True Crime Campfire - The Letter: The Murder of Julie Jensen, Pt 2

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

In part 1, we introduced you to Mark and Julie Jensen, two opposite personalities whose initially loving relationship had descended into a toxic mess of abuse and mistrust. Mark had become cold and distant, and Julie felt trapped, afraid that if she tried to leave him, Mark would make good on his threats to take away the kids and “make her look crazy” to the courts. When we left you, unbeknownst to Julie, Mark had just begun a flirtation with a woman in his office, Kelly LeBonte. This mess is about to get worse, campers. Join us now for part 2 of this chilling story.Sources: ABC's "20/20," Episode "A Murder Foreseen"CBS's "48 Hours," Episode "The Letter"https://murderpedia.org/male.J/j/jensen-mark.htmFollow 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. In part one, we introduced you to Mark and Julie Jensen. Two opposite personalities whose initially loving relationship had descended into a toxic mess of abuse and mistrust. Mark had become cold and distant, and Julie felt trapped, afraid that if she tried to leave him, Mark would make good on his threats to take away the kids and make her look crazy to the courts. When we left you, unbeknownst to Julie, Mark had just begun a flirtation with a woman in his office, Kelly Labonte. This mess is about to get worse, campers. Join us now for Part 2 of The Letter, the Murder of Julie Jensen. Kelly was pretty much Julie's opposite.

So Julie was very sweet, gentle, soft-spoken. She dressed kind of conservatively. She focused very much on family and motherhood and being home. Kelly, on the other hand, was described by people who knew her as a party girl. So she was boisterous and sexually adventurous and kind of flashy. And nothing wrong with either of those, of course. They were just opposites. She began this email flirtation with Mark Jensen, in fact, while she was planning her wedding to her completely unsuspecting fiancé.

So, wow, nice life choice there, Kel, classy stuff. And whereas Julie had immediately confessed her one weekend stand with Perry years earlier, and again, this was for years he was making her suffer for this. Like, granted she made a mistake, but we're talking like years and years of constant. like abuse after that and Julie had promised to do everything she could to make it right I mean she quit her job to keep away from Perry and everything Kelly on the other hand was known

to be unfaithful to the men that she dated and obviously to her fiancee now and she seemed to feel no remorse about it whatsoever so Yolo I guess is that it Kelly and Mark was drawn to this woman like a horny little moth to a flame

he emailed Kelly that he wanted to have sex with her on the desk in his office and in a motel room and on his office chair and probably on the moon and in his grandma's driveway and up in a tree and skydiving and every place possible that they could bone he wanted to bone.

And Kelly wrote back that he'd get what he was hoping for if he was a good boy, he's bleh, you know, all that kind of silliness. And, you know, Mark had never forgiven Julie for her indiscretion. So was this revenge or maybe initially revenge? Or was he just real good at double standards? I guess we don't know

what was going on in his head. And as all this was going on, the porn pictures and the hang-up calls were still going on, still plaguing Julie and Mark. And of course, Perry, as he had been on along, was the prime suspect, especially after that extremely ill-advised love letter that he wrote. But soon, in the fall of 1998, cops made a surprising discovery, which was that Perry had moved to New York, like some time ago. So there was no way that he could have left those pictures, at least not the recent ones anyway. So police began to suspect that Mark was the one behind the harassment. Was it a passive-aggressive way for him to just kind of keep reminding Julie, hey, you cheated, hey, you're a slut, hey, you cheated on me, you're unfaithful, you're an adulterist. So that was the police's theory, and they shared their suspicions with Julie, and this is so sad.

Despite all Mark's criticisms and threats and controlling behaviors, Julie, bless her heart, she just couldn't let herself believe that he would do this. This humiliating awful thing. But police, they did not have those feelings. They were done. They told Julie they would not be devoting one more second, not one more bit of resources to this investigation.

If she wanted to keep her head in the sand, she was welcome to do that, but they were done. And interestingly enough, the pictures and calls, they stopped mysteriously, soon after this. Right, as Mark and Kelly's email flirtation really heated up. Well.

That's a head scratcher. I wonder what happened. Yeah, that's a thinker, for sure. We're going to have to ponder that. And then in September of 1998, Kelly married her poor, clueless fiance. And then mere days later, campers, she went on a business trip to St. Louis with Mark. And after months and months of sexual tension, they finally went ahead and had sex. And can we all just stop for a second and think about this?

So especially those of you who are married and monogamous, like, just think back to your wedding day. You know, it's a big day. You're happy. You're excited. You're so focused on your new spouse and your new life together and so happy. And, you know, most of us probably couldn't even imagine cheating on your brand new, freshly minted spouse. But Kelly, oh, Ms. Kelly, just a few days after telling her fiancé, I do, she's telling Mark Jensen, do me. Kelly does not have a problem

No qualms whatsoever And apparently the sex was worth all the buildup Because right afterward Mark told Kelly He couldn't stop thinking about her He fantasized about her all day He thought about her when he had sex with Julie Which just oh screw you for that gross Not cool dude

And this business trip trist Began Mark's obsession Capital Letters with Kelly Labonte Who again let me remind you was newly married just holy shit and when Mark obsessed about a woman apparently he did not half ass it Mark obsessed with his whole ass

whole ass he did not do it by halves he made Kelly tell him about all her previous lovers in great exquisite detail so he would interrogate her like who was he well where did it happen well how did it happen how often did it happen

and how was it and then I kid you not buckle your safety belts hold on to your marshmallows because Mark Jensen, bless his heart, asked her to describe in excruciating detail each ex-lovers schmeckle.

And we are talking excruciating detail. So size, circumference, length, girth, heft, color, cut or uncut, shape, any quirks, any moles, any hairs. He wanted to know everything. And he would have her compare each of these rival dongs with his own. Okay?

I swear I'm not making this up. And it gets better if better is the word I want. Because Mark also had a sketchbook where he drew pictures of these rival weans with all the stats written down. Okay? Just like baseball cards. I mean, the dude was obsessed with. Kelly's X's P-N-E-E. I absolutely need, need to see this notebook.

Do you really? Yes, I need to know, because you know, I need to know things. Were they well-drawn? Because I don't know what's funnier. The idea of very artfully drawn and shaded don't know dongs filling a notebook or just like stick figure dicks. Either way, I need to find out. Somehow, I think that, like, childish crayon doodles would be a little bit funnier than, like, churiscuro.

Is that how you say that? Shating. But they're both pretty hilarious, let's be honest. With the artfully drawn ones, I'm just picturing him sitting in, like, a schintz lounge with, like, a smoking coat and a pipe and classical music playing in the background. And, de, de, de, de, de, de, de, de, de, drawing on my dicks. Sorry, I couldn't even finish it. Oh, man. Bless his heart.

Bless his heart, man. So, campers, it seems clear that we have a deeply, deeply insecure man here. You think? Consumed with worry about his ability to satisfy his mistress. Unless maybe this was a fetish of some sort. Yeah. And this was, like, turning him on. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course.

Yeah. I don't want to speculate too much on this because, to be frank, sorry, sorry, bad choice of words. I'd rather not have to think about this any more than necessary. Yeah. Big old yikes from this corner. And why Kelly put up with this, I cannot imagine. I know, right? Maybe she got off on it.

I don't know. It's bizarre. Maybe it made her feel desired. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But whatever her reasons, she and Mark went from flirtation to full-on obsession very quickly. And they started using code in their emails. Aw.

ID-L-Y meant I do love you. ID-N-Y meant I do need you. ID-W-Y meant I do want you. Yeah, it can mean I don't want you just as that. easily. Why put the do in there? I don't know. The writing teacher in me is like, unnecessarily wordy. Red pen, see me. Five out of ten. Or don't see me.

Yep. So, Mark and Kelly slipped away from their spouses to bump boots and draw dicks as often as they could. And in the meantime, Mark pretty much ignored Julie at home. Oh. She suspected something was up. She was depressed and suspicious, but Mark, unsurprisingly, gaslighted her, and told her she was crazy and paranoid for thinking anything was amiss.

Asshole. And in November, Mark began confiding in friends of his and Julie's that she was horribly depressed and sickly. He told one guy that Julie had lost so much weight she was almost unrecognizable. Prompted by this, Mark's friend told his wife, who was a friend of Julie's, and the woman asked Julie to lunch. And when Julie showed up, her friend was surprised to see that she hadn't lost weight at all. And she seemed fine.

Hmm. She was her usual self. Other friends said the same, that they had heard all these dire stories from Mark, but when they saw Julie, they realized that the stories weren't true. And rather, wavo up and admit what was going on, Mark convinced Julie to see a doctor. Dang, that's some next-level gas lighting right there. and by the way, this is yet another common theme in a lot of the spouse murder cases I've seen where the killer spouse is like priming the pump

kind of like spreading it around that their intended victim is suicidal or really, really sick. We saw it with Dante Satorias, remember? Oh, yeah. She was telling everybody Daryl was suicidal for months and months before she killed him. So I suspect that this is why Mark Jensen was telling people that Julie was depressed and sick because he was thinking of either staging a suicide or passing her death off. off as natural. So people wouldn't be surprised.

Yep. So Julie went to the doctor at Mark's insistence on December 1st. She confided in the doctor about her problems with Mark that she suspected something was going on with another woman, but Mark just kept telling her she was paranoid. The thing was, she still loved the guy for some reason. She didn't want to think the worst of him. Plus, even seven years later, she still felt guilty about the one-night stand with Perry. She told the doctor she was scared that if she tried to leave Mark, he'd label her as

crazy and get custody of the kids. She seemed stressed, but the doctor didn't feel like she was suicidal. She was just understandably upset about her situation. The doctor referred Julie for some counseling. He also gave her a month's worth of samples of the antidepressant Paxil and told her to come back in two weeks and let him know how she was doing. But a day or two after her appointment, after taking the Paxil, Julie had a bizarre reaction. She woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. She was acting drunk, jumping up and down on the bed like a silly 10-year-old. And unlike his usual frosty attitude toward Julie, Mark was really solicitous and attentive towards her that night.

He stayed up with her all night, bringing her drinks, comforting her, trying to. to calm her down. Julie told a friend about it on the phone the next morning, poor baby. Oh, man. She was so happy about it. This was the kind of love and affection she'd wanted all along. She just didn't want to have a weird medication reaction and scare the crap out of them to get it.

That is just so sad. Oh, bless her heart. And it reminds me of a couple of other cases that we've covered. If you remember Martin McNeil, the scary, doctor possible serial killer and remember he had a mistress too and he made her get the facelift that she didn't want to get and then on the morning

he killed her she was telling her daughter dad's being so nice to me and all this and he's been being so much kinder than he's been in forever and then he killed her and remember also Matt Baker this entire case reminds me of the Matt Baker case big time the sinister minister if you haven't heard it in season two

so many similarities it's chilling it's like they work from the same playbook these people So the next morning, Mark called Julie's doctor. He said, look, she's having a bad reaction to that Paxil. She didn't sleep all night. She was wired. He said, look, she's got to have something to help her sleep. And it took some fast talking, but Mark managed to get the doctor to call Julie's drugstore with a prescription for the sleep aid Ambien.

By the way, on what planet does a doctor prescribe a cell? spouse pills on behalf of the other spouse, especially something that heavy. Yeah. I hope this doctor lost their license. Yeah, it happens, but with something like Ambien, you would ideally hope it wouldn't because that is pretty heavy duty. And again, this is just like Martin McNeil. He called her plastic surgeon and was like bullying the guy into prescribing more drugs and

then he used those drugs to kill her. Yeah. So very, very similar. Right. And campers, if you're a regular true crime campfire list, you'll know that this isn't the first time Ambien has popped up in one of our cases. It comes up all the time. It's a powerful drug.

And sometimes it can make people act really strangely. But if it works like it's supposed to, it's a very effective sleep aid. Knocks you right on your ass. So because Julie had been up all night the night before, once Mark brought home the Ambien, she took one right away, hoping to catch up on some. sleep. She lay down in bed and tried to rest, but she started feeling like total garbage, not long after. And all throughout that day, she just got sicker and sicker. Mark stayed home with her. She was throwing up. She couldn't get out of bed. The two little boys were getting more

and more worried. They kept asking Mark, shouldn't we take mom to the hospital? Oh, bless their hearts. One of the kids even saw a neighbor outside that day and mentioned that their mom was sick and he thought she should go to the hospital, but dad said it would be okay. And Mark kept reassuring them. Don't worry, mom will be fine. If she doesn't feel better by tomorrow, we can talk about taking her to the doctor. But Julie didn't get any better. She got worse. And the next day, day three, Mark walked into the bedroom to find his 40-year-old wife dead in the their bed. And we know how that ended already from the beginning of this episode. The police and the DA were suspicious. If Julie had been so sick for three days,

why hadn't Mark taken her to the ER? He seemed upset, but this was a red flag. So was the weird position of Julie's body. Yeah, because remember her face was kind of smashed into the mattress in this very odd way. Yeah. The DA told Mark they wanted to conduct a death scene evaluation. They said, the insurance company will want it so they can pay out on Julie's life insurance policy. And that is what got Mark to agree. The DA noticed that when the police told Mark they would need to take his computer as part of the investigation, though. He hesitated for a moment and seemed uncomfortable.

Oh, boy. But eventually, he did agree. Initially, there was no concrete evidence of foul play. So Mark was allowed to move on with his life quickly. He was certainly not alone for long. Kelly Labonte moved in with Mark soon after Julie's death. She was four months into her marriage, by the way. Oh, my God.

So she left her poor, bewildered fiancé to move in with Mark. Yep. Is anybody having Matt Baker flashbacks, by the way? Big time. Mm-hmm. Like you were saying, this case is like a perfect echo. That's exactly like Matt and Vanessa Bulls. Like, just they immediately, as soon as Carrie's gone, Vanessa just moves right in. New mommy's here. Mm-hmm. Lech. Yeah, new mommy, same as the old mommy.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Everybody just riding off happily into the sunset, right? Right. And I guess that was Mark's plan. Oh, yeah. I think that is precisely what his plan was. And again, I think we said this in the Matt Baker case. And possibly also in Martin McNeil, just how astonishing that is and how indicative of the psychologist. at play with these people who do this because on what planet can you just replace someone's mother you know like oh it's fine they're about the same age they're both pretty they're both female what's the problem for them to think that this is not going to scar their children and that the kids are just going to be fine it's just astonishing it shows such a lack of understanding and

empathy yuck so even though you know mark was moving on and You know, he and Kelly are getting more and more involved. And by the way, again, four months. It's been four months since he started with Kelly Labonte. That's how fast this moved. Talk about obsession, right? While all that's going on, the investigation was still continuing behind the scenes. The autopsy didn't provide any concrete answers at first,

but police and the DA were determined to turn over every stone they could to find out what killed Julie Jensen. And if there was any foul play, they were going to find it. And they really had a suspicion just pretty much for a minute one. It just didn't feel right. And in April of 1999, police brought Mark in for questioning. And at one point, they asked him about the pornographic pictures and all the, like, harassing phone calls that he and Julie had experienced for the seven years after she slept with Perry. And finally, at long last, Mark admitted what the police already suspected, which is that he was the one responsible for all that.

I know, I'm stunned. I can't believe it. Wasn't Perry. It was Mark. And he said, look, you know, it was. my way of getting back at her. It was my way of venting my anger at her for betraying me for seven years for God's sakes. Y'all think he made her describe Perry's wean? Oh yeah. By the way. I bet he did. Oh, poor Julie. God, as if he hadn't punished that poor woman enough. So

police finally had the truth on that and then the cops dropped a little bomb on Mark. They had a little ace in the hole. They handed him a letter. A letter from Julie, written two weeks before she died. And in addition to the letter, there was a photograph of a post-it note with some handwriting on it. Okay? Now, I'm going to read you this letter and this post-it, campers, so. Pleasant Prairie Police Department, Ron Cosman or Detective Ratsenberg. I took this picture, and I'm writing this on Saturday, 1121.98 at 7 a.m. This list was in my husband's business daily planner. Not meant for me to see. I don't know what it means, but if anything happens to me, he would be my first suspect. Our relationship is deteriorated to the

polite superficial. I know he's never forgiven me for the brief affair I had with that creep seven years ago. Mark lives for work in the kids. He's an avid surfer of the internet. Anyway, I do not smoke or drink. My mother was an alcoholic, so I limit my drinking to one or two a week. Mark wants me to drink more, with him in the evenings. I don't. I would never take my life because of my kids. They are everything to me. I regularly take Tylenol plus multivitamons, occasionally take OTC stuff for colds, Xantac, or Emotium, have one prescription for migraine tablets which Mark uses more than I. I pray I'm wrong and nothing happens, but I'm suspicious of Mark's suspicious behaviors and fear for my early demise. However, I will not leave David and Douglas. My

life's greatest love, accomplishment, and wish, my three D's, Daddy, Mark, David, and Douglas, Julie C. Jensen. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And the photograph of the Post-It said the following. Own drug supply. Nicotrol N.S.

Aspirin. Bottle booze. Razor blades. Librium shells. DeFazio. terry patches shells syringe bag hands now this seemed to be in mark's handwriting and this of course is the note that she said she found in mark's business day planner which she said was not meant for her to see and i mean i'm not charlock holmes or anything but when i start to see things like you know um bottle booze razor blades

bag hands, syringe, that's disturbing when we know we have a suspicious death. And the Nicotrol Ns is interesting to me because I've heard of many, many cases where nicotine has been used as a poison. And some of the things on there, like the bottle of booze and the razor blades and the Librium shells, I think the shells probably refer there to like the empty drug capsules that you can fill with maybe something else. DeFosio, Terry, I think that was a friend of Julie's. I mean, bag hands, that's really suspicious.

It sounds like he's thinking about, like, putting a bag over his hands so that he doesn't get, like, fingerprints or DNA on something. Suspish. So, Julie had given that letter and that photograph of the Post-it note with marks, like, what I call murder notes. Because you've got to brainstorm your murder plots, guys, to her neighbors, Ted and Margaret Voigt, just a couple of weeks before her death. She'd given it to them in a sealed envelope and asked them not to open it unless something happened. to her. And that just floors me that they like honored that. Yeah. Because these people had expressed that they'd been concerned about Julie for some time. Like she had been confiding in these neighbors for weeks about her fears that Mark was having an affair and that he'd threatened to make her look crazy

if she tried to leave him again, Matt Baker all over the place. And once she'd said she was afraid Mark might hurt her if she tried to leave him. And the neighbors had actually asked her to leave Mark, they'd offered to give her money to help her get a new place but Julie was just terrified I mean she said look he'll track me down if I leave he'll find me it'll be worse and she just seemed agonized and stuck

kind of which is very much how you get in an abusive relationship I think a lot of people would relate to that who've been in relationships like that so they handed this little packet across the table to Mark in the interrogation room and he seemed let's say a little

shocked I bet he was He sat there in silence He read through it And I imagine at that point He was realizing Oh, I guess little Julie Was a little smarter than I gave her credit for, huh?

Yeah Damn But he denied doing anything to hurt Julie And I mean the letter was creepy as hell And very suspicious But it wasn't proof Of murder, right? So in the absence of a confession

Or anything concrete They had to let Mark go And he was not going to confess he's not the type and soon after that Mark and Kelly announced their engagement aw and that nice because you know he knows what a loyal partner she is

because he knows how she treated her last husband so I'm sure he was real optimistic for their future that just floors me it's like do you not really you don't think she's going to do it to you too okay bless your heart and so they're getting married and the investigation is just kind of quietly chugging along and computer texts at the police

department started digging around in Mark's computer. Remember, campers, you can't really delete anything. Nope. And on Mark's computer, they found. First of all, because I know you want to know this, a massive file of photographs of Dix. Okay. And they were organized into files. So, large, medium, and favorites.

Which combined with the Dix's. sketchbook. This was fascinating stuff. Indeed. Okay. Yeah. Katie's kinkshaming corner time. I figured we were going to be heading over to the kink shaming corner for this one. Yeah. So more than anything, this factoid tells me that he had fetish. It had to be, right? Yeah. He had a favorites folder. Favorites. Yeah. There, listen, dude, there is nothing wrong with liking dicks. Oh, certainly not. but to force your partners to describe others genitalia is extremely weird okay i feel okay saying that that's weird i couldn't pick mine out of a lineup i guarantee you like i if somebody asked me if god forbid my darling husband were to say could you describe like your first boyfriend's wang i i would just

have to make something up which is probably what kelly was doing too unless she has a photographic memory. A photograph dick memory? Yeah. Couldn't pick him out of a lineup. Absolutely not. It's just weird. And that's what I'm king shaming is that you have to sit down and do like a, like a police sketch. Police sketch is somebody else's dick. That's weird. And having the folders with those labels is weird. It's a little outside the ordinary. I would agree with you there. surprised, though, that the labels weren't large, humongous, and gargantuan? Yeah, there were no smalls, I noticed. It was large, medium, and favorites. Favorites were probably the ones with, like, some character, you know.

Like a curve. Yeah. A little bit of, a little bit of a panache. You like the ones with flavor. Oh, God. Oh, gross. I meant to say, um, flare. Okay. So the sexy emails between. him and Kelly were on there too and Lord have mercy I'm glad we don't have access to that full archive because I can't with a dick notebook is enough for me plus an email

exchange where they discuss ditching their spouses to be together and this to me is a little chilling Kelly in one of the emails references being a mom to Mark's boys and this was prior to Julie's death and in one email Kelly says she was planning to divorce her husband and she said quote

I'll divorce mine what are you going to do about yours Yeah, makes you think, doesn't it? And that same night that she said that to him in the email began a shit ton of searches for murder methods on Mark's computer. And based on his internet searches, it looks like Mark considered a lot of different options for Julie's murder, including electrocution, nicotine poisoning.

Remember the Nicotrol NS on the little post-it note? Botulism poisoning, tampering with her car, a pipe bomb poisoning the pool water which is just flipping bizarre and ethylene glycol now campers I know some of you know what ethylene glycol is

right ethylene glycol is antifreeze so Mark darling baby doll you don't search that stuff on your home computer hon go to the library

jeez little bit so good job you nailing it bud So that last search with the ethylene glycol set off alarm bells in the cop's minds because it matched a lot of what was going on in the days prior to Julie's death. So there was first the fact that she'd been acting drunk and jumping on the bed and the insomnia, the vomiting, because the first symptom of ethylene glycol poisoning is that you start to act drunk. You guys will remember that from our bad romance episode with George Blumen Shine where he was given antifreeze and he was acting intoxicated. That's the first thing it does and then you start vomiting and then you just get sicker and sicker. This is exactly what happened to Julie. So the medical examiner went back and tested Julie's tissue for ethylene glycol.

Because you can't just do that on a standard, you know, they don't go looking for those things unless they have reason to. So they did a specific test for antifreeze and boom. They found those telltale crystals that they always find when there's been an antifreeze poisoning. So Julie definitely had ethylene glycol in her system when she died. The ME also found evidence. though, that Julie may have been asphyxiated. So the theory was that Mark may have gotten tired of waiting

for the poison to kill Julie and help things along by smothering her by pushing her face into the mattress. And this, of course, would explain that awkward position of Julie's body and the fact that she was found with her face like smushed into the mattress, which is really not a natural way to be lying, right?

So police also found that a few weeks before she died, Julie confided to another friend, Teresa DeFazio, remember her name was on the post-it as well, that she was afraid Mark was planning to kill her. She told her about the suspicious post-it and a list of drugs that she'd found on Mark's computer, and she said that every time she came into the room,

Mark would suddenly turn off his computer real fast, like if he didn't want her to see the screen, which is always suspicious, right? Whenever somebody does that, you're like, what? What was it? Was it porn? What is it you don't want me to see? So she repeated her worry that, you know,

if I try to leave, Mark is going to take the kids. And I just think Julie was really torn. I think part of her still loved Mark, and I think, like so often we do, she was working really hard to talk herself out of these fears, just like we saw with Carrie Baker. And I think the other part of her knew exactly what was going on and was terrified. And I think that those two sides of her were just at war, and she just didn't know what to do. She was so afraid that Mark would take her kids that he would use his charm to convince the police and the courts that she was crazy, suicidal, and adulterous, even though that was

seven years ago. So I just think when she died, she was in a quandary. And it's so sad to me that she couldn't get out of there. Yeah. Before this happened. It's a total tragedy. Yeah. So Mark was charged. Great news. Yeah. But his defense challenged the prosecution's main piece of evidence, the letter from beyond the grave. They argued that it was. was hearsay, and that because Julie was dead and could not be challenged during cross-examination, the letter should be inadmissible. And the judge agreed. The state appealed, and the argument took years to make its way through the courts. In the meantime, Mark and Kelly went on with their lives. He started a new business. They had a child. Great. Meanwhile, the prosecutors passionately

fought to have Julie's voice heard in court. They argued that Julie's letter should be considered not hearsay, but a dying declaration, an indication of Julie's state of mind at the time of her death. Dying declarations are an exception to the hearsay rule. Yeah, it comes up all the time on law and order. Have you guys noticed that? And finally, the court agreed. And at long last, four years after Julie's death, the cops put the habeas grabus on mark.

About time. Mark went on trial for the murder of his wife in 2002. His defense, which his parents outlined on an episode of 48 hours called The Letter, which we'll post in the case thread for you guys later, was that Julie had framed Mark. For Pete's sake. They argued that Julie had wanted out of their marriage and didn't want to have to share money in custody with Mark.

So she told a few select people that she was worried her husband was plotting to kill her. Oh, God. She wrote that incriminating letter, photographed that list, and gave it all to her neighbors. Oh, boy. Okay, so apparently Julie is gone girl all of a sudden. Yeah, sure. That makes perfect sense. This is such utter nonsense to me.

I just can't even. But according to Mark and his parents, her plan. was then to take just enough antifreeze to make herself sick. Oh, for God. Not kill herself and frame Mark for attempted murder. Sure, Jan. They argued that Julie had gone through nursing school, which was true, though she dropped out before finishing in order to marry Mark,

and it was 18 years earlier. And because she had been through nursing school, she knew just how much anti-phrase to take without killing herself? Okay, so first of all, obviously she didn't know that because, bless her heart, she died. So if that was her plan, she certainly screwed it up. And second of all, if this was based on her nursing training, I would think a nurse of all people would know better than to mess with poison at any dose. So this is just absurd to me on its face. They also argued that the phrase, I fear for my early demise, was a literary term.

term. What? And not the way Julie normally spoke. They thought it sounded phony. Well, I think they might want to investigate what the phrase literary term means, but okay, I would think that when you're in a state of mind like Julie was in, you might not write in your everyday conversational, casual voice, but you know, okay, whatever. And if you're trying to, like, if you're really in that state of mind where you think you might die and you're writing for somebody in the future, I would try to like gussy at my language. Well, sure. You want people to take you seriously. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Why not? So, campers, we won't go into the whole trial because we just don't have the time. But I'll highlight a couple things for you. There were two really important witnesses against Mark.

The first was a co-worker named Ed Klug. Klug testified that one night on a business trip while they were drinking, Mark had confided in him that he hated. his wife and wanted her dead. Klug said Mark told him he was thinking of murdering Julie. He told Kluge he'd been researching how to get away with it. Which we know is true because we've got his computer. And he was dipshit enough to do it on his home computer. And he said he'd already tried once. Wow.

He'd given Julie some anti-freeze and a drink, but it had only made her throw up a little, so he obviously hadn't used enough. Mark said he'd come home to find she'd thrown up all over the floor and he'd had to clean it up with a wet back. It was a really specific story. But Mark said he'd been glad the first try hadn't worked because he didn't have a good defense story at the time. Naturally, the defense's question for Klug was, why the hell hadn't he come forward before Julie's death? Or even after, he'd waited years to say anything.

Yeah. Klug is definitely not the hero Gotham deserves. He hemmed and hawed about his reasons, but basically it seems like he was too chicken shit to get involved. Yeah, I don't so much judge him for not going to the police before Julie died because, you know, it was a drunken conversation and his argument in court was, look, I thought he was just blowing off steam. And I could see that. You know, people often say that. But what I judge him for is not going to the police immediately. after Julie died.

That's the part I judge him about. And it really does just seem like, I didn't want to. I was busy. I think he actually said that in court, if I remember rightly. Oh, it's just really busy. What are you talking about, you jackass? Anyway, sorry. You're busy for all of those hours on all of those days.

I was too busy to help with a murder investigation. Now, it wasn't like he made this story up or that he didn't have corroboration. another co-worker testified that Klug had told her about the conversation after the fact. Now, the second witness was a jailhouse niche named Aaron Dillard. Aaron was in jail for fraud, so he certainly wasn't the most trustworthy dude in the world and not an ideal witness for the prosecutor. Plus, he had gotten his sentence reduced in exchange for his testimony against Mark, which is not an ideal situation, of course.

And they'd been cellmates together for a while. And Aaron testified that Mark had told him the whole story. story of Julie's murder. So Kelly, the internet searches, the abandoned murder plots, the first attempt with the antifreeze, the whole thing. And Aaron said that Mark told him that after three days of vomiting and delirium, he'd just gotten tired of waiting for Julie to die. So he'd sat on her back and forced her face into the bed and suffocated her, which very much fits with the evidence, if you ask me. But for what it's worth, jurors did say later that they pretty much discounted this testimony because of his history as a fraudster and because he got out of jail in exchange

for testifying, which is fair enough. But his story certainly does match the evidence. But there was enough other evidence to convince them because Mark was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. Mark's teenage son made a heartbreaking speech asking for leniency, said he didn't believe that his dad had done anything to his mom and he didn't want to have to live without his dad. It was really, really sad. It's so sad in these cases to see the kids caught in the middle. It's horrible. But, you know, the judge commented on how cruel and cold-blooded a murder this was and said that that, for him, at least, outweighed all the other considerations. So, no mercy for Mark. Now, I wish we could say that it ended there. But in 2013, Mark won an

appeal on the grounds that Julie's letter should not have been admissible. That was always the big question. That was always the big argument in this case. And an appeals court agreed, saying the evidence was emotionally charged and prejudicial and that, you know, because Julie wasn't there to be challenged, it was unfair to use it. Now, the murder conviction was reinstated, though, in 2017, because the state went ahead and appealed that, but as recently as a few days ago, campers, which blew our minds when we were looking at this case, something had just popped up about it when we were planning to do it, in late February 2020, his appeal went through again. So once again, an appeals court ruled that the letter should not have been admissible under the hearsay rule. So Mark, as of this recording, has been granted a $1.2 million bond, and I believe the state has 30 days to decide whether to retry him. So as of now, the case is up in the air. It's not clear whether Mark's going to be able to post that ginormous bond.

I doubt it, because $1.2 million, most people don't have, you know, enough money to post that kind of bond just laying around. So who knows what will happen We are keeping our fingers crossed Because, you know, we think he's pretty much guilty As hell's guilty your cousin But, you know, sometimes the road to justice is bumpy campers We can't make it neat for you if it's not neat So, you know, we'll have another one for you next week

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