True Crime Campfire - The Time Traveler's Girlfriend: The Murder of Anna Repkina

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

David Foster Wallace once wrote that the truth will set you free, but not until it’s finished with you. Every time we tell a lie, we put it on our tab. That may work out for a while, but eventually the bill is gonna come due. And when that time comes, you better make sure you’ve got the money in the bank. Otherwise, your whole life’s gonna get repo’ed, and you’ll be there just standing in the wreckage. Especially if, like the guy in this week’s story, you’ve built your whole life on a lie. Sources:CBS' 48 Hours, Episode The Murder of Anna Repkinahttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/anna-repkina-murder-william-hargrove-love-triangle-ultimatum-48-hours/Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/04/william-chase-hargrove-anna-repkina-oregon-murder/Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8898317/Man-serving-life-sentence-killing-Russian-bride-researched-time-travel-death.htmlIndependent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/man-convicted-murder-fiancee-william-hargrove-anna-repkina-alsea-oregon-time-travel-b1454490.htmlhttps://nypost.com/2019/11/24/man-found-guilty-in-fiancees-murder-after-kfc-receipt-links-him-to-slaying/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/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. David Foster Wallace once wrote that the truth will set you free, but not until it's finished with you. Every time we tell a lie, we put it on our tab. That may work out for a while, but eventually the bill is going to come due. And when that time comes, you better make sure you've got the money in the bank.

Otherwise, your whole life's going to get repoed and you'll be there just standing in the wreckage. Especially if, like the guy in this week's story, you've built your whole life on a lie. This is the time traveler's girlfriend, the murder of Anna Repkina. So campers, for this one, we're in the deep woods of Oregon, April 17th, 2017. A man was out walking his dog along a logging road in the forests of Alcy, outside Corvallis, when they came across what looked like a woman's body lying in a heap on the ground. At first, the guy thought it might be some kind of gross prank, as unlikely as that would be, way in the middle of nowhere like this, but he knelt down to touch the woman's pale hand and immediately

knew. This was real. And it was immediately obvious that this was not a natural death. The back of the woman's head was covered in blood, and it looked like she'd been either shot or bludgeoned. And not too long ago either. She appeared to have only been dead a day or so. Later, detectives would marvel at the fact that her body had been found so fast, found at all, really, in such a remote location. It was just the smallest hair's breadth of chance that this guy happened to be walking his dog in a new place on this day. Whoever left this woman here, discarded like trash among a smattering of other discarded debris, hadn't expected anybody to find her. She was meant to be forgotten.

And who was she? Fingerprints soon revealed her to be 27-year-old Anna Repchina, a Russian citizen who had only been in the U.S. about six weeks. A smart, beautiful, sensitive young woman with a family. thousands of miles away who loved her, missed her, and were probably wondering why they hadn't heard from her in a couple of days. It was a heart-wrenching thought. Anna, it turns out, was a sweetheart. She was close to her family, especially her mom, Yelena, back in Moscow. She worked for IKEA. She was funny, loved cats and music and travel, and she was a bit of a romantic.

She wanted to find her true love, get started on a family. About a year and a half before she was killed, she broke off a long-term relationship. with the guy she'd been with since her teens. And that tends to make you feel kind of rudderless for a while. A relationship like that, I mean, she'd been with a guy for seven years. You probably expect you're going to get married, have a family, that this person is going to be your person. And then all that flies out the window.

So in 2016, she joined a Russian dating site. But surprisingly, the guy she connected with there wasn't Russian. He was a 26-year-old American and self-described Russofile named William Hargrove. Before long, Anna had Will's full attention. They bonded over music at first. Anna loved going to shows. Her profile was full of cute pictures of her at concerts, and she could talk all day about her favorite bands.

But she was hilarious, too, always sending memes and funny catpicks and stuff, and she and Will bantered back and forth like they'd known each other for years. Soon, they moved from Facebook Messenger into daily video calls, and Anna was falling for Will just as fast as he seemed to be falling for her.

Will loved all things Russian. He told her he'd been stationed there for a while when he was in the Marines. He liked listening to her talk about Moscow where she was living. He liked listening to her period, and she was absolutely captivated by him. Who can blame her? He showered her with attention and compliments, sent her flowers all the way from Oregon, called her his angel, and described what it would be like if she came to visit him from Russia. In one text he wrote,

Daydreaming Yet? Snow-covered evergreens? Snow on the ground, a tent hidden slightly in the trees of our clearing, a good-sized fire going, and you in my arms. Dang. Pretty romantic, if that's your bag. I don't like being outside more than I have to be, so not mine, but dang, I can imagine. You are absolutely amazing, Will wrote to Anna. We are going to have so much fun together.

As you can probably tell, Will Hargrove had what his friend Jamie called the Gift of Gab. He could talk a good game, she told 48 hours. He and Jamie bonded over nerd stuff, Marvel Comics and Harry Potter and car stuff. They both worked as auto mechanics. He was an easy guy to be around, she said. He made her laugh, took her to see her first Avengers movie. Apparently, a lot of women felt that way about Will. One of his guy friends told 48 hours that whenever they hung out at the karaoke bar or had their weekly pool and beer night at the pub,

Will would just attract women like a magnet. They'd come right up to him and start a conversation. Will Hargrove had charisma. Uh-oh. And it wasn't just women who thought so. He was so tight with a couple of his guy friends that they called him their brother. He and his karaoke buddy, Joseph, had bonded over their military experience. They didn't serve together or anything, but they talked all the time about their time in the service, Joseph and the Army and Will and the Marines.

That was how he got interested in Russia, remember, when he was stationed there years earlier with the Corps. And in late 2016, after lots of video calling and texts, he and Anna Rakina decided to get together in person and see if the sparks kept flying. Anna flew over from Russia for two weeks to spend the holidays with him. The trip didn't start out very well. Poor Anna didn't realize the U.S. had two Portland's, and she accidentally flew into Portland, Maine. at first. Oh my God. I don't know. I know. Wrong coast. But Mr. Charming cheered her up on the flight cross-country texting her that the clouds were exactly where she belonged since she was such an angel and hinting that he might pop the question during the trip. Anna texted back,

Be ready. I will cry. And once she landed on the right coast, everything was pretty much hearts and flowers. She and Will drove up and down the gorgeous Oregon coast. They spelled out Merry Christmas with pebbles on the beach and took a picture for Anna's mom back in Moscow. They took selfies all cozyed up together. It was pure romance, exactly what Anna had hoped for. That's not always how it works when two people who've bonded online come together, IRL. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes reality doesn't live up to expectations, but this time it definitely did. And on one of the last nights of her trip, right as that inevitable sad,

has started to kick in and they're missing each other already, Will proposed to her. He gave her a stunning ring, a deep emerald greenstone framed with diamonds in a white gold setting. It belonged to my grandmother, he told her. Anna was over the moon. She took a picture of her hand with the ring on, and as they hugged and kissed goodbye at the airport, she promised that the next time she came to Oregon, it would be for keeps. They'd be starting their new life together. She couldn't wait. And when she got back to Moscow, she immediately started making plans for their wedding.

She picked out a beautiful dress off the shoulder with sort of a romantic, flowy, peasant neckline and eyelet lace, so pretty. And she started making plans to pick up stakes and move to Oregon. But there was something Anna didn't know. Nothing major, just a little detail Will had neglected to mention during her two-week visit. That detail's name was Michelle. Michelle was Will's landlady. He rented a bedroom and her and her husband's house.

In fact, Anna had met her briefly during her stay, just long enough to say hi and shake hands before she and Will went out for drinks on New Year's Eve. What she didn't realize was that landlady Michelle was also Will's girlfriend. And yes, I did say she was married as well, but as Michelle later told CBS, they were more like roommates by that time than husband and wife. Michelle was working as a cabby when she met Will outside a bar one night. She was already really unhappy in her marriage, and Will worked his charm on her, and the rest was pretty much history. Will could convince you of anything, Michelle soon found out.

He painted a very pretty picture of what their future life together could be. She told 48 hours, He made you feel like you were in the sun when he talked to you. He had a way of being able to look at me, and I felt like I was actually seen. I felt beautiful. It felt like I was wanted. That's powerful stuff. It was something she really needed at the time.

I'm not sure whether Michelle's husband was aware of her affair with Will. I mean, it seems like he probably wasn't since he didn't raise six kinds of holy hell when the guy moved into their place for the low, low price of $300 rent per month. What? In this economy, that's the dream. Right? Maybe he knew and was just kind of resigned to it. Maybe he knew him was okay with it. I mean, that does happen sometimes. Or maybe he just had no idea. What I do know is that Michelle wasn't willing to rush a divorce. They had two kids, which always complicates a breakup to no end. So she told, well, look, I want to leave, but I want to do it at my own pace and in my own way.

To show him she was committed to him, though, she gave Will a token, her own wedding ring. Kind of a promise ring, I guess, to let him know she was serious about him. But according to Will's friend Jamie, also a friend and relative of Michelle's, this didn't do too much to reassure him. He was antsy about Michelle's marriage, and in Jamie's opinion, that's why he started trawling dating sites in 2016, and that's why he started dating Anna Repkina. To drive Michelle crazy. Make her think twice about staying married to her husband for one more second. Now, Anna had no idea Will and Michelle were involved. As far as she knew when she came to visit and stay in Will's room in Michelle's house,

which just blows my mind, they were just landlady and tenant. Allegedly, Anna didn't really bother Michelle that much at first. I mean, it's not like she had much of a leg to stand on, I guess, still being married herself and everything. But when Anna came back the second time in March of 2017, Michelle was pissed. Pissed enough to give Willa's walking papers, as her tenant, at least if not her boyfriend. She kicked him out, refusing to let his other girlfriends step one foot inside her house, which is understandable, even though she had no idea at that point that Will had asked Anna to marry him. Wow. So Will and Anna moved into their own apartment together.

Now, remember, as far as Anna knows, she and Will are engaged to be married. Her plan was to stay in Oregon, like forever. Mary Will, start her paperwork for American citizenship, get a job, the whole nine. She couldn't legally work here yet, but she said about making their apartment a home, and she joined a gym. and started trying to make friends. Back in Russia, her mom was worried about her. She felt like Anna and Will were really rushing things. She wanted Anna to get to know this guy a little better

before making anything permanent. And holy hell was she ever right, but Anna was in love and she was full steam ahead. Before long, though, Anna started to get suspic. Will was away a lot, sometimes overnight, and he'd go totally dark on her, ignoring her calls and texts. According to prosecutor Amy Matsuko, poor Anna would have to text his friends to try and figure out where the hell he was spending his time. Of course, the answer to that was Michelle's house.

Having his cake and eating it too. He was dividing his time between his two women, the fiancé and the still-married girlfriend, and he was playing them both. Michelle knew about Anna, obviously, but she didn't know he'd proposed to her. and Anna had no idea about Michelle, but that didn't last long once Will started spending so much time away from home. When she confronted him with her suspicions about Michelle, though, he reassured her. No, no, he said. He and Michelle weren't together now. They had dated in the past, but he ended it.

And now she was just kind of obsessed with him. You know, the old crazy ex-girlfriend play. Yeah, perennial favorite with scrub-ass men since the beginning of time. Mm-hmm. Little pro tip. If all your man's exes are crazy, think about the common denominator there. It's your man. He's garbage trash.

And poor kid, Anna, was so in love with Will that she bought this explanation at first. But not for long. The first domino to fall was when Michelle friended Anna on Facebook. keep an eye on the competition, I guess, and saw that picture of Anna showing off her engagement ring, which also happened to be Michelle's wedding ring, the ring she'd given Will as a promise that she'd eventually leave her husband for him. Yeah, let's just stop for a second and deal with that. This man accepted a promise ring from Michelle, then turned right around and used it to propose

to another woman. Holy butts. Oh, and told her it had been his grandmother's ring. By the way, don't forget that little touch. Oh. Yeah. Will might not have much else, but he's got the audacity. Coming out his fucking ears.

I've seen a lot of weird affair behavior, but regifting a wedding ring given to you by the married woman you're fucking to the other woman you're fucking has to take a cake. Like, what did he think was going to happen? Michelle would just forget about the ring or maybe he would. he thought he could pull some like wacky sitcom hijinks and take the ring back and forth between his two ladies. Like, oh, it's got to be cleaned. That's exactly what it would be like. Oh, my lord. Obviously, when Michelle saw that picture of her ring on Anna's hand, the shit hit the fan. Toward the end of March, Michelle sent Anna a message on Facebook. A couple of ground rules if they were going to have to, quote, share him. God, why would you want to at this point? Like,

I just want to see Anna and Michelle become best friends and leave this jackhole by the curb. I know, and start a podcast. Obviously. Why can't it ever work out that way? Anyway, Anna's reaction to this message was basically, you leave us alone. Will's told me all about you and you're nuts. Get out of our lives. He doesn't want anything to do with you. She and Michelle went back and forth for a while, trading little zingers, and none of it made any impression on Will. He just kept doing what he felt like doing, zigzagging back and forth between them both. Fucking asshole. I don't know if he was really in love with both of them, or if he was just trying to make Michelle jealous or what.

But obviously he had no interest in being honest with either one, and he was clearly having trouble making up his damn mind. Michelle later told CBS that all she wanted was to just be with Will and be happy. She thought he was her person. What she didn't realize was that she didn't know the guy at all. Nobody did. Will Hargrove was a liar and a fake to the core. For one thing, he was never really in the military. All those conversations he'd had with his brother from another mother, Joseph,

about his training and his time stationed in Russia. Fake. Simper, full of shit. Stolen valor is a whole new level of audacious, especially because the United States does not have any military bases in Russia. So our boy, Will, was probably stationed on his ass in the United States doing nothing. I assume Anna was just as unaware of this as everybody else in his life, and she had bought his

Michelle's Just My Crazy X line of bullshit so completely that less than a week after she and Michelle had that nasty back and forth on Facebook, Anna put on the beautiful wedding dress she'd brought with her from Moscow, and she and Will traveled out to the coast to get married. He told her he'd arranged at all, booked and efficient in a spot on the beach, there were friends coming out to be witnesses, it was going to be an intimate, romantic little ceremony, and Anna couldn't wait. She had on her emerald ring, which she still thought was Will's grandmothers, and she looked like a princess from a fairy tale. There's surveillance footage from a McDonald's drive-thru that day that shows her and Will stopping for a snack on their way up to the coast. Anna's wearing her dress. A little while later, CCTV from a Walmart showed Will look at.

looking at wedding rings while Anna waited in the car. He was on the phone as he shopped. Who with? Michelle, of course, who had no idea the man was in the process of buying Anna a wedding band. No idea that he was scheduled to marry her later that day. They just chatted about this and that. Will said he might be able to come over and see her later. Just what?

What is going through this man's head? How are people like this real? He's like evil George Costanza with this shit. And eviler. And it gets worse. Because when they got to the wedding spot, the efficient wasn't there. After standing around for a while with Anna and their witnesses, Will walked away from the group to make a phone call. And when he came back, he was all puffed up

with righteous indignation. Their efficient wasn't going to make it, he said. Something came up at the last minute and the asshole didn't even have the courtesy to call and let him know. Unbelievable. That, that is unbelievable. As in, I do not believe it. And you are correct. As y'all have probably already figured out, there was no efficient in the first place. There was never going to be any wedding. This had all been a charade, organized by Will to, what, by himself some time with Anna? Who the hell knows? When he stepped away to call the efficient, Will was actually calling a video game store.

Which is just, that fits with this chode to the core. Like everything else in his, I guess we're calling it, life. This was just a big fat lie. But bless her heart, Anna believed it. Will promised her they'd reschedule and find another efficient as soon as possible, and they got in the car and headed back to Corvallis. But if Will had been hoping to buy himself more time with this latest bit of phonus-blonis,

he was in for a rude awakening. Michelle was getting sick of waiting around. She was ready to leave her marriage and move on with her life, and she wanted to do that with Will, but not if Anna was going to stay in the picture. Will told Michelle he'd tried to get Anna to leave him alone a bunch of times before, but she just wouldn't go. She was a psycho, obsessed with him.

For some reason, she thinks we're engaged. This is, of course, exactly the kind of shit he was telling Anna about Michelle. Total triangulation. Yep. And Michelle was tired of hearing it. So about midway through April, Michelle dropped the hammer. She told him he was going to have to choose, her or Anna. Otherwise, she was going to move on without him.

And she gave him a deadline. April 19th. Will told her it was a no-brainer. He chose her, absolutely. Didn't even have to think about it. But Michelle, having heard this book, ish plenty of times before, stayed firm. April 19th. Anna either needs to be out of your house and preferably headed back to Russia or we're done.

Will said he'd take care of it for good this time. And on April 15th, he invited Michelle over to his place for dinner. But about an hour before she was supposed to come by, he called her and said she couldn't come. On his back, Will told her. Don't worry, though. I'll take care of it. Michelle was livid, and I think Will could tell she was almost at the end of her robe. So he sent her a text, I will have this permanently fixed by 1800 tomorrow.

6 p.m. But Michelle still wasn't happy. She kept blowing up Will's phone. Eventually you turned it off, which sent her into a spiral. She spent most of the night crying and leaving Will distraught voicemails. I guess you made your choice, she said in one. Why? I just want to know why.

I'll let you be, but I just want to know why. Oh, God, I know we've all had nights like that. The next morning was Easter Sunday, and Michelle's family was having a get-together. Everybody noticed how red and puffy her eyes were. She seemed totally devastated. She told her family she'd been up all night crying over Will. But later that day, around 4.30 in the afternoon, an hour and a half ahead of the 6 p.m. deadline he'd given Michelle on the phone last night, Will finally called.

He needed her help, he told her. He'd driven out to the coast and a deer ran. ran out in front of his car. He swerved to avoid hitting it and blew out a tire in the process. He sounded pretty rattled, Michelle said later, and despite having spent the previous night sobbing her eyeballs out over the sunburned taint of a man, Michelle hopped in her car and drove up to Alcy to help him. She found him waiting at the little Alcy general store, smoking a cigarette and drinking a soda. Surveillance footage would later show him buying them, and then Michelle driving up in her Prius to meet him.

Will told her that after he hung up with her the night before, he and Anna had gotten into a vicious argument. I said some awful mean things to her, he said, and she packed up her stuff and left. It was over for good this time, Will assured her. He was all hers. Oh, goody. Be still my heart, right?

Will and Michelle drove around and talked Ed out for a while, then celebrated with some car sex. you. I'm assuming she helped him change his car tire at some point, too, which somehow makes the whole thing worse. I don't know how that makes it worse than the car sex, but it does. Absolutely it does. It absolutely does. When Michelle showed back up at her mom's Easter party later that evening, she was grinning ear to ear. After kissing Michelle goodbye, Will stocked at an ATM and took out some cash, not from his own bank account, but from on us. Huh. Hmm. Hmm. And this was only the first such errand for Will that night.

He used a couple more ATMs to drain $800 out of Anna's bank account and deposit some of the cash into his own. Later, CCTV at a gas station showed Will taking another $200 bucks out, then chatting with one of the clerks. Later, she'd tell police that he was upset and weepy, told her his girlfriend Anna had left him. The clerk felt bad for him, even gave him a hug and told him it was going to be a little. okay. Oh my God almighty. As if this guy wasn't enough of a walking nightmare already, now we find out he's the type to get weepy with gas station

attendance. Excuse me, sir, but this lady does not get paid enough to deal with this shit. She's trying to restock the hot dogs. Okay, she does not need you coming in with your big bag of bullshit trying to use her as your personal therapist. Her responsibility to you should end with you paying for your big gulp and getting on with your life.

Plus, and this really shouldn't need to be said, but your girlfriend didn't leave you. You killed her, remember? Sorry for the spoiler, but I'm pretty sure y'all knew it already. I don't mean to harp on this moment, campers, but it's just such a perfect little capsule of what this type of man puts the women in his life through on a daily basis. I'm going to bust out some jaw-droppingly shitty behavior, create a problem for myself with said behavior, then steamroll some poor woman and to babysit me through it at great

personal cost to her mental health and energy levels. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's like he never learned how to self-soothe and instead makes every woman, unfortunately, fortunate enough to stumble into his path, his teacher, girlfriend, Mommy, because God forbid he faced consequences for his abysmal fucking decisions. It's like he pissed himself and instead of changing his own pants, he complains loudly to every woman in his vicinity until one of them does it. That's exactly what it's like. Yes. All right. So then after some

free therapy from the gas station attendant, bless her heart, our boy decided to go on a shopping spree. With cash, he'd stolen from Anna's bank account. He bought candy, cigars, video games, and a $150 Star Wars Lego set. Well, I mean, the Millennium Falcon isn't going to build itself with me. Jesus Murphy, if this ain't some evil nerd boy shit right here. As we've seen before on TCC, we hate to say it, but sometimes you get yourself a bad nerd, right? It's got to be said. He and Dark Jedi Mark Twitchell would get along great.

I bet Anikins his favorite. character, too. Jarger Banks. Oh, Jesus. I'm not sure which is worse, but it's definitely a tie between those two. Shortly after walking out of the store with his fancy new Legos, Will texted his buddy, saying he'd been spending money I shouldn't to distract myself. Distract yourself from what, champ, the brutal, senseless murder of a woman who loved

and trusted you? He didn't seem to be doing that great of a job distracting himself, though, because after a quick phone call to Progressive to pay off a pesky car insurance bill he'd been fretting about. They're going to cancel his insurance if it wasn't paid by midnight, and that would avoid his loan and gotten his car repoed and blah, blah, blah. After he got that all squared away, Will logged on to WhatsApp, asking for help from the internet hive mind. What with? Well, buckle up for this campers, because it is pure bananas. Will was asking for advice on time travel. Oh yeah, not making this up.

At around 4 o'clock in the morning, Will typed out an urgent plea, begging to know if anybody had, quote, serious advice on how to achieve time travel. At 4.15, somebody, no doubt a complete stranger, typed back, what do you want? This is so a 4.15 a.m. conversation. It just is. It just is. Will said that his best friend had made a horrible mistake, and he needed to undo it. I want to go back to April 16, 2017, at 1130 in the morning.

morning to stop the day from happening as it did, he typed, apparently forgetting to keep up the best friend cover story now that he had somebody's attention. I want to convince myself we need to stay home, so nothing bad happens. I want to go back to keep from losing the woman that should be my wife. Can it be done? Yeah, well, no problem. People are always time hopping. Didn't you get the memo? I did it just last night to undo those microwave jalapeno poppers. I ate right at bedtime. Can it be done? Jesus Jones, this guy. I am dying to live in this dude's brain for this Hail Mary conversation. Like, just think about it, okay?

There are many steps here. He was betting that, one, time travel exists and is possible. Two, it's well known enough that some random geek on WhatsApp would know how to do it, but not well known enough that it wasn't in the public consciousness and, like, Nobel Prizes weren't won. Right. Yeah. Three, it would be cheap enough, like it wouldn't use any unobtainium, that this broke-ass loser who couldn't pay his car insurance could do it with relative ease. And finally, four, easy enough for a guy that lied about being stationed in a country that has no American military bases to learn quickly. What a fucking sale French fie of a human being.

And he was dead serious, too. Like, I mean, and by the way, this proves he's a fake geek guy Because any geek worth this all knows about the temporal prime directive, okay? It's sacrosanct, you turn up. Captain Picard would have your ass thrown right in the brick. So, yeah, time travel. Yeah, I want to ask him to name three Star Trek characters just for that gaff alone. Like, and like you said, he was dead serious.

Will reiterated that. And in case helping out a fellow nerd in need wasn't enough of an incentive to guide him text by text through the process of time travel, Will offered up a trade to sweeten the deal. I'd honestly sell my soul, he said. Well, shit, enough said. I mean, who wouldn't want a soul like this one, right? Throw in the Star Wars Lego set and we got a deal. No, no, no, no, no. The Legos weren't part of the deal, just the soul.

Oh, well, fuck that then. Not interested. Sorry. Yeah, you don't want the rusted and tarnished soul of a guy that couldn't tell the truth if it was on a teleprompter in front of him? I'm shocked. Despite this clear indication that Will knew Anna was already dead, later that night he texted her. Just let me know you're safe. Just in case the cops wanted to look at his phone later, I assume.

Well played, you cotton-headed loser. As we told you at the start of this episode, it was the next morning, April 17th, when Anna's body was discovered in the all-sea woods, lying face up, shot once in the back of the head and surrounded by trash. The trash was an interesting find. It looked like somebody had emptied out the trash from their car or something, empty surrogrette packs, candy bar wrappers, a bag from KFC. Investigators weren't sure whether any of it was connected with the murder, but, if it were, then it would be a great lead. And they knew where to start. Inside the KFC bag, they found a receipt dated the previous Friday. There were two separate orders on it. One had paid with cash, but the other had swiped a credit card. There were no names on the paper, but when investigators went to the KFC, they got the CCTV from the date and time on the receipt and

the credit card information. The name was Kevin Thomas. And in the security video, they could see two men in the car, Kevin and one other guy. Within an hour or so, investigators were knocking on Kevin Thomas' door, and he agreed to come in for an interview. When they asked him about the KFC receipt, he was quick to answer. Oh, yeah, me and my brother go to KFC on Fridays. Who was Kevin's brother? Will Hargrove. Yet another friend who called Will his brother. This guy definitely has charisma. And Kevin had another interesting bit of information to offer detectives. About a month earlier, he'd borrowed Kevin's shotgun. Just wanted to quote, go up to the woods and blow off some steam. And guess what? He still hadn't given it back. Kevin told them Will was currently staying

with his girlfriend Michelle, so they beeline right for their new prime suspect and his lady friend. Will agreed to come to the station for an interview, and on the way he texted. Michelle. Tell them we drove up there together, he told her. I picked you up at your moms. We drove there, stopped at the store, and drove back. Yeah, nothing says I love you like asking you to be my

alibi. Right? The rom-com industry should really do something with that. With the detectives, Will echoed that bullshit story. He'd picked Michelle up, they'd driven up to Allsee, bought siggy's and sodas at the little general store, and then just driven back. They asked him if he'd thrown out any trash while they were there, and he said, oh yeah,

he had, around the side of the store. Yeah, well, that ain't where they found it, now is it Will. Nice try. When the detectives asked him about Anna, Will claimed he barely knew her. He'd met her in downtown Corvallis one night, he said, and they'd gone on a couple of dates before he'd realized Anna was, quote, psychotic and dumped her. What was so psychotic about her? She decided to put on Facebook that we were engaged, Will said, and it brought down hell upon me with Michelle. When the investigators finally told Will that they'd found a bunch of his trash, right next to Anna Repkinah's body, he did an unconvincing, I'd almost say cartoonish, double-take. I'm sorry, what?

Oh, Will, you big flour dumpling. When they told him they were interested in talking more about some inconsistencies in his story, we'll stop talking and lawyered up. The first smart thing he's done so far. I mean, y'all, this man dumped his car trash right next to his murder victim's body. I'm sorry, but that one's going in the Dip Shit Hall of Fame. He might as well have left his social security. card at the crime scene.

Mm-hmm. I'm surprised you didn't, honestly. At that point, they put Will under arrest for honest murder. And then they brought in the other woman, aka Michelle, who promptly made one of the worst moves of her life by sticking to the lie Will had told her to give them, that he'd picked her up at her moms and they'd gone up to all see together that day. Girl, this man lied to you, cheated on you, gave away your wedding ring. This much, at minimum, you already know, even if you haven't figured out yet that he

murders his other girlfriend. Do not lie for his pitiful ass. Yeah, I can't believe this needs to be said, but if a dude asks you to be his alibi and you were not with him, do not do it. It can only end badly for you. But to Michelle's credit, she didn't stick to Will's bullshit story very long. She thought better of it almost right away and admitted, that's a little bit of a lie. He called me, he said he was going to pick me up, and he didn't. When the detective told her that Will was under arrest for killing Anna, Michelle seemed dazed.

And for her, this was the beginning of a long nightmare. First, as the full realization of who and what Will was started to dawn on her, and then at his trial, when the man she loved so dearly tried throwing her under the bus to save himself. Because, of course, he did. Will's defense attorney told the jury that the evidence would clearly show that Michelle was the one who killed Donna. The evidence they found so crystal clear amounted to not much more than this. One, cell phone records showing that Michelle had been to that logging road where Anna's body was found about a month before her murder. And Michelle admitted to this, she said Will had taken her there. Which of course just proves that

this dude has no imagination. Right. Two, Michelle had on a cell phone in her possession after the murder because Will gave it to her. She swore she had no idea whose it was. And three, motive, as illustrated by a text exchange between Michelle and Will on April 15th, where Michelle gave him a clear ultimatum. Fix this, she told him. Get rid of her. If she's not gone by Thursday, I'm building a snowman. Now, apparently, building a snowman was an inside joke in Michelle's family about killing somebody in a place where it's cold all year round, then building a snowman around the body. Foolproof method, right? File that one away, campers. Yeah, guys, that's real convincing. Lock her up and throw away the key. Sounds like if Frozen was a slasher movie.

Of course, if you're reading between the lines of a text exchange to tweeze out something sinister, Will's response was a lot more concerning. He said, I will have this solved permanently by April 19th. Will claimed that he'd brought Michelle to that logging road so he, she, and Anna could have it out once and for all. Work out the complicated love triangle between them so everybody could move on. But instead of talking to Anna, Michelle had taken out a shotgun and killed her. There were a few problems with that, though. First of all, the gun. They'd found it in the backseat of Will's car. the day they arrested him, and it had some nice, clean fingerprints on it. Whose? Well, Will's, not Michelle's. Her DNA wasn't on it either. Not only that, but Will's cell phone pinged right at the logging road that afternoon.

And then a whole series of CCTV cameras caught him using various ATMs to steal Ana's money. And Michelle's phone records put her exactly where she said she was most of that day, at her mom's house. When the jury looked at that, the picture became clear. They found Will Hargrove guilty of murder, plus two counts of second-degree theft. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years. Anna's family flew her ashes back to Moscow. All that was left of this bright, lovely girl who took a leap of faith to start a new life in a new country and was so horribly betrayed. The prosecutor told CBS, Anna was loved.

She was loved alive and she was loved after. As for Michelle, to say this was rough on her is a massive understatement. As she told reporter Tracy Smith, it pretty much wrecked her life for a while. The stress, the betrayal, the suspicious looks from people around town. And honestly, I feel awful for her. Like, okay, she fell in love with a chode who scammed her into thinking he was somebody he wasn't. It happens to a lot of us. I don't think she knew a damn thing about Anna's murder until after Will was arrested.

And I hate that she's been dragged through the mud like this. Yeah, even 48 hours was like, Michelle, you told Will to take care of the situation with Anna. What did you mean by that? Like, what do you mean? What did she mean by that? She meant break up with her and send her back to Russia, for fuck's sake. Like, quit trying to make it sound sinister. There is zero, and I mean zero evidence that this woman had one tiny thing to do with this woman's murder.

I mean, she wasn't happy about Will dating. somebody else most of us wouldn't be but she didn't kill Anna she didn't tell Will to kill Anna she didn't do anything except send a couple of bitchy texts no worse than what most of us would send in the same situation right you know what fuck him and his defense attorneys for trying to throw her under the bus for his crime craving little weasel so Michelle if you're listening to this we think you held up as well as anybody could have possibly held up in this bizarre situation and look we're rooting for you you do not have to let this asshole to find you and we hope you can find some peace in your life. Will is appealing his conviction, which good luck with that.

I guess the time travel thing still hasn't worked out. If I ever invent time travel, I think I'll use the opportunity to go back to the day he filled out that dating profile on the site where he met Anna and smash his laptop into smithereens with crowbar. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Jennifer, Allison, Madison, Zoyla, very cool name, Nancy, Mel, Callie, and Kate.

We appreciate you to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free at least a day early, sometimes two, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rat enamel pin while supplies last at 10, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.

And for great TCC merch, visit the true crime campfire store at spreadshirt.com.