True Crime Campfire - The Bad Son: The Charles Family Murders

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

All of us have some tensions and frustrations with our families, and that’s fine. It’s just normal human nature. But for some people, these rough edges to everyday family interactions become absolutely unbearable, an insult to their overinflated sense of importance. And those resentments can seep like poison through every particle of their being until it's all they can think of. Visit crimewaveatsea.com/campfire to join us on the CrimeWave cruise in February! Sources: https://supreme.courts.ca.gov/sites/default/files/supremecourt/default/documents/2-s076337-resp-brief-082809.pdf https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jan-16-me-63999-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jan-30-me-13611-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-12-12-me-13181-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-01-02-mn-15646-story.html Follow us, campers! Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie.

And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. All of us have some tensions and frustrations with our families, and that's fine. It's just normal human nature. But for some people, these rough edges to everyday interactions become completely unbearable, an insult to their overinflated sense of importance. And those resentments can seep like poison through every particle of their being until it's all they can think of. This is the bad son, the Charles family murders.

So, campers, we're starting this one in La Mirada, California, November 7th, 1994 at around 10 p.m. Specifically, we're in the big parking lot behind El Camino High School, where Deputy James Riffelado arrived to investigate a call about a car fire. By the time he got there, the gray Honda Civic was just smoldering under the yellow lights of the parking lot. Still, it was an eerie scene, and he approached cautiously. and when he got close enough to see what was inside, he was shocked. On the back seat of the smoldering car were the naked, badly burned bodies of a man and a woman. After taking a moment to gather himself, Rifalado opened the trunk of the car and discovered a third body,

a young man, clothed, his body much less badly burned. Investigators quickly traced the Honda's registration to Edward and Dolores Charles of Fullerton. They were able to quickly identify the body in the trunk as that of the youngest of their two sons, Danny. And with that identification, they assumed the other victims were Edward and Dolores, something soon confirmed by dental records. There was no question that all three were the victims of brutal homicides. Danny had been stabbed in the back twice and then choked violently enough to break the hyoid bone under his jaw. The stab wounds might have killed him eventually, but his killer wanted to finish him fast and had smacked. a blunt force weapon into Danny's head four times. That was what killed him. Edward had blunt force

injuries all over his upper body, with fractures in his ribs, spine, neck, jaw, cheek and skull. The blows to his neck and skull had killed him. Delores had asphyxiated, either from strangulation or a blow to her neck that crushed her throat. From the contents of their stomachs, it seemed like Danny had been killed several hours before his parents. Almost an entire family wiped out in one night. So, how in the hell did we get here? Well, from the outside, the Charleses looked like a normal, comfortable, upper-middle-class family. Edward Sr. was an electrical engineer at Hughes Aircraft and was an involved father to both his sons, Eddie and Danny.

His relationship with his boys seems to have been normal. A couple of neighbors remember him and Eddie having loud arguments, but I'd still file that under normal for a teenage kid and his dad. Dolores did secretarial work, frequently for attorneys. She worked from home at the time of her murder, but she'd previously had office space in Irvine, and one of her workplace neighbors remembered one wall being completely covered in pictures of her two sons. She was warm and helpful, offering her time to help out at both her son's schools, with Eddie's athletic work and Danny's performances at the Orange County High School of the Arts. As you can probably guess from that, Danny Charles wasn't your typical high school kid.

The high school of the arts was not easy to get into, but Danny cleared the bar and won multiple awards in musical theater, singing, and acting, being named student of the year in his senior year. He said, draw my kid like me. His teachers thought he had a real shot of making it as an actor, which is no small thing in Southern California, where wannabe stars are as common as dirt. After high school, he attended the University of Southern California, studying voice and acting, and lived in the dorms there. He'd already been in a few local productions, and his parents were hugely proud of him. He was 19 when he died.

And then there was Eddie, two years older than Danny. While his younger brother was a star, Eddie was, you know, just a dude, and obviously there's nothing wrong with that. But it's not hard to imagine some resentment creeping in there. Eddie was on the varsity soccer team for three years without ever really standing out, and he wasn't really part of the jock crowd. His group of friends were mainly gearheads who worked on cars. Not an outcast, not super popular, just a dude. His friends' parents liked him.

He was polite and liked to brag about his talented kid brother. He seemed like an easygoing California teenager, mostly. Years later, the LA Times interviewed Eddie's high school girlfriend, who asked that they not use her name. They'd started dating in Eddie's senior year, but like lots of high school couples broke up not long after he graduated. Eddie was not happy. He helped out coaching a youth soccer team that some of his ex's friends played on, and she came to watch them play one time. After the kids were off the field, Eddie shoved her to the ground, slapped her, and kicked her.

Not long after that, she'd left her car parked while she went shopping and came back to find big dents in it. Eddie had kicked the crap out of it. It's not clear if he just happened across her car or if he'd been following her. She was so scared that her mom got a new alarm system for their house. After school, Eddie took classes at Fullerton and Cypress colleges, but dropped out of both and started working as a mechanic at the Sunny Hill Chevron station, devoting a lot of his energies to karate and boxing. By 1994, he had bulked up a lot and was telling everyone he was aiming to win Olympic boxing medals.

but no one in the local fight scene had ever heard of him. And listen, I hope I'm not breaking any hearts here. But if you're not already outstanding in a sport by the time you're 21 years old, the chances of you making the Olympics are slim to none. Like many a macho dork we've covered before, the martial arts stuff was all about image, just a story he was telling himself. I'd guarantee you that Eddie was someone who would confidently tell you

He could beat a chimpanzee up in a fight. Have you seen those videos? There's a bunch of guys online. Okay, good luck with that. He spent hours engraving Ying Yang symbols on all his automotive tools. He told people he was a black belt in karate, which was a lie. He was a green belt, which is halfway to black. Still something to be proud of, but, you know, it just doesn't sound as cool as saying you're a black belt.

For most of the two years before the murders, Eddie had been living with his girlfriend, Kimberly Spear. They broke up in June of 1994, and in 1993, Eddie started seeing someone new, Tiffany Bowen. That's not a mistake, by the way. There were like six months of overlap with the two girlfriends. Tiffany hasn't really put herself out there since the murders, which is understandable, so it's kind of hard to get a handle on her. She was a model and an actress, a blonde, who made her. was a background extra in Baywatch one time.

You can sometimes see her referred to as a, quote, Baywatch actress, which is overstating things a lot. But, you know, it's Baywatch. You have to be drop-dead gorgeous just to be in the background. Anyway, she and Eddie hit it off big time. They got engaged almost immediately, which we know, always works out great. But for some weird reason, not everybody thought it was a good idea.

Eddie's old roommate thought Eddie was just into Tiffany because she was hot, and she was just into him because his family had money. In the few months they were together, Eddie paid for a nose job and breast implants for Tiffany. And the court document on the roommate's testimony has a footnote that says she was attractive before the surgery, which I assume is supposed to just reflect what the roommate said, but it kind of reads like maybe one of the court clerks was smitten.

How dare you? She was pretty before. Thank you for the heads up, the context, I guess. We're not saying she wasn't hot, but he'd had this work done. It was the kind of relationship that might burn out pretty quick, especially because in the fall, Tiffany started college on the other side of the country in Baltimore. This relationship did not have the juice to stand four years of long distance, but for now, they were together. And because Tiffany's parents lived just down the street from the Chevron where Eddie worked, he moved into their spare room when Tiffany had it east. Which is, I'm gobsmacked.

Like, can you imagine? And like, your daughter moves out. And then her loser boyfriend is like, yeah, can I have a room? Weird. At the time of the murders, though, he was just about to move back in with his own family. His mom, Dolores, had just finished repainting his old room. So Eddie wasn't estranged from his family. He was about to move back in with them.

And he still sometimes went over there for dinner. There were tensions for sure. Eddie and his dad were good at pushing each other's buttons. and apparently Dolores didn't really approve of Eddie's new fiancé, Tiffany. It's not clear why, but I'd guess lots of moms wouldn't be super keen on their kid immediately getting engaged to a new partner right after the end of a long-term relationship and then immediately paying for her to get her boobs done. Yeah. We have a reasonably clear picture of life inside the Charles home because Dolores' father, Bernard Servino, also lived there. And besides Eddie, he was soon the only surviving member of the family.

Eddie in particular was close with his grandfather. They were both into cars and mechanical work. Bernard would describe Eddie as his favorite grandson. We know from him that the stresses in the family were fairly normal, just low-key family drama stuff, and that although it seemed clear to everyone on the outside that Danny was the favorite son, there wasn't much in the way of resentment or ill-will between the boys themselves.

On the evening of Sunday, November 6th, Edward Sr., Dolores, Danny, and Bernard sat down for dinner, home-cooked Italian, y'am. Danny was closer with his parents than Eddie was, who was a couple of years older and more independent by nature. Danny came home from the USC campus most weekends. Eddie arrived while they were eating, and there was a normal family visit, no arguments, no drama. Danny left to drive back to USC in his Honda Civic at around 8 p.m., and Eddie left shortly afterward. after an hour or so Dolores Charles started to worry she'd asked Danny to call her when he was back safe in his dorm and he hadn't he always called she was still worried at 1130 when her dad Bernard went to bed he would never see his daughter again when he woke up early the next morning to take the dog for a walk the house was completely empty no sign of either Dolores or edward but out in front of the house on the driveway he

He saw a three-foot-long trail of what looked like blood drops. Witnesses would later provide some pieces of the puzzle of what had happened that night. At around 9.30 p.m. on Lakeside Drive, just around the corner from the Charles House, a woman was walking a friend out to her car when they both heard desperate cries for help, apparently coming from the trunk of a Honda parked across the street. They rushed back inside and called the police, but by the time the officers got there, the car had gone. 20 minutes after that, co-workers saw Eddie pull into the Sunny Hills Chevron station where he worked.

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Learn more at Bloomberg.com. He parked over in the shadows so no one could get a good look at the car he was driving, just that it was a small, light-colored sedan, a description that fit Danny's pale gray Honda Civic. Eddie told people the car belonged to his girlfriend's mom, Gene Bowen, and he'd taken it out to test problems she was having with the brake and clutch pedals, but Gene's two cars were a gold Impala and a red Mustang, neither of which was likely to be mistaken for a civic,

and both vehicles were automatic, meaning they had no clutch pedal. Just after 6 a.m., the neighbor across the street from the Charles House came out, to pick up his morning newspaper and saw Eddie over there rubbing at the driveway with some kind of a rag. He stopped when he noticed the neighbor watching, but after the guy took his newspaper inside, he went to look out the window and saw Eddie go back to trying to wipe something off the driveway. Then he went to work at Chevron, showing up unshaven and looking like he hadn't slept at all, which he probably hadn't. Afterwards, he went back to his parents' house and told Bernard they'd gone to L.A. to help Danny with his car, which was having clutch problems. Lots of cars having clutch problems

in Eddie's version of events. I guess it hadn't occurred to him that after suspicious deaths, a police might want to speak to both his employer and his granddad. Bernard told Eddie he was going to call the police. The only reason he hadn't done it so far was because he thought you had to wait 24 hours to report a missing person. After hearing that, Eddie split. A little while later, at around 9, he got his girlfriend's brother Ty to drive him to the Chevron where the Honda was parked. He'd been driving his girlfriend's truck all day, but I guess this was his dumbass way of trying to avoid a trail between him and the Honda, you know, by involving someone else and driving him straight to it.

Do we need to say that Danny was the smart one family? He really is doing the suspicious behavior tango, isn't he? At 10 p.m., the sheriff's department sent a deputy to check out a burning car in a high school parking lot, and at the same time, Eddie called Ty to give him another ride. He wanted Ty to pick him up at a softball field that was a 10-minute walk from the high school. Later that night, between 3 and 4 a.m., it started to rain. A lady named Leanne Palaccia was currently living in her car, and this morning was using a flashlight to go dumpster diving in an industrial

part of Fullerton, close to the railway tracks. She found a big rubber-made container, and inside it were clothes and a towel, all bloody, as well as some sunglasses, jewelry, and a large 16-inch wrench. Leanne took the glasses and the jewelry as well as a pair of jeans that weren't too bloody, and took the wrench as a gift for a friend. On the wrench was an engraved yin-yang symbol, the mark Eddie put onto all his tools. And let's just pause to consider how colossally dumb it is to dispose of your highly distinctive murder weapon, not only in the same place as the bloody clothes of your victims,

but in the same sealed container. And again, sealed container. Honey, you're preserving the evidence for them. Bless your, I mean, you know, you really shouldn't just be tossed in the shit in a dumpster in the first place, but at least if you just tossed it in there, there might be some kind of contamination of the evidence where it wouldn't be usable, but all. Oh, no, we've got to vacuum seal the shit in a freaking big old rubber made tote. So it's preserved perfectly.

Well, it was easier for him to just throw the whole bin in there rather than dump it out or take anything out or separate it. Easy as convenient. Easy is what you want, really, when you're, that's the priority in a case like this. When you're committing a murder and trying to get away with it. Yeah. And it was raining. Like, it would have destroyed. Oh, my God.

He's so stupid. Leanne lived a kind of life where you avoided contact with the police if you could, but in a couple of days she read about the bodies found nearby in a burned car and she came forward. Not before Trash Day, though. When the cops went to try and find the rest of the evidence in the rubber made container, it was gone, most likely already compacted in a landfill. But by that time, Eddie Charles was already behind bars.

With clear evidence of violent death on all three bodies, and equally clear evidence of arson on the Honda, investigators knew they were looking at a triple homicide and a clumsy attempt to destroy any evidence. They moved quickly, and the day after the burning car had been found, they had already uncovered most of what we've shared. They traced the car and got the chronology of the past couple days from Bernard, then interviewed neighbors,

including the one who told them he'd seen Eddie trying to clean up the driveway. They connected the murders to the nearby 911 call about somebody yelling from the trunk of a car and interviewed Eddie's co-workers at Chevron. And of course, they spoke to Eddie. He told them he'd spent Sunday night with the Bowens, his girlfriend's family watching TV at the time the burning car was found. Well, that was easy to check, so they did.

And the Bowen said, Mm-mm. And when the police spoke to Ty, they learned that he'd picked Eddie up very close to the location of the car. Eddie had actually known Ty a lot longer than he'd known his sister, Tiffany. The two of them played youth soccer together, And I guess Eddie was relying on the unbreakable bonds of team spirit to keep Ty's mouth shut. I mean, is a triple homicide such a big deal compared to that one time you went into overtime against the Costa Mesa Mavericks?

Turns out, yeah, it is. And Ty came clean immediately. You know, something, something triumphs defeats, epic highs and lows of high school football, blah, blah, blah. But seriously, did he think his girlfriend's family would cover for? for him during a triple murder investigation? God, this guy is going into our dumbassery Hall of Fame. Eddie was feeling the heat, so he did the same as many people in a jam and turned to a spiritual advisor.

Well, as close to a spiritual advisor as he had, which was a karate instructor. This was a guy named Philip Axelson, who Eddie just called Sensei. Philip Axelson was highly accomplished and seems like a good guy, creating a special self-defense program for people with physical disabilities. But I'm sorry. I can't hear anyone being called Sensei without thinking of the guy in Napoleon Dynamite. Bow to your Sensei. You know, communication with your karate instructor is, of course, privilege. You know, your doctor, your lawyer, your priest, your spouse, and your karate instructor. I don't know. I might be wrong about one of those. Anyway, Eddie called up Sensei Phil and said, I think I did something terrible.

I think I killed my family. What you think? What's the, like, what are you talking about? Such a weird phone call. Philip told Eddie to get an attorney and then told him he was in the middle of a meeting and would call Eddie back. Instead, he called the cops right away. All of this was more than enough for a warrant, but young turnips like Eddie are just the kind to go tearing off through backyards when the cops try to collar him. So before they actually put the habeas gravis on him, they told Eddie they were putting.

officers all around his parents' house to keep reporters away, seen as the murders had become a big story. Eddie, bless his heart, believed them. Again, Danny was the smart one. Eddie's girlfriend Tiffany had flown back from Baltimore to be with him during this trying time. The two of them walked out of his parents' house at around 8 p.m. on Wednesday, less than 48 hours after the burning car had been discovered, and Eddie was absolutely astonished to be arrested for the murders of his parents and brother. And he wasn't going anywhere. Criminalist Heidi Robbins found some minor blood evidence in the foyer,

presumably from bodies being transported out to a car, and a whole mess of blood evidence in the bedroom, on a desk and nightstand, on the side of the bed and mattress, on the headboard and the wall above it, and on the back of the door. It seemed clear that this was where Dolores and Edward Charles had been killed by their son.

most likely his mom had been attacked while she slept with a blow to her neck that crushed her throat. Sensei Philip Axelson testified that Eddie had been able to break three one-inch boards with his hands and was capable of inflicting that kind of damage. Then Eddie had beaten his father to death with a blunt weapon, at least five times around the head and neck, and more times on the torso and back, which is overkill. That's a lot of rage, right? There were no defensive wounds.

it seems likely Eddie struck his father while he was asleep or just waking up, and the ferocity of the assault was all about his own anger rather than overcoming someone who was fighting back. The weapon was probably not the yin-yang wrench recovered from the dumpster. That had blood and hair on it, but only Danny's, and Danny had been killed before his parents. Eddie carried his parents' bodies out to the car and went back inside to make a weak attempt to clean up the evidence with towels.

In the dark, he'd missed the drops of blood on the driveway, but a rainstorm had washed that away before Eddie's arrest. Investigators were able to piece together what they thought had happened. After Danny had driven off on Sunday night, Eddie had caught up with him, somehow got him to pull over. It wouldn't have been hard when he was Danny's brother. Their dad had been sick. Maybe Eddie just said he needed to talk about that.

Then Eddie stabbed his brother and put what he thought was his dead body in the trunk of the Honda. What happened next is fuzzy, but I'd guess Eddie went to park his truck somewhere before walking back to drive the Honda, and this is when Danny yelled for help from the trunk. Eddie drove him somewhere quiet near the Chevron station and beat him to death with the Yin Yang wrench. Later, after Bernard had gone to sleep, Eddie had gone back and killed his parents. It was a decent-sized house, and Bernard's room was at the opposite end from the master bedroom. He slept through the whole thing. If he hadn't, I'm sure his favorite grandson would have killed him too.

Eddie was apparently calm and pleasant when he was first booked into the Orange County Jail, but that didn't last long. It's jail, not fun time, happy camp. A couple of weeks after his arrest, Eddie had decided he wanted out of there, so he called in a deputy to tell him a story. The dinner at his parents' house on Sunday had been deeply uncomfortable, his mom and dad bickering with Danny and Bernard getting upset at all the fighting. Eddie had left them to it, then come back at around 11.30 p.m.

He'd found a bloody ball peen hammer in the kitchen and the dead bodies of his mother, father, and brother in his parents' bedroom. He'd gone looking for Bernard and found him in his bedroom, covered in blood. Eddie hadn't killed his family. His grandfather had. But Eddie loved his pop-pop, so he decided to try and make sure that Bernard got away with murdering Eddie's entire family. He helped Bernard shower, then set about cleaning up the seen. Okay, raise your hand if you believe any of that. Okay, if your hands in the air right now, you got to go to your room and stay there. Okay, you do not get to play with other people today. You got to wear the stupid helmet. Yeah, you wouldn't find this much horseshit at the Kentucky Derby.

But this was the play Eddie chose. And a couple days later, he called Bernard and asked him to get with the program. Bernard later testified that Eddie had said, Grandpa, I'm 22 years old. I'm a young fellow. You're an old man. Perhaps you should take the blame for this. You've lived your life.

Just stunning, stunning amounts of entitlement. Bernard, by the way, was 73 years old, which I guess when you're 22 can sound like one step removed from the cryptkeeper. But come on. You've lived your life, rude. The absolute audacity and Dululu. like he thought that he might have a shot at this. Oh my God.

Bernard got bad, cussed Eddie out and hung up. Eddie called back a couple of minutes later and whined that Tiffany was pregnant and Eddie needed to get out so he could take care of her. Okay, Eddie. I'm sure you'd be husband and father of the year. Bernard somehow got even madder and slammed down the phone. By the way, Tiffany was not pregnant. Eddie just made that up.

He's such a little shit weasel getting all pissy because his granddad won't take a triple homicide rap for his specialist little boy. You killed his daughter, Numb Nuts. If Popup ever sees you again, he's kicking your ass. Eddie apparently did not enjoy getting yelled at by his granddad because before long, he was trying to have Bernard Kilt. For God's sake. Something you can rely on is that little rich kids who think they're tough, will not keep their damn mouth shut when they're in jail. They've got too much to prove.

Eddie was soon chirping to a cellmate that he needed help with a job, and the cellmate was like, uh, yeah, dude, that's fascinating. And then went straight to the authorities. What do we say? Prison buddy's not your buddy. A few days later, Eddie got a message from a mysterious stranger on the outside, an ex-con who had heard that Eddie needed some work done. This was actually Sheriff's deputy Steve Howison,

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You've got your favorite blanket, a freshly poured drink, and a cold case burning a hole in your streaming queue. You're not just watching true crime. You're running the investigation from the comfort of your couch. Welcome to Murder She Watched, the podcast where we recap, dissect, and slightly overanalyze some of the best and craziest true crime documentaries on our favorite streamers. Did the spouse do it? Why is the shady neighbor wearing leather?

gloves in July. Why did this guy agree to be interviewed in this documentary? We ask the tough questions that you're often just screaming at your TV. So every week, we break down the twists, red herrings and absurd documentaries that have kept you up all night. It's high drama, cozy vibes, and absolute couch detective energy. Grab your throat blanket and hit subscribe. Search Murder Murder She Watched wherever you listen to podcasts and let's solve this thing together. Howison visited Eddie in jail, the two of them communicating by phone through a glass partition, with the important information on handwritten messages held up against the glass. Real smooth.

Real good. The plan was, predictably, very stupid. For the princely sum of $150,000, the initial idea was for Howison to burglarize the Charles home clumsily enough to wake up Bernard. When Bernard called the cops and Howison was arrested, he was to claim he was a professional hitman who had killed Eddie's parents and brother and wouldn't receive his full payment until he'd killed Bernard as well. Oh, he wants him to take the fall from the murder, too. Well, we. Okay. It's, I mean, is your whole life worth $150,000? It's bonkers, man. This story had more holes in it than a colander made of Swiss cheese. Why was he robbing the house if he was a hitman? Who had taken out this

contract? And what kind of assassin would meekly surrender as soon as his 73-year-old Target woke up. That wrinkle was quickly ironed out anyway, as Eddie quickly decided he wanted Bernard dead. Howison held up a note with grandfather dead written on it, and Eddie nodded. Howison asked how Eddie wanted it done, a gun, a knife, or a bat. Eddie chose the bat because a gun would be too loud. Do him in his sleep, Eddie wrote. Oh, boy.

I'm guessing the plan was for Eddie to either burn these notes or flush them down the toilet, but as soon as the conversation was over, Howison's partner rushed into the visiting room and grabbed them from Eddie's side of the glass. Eddie also tried out another version of the story where he had blamed Bernard for the murders, this time saying that when he'd gone back to the house at 1130 and found his family dead,

there'd been a typed note in an envelope telling him to clean up the scene and if he went to the cops, the killers would also kill Tiffany and her whole family. Yeah, that seems like something that would happen. why not? And if you're thinking, why would the killers leave a note specifically for Eddie when he'd already left the house and presumably gone home? Come on, you know, don't stress the small stuff. Okay, of course it's stupid. It's something Eddie Charles said. Next, Eddie tried to scare himself up an alibi.

He wrote, how about this? How about this? Sunday night, I was with a girl from 7.30 p.m. until 7.30 a.m. day when she dropped me off at my house. She picked me up the night before at my house in a blue four-door car. The only thing is, who was this girl? Where did you meet her? Why didn't you say something about it before? Who? I don't know. Find someone who will say they were the girl. Where? I met her at the station getting gas. Why? Because I didn't want my old lady to find out. What? Well, like I said, I couldn't let my old lady find out. How? I'm incredibly stupid. The old lady, Tiffany, was maybe 19 or 20 years old, by the way. He talks like he's like a hell's angel or something. She'd initially stuck with Eddie after his arrest. I mean,

it's hard to believe someone you love could do something like this, and he was insisting to her that he was innocent. But he couldn't keep his story straight about what had happened when he spoke with her during her jail visits, and she quickly came to believe he might actually be a murderer. She dumped his dumbass a couple weeks after his arrest, but Eddie wasn't single for long. At Chevron, he'd worked with a lady named Jill Robeson, who was married and still with her husband at the time, although they'd be separated by the time of Eddie's trial. There's no record of this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some casual workplace boinkin going on, just because Eddie seems like the type. But whatever the previous nature of their relationship, Jill didn't get really starry-eyed over Eddie until his

arrest for the brutal murders of three members of his own family. You know, it's just what every little girl dreams of, right? Someday, my friends will come. She started writing him letters, and he responded, we don't know what was in most of these letters, but I'm guessing they were uncomfortably horny. Court documents described Jill as Eddie's girlfriend, and by the time the trial rolled around, and she would testify that she was in love with him. Which brings us back around to Eddie's alibi story. He casually mentioned to Jill that it would be good for him if someone could say they'd been with him on the night of the murders,

and Jill was immediately all in. What are you talking about? She said, I was with you. Bless her heart. She understood the assignment. Eddie didn't actually want her to make this claim to authorities. As we'll see in a moment, she was about as far from a reliable witness.

as you could get, and Eddie knew this, but they kept talking about how useful it would be if there was a woman who'd alibi Eddie for the night of the murders, so Jill just decided, fuck it, she's going to do it herself, telling both prosecutors and Eddie's own defense team that they'd been together when the killings occurred. This was obviously not going to help Eddie out as much as either of them hoped it would. Other people at Chevron had seen Eddie without Jill on the night of the crimes, and Tiffany's brother Ty had driven him around. Jill's testimony would be shredded at court. A former close friend testified that Jill was not a truthful person,

and she'd seen her lie a bunch of times, including to her husband. A co-worker at Chevron said more or less the same thing, that Jill was known as someone who lied all the time and added that most of the time she was at work, she'd been drunk off her ass. She sounds like a peach. Jill's dad testified she was a truthful person, but then had to concede that he'd previously told an investigator that she lied continuously. Imagine being in court and everyone you know gets up on the stand and calls you a liar.

I know the prosecutors had a blast finding those bonuses. Oh, my God. They were having the time of their lives. Jill wasn't testifying for the defense. They knew better than that. She'd been called by the prosecution because although Eddie hadn't told her to lie for him, their frequent conversations about how good it would be for him to have an alibi showed a consciousness of guilt on his part. There was one really fuzzy part in the prosecution's case against Eddie,

and I'm sure plenty of you have been wondering about it, too. Motive. The fact is, there was never a clear line drawn between cause and effect. No, Eddie did X so that he would get Y or anything like that. It looked like Eddie was just such a thin-skinned little prick that normal family tensions and boiled into murderous petty hatred. But you don't need to show conclusively why someone committed a crime, just that they did. Eddie was convicted for the murders of his parents and brother, and the trial moved onto the penalty phase, which was kind of a shit show. The first penalty trial was split 11 to 1 in favor of the death penalty, which meant a retrial of the penalty phase. The second trial sentenced Eddie to death, but that verdict was thrown out after a juror admitted to

consulting someone in his church about how he should vote. Trial number three was another 11-1 deadlock, but in October 1998, the fourth trial finally sentenced Eddie Charles to death. With his fate apparently sealed, Eddie tearfully admitted full responsibility for his family's deaths, and still couldn't get beyond making himself the main character. I died the same night as everybody else, he sobbed. He still couldn't provide an explanation for why he'd killed them. Eddie Charles is still in prison and still under a sentence of death.

California currently has this weird situation where people can still be sentenced to death, but an executive order from the governor prevents executions from actually taking place. There will be a new governor next year, so who knows what will happen to Eddie and the hundreds of other inmates in California who are theoretically on death row. I mean, y'all know our position on that. We'd rather see him sit his dumbass in prison for the rest of his life and think about what he did. So why'd he do it? I'm interested to hear what you guys think. Please post on our social media.

Yeah, I mean, obviously we can't know for sure. I'm sure he would inherit some money, but that doesn't seem to have been like a priority for him. But he reminds me a little of Chris Pritchard. Do you remember the Dungeons and Dragons, the murder of Leith von Stein? And Christopher Porco, too, for that matter. Young men who killed their families

because they felt like they were failing at life. We've talked before about how, narcissist ego death is death. There's no difference for them. So any threat to their image of themselves is just unbearable, has to be squashed. I think Eddie was probably insecure from a young age. His brother was the family golden boy, not him. Eddie bragged about his martial arts skills, but he knew he wasn't nearly as advanced as he said he was. And the people who know you better than anybody else in the world are your family. They know you're not a black belt. They know you're not headed to the Olympics. And rather than try to be okay with that, with just being himself and going after whatever

made him happy, Eddie opted to snuff out the people who could see right through him. Through the facade of the karate champion to the insecure boy underneath. Now, before we go, don't forget about our true crime cruise, Crime Wave 2.0, February 8 through 12, 2027. If you want to come to the Bahamas with us and some of the biggest true crime and paranormal podcasts in the world, like case file, unexplained, last podcast on the left, scared to death, and true crime garage, here's what you got to do. Tickets are on sale now, but they are almost sold out. So if you want to go, make sure you get over to crimewaveatsc.com slash campfire and book your cabin ASAP.

You'll get $100 off plus a private meet and greet with us. And the great thing is you can pay for it all at once or you can set up a payment plan and pay it off over time. So get on it all. That's CrimeWaveatc.com slash campfire. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire.

And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely Patreon supporters. Thank you so much to Kate, Calford, Vicky D, Gaya, or Gaya, I'm sorry if I butchered it, let me know, and I'll do it again. and Denise. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And when you join the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker, a rad enamel pin, or fridge magnet while supplies last, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us. at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.

Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Tenless? Then you're going to love our podcast Disney Countdown. Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial. And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, aka Jerry, Jerry.

And we are the host of the hit Disney podcast Disney Countdown. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we Countdown our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show, right, Jeremy? Ooh, girl, you know we are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts. You didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life.

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