off to a lab for toxicology, and lo and Behold, Rock Huronium. Plus, they were getting an earful about Shelley from just about everybody they talked to. The woman was not being discreet about her affair with Bobby Teets. And several people, including Jimmy's dad, had walked in on them in compromising positions the days following the murder.

Yeah, way to hold it together, Shelly. Way to play it cool, girl. Yeah, the detective walked in on one of those, by the way, as well, the lead detective was like, wow. Wow. The day of Jimmy's visitation, Shelly had the gall to ask her father-in-law if Bobby Teets and his wife and kids could stay over at their house for the night where she and the kids were staying. And in the middle of the night, Jimmy's dad went down to the wreck room to get something and found him right there in their PJs in a close embrace. Bobby was like kissing Shelley on the side of her face. And when Shelley saw him come and she pushed Bobby off her. Wow. Yeah. It seems like Shelley made very little effort to fake it in the days after Jimmy's death. We'll just give you a few little examples. And there are more, more in John Glatt's book. Lots more. Lots more.

The day before the funeral, people were bringing Shelly clothes and stuff to help out because she'd lost most of her stuff in the fire. Somebody had brought her a pack of simple underwear and Shelley was like, I don't want to offend anybody, but I cannot wear these. I've got to go to Victoria's secret. Bitch, you've got a what? Priorities, man. And please, please spare me that everybody grieves differently speech on that one, okay? Because I agree with you.

Everybody does grieve differently, okay? But that shit right there ain't normal. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Neither is inviting your lover to be one of your husband's pallbearers. That's just gross. And apparently several people had their own. That was when I knew she killed him moments with her.

Shelly, Jimmy's dad's moment was when he hugged Shelly the morning of the fire and said, Thank you for loving my son. Shelly said, yeah, I wish I'd loved him more. Jimmy's cousin and good friend Carrie said that on the morning of the fire, Shelley's first words to her were, hey, where'd you get that cute outfit? Yet another friend asked if they could get Shelly anything, and she quipped a new husband. Waka, waka, waka. Jimmy's best friend Jeremy said he knew Shelley'd done it

when he came up to offer condolences at the visitation and she gave him a death glare that would make Medusa look like Dolly Parton. You know, because Dolly's an angel on earth. We love you, Dolly. Apparently, Shelly had thrown a full-on tantrum with the funeral director earlier in the day when she'd come in demanding to see The Body

and the director told her she couldn't. Jimmy just wasn't in condition to be viewed. His body was burned beyond recognition. Shelly was furious, raging, saying stuff like, well, you need to tell me then. How burned up is he? Worried about evidence showing shells? Like, for example, a needlemark? Most people noticed how stoic Shelley was at the funeral, and some even felt she seemed annoyed at having to be there. And this is frickin awful. When Jimmy's little 12-year-old son,

who remember Shelley had always been fond of picking on, couldn't bring himself to leave his dad's casket, Shelley was like, what's he still doing up there? When is Stephanie coming to get him? Unbelievable. Oh, God forbid, a young boy with a brand- new understanding of grief and loss stands near the casket that holds his father who has to say goodbye to. Fuck you, Shelly, you absolute fucking demon. She's a psycho. Like, that, that is just evil. There was a major contrast between Shelley and Jimmy's ex-wife Stephanie at the funeral. While Stephanie was in floods of tears, Shelley stayed dry-eyed the entire time. A lot of people were weirded out by her demeanor, and back at the hospital, everybody seems to have just assumed

she did it. Shelly was not popular over there. So all this stuff was percolating in the investigators' minds, and of course we've saved the best for last. The interview was Shelley herself. First of all, they brought Bobby Teets in on the same day. They'd heard the whispers about how cozy-wozy he and Shelley had been ever since Jimmy's death, and they'd also gotten wind of the fact that he and Shell Bell had spent a night in a hotel together in Chicago a couple weeks ago. In a single bed suite.

Bobby Teets didn't pull any punches. He admitted the affair immediately. He seemed genuinely upset about Jimmy's death and even more upset about the fact that his wife was going to have to find out about the affair now. He did not seem like a man who had any desire to ride off into the sunset with Shelly Michael. For Bobby, this was a fling. It was clear early on he wasn't involved in the murder.

He couldn't have been more forthcoming and he passed a polygraph easily. In sharp contrast, Shelley got in that interview room and lied or perky the last off. Affair, what even is that? I don't know what you're talking about. Rocky, what? No, no. No, no, I never left the hospital that day. I didn't drive home. Oh, you have security footage of me leaving the hospital that day? Oh, okay, well, I guess I did just run home real quick, but it wasn't just that any fire. I mean, it was a disaster, y'all. She lied her face off, only admitting to stuff when the detectives showed her they had ironclad proof. And even then, like, they had to hammer that shit home. But she denied any involvement in Jimmy's murder. And that was the hill she decided she was going to die on from Hey, Bias Grabbis through to the trial.

Oh, by the way, her defense attorney actually ended up scoring her an achievable amount of bail after her arrest. She was supposed to be on house arrest until the trial. Like, how many first-degree murder defendants get that? She should have been fucking grateful they were letting her stay home with her family. But instead, Miss Shelley just ignored the order and did what she wanted, as usual. Of course. People saw her out and about, getting her nails done. And when they called her on it, her lawyers were like, look, Mrs. Michael is indignant that she's being charged with this crime.

Oh, okay. Well, I'm sure Jimmy Michael was indignant at being murdered. I know, right? I'm a little indignant at the fact that your client committed a brutal murder. I didn't know that you only had to obey the laws that didn't make you indignant. Interesting. That's good to know. I'm going to head to the bank right now.

Right, exactly. I'm indignant that you won't give me $1 million in cash right now Yeah And the court Was rather indignant At having its orders ignored So they threw her indignant

ass back in jail But it didn't seem to face Shelly When she showed up on the first day of trial In a cute little pink sweater She turned around to her dad And gave him a big old thumbs up Which of course made it On to the front page of the local paper that day

And I'm sure had her defense attorney going through several full bottles of peptopolis mall. Like, girl, please work with me here. Now, y'all, we don't have time, obviously, to go into the whole trial. But like many narcissistic hosebags before her, Shelly, of course, took the stand in her own defense. And believe me when I tell you, that prosecutor mopped the floor with her face. It was hilarious. Shelly just got immediately, like, pissy and irritable.

And the prosecutor just made a meal out of it. it's truly a delight to watch her implode up there and just see how increasingly just more and more angry she's getting and how badly she's doing. So if you can spare an hour, watch the 48 hours episode and see for yourself because it's something else. It's like she couldn't help herself. It's really like, yeah, she just really couldn't. It was very indignant. It's true. They had a point. She was indignant. She was indignant. Shelly's defense was basically like, eh, Jimmy's ex-wife, Stephanie probably did it. Hey, how about this? Maybe he killed himself, which, again, we're going back to defense attorney montages where they're like eaten Chinese food and writing on boards.

Throwing shit at the wall to see what will stick, right? And like airboxing or whatever. And that's the best they come up with. That means you have a terrible client. But, you know, the police had actually looked into Stephanie early on, but they found no evidence to suggest she was involved or had any motive whatsoever. She had remarried. She had a new baby with her husband. She and Jimmy had come to a good place in their co-parenting relationship. Like, she wasn't the one who'd get $500 grand on Jimmy's death. The prosecution had a nice combo of physical and circumstantial evidence. The little cap from the syringe she used for the rockeroneum had rolled under the bed.

They had all that CCTV footage from her leaving the hospital and the interrogation where she lied about it. They had the Bobby Teets affair. And Shelly did not do herself any favors on the stand, as we told you already. And after about a day and a half of deliberation, the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder, an arson, too. Much to the dismay of Jimmy's family, they included a recommendation of mercy, meaning she'll have a chance of parole someday. In fact, her first chance is coming up in 2027 when Shelly will be 55 years old. Shelly's kids went back to live with their dad, Rob, and as of the air date of the 48 hours episode about the case, Rob wasn't letting him visit her, which is probably a good call. Poor kids.

Meanwhile, Shelly is right where she belongs, back flipping down the corridors of the Lakin Correctional Center in West Columbia, West Virginia, having committed one of the most cold-blooded murders I've heard of in 20-plus years of true crime obsession. And it scares me how easily she might have gotten away with it. I think if she hadn't set that fire, she really might have. Because 30-something men don't often die in their sleep, but it's not unheard of. And Rockeroneum is not going to come up on any standard talk screen. And if she hadn't layered an obvious arson on top of the murder sort of alerting everybody that there was something fucky about this, I think it's very possible she might have pulled this off, which is scary.

Oh, and one last thing. Shelly has a prison pen pal account with an address to write to her on the website, should you be so inclined. I wonder if she has cute cheerleader handwriting. I wonder if she uses hearts to dot her eyes. Not be surprised. 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 patrons. Thank you so much to Alicia, Andy, Betty, Marilyn, Ashley, Brandy, Rachel, Devin, Michelle, and Madison. 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, add free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rat enamel pin while supplies last at 10 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. Patreon.com slash true crime campfire. And because we've gotten a bunch of requests lately, we do have merch. Just search online, spreadshirt, True Crime Canfire. Because people have been asking. We have a ton of merch. And for the month of June, for Pride Month, we have a exclusive prime. design where 100% of the proceeds go to, or the profits, 100% of the profits go to Lambda Legal, a foundation that is near and dear to our hearts. So thank you. Thank you.