True Crime Campfire - The Sausage Kingdom: The Crimes of Stuart Alexander

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

I’m sure most of you have heard some variant of the phrase, “nobody wants to see how the sausage gets made,” which refers to the often messy procedures behind getting things done in, say, business or politics. But it’s also a literal truth that most of us don’t want to see how sausage gets made, and that goes double if the person making it cuts corners and develops a wildly aggressive attitude to any kind of government oversight. Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit ⁠badmagicproductions.com⁠ for more info and to buy tickets. Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027. Sources: LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-oct-18-mn-38382-story.html SFGate: https://www.sfgate.com/news/baycitynews/article/sausage-king-guilty-of-killing-3-meat-2641380.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/baycitynews/article/girlfriend-says-sausage-king-wanted-to-grind-up-2758522.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/oakland-sausage-factory-secretary-tells-of-fear-2721223.php East Bay Times: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2004/06/10/survivor-recalls-shooting-spree-in-sausage-factory/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2004/04/29/ex-meat-inspector-describes-factory/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2004/05/21/linguisa-not-safe-to-eat-expert-says/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160527100913/http://www.mindfully.org/Food/sausage-king.htm KCBS Radio Podcast, “The Sausage King” 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/TrueCrimeCampfire https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/ Facebook: True Crime Campfire Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire Email: [e-mail] MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. I'm sure most of you have heard some variant of the phrase. Nobody wants to see how the sausage gets made, which refers to the often messy procedures behind getting things done in, say, business or politics.

But it's also a literal truth that most of us don't want to see how sausage gets made. And that goes double if the person making it cuts corners and develops a wildly aggressive attitude to any kind of government oversight. This is the sausage kingdom, the crimes of Stuart Alexander. So, campers, for this one, we're in San Leandro, California, June 21, 2000. In the small factory at the corner of Williams and Washington, shots rang out. The bodies of three health inspectors hit the concrete floor. A moment later, Stuart Alexander, the self-styled sausage king of San Leandro, came bursting out of the factory doors, a gun in each hand, screaming,

I'm going to get you to the fourth health inspector, who took off running down the street as bullets zipped through the air around him. It was a scene of total madness and terror, and like we do any time something like this happens, people wondered how the hell did we get here? When you think of California, chances are you think of the coast, the beaches and big cities, but it also has an enormous agricultural industry, bigger than that of any individual European nation. A lot of food gets made there, which leads to particular towns and regions specializing in specific things.

And that leads us to San Leandro, a small Bay Area city that proudly declares itself the sausage capital of California. I have to wonder what it is about sausage that lends itself to cruxie. creating like land and royalty. I haven't heard of any corn chip dukes or duchies, but we've all heard of Abe Froman, sausage king of Chicago. Yeah, Chicago did have a real sausage king at one point. I don't know if that's his name. I just remember that from the Ferris Bueller movie, but Chicago did have a sausage king, and he was heavily suspected of having murdered his wife. I don't know if he was ever convicted for it. But the theory was that he murdered her and put her in the sausage.

So, yeah, it's a storied history of sausage royalty. A lot of Portuguese immigrants settled in the East Bay and brought with them the Linguisa, a pork sausage made with garlic and paprika, which soon caught on big time in local markets. Small, family-owned sausage factories sprang up in the city. Among them, Santos Linguisa, founded by Pia Santos and and her husband Antonio in 1921. First from their basement, then when demand grew,

they bought the property next door and turned it into a factory. Santos Linguiso was a staple of the local sausage economy. Sorry, that's just such a funny phrase. The local sausage economy. And really took off from the 1950s onward

when Pia's grandson Herman took over the operation. Herman Tweedy Alexander had been born in San Leandro, and grew up in the Santos Linguisa factory just as much as he grew up at home. He was a larger-than-life character, expelled from high school for getting into fights, than joining the army and learning to speak fluent Japanese. By the time he took over the family business from his father,

Tweety was kind of a fancy man, snazzy suits, shiny shoes, a pencil, mustache, and slicked-back hair, always smiling and with a twinkle in his eye. He looked like he was halfway between a game show host and a mid-list. level wise guy in the Corleone family. The business flourished under Tweedy. He had a Rolls-Royce, a Jaguar, Lincoln, an RV, and a boat. It's easier to make big money if you think of paying taxes as something that happens to other people. Tweedy did all his business in cash, which made it easier to hide things from the government and made sure that all his properties were seriously undervalued so as to slim down the property taxes. Every night he'd be out eating.

or gambling with judges and politicians, people he'd grown up with and played golf with every weekend. At Christmas, he'd throw big parties at the factory, open to the whole town, with free food and beer and a jazz band from San Francisco. He was an important, popular man in San Leandro. Tweedy and his wife Shirley had three boys, Stefan, Stewart, and Stanley, and the family lived in a big house on Bancroft Avenue. Tweedy wasn't there much, and his parenting didn't go much further than either laughing at his kids or smacking them around the head. Great. Given the little sketch we've given you of Tweedy, does he sound like the kind of guy who always keeps his pants on when he's away from home? Yeah, Tweedy did not always keep his

pants on. He screwed around every chance he got, running off to Reno with his buddies for gambling and girls. He and Shirley got divorced, apparently with a pretty loosey-goosey custody arrangement. Tweedy bought surely a house as part of the divorce and the boys moved in with her but after a year or so the oldest, Stefan, decided he preferred staying with his dad and just moved back in. The other two boys followed within a few weeks.

Tweedy didn't have any interest in looking after three teenage boys so he asked an old girlfriend, Betty, to move in and basically be a surrogate mother. His current girlfriend, Peggy O'Neill, said later, women loved him. All his exes loved him. Christ, even men loved him. If you were Tweedy's girl, you were somebody. On the other hand, there were all these women that you knew he was going out with. I'm sure Betty did her best, but the boys ran wild, especially the younger two, Stuart and Stanley. One of our main sources for this story was Bud Hazelcorn's article for San Francisco magazine, The Sausage King, and a childhood friend of the boys told him, it was nothing for Stuart or Stanley to steal from you. They'd come in your house and take things, your basketball or your bike. If you fought back, you had Stefan to contend with. No matter what they did, if you complained, you'd pay double with your fists.

This was very much a 1970s macho neighborhood, and Stefan acting as an enforcer for his shitty younger brothers didn't diminish anyone's opinion of him. It was just what you did for family. Stefan was popular, a friendly, good-looking kid, very much like his pops. Tweety thought so too. He meant for Stefan to take over the business after him. But it wasn't to be.

Stefan loved motorcycles. In May of 1977, when he was 18 years old, he was out riding one day on Lake Chabit Road, a windy road by the shoreline. He got in a wreck, a head-on collision with another vehicle. He was in a coma for two weeks before he died. Tweedy was inconsolable and barely left his house for a year. He told his girlfriend Peggy,

I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but he was my favorite. When Stefan died, I died too. Oof. Yeah, oof, all around. The other two kids, Stuart and Stanley, each had their problems. The trouble they'd gotten into when they were young was all Stewart's fault. Stanley was a sweet-natured kid, but he was one of life's natural followers. He'd soon develop addictions to both alcohol and heroin,

but he got clean when his parents sent him to a rehab center in Hawaii. Stewart, by contrast, was a teetotaler and a hard worker at the factory where he'd been employed since he was a kid. Maybe too hard of a worker. He could get hyper-focused and intense, and he had a hair-trigger temper. You could piss him off just by looking at him. So, unsurprisingly, Stuart and Tweedy argued all the time, mostly because that was just the kind of person, Stewart was, but in particular, he was always bugging Tweedy to tell him the secret recipe for the marinade that made the Santos Linguisa sausage so popular. The recipe wasn't complicated. It was just wine vinegar, paprika, garlic, salt, pepper, and water. But of course, it was the exact quantities

that mattered, and Tweedy kept those to himself. You don't need to know that, he'd tell Stuart. That doesn't sound like someone who's keen on the idea of passing the business to his son. a need-to-no-basis kid. Like, first of all, huh? So that really tells you a lot, I think, about their relationship. Because if he doesn't want to tell his son the recipe, then surely it's because he thinks he's going to take it and go somewhere and start his own thing, right? Why else would you keep it from him?

So that's a serious lack of trust. Dang. And I don't think he was wrong. He was probably not. No, we're going to see. Stewart is an asshole. Yeah. There's no way to know if it was about the marinade, but one time Tweedy and Stewart got into a full-on fist fight on the factory floor,

Tweedy threw Stewart out and told him to never come back. Stewart yelled that he would come back with more money and more property than Tweedy could ever dream of. Yeah, that must have been fun for the workers. Awkward. Of course, if I worked there, I'd be there with a bag of popcorn from the breakroom bending. just trying to overhear every word because, you know, sometimes the only bearable thing about work is the gossip. I know y'all know what I'm talking about. Like, look, if I have to give this damn place the best years of my life, I'm going to make sure I get every drop of tea.

I want to know whose husband Sharon's after this month. I want to know whose ex-wife is in Cancun with her new boyfriend that's 15 years younger and she is. I want it all. All. Stewart's first step in sticking it to his dad was to buy some property. with a loan from his dad. Kind of takes the stickiness off the sticking it to him, I think. Lots of family fights involve big, dramatic declarations that everyone silently agrees never happened.

And Tweedy was happy to bankroll his son starred as a property developer. Stewart also borrowed money from Tweety's friends and heavily mortgaged his property deals. He was copying his dad with all of that. But unless you were the IRS, Tweedy always paid. his debts. And Stuart wasn't real enthusiastic about that part of the business. He screwed somebody over on almost every debt he had. One notable exception was a plumber who he owed $17,000. That guy sued and got his money, which I'm guessing had more to do with him being six, eight and three hundred pounds than any legal arguments. Jesus. Stewart had two big problems. First of all, he hated to let anything go.

If he had a property that was losing him money and the best option was clearly to sell it, he wouldn't. He'd just let unpaid mortgages and other debts rack up until it was foreclosed on, then be furious at the foreclosure. And any time he was told he had to do something, he reacted like a pissed off teenager. He'd just dig in his heels and get mad. If you told this guy he had to keep breathing air to survive, his reaction would just be shut his mouth till he went blue in the face and passed out. like, contrary into the core. So, Stewart was a dud as a business boy

and clearly wasn't up to the task of running Santos Linguisa. But that was a problem for the future. Tweedy was just in his 50s, active and healthy, until he wasn't. He was diagnosed with an aggressive lymphoma and died in May of 1993 at just

59 years of age. His will explicitly described the funeral procession he wanted, so his roles in 17 limos packed with his buddies and girlfriends drove by the places he loved, his home on Bancroft, the Santos Linguisa factory, and the golf course. I guess it would have been asking a little too much to have everyone drive to the casinos in Reno. The day after he died, before the funeral had even happened, Stuart and Stanley were bugging Tweedy's lawyer about the will.

They would split almost all of the estate between them, which pissed Stewart off because apparently he thought his family was a medieval royal kingdom where the oldest son gets everything. The estate included millions of dollars in property, and the boys also inherited about 300 grand in debt. With everything else, this wasn't really a huge deal, but Stuart, predictably, was furious. As long as he didn't spend like an idiot, he was set for life, but all he cared about was what he was losing, not what he'd gained. I know people like this. Y'all know people like this. just it's always glass half empty no matter what Tweety's will let his girlfriend Peggy O'Neill

stay in the house on Bancroft for 10 years rent-free and also gave her the deed to the 1973 Corvette he'd given her as a gift and this drove Stewart nuts he wanted that house he didn't care so much about the car except that he didn't want Peggy to have it one day he just stole it right in front of her

she sued him but he just wouldn't give it up despite court orders and a $50,000 fine for failing to appear, which was at least five times the value of the flipping car. He broke this Corvette down to its parts and buried it on a friend's land. Also, Peggy wouldn't have it. I think I've told you all this story before about this kid I used to nanny for when I was in college. This kid was the worst. I wonder sometimes about what he's doing now because he'd be a grown adult. I'm sure he's still a walking nightmare.

His mom was super nice, okay? She was a lawyer. She worked really hard. She tried really hard to parent him. But they were divorced. And his dad was an asshole, like, asshole, just thoroughgoing to the core of his soul. And he would undo every bit of good parenting that this poor woman tried to do. And this kid was such a little prick. We would have his friends over, you know, and they would just be playing together and stuff. Anytime the friend would want a snack or something, this little shit would take it from him. No, mom said, you couldn't have any food, which is total bullshit. His mom was like, yeah, let them have whatever they want, you know. But this kid would say, no, mom said no food. One time I saw this child take a rice crispy treat out of his friend's hand and throw it in the trash, just so his friend wouldn't have it. And that is Stewart.

That's Stewart burying that Corvette on a friend's land. Like, what is wrong with your brain, man? This is somebody who badly, badly needs, like, extensive therapy. but of course he wasn't going to get it. From the parents behind law and order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy. Patrick Pickle Bottom Everyday Mysteries. Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Picklebottom,

a precocious 11-year-old, with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life as he unravels baffling enigmas, and solves clever cases. Patrick Picklebottom Everyday Mysteries is perfect for kids

and is just as entertaining for grownups who love a good mystery. The whole family can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.

Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

Stuart had his girlfriend Eve sit across the street from the house to spy on Peggy. God, poor Peggy, Jesus. He made threatening phone calls in the middle of the night. In December, Peggy's dog died. It looked like it had been hit. by a car, but she said that not long after, Dave Catelli, a friend of Stewart's, came to her house and said, what happened to your dog is going to happen to you if you don't back off this lawsuit. Holy shit. Cotelli died young and Stewart has kept his mouth shut, so whether the two of them had anything to do with what happened to the dog or if they just took advantage of an accident, who knows? I hope it was an accident. God, that's awful. Peggy, anyway,

eventually had enough and moved out. The executor of Tweety's estate sold the house to Stewart. He finally had it in his hands after all that effort terrorizing Peggy, but he couldn't keep it up. And after just a few years, he sold the place for $100,000 less than its value.

God, he's an idiot. Stewart wanted everything for himself. A year after Tweedy's death, he bought Stanley's half of the estate at a fraction of its value. If his younger brother expected any kind of gratitude, he was sadly mistaken. Stuart immediately evicted him from the house next to the factory,

where Stanley had been staying and said he'd kill Stanley if he ever set foot in the factory again. This is his brother. Stanley moved in with a friend who remembered him crying and saying, Why does Stewart treat me like this? We're all we have left in the world. God, that's so sad. If anyone told him to stand up to his older brother, he'd say, you don't know Stuart. He's crazy. Since he'd come back from rehab in Hawaii,

Stanley had been living in Pennsylvania and staying sober. Being back in San Leandro with his old friends and his crazy brother was not good for him and he was soon using heroin again. He had a few arrests for petty theft and drug possession and then one for a not-so-petty theft when he was caught stealing computers from San Leandro High School. He got 30 days in jail at the start of 1995. When he got out, he was planning to move back to

Pennsylvania, but first he had some business with Stewart. He had papers signing over some more the estate to Stewart, but in return, Stanley wanted a guaranteed share of the proceeds when Stewart sold the property. Stewart said, no dice, surprise, surprise, and Stanley angrily stalked out. He was set to leave town the next day. When a friend called at about 9.30 and asked if she'd see Stanley before he left, he said, no, I have to clear up some business with Stewart. Just after two the next morning, a Union Pacific train from Oakland round of the turn, and the engineer conductor and a student engineer all saw Stanley Alexander sitting on the left-hand rail in the white glare of the headlight. The engineer laid on the brakes and the air horn, but Stanley was

much too close for the train to stop. He turned and looked straight into the light. He never even flinched, the engineer said. Just before the train reached him, Stanley stretched out and lay fully across the tracks. Whether he had gone to see Stewart, and what they might have talked about, no one knows. Some of Stanley's friends would come to believe he'd been murdered, doped up by Stuart and put on the tracks. But I think that's pretty far-fetched. Elaborate schemes like that are incredibly difficult to pull off,

and Stuart Alexander was not a finesse kind of guy. The truth is almost certainly what the authorities determined it to be. Stanley killed himself. This is almost like a mini von Erich family. You know, the wrestling family were all the sons. died by suicide. It's horrible. So sad, God. Stuart was about as moved by his brother's suicide as he had been about his father's death,

which is to say, not a lot. He was more concerned about his money. He was always more concerned about his money. But that didn't stop him spending it like an ancient Babylonian king with an impulse control problem. He bought vintage cars, a ridiculous number of guns, and blew tens of thousands of dollars on sex workers. Like, apparently there's money in being sausage kings. Oh, yeah. Sausage royalty cleanup.

I like sausages, but man. He also bought expensive pet pigs, which seems a little weird when your whole livelihood is making sausage, but there you go. It's so weird. I can't imagine. But, like, if you talk to farmers, that's like, they get a little bit, they get a little twisty about their animals. Like my, my cousin, my cousin named her show goats dinner and breakfast and stuff. Oh, yeah.

Well, my brother has chickens and they're all named after it. Like, one of them's Nugget, one of them's Alfredo. Like, they're all, they're just egg laying in. So they're not going to get eaten. But, like, yeah. But how do you bond with an animal? And then I just don't understand. Like, when your business is killing that same animal.

It's odd. I don't know. I think you just get to a point. I think you and I are so removed from it. Yeah. That it's different. But when you are, when you're in it, when you're literally elbows deep. And I mean, Stuart, Stuart is a freak. Yeah.

Stewart is a freak. But I think farmers are also just they're in it. So it's like their reality. So there's a disconnect. Like, it doesn't seem like the same thing. I don't get it. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're right. Again, Stuart is a, Stuart is like the one that we're making fun of, but like, farmers are different.

Stuart, we're making fun of, farmers, we love you. Yeah. It's like, you know, where we, you can make fun of, like, it's like, don't be in soup us. That's, that's what I'm saying is like, I'm making fun of Stuart, but I would never make fun of my cousin. Yeah, exactly. Right. We don't want any friendly fire over here. My granddad was a farmer.

And, I mean, I can remember he would have bonds with some of his cows and stuff. I don't know. It's weird. And he'd send the rest of him off to the slaughterhouse. Like, what? So strange. It's like that, it's like that Supreme Court Justice that's like, I don't know the difference, but I know there's a difference. Yeah.

He's talking about Dorn. I don't know the difference, but I know there's a difference. He'd never taken care of the debt he'd inherited from Tweedy and borrowed more money on the estate to pay it. then he had a sudden new obsession and borrowed more money to buy a big corner building close to the factory. He remodeled it himself and proclaimed it would be a new center for the Mother Marianne Wright Foundation, which distributes food and clothes to the needy. But not only didn't he get permits for this venture, he'd never even applied for them, and the city wouldn't let him open the center.

It's like when I was in like second grade, I decided I wanted to start a business. band, except I couldn't play any instruments. I could play the flute, but like, I wasn't Jethro Tull, you know? So, like, we, we went to my friend's house and we started writing songs, except I couldn't play, we couldn't play any instruments. So, like, it wasn't a band. We were coming up with band names, but it wasn't a band. You could have just been a cappella. It was like that. I mean, Barbershop. Whitney, Whitney, you've heard me sing. It's not as bad as you think it is, but I take your point. Okay. To Stewart, of course, this wasn't his own fault because nothing ever was. It was the cities. His attitude about life was that he should be allowed to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and anything that stood in the way of that just pissed him off. It was his same old problem of refusing to do anything that was demanded of him. He had the same problem at the sausage factory, where the health inspectors noted infraction after infraction that Stewart just ignored until eventually they shut him down.

These were all for minor things, but they added up, and they were things you definitely want done, like making sure the meat reached a temperature to kill bacteria, or blocking gaps that let flies into the processing rooms, because flies lead to maggots. Yeah, I feel like I want my sausage makers to have a staunch anti-magot policy. I feel like that's a small ask. Just a slightly small ask, I think. Yeah, this really should be basic stuff. after the city shut him down, Stuart had his production manager, Larry Torres, start addressing

every one of the infractions with the city allowing the factory to remain open. It took almost a year, but Larry got everything into shape, and right after he'd finished, Stuart accused him of stealing $40, and Larry quit immediately. I'm guessing Stewart had somehow started associating Larry with the city authorities, which was why he was such a dick to him, but good job, man. You drove off the person who knows how to fix things. $40.40. Dear God. Stuart had been working at Santos Linguisa in one capacity or another since he was eight years old. He was bored of it and started only showing up every now and again. The factory continued on without him, mainly due to two experienced employees, both Portuguese immigrants, the butcher Jose, known as Joe the Boner, and his sister-in-law Laura Santos, who made the marinade.

In fact, since Tweedy's death, Laura was the only person who knew how to make the marinade. Both Joe and Laura had worked for Tweedy for decades. They were now both in their 70s, both absolutely vital to the whole operation, and Stewart made no effort at all to have them train up somebody to learn their skills. After 75 years of operation, he was running Santos Linguisa into the ground. Stewart's main focus now was on how he was being screwed over by the state in the state, city. He hadn't paid state unemployment insurance. He ignored zoning laws and he ignored the fines from these until they got thicker and thicker. All of this, all of this was his own fault,

but he was incapable of seeing it like that. His solution to this imaginary harassment by authority was simple. He'd become mayor of San Leandro. He was already the king of, he was already the sausage king. I know, right? Like it's a motion of anything. And this just cracked old Laura Santos up. She said, how are you going to run the city? You can't even run your business. Oh man. Way to keep the respect of your employees there, Stu. Stewart wasn't much of a forward planner. Like being mayor of a small city isn't going to shield your business from state inspectors. If anything, it's just going to put more of a target on your back. Not that there was any chance in hell of Stewart actually being elected. He didn't make a

terrible impression initially, with an argument that the city was too focused on attracting big businesses and not enough on long-standing local operations. That's the kind of stuff that's going to get people nodding in agreement anywhere in the country, but it didn't take long for the local press to start looking into the backgrounds of the mayoral candidates, and as soon as they did, Stewart was sunk. One of the things the city had been going after him for was using his backyard as a dump. It was full of the skeletons of wrecked cars and old appliances. In 1997, one year before the election, Stewart had noticed an elderly neighbor taking pictures of all the trash in his yard. He went right over there, grabbed the camera, and punched the old man in the face, knocking him down

where Stewart kicked the shit out of him. The only reason he wasn't in jail was because he paid this guy thousands of dollars to settle out of court. Stuart came third out of four candidates. Shout out to Lou Filippovich, the only person he beat, an elderly man who apparently ran for every available office after he retired. You gotta have hobbies in retirement,

I guess. In early 2000, things began to go downhill fast for Santos Linguisa. In January, a health inspector showed up early and cited Stewart for falsifying his daily sanitation reports, which wasn't hard to figure out because Stewart

had apparently managed to fill out and sign that day's report before he'd even shown up to work. Magic. Stewart got mad and threw the inspector out. The next day, two compliance officers from the Department of Agriculture showed up and I don't think it's ever a good sign when an investigation into you gets bumped up to the federal level. Not good. The two officers asked to speak with Stewart. He came out of his office and barked at them, I don't have time to see you. Get out of my face. God, man. And then he stalked back into the office, like they would just go away.

One of the compliance officers, Gene Hillary, asked Laura Santos, is he always like that? Laura said, yep, most of the time. I love Laura Santos. If you're processing meat and you don't get inspected daily, you can't operate legally. So Santos Linguisa shut down. Laura Santos decided it was a good time to retire, despite, Stewart's pleading that she keep working. With her went the marinade recipe. It's not clear if Stewart just asked her what it was, but I kind of suspect he didn't just because he hated anything

that made him feel like he wasn't in charge of everything. There are plenty of marinade recipes, of course, but Santos Linguisa, if it ever started production again, would be a different thing now. For the other big problem the factory was facing, we have to go back to 1992 and 93, when hundreds of people got sick from eating undercooked jack-in-the-box burgers infected with e-coli. Four kids died, and in 1996, legislation was passed tightening inspection of meat processing and food preparation. The biggest companies had to comply first, while small operations like Santos Linguisa were given until January 25, 2000, to get new protocols in place. Stewart just didn't bother.

The USDA were trying to make the transition easy for everyone. They kept getting in touch with Stewart and telling him, just take these classes, do the paperwork, explain your process, and you're golden. This story has often been simplified down to Stewart being furious at the new regulations because the changes would mean he'd have to change his curing methods, and that would change the flavor of Santos linguisa. But that ship had already sailed when Laura Santos quit, taking Tweety's marinade recipe with her. And the main problem inspectors found at the factory was that the sausages weren't

reaching the 140 degrees required to kill the parasites that would cause trichinosis, a truly horrible and potentially fatal disease. Oh my God. I knew a guy who got this when I was a kid. It was gnarly as hell. Like everybody was talking about it in our town. Even a mild case of this stuff makes you want to pray for death. Like it starts with just awful diarrhea and vomiting and cramps and it can end with freaking neurological issues or myocarditis and any one of a dozen other just god awful things. This is not to be fucked with, Stuart, you imbecile. Oh, come on. It was just too much trouble for him, Whitney.

Poor guy. Yeah, evidently he was too busy getting his own sausage serviced. Yeah, doesn't trachinosis, doesn't it like eat your brain or something? It's so bad. It's one of the worst things in the world. Just Google it. It's horrific. Yeah.

It's like worms literally your brain. I'm not trying to like, it's horrible. Stewart claimed this demand was. unreasonable because Santos Linguisa had always been perfectly safe. And it was impossible to reach that temperature with their traditional wood fire curing method. Fire is too cold to get the sausage hot enough. That's what he was claiming. This guy would argue with a statue. He would argue with anything. Oh, my God, dude, just do it. Fire too cold. That's what he's saying. Fire too cold. The thing is, Tweedy had always managed to get the meat that temperature. He always put on a little show for the health

inspector leaping over the fire in the smokehouse to grab a link to be tested. It wasn't until Stewart took over the temperature dropped. And this was probably deliberate. Lower temperatures meant bigger sausages, and they were sold by the pound, so bigger profits. And if the meat wasn't as safe as it used to be, well, that wasn't Stewart's problem. I hate this guy. You're reminds me of this subhuman nightmare creature that I saw one time on American Greed. That show is great. If you don't watch it, you should. This guy owned a peanut factory.

And he knew 100% that his cost-cutting bullshit was contaminating the crap out of the peanuts. Kids were dying after eating their peanut butter and stuff. And he couldn't have given less of a damn as long as he was making money. That's all he gave a shit about. That's all he gave his shit about. Just making money. Cutting corners. Just what is wrong with these people?

Oh, God almighty. I just, I don't get it. I will never get it. I hate it. And go fuck yourself if you're one of those people. This reminds me of something I heard of on a podcast. I think it was actually the cracked podcast, the cracked magazine podcast. Back when the cracked website was actually really good. And is the, and this is before the blank theory was a terrible TikTok thing. Like, it's the monkey sphere theory and how, like, the human brain is only capable of caring about, like, a hundred people. Like, okay. Well, like, okay, you break, you break a vase in your house, right? You sweep it up and you put it in your trash can, okay? Because you're afraid that your cats or your, you know, your husband or your niece or whatever are going to cut themselves on your, the vase, right?

But what about the trash guy? I worry about the trash guy too. I worry. I do, too. Yeah. I always worry about the trash guy. I get so concerned. Or like, I worry about like the, I get, I have somebody come and deep clean my house every few weeks.

I worry about her too. I always worry about like, I always like, I always like, I can't imagine not worrying about people in the world. I know. And I know that makes me sound like. fucking dope. No, it's just normal. That's normal, right? Like, we're not weird.

That's normal. I think some people are just single-mindedly focused on money, and it is one of the, just the great cancers of humanity that drive. You're going to hate Stewart more when I tell you this. He dubbed himself the sausage king, and at one point had a gold jacket made with its stitched on the chest, more proof of our theory that anyone who gives themselves a nickname is a preposterous dork with no morals. Honey, your dad was the sausage game.

Get over yourself. God, can you imagine Tweety rolling in his grave? Spinning. I hope Tweety, by the way, was buried with little mummified sausages. And he's just rolling in there with the sausages, little linguistics. little linguises. What about our image? Oh, my gosh.

Well, he was the sausage king. He was. Like a little mummified, sent off to the underworld. In the sausage trip. Sausage pyramid. We're sorry, Tweety. Rest in peace. No, it's respectful.

That's, honestly, the IRS probably was like, he died right before the IRS was kicking down the door. I know he did. Yeah, that's always the way. The truth was he only saw the factory as something to squeeze money out of. Tweedy had always kept it clean, but under Stewart, the place got dirty. A 24-year-old burning alive inside his own apartment. Police waited outside for 38 minutes.

Was this an accident? A suicide? A specific section on both wrists unburned. Hours earlier, he would tell his parents that if his wife found out he was leaving, she would go ballistic. That's our episode She'd Go Ballistic, the suspicious death of David Elmquist.

This is Crime Salad. I'm Ashley. I'm Ricky. Search for Crime Salad wherever you listen. There are vampires out there. They're beside you in the darkness, but what people don't understand is that they're not monsters.

They're just going to work, living there on lives. But we are a dying breed. Those who came before me, they are fearful and are not content to sit back and just disappear. and they'll do anything to fix that.

From the creators of Parkdale Haunt comes Woodbine, a podcast about monsters, dreams, and changes, those you want, and those you never saw coming. Season 2 arrives September 24th, distributed by Realm. This story has sometimes been presented as Stewart being outraged at overreaching regulations that would change the nature of his family's linguisa. But he'd already changed it.

If anything, the regulations would force him to go back to the way Tweedy operated. when Santos Linguisa had been most successful. This was not about him trying to preserve the purity of his ancestral sausage. It was about making a quick buck. And most notably, it was about Stewart not doing what he was told. A 38-year-old man going red in the face and saying, I don't want to.

Like a muleing little baby. As the wealthy son of a local bigwig, it was an attitude that hadn't been challenged much in his life. But it's not something that works too well against the federal government. sausage king my ass. He's a lesser sausage baronet at best. At best. Days after the feds had shut him down,

Stewart put a fence across the driveway into the factory and hung a sign on it, which read in part, the USDA is coming into our plan harassing my employees and me, making it impossible to make our great product. Gee, if all meat plants could be in business for 79 years

without one complaint, the meat inspectors would not have jobs. You tell him, Stu. Jesus Jones, who puts G in his like crazy guy rant? The sign also declared he was going to sue the USDA and asked for contributions toward a legal fund. Gross. And he got some money, which is insane to me, but he never filed, of course, because that would require work. In April, Stewart asked to meet with health inspectors and asked if he could reopen on the next Monday

if he had all his paperwork and new procedures in place. The inspector said, sure, that's all they'd wanted, but they knew there was no chance of Stewart doing everything necessary over just one weekend. He didn't even try. He'd brought a buddy along to the meeting, and as they left, Stewart said, I'd like to shoot those guys.

In June, he took down the gate and the sign and just started up operations again. Richard Miller owned a print shop across the street and asked Stewart what he was doing. There was nothing wrong with my product, Stewart said. Nobody's ever gotten sick, so I just opened up. When Miller asked about the inspectors, Stuart said, they're not going to step foot in this place.

If they do, they're trespassing. And if they don't leave, I'll just shoot the sons of bitches. Wow. The Miller, as people generally don't in these cases, didn't take him seriously. Stewart was a guy who casually said he was going to kill somebody almost on a daily basis. In anticipation of reopening, Stuart had hired a new secretary, a 21-year-old blonde model named Brooke Silverglide,

and I think we have to remember that she was very young, because, bless her heart, Brooke doesn't come across as the hero in this story, not doing the reputation of blonde models any favors at all. It's a very undeserved reputation, because there are some models who've done some cool shit. Her duties were the normal secretarial ones. Answer the phone, buy nice clothes for herself on Stuart's dime, and have lunch with the boss.

Over lunch, Stewart suggested he opened up some flower shops and let her run them. Obviously, he was hoping to make the relationship a little closer than employer-employee. Stuart already had a girlfriend, Charlotte. When he introduced Brooke to her, Charlotte was like, nice to meet you, and immediately memorize the girl's license plate number. She knew who she was dating. Things with Charlotte weren't going so great. She was super mad at him.

He talked her into having sex in his office, but she'd made him promise that all the surveillance cameras and stuff weren't running, but as will surprise absolutely no one, it had been running. And afterwards, Stuart showed the tape to his bros. So things with Charlotte were winding down, and he was lining Brooke up as a replacement. But she wasn't biting and may have just been oblivious to his... efforts to get her in the sack. As soon as Brooke had started working for him, Stuart had bent

her ear about how he was being persecuted by health inspectors who had a personal vendetta against him, and she swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. On Wednesday, June 21st, four people arrived at Santos Linguisa to determine if Stewart was making sausages illegally. William, Shalene, and Earl Willis were local health inspectors, and Gene Hillary and Tom Quondros were compliance officers from the USDA. As usual, Stewart was late coming into work, so Joe the Boner let the inspectors in to look around. When Stewart arrived, Tom Quondros went outside to call the police, asking for help with a potentially irate shop owner. The dispatcher logged this as low priority. Stewart also called the police, ranting about health inspectors trespassing in his factory.

The police never arrived in response to either call. Stuart kept popping out of his office to yell at the inspectors. Why are you here now? Why are you harassing me and my customer? Get out of my plant. Get off my property. He darted back into the office to grab an instimatic camera and take all their photos. Shalene and Willis looked awkward in theirs, but Gene Hillary just grinned.

Stuart skulked back into his office, and Gene asked Earl Willis to go out to the car and get their own camera. Out there, Tom Quanderas told Earl that he'd take the camera. camera in. Earl should wait outside for the police. Brooke Silverglide, outraged on her boss's behalf, marched into his office. How come they're here again, she said. They've got no right to be on your property. They can't come and go anytime they want. They actually certainly can. They can. They absolutely can. She noticed the drawer of Stewart's desk was open. He always kept three guns in there. Can't you fire a warning shot over their heads or something? Like at a ranch?

Brooke said. What the What? Oh my God. Is that like ranch behavior? Like what are you talking about? Ranch behavior,

firing a warning shot over people's heads. Like what is happening? Dear God. Inside too, where it could ricochet off of any old thing. Lord have mercy girl. Her experience is just watching Beverly Hillbillies. Not long after that. Stewart stepped out of his office and shot all three inspectors. They all fell. Then he ran outside where

Earl Willis was waiting, yelling, I'm going to get you. Willis turned and ran as Stewart chased him, about 25 feet behind. Stuart shot maybe four more times, but missed with each one. Willis was in much better shape than Stewart. He managed to clamor over a fence, tearing a hamstring, and limped away to a nearby bank where someone called 911 and finally got the police moving. Stewart walked back into the factory. He saw that Jean Hillary was still moving. He reloaded his pistols, walked over to her and shot her in the head. Then he went over to Tom Quondros and William Shalene and did the same to them.

All of it was caught on the factory security cameras. Meanwhile, Brooke Silverglide called her boyfriend as soon as the shooting started. Not the police, for some reason. Then she kicked out a window screen to clam her out and run. away. Stuart put his guns on the ground and went outside to wait for the cops to come arrest him. Jean Hillary was 56 years old and had lived in Alameda all her life, where she raised three daughters. She was a funny, happy woman who always opened her house to her community on holidays. Hers was the house neighborhood kids went to after school if their own parents weren't home yet.

With her kids out of the house now, at 51 years old, she'd gone back to school and earned a bachelor's degree, then trained for two years with USDA to be an inspector. When Stuart Alexander murdered her, she'd just gotten her first full paycheck for the job. Tom Quondros was 52, and unlike Jean, was a veteran food inspector. He was patient and generous, the kind of guy that everyone else in the business turned to for advice. At Santos Linguisa, he'd switched places with Earl Willis because he could see that Willis was nervous, and that saved Willis's life. That's the kind of guy Tom was. Bill Shaline was 57, a kind, compassionate man who viewed his job as a serious business that protected

people's lives. He was divorced, but spoke to his 16-year-old daughter Megan every day. She was waiting at home for him to call at the moment he was killed. Stewart was arrested without incident, and with the shootings caught on camera, there was no real argument over what had happened. He was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. murder, with multiple special circumstances making him eligible for the death penalty. His defense tried their best to reduce his culpability, first arguing that the inspectors had been harassing him. Stuart's mom, surely, a frosty old broad, has kept tooting that horn, repeating it on a bizarrely sympathetic episode of City Confidential on A&E. If health inspectors tell you to do something

and you don't do it, it's not harassment, if they keep coming back. It's their job. The trial also included testimony from Brooke Silverglide, who was tracked down at home on the night of the murders, watching the story on the news, still not having called the police. She described the circumstances of the shootings and said she was still traumatized. In October of 2004, Stewart was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder. He was sentenced to death, but he wouldn't end up serving much time. In his few years in jail so far, he'd put on 80 pounds and his health had deteriorated rapidly. On December 27, 2005, he was found dead in his cell, having died of a pulmonary embolism. I'm not sure if that felt like justice to his victim's loved ones, or if it felt like a cheat.

Either way, he's no longer polluting the planet, and I hope that brings them some measure of peace. At Stewart's trial, his defense had tried to argue that Stewart's person, personality had radically changed after a motorcycle accident in 1997, which caused a head injury and made Stewart more violent and unpredictable. But the medical records only showed a minor concussion. Mama Shirley's took up for her boy, saying Stewart's personality had changed night and day after the crash. But from what we've seen in the sources we use for this episode, it doesn't sound like that's true. Stuart had anger issues from way back. He was stubborn and arrogant and it was always his way or no way at all.

The KCBS radio podcast, The Sausage King, interviewed Gordon Galvin, who was a high school buddy of Stewart's, and he remembered Stewart getting into a fight with one guy and whacking him on the head with a baseball bat, making the guy have to have a metal plate in his head for the rest of his life.

Another time, Stuart got into an argument with a guy at the beach, after which he set the guy's truck on fire. Okay, that's unhinged. That's unhinged behavior. and Gordon himself wasn't immune. One time, Stuart asked him for a favor.

He thought his girlfriend Laura might be cheating on him, so he wanted Gordon to ask her out to see if she said yes, which she did. On their date, Gordon came clean about what Stewart had asked him to do, and Laura told him she'd actually broken up with Stewart and was scared of him. Later on, Stewart went over to Gordon's house and started beating the crap out of him, promising to break his jaw for going out with Laura, only back and off when Gordon grabbed a fire poker and started swinging it at him. All of which to say, Stuart's minor concussion in 1997 did not all of a sudden turn him into a violent piece of shit.

He's always been a violent piece of shit. What prompted him to snap like that on a random day in June? I don't know. The combination of his failing relationship and his anger at having to comply with some basic safety regulations at work? Maybe. All I know for sure is he let his grandiose sense of entitlement take him over, and it costs three innocent people everything. So I don't know about you, but I'm glad the sausage king spent his final days in the dungeon. Now, before we go, don't forget about our two amazing live shows coming up.

We're so excited. First, we've got summer camp, September 10th through 13th, an amazing four-day festival in Equinoct, Pennsylvania, hosted by Dan and Lindsay Cummins of TimeSuck and Scared to Death, two amazing podcasts. We'll be performing live alongside them and the podcast astonishing legends in addition to a roster of awesome stand-up comedians and local bands. Go to Bad Magic Productions.com for more info and to buy tickets. Then we've got our True Crime Cruise, Crime Wave 2.0, February 8 to the 12th, 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, true crime garage, last podcast on the left and scared to death, here's what you got to do. Tickets are on sale now and they're going fast. So if you want to go, make sure you get over to crimewave at sea.com slash campfire and book your cabin ASAP. You'll get $100 off plus a private meet and greet with us. The great thing is you can pay all at once or set up a payment plan and pay it off over time. So get on it, y'all. That's crimewave atc.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 Zatar, Laura D, Laura C, Amy, Becky, and Marilyn. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you join the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. 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.

Look, we all know there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, sad, confused. I'm Josh Harrowitzin. Yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly happy, say, said, confused is the place for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. From Andrew Garfield and Scarlett Johansson to Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino for over 10 years and over 700 episodes, Happy Say, Confused has broken movie and TV news every single week. That's because I ask all the questions I want to know, and more importantly, you want to know. Casting what ifs, backstage stories, acting pet peeves, and much more. So whether you're into superheroes, prestige TV, or just the

coolest actors and directors alive, you're going to learn something in every episode. Listen to Happy Happy Say I Confused on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For eight years, we've been asking the same question over and over again. How did this happen? My name's Mandy. And I'm Melissa, and we're the host of Moms and Mysteries, the True Crime Podcast with over 55 million downloads. We're two Florida moms who are obsessed with mysteries. Each week, we do deep dives into fascinating true crime stories. We cover everything from infamous cases like Casey Anthony to the bizarre and complex crimes right here in our home state, like the shocking murder of FSU professor Dan Markell. We bring you the facts, but with warmth and width, you'd only get from two friends who have been hooked on mysteries since childhood.

Join us for new episodes of Moms and Mysteries every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.