True Crime Campfire - Stranger than Fiction: Vol. I

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

They say that truth is stranger than fiction. We can forget that sometimes when we see some outrageous viral story on Reddit and decide it must be fake—just a writing exercise, right? Isn’t that what people always say? And sometimes it’s true. But the thing is, it’s been proven true countless times over the centuries—weird shit happens every day. Especially when a particular human failing rears its creepy little snout. I’m talking of course about obsession. Obsession is a wild card. It can take a seemingly normal, well adjusted person and turn them into someone even they wouldn’t usually recognize. Both of the stories we’re about to tell you involve obsession in one form or another. Two very different killers, two very different motives…two very weird stories. Sources:Investigation Discovery's "Your Worst Nightmare," Episode "Bump in the Night"Investigation Discovery's "Deadly Women," Mary Jane Fonder segmentInvestigation Discovery's "True Crime with Aphrodite Jones," Episode "Broken Commandments"http://www.parkaman.com/strange-case-daniel-laplante-real-night-horror-story/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_LaPlanteFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. They say that truth is stranger than fiction. We can forget that sometimes when we see some outrageous viral story on Reddit or someplace and decide it must. to be fake. Just a writing exercise, right? Isn't that what people always say? And sometimes it's true, but the thing is, it's been proven true countless times over the centuries. Weird shit happens every day, especially when a particular human failing rears its creepy little snout. I'm talking, of course, about obsession. Obsession is a wild card. It can take a seemingly normal, well-adjusted person and turn them into someone even they wouldn't usually recognize. Both of the stories we're about to tell you involve obsession in one form or another. Two very different killers, two very

different motives, two very weird stories. This is our Stranger Than Fiction Grab Bag, Volume 1. Unholy Trinity. So, campers, we're in Springfield Township, Pennsylvania. A pretty community, yet another one of those places where people don't lock their doors. It's also one of those places where crime doesn't happen, which is just demonstrably false at this point. Stop saying that, Keith Morrison. Okay, okay.

I know we just got into this, but bitch, did you just criticize National Treasure Keith Morrison in my presence, because we're not doing that. Oh, okay. That's strike one, KT. Don't make me say it again. So, we're sorry, Keith, we love you. So we're at the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. Wednesday, January 23, 2008, about 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

A cleaning lady shows up to get the church ready for Bible study that evening, and she's surprised to find the front door of the church unlocked, which was weird because nobody else was supposed to be there yet. and when she goes inside she sees that the lights on in the main office. The church had just hired a new secretary, so her first thoughts that it must be her. She must have come in to get the lay of the land on her new job. So she figures she'll pop her head in and say hello.

But instead, she walks in on a nightmare. The first thing she sees is the blood all over the floor, a startling amount. Then she notices the body, a woman crumpled and bleeding on the carpet. So, of course, she's terrified, and she hauls ass out of there and goes next door to call. 911. She tells the 911 operator she didn't get a good look at the victim's face, so she's not sure who it is. She'd run out of there so fast, not sure if the killer could still be in the church.

So, before long, detectives and EMTs swarm the scene. And as they're kneeling down to take a look at the victim, they notice she's still breathing. Just barely. She's been shot in the head, but she still has a faint pulse. So they rush her out to the ambulance, and as they pass her, the cleaning lady realizes that she knows the victim. It's the church's temporary secretary, 42-year-old Rhonda Smith. Apparently, the church minister, Pastor Greg Shrieves, had asked Rhonda to mind the office for a few hours

from Monday to Wednesday that week while he was on a trip. So poor Rhonda is rushed to the hospital where the doctors put her on life support. As word spreads, everyone in the congregation is starting to gather and pray for her. But it soon becomes clear that Rhonda isn't going to make it. Her heart is still beating, but she's brain dead. What made Rhonda Rhonda is gone.

So her family, bless their hearts, make the heart-wrenching decision to take her off life support that evening. I can't even imagine having to make that call. So here we have a young woman who's been a member of this church community for several years now, much beloved, friends with just about everybody shot to death at the church. Who? Why? What was behind this? The first thought was suicide. Everyone in the church community knew Rhonda had been struggling lately.

She was always having money troubles. The church had even taken up a collection to help her a while back. She'd been so grateful she'd gotten up in front of the church one Sunday to thank everybody. She said she felt like the church had adopted her, and that was kind of how the community thought of her, like family. In addition to the money issues, Rhonda had bipolar disorder. In fact, that was part of why she had the money woes. She had trouble holding down work.

Some of the church members also knew something else about Rhonda. She'd actually been suicidal in the past. One friend had actually talked her out of suicide a couple of times before. But there was a problem with the suicide theory, namely that they didn't find a gun at the scene. Now, it is possible that somebody had found Rhonda dead by her own hand and then took the gun to stage the suicide to look like a murder. Maybe to spare the church from the scandal of suicide maybe, or to protect Ronda's family from knowing she took her own life. It seems a little far-fetched, but it is possible. It's been known to happen. But there was another problem, too.

The blood evidence ruled out a self-inflicted wound. The medical examiner found two gunshot wounds to Rhonda's head from a 38-caliber gun. It's unusual for a person committing suicide to shoot themselves more than once. Not completely unheard of, but weird. The more important point, though, was the stippling pattern they found on Rhonda's skin. So if you're not familiar, stippling marks are what happened when gunpowder is ejected from a gun near skin. and a trained forensic tech can tell, based on the stippling, how close the gun was to the victim when they were shot. This stippling pattern was on the outside of Ronda's hand, which proved that she was not holding the gun herself when it went off.

So this proved it was murder. It was a close-range shot that killed her. So, of course, the congregation all freaked out when they found out it was a murder. Church is supposed to be a safe place. So when something like this happens there, it really shakes. makes people up. And pretty soon, investigators started to get reports from congregants of a weird interaction that happened a few days prior to Rhonda's murder. A suspicious man had shown up at one of the church services. The guy had this jittery, nervous energy about him. He just made everybody uneasy.

And then, when they took communion, dude tried to steal the wine cup. So what the hell was he going to use it for? A pimp chalice? Like those beautiful wine cups, like, it's just such a weird thing to steal. He thought it was the Holy Grail. Oh, yeah. Maybe he was Indiana Jones. Oh, my God. They missed out. So it is a weird thing to steal. And then he turned around and said to one of the church members,

huh, this would be a great church to rob. You know, you know, if you were going to rob. a church. Yeah, just making conversation like you do. Exactly what a law-abiding citizen would say right after they bring up the weather. Sure, sure. So this was very interesting to the detectives. Maybe this dude had decided to come back and rob the church, this easy target.

Maybe this was a robbery gone wrong. Some of the church congregants had seen the guy driving away in a white van after the service. So the police put out a bolo on the white van and a man matching the dude's description. Can I just ask, why is it always a white van? Like, it literally always is. I mean, you know this if you watch true crime and listen to True Crime. It's just white van, white van, white van. Do creeps like not like colorful vehicles or something?

I'm just confused. Hey, now, I dated a guy that converted a white van to a hippie hideway. It was also, if I recall correctly, a former crime scene. cleanup van. Oh, that's awesome. And the dude was also the worst, but he wasn't like a creed. Okay. By the way, here's some unsolicited dating advice. Don't date a guy with a former crime scene cleanup van. But if he has one that he's made up to look like the mystery machine from Scooby-Doo, then I'm all over that. Yeah. Yes, please. Yeah, he had it all like, it was, it had like solar panels on top that made it run. Oh, my God. So elaborate. And it ran on like, um, vegetable oil, I think. It was like,

It was pretty sick. I will say. And I said he's the worst. He just, it was not a good relationship. Anyway, I won't get into this. We don't have to talk about it right now. So they looked everywhere for this man or his van, but he seemed to have disappeared in a puff of smoke after that one church service. And soon they started thinking. I mean, nothing had been stolen from the crime scene. So that pointed away from robbery. It's possible a robber might have just fled. after finding Rhonda there, panicking and killing her. But there was something about the scene that felt personal, especially because she'd been shot at such close range.

Rhonda's life revolved so much around the church. Just about everyone close to her was a member. So they started thinking, if this was personal, the killer might be a member of the church congregation. So one by one, they started talking to everybody they could find to talk to at the Trinity Evangelical Church, and one name kept popping up over and over again. Mary Jane Fonder.

Mary Jane had been part of the church family for about 14 years, and she was dedicated to it. She was always the first person to volunteer to help with funerals, weddings, potluck, suppers, all the stuff that makes up the life of a church community. But she was, let's just call it a bit eccentric. One person who knew her well has described her in interviews as the aunt you don't want to sit next to at Thanksgiving, which I think is about as good a description as you could possibly give of another person. It's pretty good. Yeah.

Mary Jane liked to talk, and she was one of those people that talked at you, not to you. You couldn't get a word in edgewise, and if you did, it didn't seem like she was paying attention. She was the kind of person who, unless you love her very much, when you see her headed your way at the Christmas party, you're going to start looking for the closest fire exit. Because you know, if you don't escape right now, you're going to get trapped for an indeterminate period of time and it's going to feel like an eternity. And on top of that, her personality was just kind of brittle. You know, she's just kind of grouchy and, you know. So it's not like Mary Jane was everybody's favorite person, but people did recognize that she cared about the church.

She had a commitment to that. So, you know, they put up with her the way you put up with that kind of grumpy, annoyingly chatty auntie. She'd never married, and she lived alone in her cluttered house ever since her parents died. The church was pretty much the only family she had. Mary Jane had been a fixture at Trinity for about a decade, when in 2005 a new pastor arrived. Now, this guy, Pastor Greg Shrieves, is an interesting character.

Apparently, he'd been an executive for pro-golf for years, and then he decided he needed to get more meaning out of his life, so he left, this, I would assume, very well-paying job, to become a minister. So that's not something you see every day, right? Kind of interesting. So, anywho, Greg was immediately embraced by the church. They thought he was hot stuff. First of all, he was single, and for a small-town church,

community, a single pastor is pretty much catnip. Plus, he was handsome and he had these piercing, like cornflower blue eyes, just, woo boy. And on top of all that, he had a ton of energy. He was new to the ministry. He was all excited to get in there and get his hands dirty and make a difference. And it was just like a shot of pure adrenaline to the church. Just what they felt like they needed, because they'd had a few years in a row with no permanent minister. This dude was the bomb. He was just hot as a pistol. And Mary Jane was all over him. Oh yes. She took a bound herself to adopt Pastor Gregg pretty much right away. He was a pastor, so obviously he

saw it as one of his jobs to be kind to his congregation. Sure. He could tell Mary Jane had some trouble getting along with other people. So he went out of his way to involve her in activities, encourage her to sit at his table at gathering, stuff like that. And boy, did it make an impression. Mary Jane ate up all that attention from handsome pastor blue eyes. She started calling him all the time. And if he wasn't home, she'd leave him rambling voicemails about anything and everything. Oh, let's use these kinds of flowers for the Christmas altar. Or you look so thin on Sunday.

Are you eating enough? Oh, God. Lucky Pastor Greg. It gets better. she also used to show up totally unannounced at his house with full meals she'd cooked for him and she'd want to come in and sit down with him while he ate them yikes so this was you know um kind of a lot yeah but pastor gregg just thought of mary jane as an overly friendly lady somebody with good intentions but not the best social skills but but

But then, one time, she was helping the pastor around his office and they were chatting. And out of the blue, Mary Jane just started spilling her whole life story. And when she was done, she looked at Pastor Gregg and said, you know there's something between us, don't you? Oh, boy. Hello? Hello? Boundary Ben, the Bernie's Mountain Dog. Please come get this woman.

Yeah. And keep in mind, like, first of all, Mary Jane's quite a bit older than Pastor Greg. She was in her 60s, I think, like, mid-60s when this was going on. And he had done nothing whatsoever to give her the impression that he was like into her, not on anybody's planet. So this was just completely out of left field for him. And then Pastor Gregg started finding food in his fridge that he didn't put there. This woman was breaking into his house and leaving him food.

Oh, no. And when he confronted her on it, she admitted it very, very cheerfully. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was me. I can tell you're not eating enough. Wow. Wow, well, wow. Yeah, that kind of entitlement to another person is a red flag. Yikes. And like, the question is, is like, do you eat it? Because no. Hell no. Yeah, and I kind of got that impression from when I was watching him in an interview talking about this, that he was creeped out by it and probably didn't eat. So all this was going on, Pastor Gregg was still settling into his new role as pastor at Trinity when Rhonda Smith and her parents joined the church. Unlike Mary Jane, who had never had an easy

time fitting in anywhere, Rhonda fit in with the church community right away. She was a total sweetheart, and she was fun to be around. She'd hardly been there any time before she struck up a close friendship with a few of the members. And when the community realized she was having dire financial problems, they'll rush to help. Yep. People found her odd jobs to do, made meals for her, and Pastor Gregg offered her a job as temporary secretary for the church. All of a sudden, there was a new kid on the block who seemed to be soaking up a lot of the attention that Pastor Greg had previously been lavishing on Mary Jane. Mary Jane was not a fan. I'm sure part of it was that people liked Rhonda. I mean, obviously liked her, enjoyed being around her, sought her out.

And, you know, Pastor Gregg had bent over backwards to make sure that Mary Jane was included in stuff, but people didn't like Mary Jane the way that they did Rhonda. People described her as smart, but different. You know, the way people say different or they mean like, you know, doesn't just mean different. It's a diss. It's a dig. People used to say that about me, as a matter fact. Right, me too. Mary Jane had been there for 14 years. had volunteered for everything, been there for every activity, cooked meals for the potlucks, helped with the flowers for Easter, sang in the choir, everything you could possibly do.

The church was the biggest thing in her life, and the community had never pitched in together to make her feel welcome. Rhonda just got here, and already she's kind of America's sweetheart, right? And maybe Mary Jane wouldn't have minded that too much, but she very much minded the attention that Rhonda got from Pastor Greg. And her jealousy of Rhonda seems to have scrambled her circuits. She started getting paranoid that the other church members were doing fun stuff without her. One night as she was leaving choir practice, Mary Jane saw a bunch of cars in the church parking lot,

like more than would usually be there at that time. And she got it into her head that the church was having a birthday party for Rhonda and that they didn't want her to know about it. FOMO, campers, it's real. And this was all nonsense, of course. The church members may not have been Mary Jane's biggest fans. I mean, she wasn't an easy person to like, but they weren't the type to do something shitty like that. they weren't having a party that they didn't invite her to. If they'd had a party, they would have invited Mary Jane like they always did. But she became completely convinced that all kinds of

fun stuff was going on behind her back. And a deep resentment of Rhonda started to bubble in the back of Mary Jane's mind. And when the detectives talked to him about all this, even Pastor Greg started to realize that there might be something to this theory that Mary Jane was the killer. He knew she was obsessed with them. It was impossible not to know it. And it was pretty obvious that she wasn't a fan of Rhonda's. They asked him. So, just for the record, were you involved with Rhonda Smith? And Pastor Gregg was like, no, of course not. I was just trying to help her get back on her feet. She was one of my congregation. Nothing more than that. And based on their conversations of the other church members, that seemed to be the truth. So for detectives, this was all looking

pretty sinister. Did this poor woman die because a 66-year-old lady had an obsessive crush on her pastor? Police brought Mary Jane in for an interview. And right away, they got an up-close look at her James Joyce-like stream of consciousness conversation. As prosecutor David Zellis put it, she goes off on tangents. You'll ask a question and you're sitting there 15 minutes later and she still hasn't answered the question. And you have no idea what she's talking about. Yeah, and you know, if it wasn't for the church members' stories about her, I might actually suspect she was doing this on purpose

just to kind of keep the upper hand in the interview and not have to talk about the murder, which is still possible. But she did tend to talk at you and talk your ear off about anything and everything. So who knows? I mean, it might have just been her personality coming out, or it could have been a strategy. They were having a hard time getting her to focus on the case. But they did have a little bit of an age.

up their sleeves. They'd done a little digging, and they knew she owned a 38-caliber gun, the same gun that killed Rhonda. When they asked her about the gun, she admitted she'd once owned it. But she said, I tried firing it once, and it scared me half to death. So I didn't want it around anymore, and I got rid of it. So the detectives were like, oh, okay, what did you do with it? And she said, oh, I threw it in Lake, Knock a Mixon. Oh, wow. Okay, so first of all, that's a fun name for a lake, and I want to say it. Knock a Mixon.

Yep. Knock a Mixon, knock a mixing. Rams with Richard Dixon. Okay. So, now, little tip campers, do not tell a detective investigating you for murder that you threw your gun in a lake. Just let's not do that. Because that's going to tend to make them look real hard at you, I would think.

Yeah, I think it would have been. less suspicious for her to have just kept it at that point. Definitely. Detectives thought she was a pretty good suspect, but I mean, they had no proof. In fact, Mary Jane had an alibi. She said she was getting her hair done that day, and when they checked the sign-in sheet at her salon, lo and behold, there was Mary Jane's name. So they had no probable cause for an arrest warrant. They didn't even have a probable cause to search her house. And that was frustrating because their investigation also turned up another interesting little nugget of information. Yeah.

So thing was, Mary Jane's elderly dad had gone missing about 14 years earlier, and the case had gone cold. And there was a detective, Kim Trial, who had her suspicions that Mary Jane might have been involved. See, in 1987, Mary Jane had been working as a home health aide in 15, when her mom got sick. So Mary Jane, Ever the dutiful daughter, moved back to Springfield to become her parent's caregiver. When her mom died in 1992, her father didn't cope very well. And he and Mary Jane's relationship started to really suffer. Sometimes he'd just wander off and not tell her where he was going. And that drove Mary Jane crazy. According to Mary Jane, their relationship took an even worse hit after two of her dad's cousins visited and harshly criticized the way she ate chicken.

Okay, I'm sorry, but I just really need to know how this woman ate chicken. Like, who eats chicken weirdly enough that somebody feels the need to pass comment? You know, like was she trying to suck the meat off the bones like a cartoon king? Was that it? How did she eat the chicken? Yeah, and that was the driving force of her deteriorating relationship. with her dad. His cousins were mean to her. Girl, what? It's very strange. And then, in 1993, Mary Jane called 911 to tell them that her father had wandered off and failed to come home.

She said he'd gone to pick up the newspaper from the end of the driveway and just never came back. So the police launched a massive search, but they couldn't find him anywhere. Mary seemed devastated. Kim Trial, who was the primary investigator on the case, worked on building a rapport with Mary Jane over the next few months, hoping maybe she would reveal something important. At one point, she'd asked if she could search Mary Jane's kitchen, and she said, sure. And in Mary Jane's freezer, Detective Trial found the frozen body of a small dog. Mary Jane was just like, oh yeah, my dad's dog passed away, and I was thinking I might take him to the vet, find out what happened. She was keeping a dead dog in her freezer.

sure alongside her tater tots great good good plan so detective trial was in her own words quote pretty freaked out yeah yeah i can see that okay aside from having a literal human in your freezer i think household pet is in the running for worse things for a detective to find in your house yeah it doesn't look good and after three months the case of mary jane fonder's missing father went cold Mary Jane had called the police station to complain that Detective Trial was bothering her and asking too many questions and she wanted her to leave her alone. So had she started to sense that Kim Trial suspected her of murdering her father? I think that's very likely. Without any hard evidence to justify charges, though, no body, no nothing, and without Mary Jane's cooperation, the case just kind of fizzled out.

Mary Jane had joined the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church shortly after her dad disappeared. 14 years later, we have the murder of Rhonda Smith. Interesting. Now, was this proof of anything? It was not. But it for sure made the detectives who were investigating Rhonda's murder feel like they were barking up the right tree. Especially when they discovered that Ms. Fonder kept cashing her dad's social security checks for years after he went missing. Red flag.

And as their investigation into her background went on, Mary Jane just kept on going to church, scaring the living bejesus out of the pastor. Because ever since the detectives had talked to him about her, he'd become more and more convinced that she was the one who killed Ronda. He kept thinking about how she'd broken into his house all those times to leave food. And, you know, it had been weird before, unsettling, annoying, but now it was scary. And when he was up in the pulpit preaching,

he couldn't stop looking at Mary Jane. She'd be sitting there primly in the church pew. And every time she'd go into her purse for a mint or something, he would wonder if she was going for a gun. If she was mad enough at Rhonda to kill her, might he be next? I'm guessing the world of pro golf was looking a lot more attractive to Pastor Gregg right about then. Yeah, and after the murder, Mary Jane kept popping up to support Rhonda's parents. She would go to their house with a pie or something and just invite herself in.

Yeah, Mary Jane was very much the type of person to show up unannounced at your house and invite herself in. And stay for four hours, talking about her latest gardening project or something. something when you're in the middle of an intervention for your dad you know but you know it's hard when somebody shows up at your house with food offering sympathy you feel awkward about turning them away so ronda's parents would let her come in they were very sweet people and they didn't know at this point that mary jane was being considered as a possible suspect in their daughter's murder at one point during one of these visits, Rhonda's mother saw Mary Jane was wearing these really old, beat-up shoes, like with like holes in the, in the souls.

And sweet lady that she was, she offered Mary Jane a pair of her dead daughter's shoes. Oh, man. Brand new sneakers. And Mary Jane seemed delighted to get them. So the investigators knew that if they were going to nab Mary Mary, and Jane, they needed to find that gun. So they dragged Lake Nacomixen, and they didn't find anything. The case was quickly going cold. But then, two months after Ronda's murder, the police got a call from a guy who had taken his son out fishing on Lake Nacomixen. The kid had been playing around in the sand on the shore,

and there, partially buried in the sand, he found a gun. How's that for father-son bonding? A 38 caliber, just like the one Mary Jane claimed she'd tossed into the lake years ago. He also found a box of bullets. Now, the gun was most definitely not in the kind of shape you'd expect it to be if it had been tossed into the lake years ago. It wasn't damaged, and it looked. like it hadn't been exposed to the elements for very long at all. The serial number was easily readable, and it didn't take long for detectives to confirm

what they already suspected. This was Mary Jane Fonda's 38-caliber gun. Not only that, but the bullets they found by the lake were the same brand used to kill Rhonda. Soon, firearms testing revealed a perfect ballistic. match. Katie, does this mean it's habeas grabus time? Why, yes, ma'am, it does. Of course, Mary Jane denied any involvement in the crime. There's news footage of them walking her by a bank of reporters in her orange jumpsuit. She looks like grumpy as hell and bored. And when a reporter asks her if she killed Rhonda, she said, no, I loved her. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure you did, MJ.

For all her social awkwardness, Mary Jane had an air of arrogance about her, and nothing illustrates that better than this. At her first court appearance, the prosecutors noticed that MJ was wearing Ronda's sneakers. Wow. Yeah, wow. And Mary Jane's attorney knew he was facing a tough battle. He realized she was an unlikable defendant. He didn't seem to like her much himself. And after a 10-day trial and six hours of jury deliberation, Mary Jane was found guilty of first-degree murder,

and sentenced to life without parole. Her response? She announced to reporters that she was just as much a victim as Rhonda. She said, I'm the second one from the church, as in the second victim of the real killer. Yikes.

A year later, though, Mary Jane actually admitted to her guilt in prison and said she was love and life in there. She said it was God's will for her to be in prison that she felt like it was her destiny. Oh, my God, destiny. This woman is fucking delusional. Your actions put you in prison

ma'am, not anyone else's. Yeah, it reminds me of Mark Twitchell and his bullshit about being an instrument of fate. This doesn't surprise me in the least, by the way. She seems like exactly the type of person that would thrive in prison. In prison, you literally have a captive audience. So if you want to blather all day, you got people that have to listen because they can't leave, and MJ seems to like nothing more. I seriously feel for the women who had to share a cell block with her.

They should probably get a few years knocked off their sentences. So Mary Jane died in prison of cardiac arrest in 2008. And unfortunately, she never deigned to fess up about whatever the hell she did to her father. I mean, we're sure she killed him, right, KT? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. They've searched the property a couple of times that there's been some ownership issues with the house. I think her brother owns it now. And he might not have let them search the property.

The last I saw of it was an article in 2018. Right. But, yeah, I don't see any other scenario that makes sense. her murdering her dad. Yeah, he's not just going to walk off and then never, I mean, they'd find his body if he just wandered off and got confused or something. So investigators are still trying to figure out what happens. And like we said earlier, they know she was cashed in his social security checks for years

and years after he died, but they still haven't found, you know, anything definitive. So poor guy, I hope they do find his body someday. So he can be laid to rest next to his wife, which is I'm sure what he would have wanted. Okay, campers. So moving on to case two. This one is called Haunting, a story of triple murder. This story, possibly more than any we've told you, is a nightmare come true. There are a lot of places we could begin, but I think we'll go first to Townsend, Massachusetts,

December 1st, 1987, where three bodies have just been discovered, one sexually assaulted and shot, two drowned in separate bathtubs. There are bloody handprints on the walls, a half-empty glass of beer on a table. Like I said, it's a nightmare come to life. But it's not really the beginning of the story. It's actually closer to the end. So let's go back a year to 1986 and another Massachusetts town called Pepperel.

The Andrews family were mourning the loss of their wife and mother Deborah, who had recently lost a tough battle with cancer. The daughters, 15-year-old Annie and her younger sister Jessica, were really struggling with the loss as any teenage girls would be. Their dad was working overtime as a bus driver to provide for his family, but it took him away a lot, and it was hard on him to not be able to be there for them as much as he'd like. But the girls were pretty independent and self-sufficient, and they were usually fine taking care of themselves at home when their dad was at work. But, of course, they were hurting without their mom.

That kind of loss for a teenage kid, I can't even imagine. And in the midst of that loss, that desperation to feel some kind of connection with their mom, they got the idea to try holding a seance. You know, like we all did at middle school summer parties, right? Yeah. So they tried it. Lights off, candles lit. They asked their mom to give them a sign if she could hear them.

I doubt they were surprised when nothing happened, poor kids. But then later that night, after Annie and Jessica had fallen asleep and the house was dead quiet, the girls woke up to a knocking on the wall of their bedroom. a loud rhythmic knocking, not just one little clunk. They were scared, but then they thought, oh my God, it's mom. The seance worked. So they sat up in bed in the middle of the night and talked to their mother. And bless their hearts, I hope it at least was nice that first night to feel close to her again.

But after that night, weird things started happening around the house. There were more strange knocking sounds. Objects would move around. Not that they'd see them move or anything like that, but Annie might put her backpack down on a kitchen chair and then later she'd find it in her bedroom, stuff like that. Lights turned on and off. Like Jessica would be sure she'd left the bathroom light off after she used it

and then lo and behold, it'd be on again. After a few days of this, Annie and Jessica realized that they couldn't explain all these things away. Something was definitely going on. So one night they sat down in the living room while their dad was at work and they talked to their mom again. Annie said, Mom, if you're there, give us a sign. Knock on the wall three times. Do people ever really expect something to happen when they do a thing like that? I don't know what Annie and Jessica were

expecting, but what they got was three distinct knocks. Their mom was there. In the house with them. She was answering them. They couldn't deny it. naturally, they told their dad about it when he got home that night. They told him the whole story, the seance, the weird stuff that had been going on for the past few days, and now the three clear knocks. And their dad didn't buy it. I mean, you really can't blame him. No, of course not. I mean, especially not at this stage. Your kids tell you, hey, we had a seance and it worked and you're, you know, you're probably not going to call the newspapers right away. Right. And he knew how much they missed their mom. Sure. He missed her too. Of course.

And to him, this was just their way of acting out a little bit and feeling connected to her. It made sense. So dad was unimpressed, but the knocking continued. And just like in the movies, and only ever happened when Annie and Jessica were home alone. One night, the girls heard some more knocking, but this time, it had a different feel about it. It was aggressive, loud, like someone or something trying to break through the wall. It was coming from the basement.

And, like heroines in every horror movie, Annie and Jessica decided, I decided to check it out. Oh, God. They took a kitchen knife, just in case. And when they got down the basement stairs, which must have felt like it took forever, their blood froze. On the wall of the basement, in dripping blood-red letters, was written, I'm in your room.

Come find me. Jesus, Murphy, that was creepy. How you said that? So, of course, the girls freaked the fuck out, because who wouldn't? This was not their mom. She'd never want to scare them like this. Terrified, they called their father to come home from work. Mr. Andrews rushed home and called the cops.

And quickly, the guy who showed up realized that the red liquid on the wall wasn't blood. It was ketchup. Well, at this, both Mr. Andrews and the investigator figured this was more acting out from the girls. Oh, sure, you know, just a little spot of grief turned to creepy vandalism like you do. But, you know, it actually does kind of make sense, even at this point. I think their dad probably felt like this was their way of trying to get his attention. Just let him know, hey, dad, we're hurting here. We need you around more.

Mr. Andrews decided to set the girls up with a therapist, which was a great idea. I mean, whatever else might be going on, these girls just lost their mom. They need to talk to somebody about it. At this point, the activity had been ramping up for months. It was now fall of 1986. Once the cops were called after the catch-up vandalism incident, the activity died down until December. One night the girls were home alone again watching TV when they heard more knocking coming from upstairs.

Annie's room, it sounded like, or maybe the attic. And yet again, bless their hearts, because they are the bravest bitches I've ever heard of. They decided to go up there and investigate. These kids obviously had not seen nearly enough horror movies. You never go investigate. For Pete's sake, just get out of the house. So anyway, they crept up the stairs, and there in Annie's bedroom, written in red on her mirror, were the words, I'm back.

Find me, if you can. Just... No. And right as they noticed the writing, here came the freaking knocking again, from the wall right next to them. And because they are horror movie final girls, they promptly turned around and hauled ass out of there. And on the way out, as they were rushing down the hall to the front door, they saw a photo of Annie pinned to the wall with a flippin' butcher knife. Oh my God. So they sprinted over to a neighbor's house completely hysterical, of course, and the poor neighbor listened to the whole story. which probably didn't make a hell of a lot of sense to him in that moment.

In fact, the neighbor waited until Mr. Andrews got home to do anything. He just let the girls hang out at his house. So when their dad got home, his first reaction, like any good horror movie father, was total exasperation. This shit again? Seriously? You girls have got to stop this. We've got to get you some help. But they were so upset, so insistent, that Mr. Andrews'

finally said, fine, I'm going to go take a look. You wait here. So he went inside. And very much on brand for the horror movie theme we have going on here, he called out, is anyone here? But nobody answered. So fully expecting to find everything perfectly normal, he climbed the stairs to Annie's room and pushed open the door. There was a new message scrawled in huge red letters across one wall, Marry me. And there, standing in the middle of Annie's bedroom, in front of that big mirror, was a figure from a nightmare. It was a man wearing Frank's dead wife's wedding dress and a flowy blonde wig, camouflage paint all over his face. He was holding an axe. And when he saw Mr. Andrews

standing there, he lunged. Again, may I take a moment to just say, Nya! But thank God, after a quick scuffle, Mr. Anders got the upper hand and bolted down the stairs. And the attacker, seemingly, vanished. Poof, gone. Mr. Andrews sprinted out of the house

and immediately called the cops. And investigators came, they searched the house, and at first they found nothing. It was bizarre. How could this guy have just vanished into thin air? But then, in Annie's bedroom, one of the detectives noticed a part of the wall that looked a little bit different from the rest. And when he investigated, he found a secret door. And when he opened it, he found a man, curled up into a fetal position hiding inside.

Just, Jesus Jones, that's creepy. So, of course, they hauled him to his feet, and as they marched him out of the front door, past the horrified girls and their father, the dude laughed. Oh, of course he did. Creepy horror movie villain laughter. God. And in that moment, Annie realized she knew this guy. It was Danny LaPlante, a 16-year-old guy she'd been out on one date with.

Oh, my God. Apparently, Danny didn't handle rejection well. So let's put a pin in that for a few minutes, campers, and talk about Mr. LaPlante. Born in 1970, Daniel LaPlante was served a shit sandwich pretty much upon birth. His father was physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive. And after his father was out of his life, he suffered abuse at the hands of a revolving door of adults, not least of which was a goddamn psychologist. Oh, my God, that's horrible. Horrifying beyond words.

Danny was unpopular in school due to his creepy demeanor and lack of hygiene, which is a pretty common sign of child abuse. He had dyslexia and hyperactivity disorder, which also led other kids to bully him. Basically, this kid could not catch a break from the moment he was born. Starting in high school, Danny graduated from being just kind of a kid with issues to undertaking criminal activities. He started burglarizing homes fairly often and liked taunting his victims by moving small objects around. Sometimes, he wouldn't even take anything. He's just like making sure people knew he was there. Yeah, and you might not know this, Katie, because you're not super into the Manson case,

but Charles Manson was into this, too. He and his family, aka cult, would break into people's houses a lot. Sometimes they'd steal stuff, but sometimes they would just stand there and watch the people sleep and move stuff around and mess with their heads. They call these little nighttime adventures Creepy crawlies. And if that doesn't make you have to take a Benadryl to get to sleep tonight, I don't know what's going to.

Cheese and freaking crackers, yikes. So, like Charlie Manson and his fam, Danny started breaking and entering pretty much solely to torment people. And I imagine this gave him a feeling of power and possibly superiority as well. When you're lying there fast asleep and Danny is standing over you in the darkness, he has the power of life and death over you.

He could stab you in your sleep, and you'd just never wake up in the morning, or he could just leave and come back any time he wanted. And for a kid like Danny, who's probably felt a complete lack of power and control his entire life, that can be intoxicating. So in 1986, Danny got his hands on a phone number that he believed was from one of the homes he'd burglarized. Now, it's not actually entirely clear from the sources we've seen, whether Danny ever actually burglarized the Andrews home before all this started, or if he just thought that that was the case, or what I don't know.

know, but the number he got his hands on was their number. So he started calling the house and one day he ended up reaching 15-year-old Annie. And they started kind of chatting and flirting. He told her he'd gotten her number from a friend. Annie liked Danny's phone persona. He told her he went to a different high school than she did and he described himself like pretty much every 15-year-old girl's dream date. Popular, athletic, fun. He was the captain of the football team for guys. He was the captain of the football team for God's sakes. Yeah, that's like the platonic ideal of a high school dream boat. You know, he's the door you open when you win at Mystery Date. And if y'all never played Mystery Day growing up, you missed out. That's all I'm saying. So fun. So after a few of these phone calls,

Danny asked Annie out for ice cream and she said yes. I mean, worst case scenario, you get ice cream, right? Sure. But when the day finally arrived and Danny showed up at the door, Annie was shot. Turns out his phone persona was more like a phony persona. Ooh, I like that. He was nothing like he described. He was scruffy, greasy looking. He was a kid that gave her a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. And all through the date, he kept asking her about her mom's death.

How long was she sick? What kind of cancer did she have? How much did she suffer? Oh, my God. Did her hair fall out? Ugh. Yeah, dude. It was creepy.

be. At one point, Annie told him that she sometimes talked to her mom at night. Danny said, well, does she ever talk back? Oh, boy. And that was it for Annie. What a shitty thing to say. This dude was bad news bears, and she knew it in her gut. So when he dropped her off back home, Annie decided to stop seeing or talking to Danny. She listened to her little voice. Yeah, Annie. Good for you, baby, especially at 15, right? So back to the present. The detectives soon discovered evidence that Danny had been living in that crawl space in Annie's bedroom for months. There were food wrappers in there, magazines. He'd really made himself at home. And the crawl space extended all throughout the house so he could see the comings and goings of the family through the heating

vents. Just deal with that for a second. Oh my God. Campers, this creepozoid had been living in the walls of this family's house and watching them and making the girls think that their dead mother was trying to communicate with them. I swear to God we are not making this up. This actually happened. So Daniel LaPlante was arrested and charged with a slew of things armed assault in a dwelling, breaking and entering, malicious injury to a property and armed burglary. God only knows what would have happened to that family if they hadn't gotten out that night. So Danny was first sent to a psychiatric hospital to be evaluated. and then to juvie. Unsurprisingly, the Andrews decided to start over in New Hampshire and started

packing up the house. They probably figured they could never sleep again within a hundred miles of where this happened and who can blame them. Yeah. So life went on for a while. After serving less than a year in juvie, the courts pulled a move that I've actually never heard of before. They decided that Danny should be charged as an adult for his crimes, which basically hit the reset button on the court proceedings. Unfortunately, this allowed his mother to post bond for him and get him out in October of 1987, which had these people never seen the movie Halloween? In November of that same year, because old habits die hard, Danny broke into a house in his

mom's neighborhood and stole two handguns. You remember that we started this case with a murder, right? Yeah, and a little content warning on this. this campers, there's mention of sexual assault and child death. So if you need to skip this part, we understand. December 1st, 1987, Andrew Gustafson came home from work to find his pregnant wife, Priscilla, and their two young children, 7-year-old Abigail and 5-year-old William, murdered. Priscilla had been sexually assaulted and shot multiple times at close range, and the children had been drowned in separate bathtubs.

Oh, God. As we said earlier, there was half a glass of beer on the counter and bloody handprints on the walls. This felt familiar to Detective Lawless, who had worked on the Andrews case the year before, and he knew Danny was out on bond, so he decided to go talk to him. His theory was that Priscilla and the kids might have interrupted Danny in the process of burglarizing the house, and he killed them to avoid getting caught. But I'm not sure if I buy that. The emmo does not fit a burglary gone wrong.

It seems to me like his ammo was evolving. Yeah, I agree. A burglar who's interrupted in mid-robbery is more likely to just run, number one. But if he does kill, he kills to escape. At least that's the case, the overwhelming majority of the time. He doesn't drown children in a bathtub. So that doesn't fit for me either, but whatever. So Detective Lawless and a deputy dropped in unannounced on Danny's house, which was literally right behind the Gustafson residence.

Like there were only some trees that separated them. Danny's mom's reaction was annoyance, basically, that these detectives were harassing her son. But she called out for Danny to let him know they were there, and for some reason, I can't imagine why. Danny didn't want to talk to these guys. So he bolted out the back door and managed to escape through the trees. He was on the run for two days. At one point during those two days, he kidnapped. a woman in her car but thank God she managed to get away so yet another badass woman I love it

people were spotting Danny all over the place and the tip line blew up for the entirety of those two days until finally they narrowed down the area where he was suspected to be which was a lumberyard police surrounded the area and cornered him in a dumpster which I think is poetic because a dumpster is literally where this creepy little shit bag belongs so when they finally cuffed him Danny was laughing hysterically, yet again. So don't you bet this guy would love that new Joker movie? Like, he probably thinks of himself as an anti-hero and really enjoys creeping people out, just blech.

Yeah, and he'd completely miss the point of the Joker as a character. Oh, yes, most definitely, yeah. It's just, don't get me, don't get me started on D.C. right now. Daniel a plant, a.k.a. Daniel Pissant, as I like to call him. Daniel was charged with three counts of first degree. murder. They found a hair on his sock that matched Abigail Gustavsons, and it didn't take long for the jury to find him guilty. He since sued the courts multiple times for violating his rights. Most hilariously, he said they violated his religious rights as a practicing Satanist,

because he should have the right as a Satanist to murder three people. Oh, sure, sure. That's reasonable, right? And he is so the kind of sad little edge lord that likes to talk about sacrificing babies under a new moon or whatever it is. And we should note, by the way, that what he's describing is a Satan worshiper, not a Satanist, which is a different thing, more of kind of a secular philosophy, but whatever. Anyway, shut the fuck up, Daniel. Shut the fuck up, Daniel. It feels good to just say that. Shut the fuck up, Daniel. In 2017, because Massachusetts law says that underage offenders should be considered for leniency, which I actually pretty much agree with. Yeah, I think in many cases I would most definitely agree with that. And because Danny committed the triple murder, triple murder, when he was 17, he was able to request a reduction in sentencing.

He said, and I quote, I do not have the words to fully express my profound sorrow, but I am truly sorry for the harm I have caused. From the very essence of who I am, from the depth of my soul, I am sorry. And that all sounds very pretty. But the thing is, Daniel has been heavily evaluated in prison by a trained forensic psychologist, and that psychologist said that this was total horseshit, that they have never seen. Not one time. slightest hint of remorse from this man for what he did to those families. So the judge appelled Daniel's 45-year sentence. So fortunately, at that point, Daniel's last appeal had run out, and he

will now officially spend the rest of his life in jail. Fue. Now, here's the thing, Campers. I actually feel a lot of sympathy for Daniel in a way, at least for the child that he was before he turned into the person who drowned those children in the bathtub. He was failed, badly, by multiple adults in his life by the system. And this is why it's so crucial to report child abuse whenever we see it or have reason to suspect it's going on. It's why we have to hold our systems accountable for helping these kids when they need it, really helping them. And it's why criminal psychology is so important. Because if we can trace a lack of empathy and the drive to inflict senseless violence back to its origins, then maybe we can figure out a way to stop it. Or better yet, prevent it

before it starts. I wish Danny could have gotten help early on in his life. I wish he could have been spared the abuse. I have a feeling if that had happened, the Gustavsons might still be here today, and the Andrews family wouldn't have had to go through the hell that they did. So, anywho, that's my soapbox for the day. Mm-hmm. So that was a hell of 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, check your crawl spaces, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime fire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Ms. Kiki, Brogan, Morgan, Shannon, and the True Crime Dumpster

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