True Crime Campfire - Tin Soldiers: The Murder of Carole Garton

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

When it comes to stuff, I really feel like counterfeit can be just as good as the real thing. Give me a lab-created diamond any day; I can show off some sparkle without robbing a bank. Same goes for shoes and bags and perfume dupes—I’m happy to sport a convincing knockoff. Fake isn’t always bad. But when it comes to people, it’s a whole different story. Especially when we’re talking fake doctor, or fake financial advisor…or as we’ll see in today’s story, fake assassin. Join us for a story of counterfeit clout, astounding gullibility, and greed, that when mixed all together, led to a deadly conclusion.This is a wild one, folks. Sources:Kill or be Killed by Robert ScottOxygen's "Mastermind of Murder," S2E10, “Under Covers”The Investigators, S1E8, “Toy Soldier”Court papers: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1891091.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome 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. When it comes to stuff, I really feel like counterfeit can be just as good as the real thing. Give me a lab-created diamond any day. I can show off some sparkle without rob, a bank. Same goes for shoes and bags and perfume dupes. I'm happy to sport a convincing knockoff. Fake isn't always bad. But when it comes to people, it's a whole different story,

especially when we're talking fake doctor or fake financial advisor, or as we'll see in today's story, fake assassin. Join us for a story of counterfeit clout, astounding gullibility, and greed, that when mixed all together, led to a deadly conclusion. This is tin soldiers. The Murder of Carol Garden. So, campers, for this one, we're in the little country town of Cottonwood in Northern California, May 16th, 1998. Sometime in the late afternoon, a man named Dale Gordon made a call to 911. He was pretty calm. We have a pregnant woman, and she's on the floor bleeding. Maybe somebody shot somebody here.

I don't know what's going on. We just got home, just noticed her. It's my roommate's wife. Dale sublet a room in the house of his friend's Todd and Carol Garton. It was Carol bleeding on the floor. When Todd got on the phone with the dispatcher, things suddenly got really weird. He seemed to be having some kind of flashback to his days in the Marine Corps. I have a place, a zone, get the airstrip on link with the paramedics.

I need revival and oxygen on stat. When police and paramedics got to the Garton's home on Adobe Road, they discovered Carol, eight months pregnant, lying on the floor of the tiny bedroom. The paramedics had to pull her into the kitchen to have enough room to try the rescue efforts, but it was much too late. Carol had been dead for quite some time,

shot twice in the head, twice in the torso, and once in the leg. It looked like she'd been shot while lying on the bed and then fell off of it. There was no sign of any forced entry into the house, which more often than not means the victim knew their killer. It was either someone they'd let in, or someone who had keys of their own. Carol's husband Todd said that he, Carol, their roommate Dale, and Todd's friend Norman had gone to the gun show up the road in Anderson that day. Carol hadn't intended to stay for long, and when she left, Norman had asked for a ride back to Cottonwood in Carol's white Jeep.

But the Jeep wasn't at the Garten's house now, and neither was Norman Daniel. Daniels. Norman, Todd told the detectives, was a casual acquaintance, not someone he knew real well. He worked at a gas station in Cottonwood. As far as detectives knew right now, he was the last person to see Carol Garten alive. Norman Daniels wasn't at his trailer when police arrived, but a quickly executed search warrant told them he'd been there recently. He'd come back to change clothes, and the ones he'd left behind had blood spatter on them. They also found a 44-calibre revolver under his pillow, and what looked like shell casings for the same weapon in the front yard. They also found something weird in Norman's nightstand. What looked like a wax

seal with an imprint they initially thought was a ram's head, but that on closer inspection was a scuba diver's head and mask with hoses coming off of it. Huh. They waited for Norman to come home, and the next day he did, looking like hell, like he hadn't slept at all. Norman initially said he'd spent the last day and a half at the lake and hadn't had any contact at all with Todd or Carol Garten. But when a detective asked if he wanted to come over and see Carol, right there and then, Norm got real quiet and nervous. If he'd been out of touch at the lake, of course, he wouldn't know anything was wrong with Carol. He was arrested and taken back to the sheriff's office to be interviewed. And there, he eventually confessed to killing Carol. I was jealous of the

relationship Todd and Carol had, he said. I was jealous of them. Norman kept talking about the murder and about his life, and the more he talked, the more he mentioned Todd Garton's name. Not to implicate him, but it sure seemed like Norman Todd were pretty close. But Todd had told him he barely knew the guy. What was up with that? And who was Todd Garton anyway? Todd was born in 1970 and started lying almost as soon as he could talk. If you want to be more generous, you might say he could spin a good yarn, but one way or another, he was as full of bullshit as the world's worst pinata. He was a bright kid with a comfortable middle-class upbringing, but nevertheless developed an intense jealousy for the wealthy. It wasn't

enough that his own life was easy if someone else's life was better. Todd's tall tales really took off when he was 16 and his family moved from California up to Portland, Oregon. Nobody knew him here. He could invent a whole past for himself, and poe did he ever. A mediocre bass player, he and his drummer, Buddy Collins, soon put together a band, detente touch, which really just sounds like they tried to get as close to Depeche mode as they could. Detente touch. Todd's new bandmates got to hear his reinvented history, inspired by his addiction to Soldier of Fortune magazine.

There it is again. Yeah, all I need is an idiotic Mensa member, and I think I've got a bingo. When he was 12 years old, driven by patriotic pride and his Irish ancestry, Todd had stolen a credit card and flown to Belfast to try and find the IRA, which he did. He wanted to join. Now, you might think the IRA's response to that would be to give the kid a solid kick in the ass, but no, they were amazed at Todd's knowledge of firearms and their proper care and maintenance. because as we all know, every American preteen knows more about guns than a decades-old paramilitary organization. The IRA invited their new Gunsensei to stay a while and share his secret knowledge. I'm imagining all these like tough, grown men sitting crisscross applesauce around an American middle schooler looking up with awe in their faces. Before then, I guess they'd just been chucking AK-47s at people instead of firing them.

Soon, he was going out on missions with them and getting into gunfights with British soldiers, making kill after kill. We don't need to tell you this was all bullshit, right? We don't need to tell you that. That's good. Okay. I mean, we've had people tell some massive lies on the show, but this might be the most ridiculous lie we've ever covered. And Todd's buddy Colin thought it was nonsense. At first, but Todd kept telling the story and all the details stayed the same.

So eventually, Colin started to think it might be true. Which, dude, no, that just means he's smart enough to remember what lies he told what people. God's sakes, but bless your heart. De Taunt Touch was pretty much a garage band like a million others, but they struck a small nugget of gold when they got Carol Bachelor to sing for them. Carol, who took the stage name Ursula DeSay, was way ahead of the others and talent. Once she was on board, they actually started to get some gigs. Todd nominated himself for the role of Hightman and Promoter, and he liked to lay it on thick. One flyer said,

To pass up seeing d'etante touch now would be the same as missing the Beatles when they started back in Liverpool. This band in later years will be brought up with the likes of the doors, Jimmy Hendrick, Janice Joplin, Buddy Holly, and Led Zeppelin. Damn. Todd didn't believe in the walk before you can run so much as rocket yourself to Mars before you can walk. There was, of course, a lot going on in the Pacific Northwest's music scene around this time with grunge slowly creeping to life, but that wasn't a taut touch's scene.

They leaned more towards 80s glam metal. The fifth member of the band was Hairspray. Decades later, Lynn Aeson could still remember exactly when she first laid eyes on Todd Garten. She was 16 years old at Parker's high school in Portland, and she'd just been chatting with some friends about the new boy from California when there he was, walking down the hall, long, dark hair flowing, pretty much pure catnip for any girl on the hard rock side of the MTV generation. Lynn had cartoon hard eyes for Todd from minute one, and she had crushed even harder.

when she found out he was in a band. She had a friend to introduce her to him and spent as much time as she possibly could around him. Teenagers aren't exactly subtle. Todd could see that Lynn thought the sun shined out of his ass, and he liked that. Within a few weeks, they were dating. Which I don't get it personally.

I've seen pictures of Todd, you know, in his detent touch days. And to me, he just looks like a guy who was probably still breastfeeding, like, in high school. But to each their own Lynn. Why is that such a good analogy? That's so perfect, yes. Because it's dead accurate. It's dead accurate. You all see when we post the pictures. Todd also liked that there was apparently no limit to the amount of his bullshit that Lynn was willing to believe.

By now, he had altered his most dramatic story a scoosh closer to believability. He told Lynn he was 15 years old when he went over to teach the IRA what guns were, not 12. A little bit better, right? He had a copy of the anarchist cookbook, the notorious guidebook on how to make bombs. booby traps, LSD, and anything else a would-be revolutionary might need. He gave it to Lynn. She had to hide it for him. If certain people knew he had the book, he'd be killed.

Meanwhile, every edgy teenager since the 80s could get their hands on an anarchist cookbook by like buying enough wallet chains and or leather jackets or wishing upon a star or whatever. They were being passed around like dad's porno mags. They had it at the bookstore in my town. Everybody I knew had that book. It's, yeah, it's like, what do you mean, certain, I'm guessing the government, but like, no. Yeah, it's everywhere, dude. Every shitty apartment with Kianti bottle candle holders had that book.

Just calm your tis. Chanty bottle, can holders. You know it's accurate, too. It's so true. We're the same age. I was, well, I'm a little bit younger than Todd, but same general era. Todd stuffed the book with newspapers. articles about Northern Ireland, claiming to have been involved in many of the events there.

There was a picture of someone in a field in Ireland, face conveniently blurred by newsprint. That's me, Todd said. Lynn believed it all. Todd gave her books to read. Till now, like any good high school girl in the mid-80s, Lynn's main reading material had been Anne Rice vampire novels. Girl, same. But Todd wanted Lynn to read stuff he was into, military and espionage thrillers.

like the Day of the Jackal and the Eagle has landed. And if Lynn had her eyes all the way open, she might have wondered why Todd's stories about his own life were way more outlandish than anything in fiction. But nobody ever said teenagers in love were smart. Bless them. Lynn stuck to Todd's side like a dreamy-eyed barnacle and went to as many as Dayton-t touches shows as she could.

Other members of the band dismissed her as a groupie, but Todd enjoyed her absolute devotion to him. well sort of absolute behind todd's back Lynn was screwing around with her girlfriend Natalia but she was apparently one of those girls who doesn't really think it counts as cheating if it's with another girl but despite these other flirtations Todd was the moody fluffy-haired planet around which Lynn orbited

with a razor blade she carved a heart into her upper thigh with a T for Todd in the middle T for Todd certainly appeared to be just as much into her showering her with love letters and big splashy declarations of romance. But he didn't have much in the way of object permanence when it came to romance. Lynn got into trouble at school and dropped out, then moved out of home and end with some friends. And without her clinging to his side at all times,

Todd's attention started to wander, and then focused laser sharp when he started working at Arby's and found romance amid the sweet aromas of curly fries and melting cheddar. Mmm, curly fries. Carol Holman was a few months older than Todd, and for the most part had a happy, normal childhood. She was an athletic, outdoorsy kid, funny, and smart. But even happy kids can fly off the rails toward the end of adolescence, and Carol's parents getting divorced when she was 17 didn't help.

She started having trouble at school and staying out late, generally going through some boilerplate teenage rebellion. I don't think shift work at Arby's really fits into the teenage rebellion thing, but she needed some spending money. Todd liked the look of her right away, and no wonder. She was gorgeous and curvy with a smart wit, and she was the only person in Todd's life who would call him on his bullshit stories. Not that she'd dislike the bullshit stories.

She enjoyed watching Todd regale other people with his nonsense. It was just that when he tried it on her, she'd laugh him off. Good for her. She was the polar opposite of Lynn Aeson. calm and confident. And whatever else, Todd could be charming and had apparently forgotten entirely about an Aeson's existence as soon as he clapped eyes on Carol.

They were soon dating, and not long after that, De Tant Touch all moved into a house together to live and practice, and Carol moved in too. As you might imagine, a house occupied by a teenage rock band got pretty raucous.

The band weren't into drugs. Todd, in fact, was pretty much straight-edge. Nerd! He'd claim this was because of his drunken gambler dad, but that was probably a lie. A lot of manipulators avoid intoxicants because it makes it harder to control people. And harder to remember what lies you told the next day. Yeah. But everybody else did plenty of drinking, and there was a lot of screwing around.

High school kids and musicians were always crashing there, and there were a lot of impromptu parties. It was a party house. Todd was fun, but he could definitely rub people the wrong way. whereas Carol was pretty much universally liked. A lot of guys were jealous of Todd. Band member Shannon Colbank remembered more than once hearing guys at the house complain, she's too good for that jerk, or words to that effect. That tidbit, by the way, comes from the book Kill or Be Killed by Robert Scott,

one of our main sources for this case. Carol's parents shared that opinion and tried to talk her into moving out of the house. Her dad even threatened to have Todd arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Todd, the bullshit artist, acted so confident that Carol's dad thought he was about five years older than he was. In actuality, he was younger than Carol. And then, Lynn Aeson turned up again, like the bad penny. She tracked Todd down to Arby's, where the girls behind the counter told her that not only did Todd have a new girlfriend, they were already living together. Lynn was livid. Not with Todd, but with Carol, who as far as Lynn was concerned, had swooped in

and stolen her man. She started showing up to all the band's practices and making googly guys at Todd, which made everybody uncomfortable, except for Todd, obviously. Todd loved it. If it's great having one girl be really, really into you, isn't it twice as great to have two girls really, really into you? There weren't many more band practices anyway. Todd's life strategy of over-promising and under-delivering was starting to bite detente touch in the ass. He talked to the owner of the hottest. club in town into booking them two Saturdays in a row, promising that at least 500 people would

show up each night. But the crowd numbers were a lot closer to five than 500. And after that, nobody wanted to give them any gigs. Ursula, their only real standout talent, quit, and the whole thing just dissolved. And somewhere, Paul McCartney breathed a sigh of relief, the Beatles' legacy was safe for now. Todd and Carol moved in with his parents, which at least stopped Lynn from turning up all the time. Either she didn't know where they were or had enough of a grasp of reality to know how weird it would be to just show up uninvited at his parents' place where he was living with his girlfriend. Lynn soon found a boyfriend of her own, but Todd called her regularly and sent her gifts in sappy letters.

To Lynn, this told her that she still owned most of Todd's heart. But it seems pretty clear to me that he was just keeping her on the shelf. in case things went south with Carol. Now that Dayton-Touch had crapped out, Todd decided that if his rock-and-roll dreams were dead, he'd pursue his second boyhood fantasy, a life of military adventure. He signed up for the U.S. Marines.

Todd was smart and imaginative, and the Marines might have been able to knock him into a useful shape, but he was unlucky and hurt his leg real bad during boot camp. It never quite healed well enough, and one year after he joined, Todd was given an honorable discharge. With another dream biting the dust, Todd was flailing. He called up Lynn and asked her to marry him. She asked for a little time to think about it, then called him back to say yes. Carol answered the phone. When Lynn told her that Todd had just

proposed, Carol said, imagine that. He just proposed to me too. Oh my God. So how Todd talked his way out of this with Carol isn't clear, but I'm guessing he just said Lynn was crazy, which might have worked because Lynn was kind of crazy, and Carol, for obvious reasons, was not a big fan of hers to start with. But Todd still wanted to keep his hooks in Lynn. He sent her a letter that ended, I adore you, O Lynn. I count myself as nothing before your divine majesty. You are life, truth, beauty, and goodness. I glorify you. I give thanks for your existence. I desire to serve, obey, and love you. But not marry you, apparently. He was going to marry Carol, because she was better. Their wedding was in Reno in 1991, but being married didn't stop Todd

sending Lynn love letters and having long phone calls with her where he bragged about his adventures in the Marines. Because, see, Todd never told Lynn he wasn't in the Marines anymore, just like he didn't tell her he and Carol had gotten married. When he found out Lynn was dating a guy, named Dean Noyes, Todd's stories got even wilder. Daring assassination missions all over the world. Real black ops kind of stuff, you know. The funny thing is, if he'd actually just sent some of this shit into Soldier of Fortune instead of trying to build a fake life out of it, he might have actually been able to make a little money. The year after Todd tied the knot, Lynn got ready to marry Dean Noyes in a hurry because she'd just found out she was pregnant. Todd was not happy. In his eyes,

despite the beautiful wife he didn't deserve, Lynn was still his. He told her no one could love her as much as he did. Nobody could appreciate her divine majesty as much, which, by the way, any men listening, you know, he set the bar, okay? We need to be told about our divine majesty on a regular basis. True. Or else we're out the door. Lynn, finally forcing him to put his money where his big fat mouth was, told him, if you don't want me to do this, if you come up here, I'll leave a whole church full of people.

I'll leave with you. Todd didn't show up, of course. When her son was born, Lynn wanted Todd to be his godfather. He didn't show up for that either. Ugh, I know. But after a while, he started sending her letters again, keeping her connected with him,

just in case he needed her. Girl, stand up! I know. It's so depressing, isn't it? Once they were married, Carol got a job with the Oxford Suites Motel chain, First at the desk, but she was quickly promoted to management, and then to a gig training other people to manage motels. They really liked her. Todd, meanwhile, set up a promotions company booking bands in central Oregon, with them often staying in the motels that Carol managed.

But this quickly crashed and burned, with poor Carol caught in the fallout. Todd had some trouble with the motel company, most likely stiffing him on payment because he lost so much money on the promotions company. Carol, having to choose between her job and her husband, chose Todd, and quit. Ugh. They moved back in with Todd's parents. He and his dad started a fencing company, while Carol got a job with a mom-and-pop insurance agency in town. Her new bosses adored her, and as was increasingly common, thought Todd was a chode who wasn't good enough for her. Correct.

You see, the further you get from high school folks, the less impressed people are by a big mouth. Things drifted along like this for a few years with Carol succeeding in Todd, Phelan, and Flan. He relied on his dad for work and on Carol for money, which for somebody with his grandiose sense of self-importance was intolerable. His ego demanded adoration, and he still got that from Lynn. He ramped up his calls and letters to her, and his fantasy life got even more dramatic. He was a sniper on an elite marine black ops team and had made multiple kills in South America. The Marine Corps, by the way, has a secrecy exemption for trying to impress your old high school girlfriend. Obviously, you're allowed to do that. Just don't tell anybody else, right?

Mm-hmm, sure. He sent Lynn pictures of his purple heart and his marine dive school emblem, which was a pin in the shape of a scuba diver's head. It's unclear where Todd got these. eBay was in its infancy, but in the days before internet trading, almost every town had a few pawn shops. Because being a government super soldier apparently wasn't an exciting enough story, Todd kicked things up a notch. He was also an assassin for hire, working for a shady globe-spanning organization, known simply as the company. For enough money, the company would kill anyone in the world for you. And apparently, the Marine Corps were just fine with one of their own freelance, as a killer for hire, which is very, very believable and convincing and true.

You'd think all this globe-trotting wetwork wouldn't leave much time for anything else, but Todd told Lynn he also helped the Sheriff's Department on drug raids. He sent her a newspaper picture of an officer just about to break down a door, face conveniently turned away from the camera, and wrote, guess who on it? I just, this is so funny. It's like, did Lynn have no object permanence? Because like, people look different. Like, people's bodies look different. Like, it's just weird. It's, it's, it's when you want to believe something, you will. It's that simple. We should probably point out by now that Todd was not John Rambo. Okay? This was not a believable lie whatsoever. No. Todd and Carol had very briefly had a.

fun little garage band called Forbidden Fruit, and one of the guys in the band was George Coram. Todd told Lynn that George had stolen sound equipment and guitar, so obviously Todd had killed him. Thing was, George used to live in Portland, and Lynn knew him. They had tons of friends in common. If she'd mention him to anyone, she'd have learned he was alive and well, and that Todd was full of shit. His lies had always been ridiculous, but this one was just flat out stupid, but Lynn, never followed up about George. She didn't question anything Todd told her, especially not when he started badmouthing Carol. She was just so mean and demanding to him all the time. She was cheating on him with multiple guys. She was just making his life hell. All lies, of course.

Like, I'm guessing her being mean and demanding was like, hey, man, can you put your socks in the fucking hamper? Yeah. Can you do the laundry since I'm the one working here? Go fuck yourself. She probably didn't even say that. No, I know. cheating had always been a hot-button issue with Lynn, and the thought of Carol hurting Todd like that had just burned her up. I mean, early in their marriage, she told her own husband, Dean, that if he ever cheated on her, it would be a stone-cold deal-breaker. Lynn being Lynn, this didn't stop her flying over to New York every chance she could to visit and screw around with her old high school girlfriend Italia. But again, you know, doesn't count if it's with a woman or an emotional affair with Todd. You know, doesn't know. I know. The nerve. Like, oh, it's a deal breaker if he cheats on you. Are you insane? Yeah. Good Lord. It's a, you know, rules for thee, but not for me. Blah, blah, blah. By 1996, Lynn's marriage to Dean wasn't going so great. She and Todd. the old high school sweetheart, started to have wistful conversations about how they could be together again. If only Dean and Carol were somehow magically out of the picture. By the fall, Todd had started talking openly about murder. As we've seen before on this show, people often don't take

the person seriously in this situation, but Lynn took Todd seriously right away. As far as she knew, he was a professional assassin who had killed dozens, if not hundreds of people. But she just went silent when Todd started talking about murdering their spouses, neither encouraging or discouraging them. But a few months later, Lynn got a call from the husband of a woman Dean worked with. My wife and your husband are having an affair, the guy said. And when Lynn confronted Dean, he admitted it was true. The next time Lynn spoke to Todd, she said, go ahead, take him out. It didn't hurt that Dean had a $125,000 life insurance policy. Lynn wanted that money and could use some of it to pay the company to kill Dean.

Now, I hope y'all aren't going to be too disappointed about this. Just prepare yourself, but there was no company. Okay, just Todd and his big bag of bullshit. What? I know, I'm sorry.

Oh, no. Say it isn't true. But he was happy to kill Dean Neuiz, although he wanted some backup for the mission. A couple years earlier, a mutual friend had introduced him to Dale Gordon. Dale had been in the Marine, and was kind of an asshole, so he and Todd had a lot in common and hit it off right away.

And when Todd started spinning all his special ops stories, Dale swallowed him whole. In real life, Todd hadn't been a Marine for very long, but he'd picked up enough to be able to talk about it convincingly, and he had all his pawn shop medals and emblems. Dale would later say he just couldn't believe one Marine would lie to another, which I think was just his way of trying to find an excuse for the truth, that he was a sucker. Dale's life was in the process of falling apart. His mechanics business had failed and he declared bankruptcy and his girlfriend had left him after he told her about some shady work he'd done for Todd.

Stealing his Ford Bronco and leaving it out in the country, shot up with bullet holes so Todd could collect on the insurance money. He was drinking most of the time and had frequent thoughts about ending his life. Todd let him move in with him and Carol in their tiny house in exchange for helping out with the fencing company. So Dale was deeply vulnerable and entirely dependent on Todd, when Todd started telling him what a scumbag Dean Noyes was. Hi, I'm Darren Marler, host of the Weird Darkness podcast. I want to talk about the most important tool in my podcast belt. Spreaker is the all-in-one platform.

that makes it easy to record, host, and distribute your show everywhere, from Apple podcasts to Spotify. But the real game changer for me was Spreeker's monetization. Spreaker offers dynamic ad insertion. That means you can automatically insert ads into your episodes, no editing required. And with Spreker's programmatic ads, they'll bring the ads to you, and you get paid for every download. This turned my podcasting hobby into a full-time career.

Sprinker also has a premium subscription model where your most dedicated listeners can pay for bonus content or early access, adding another revenue stream to what you're already doing. And the best part, Spreaker grows with you. Whether you're just starting out or running a full-blown podcast network, Sprinker's powerful tools scale effortlessly as your show grows. So if you're ready to podcast like a pro and get paid while doing it, check out spreeker.com. That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.com. Dean's wife Lynn, Todd said, had fought alongside him for the IRA in Belfast. Depending on which of his IRA timelines Todd was sticking to,

she would have been either 11 or 14 years old at the time. Most of his bullshit relied on people not looking too closely at the details. Dean, Todd said, was abusive, beating Lynn regularly. He'd promised to kill her if she left him. The company had agreed to kill him, and Dale would get $10,000 if he helped. Dale agreed. They went up to Portland on what Todd called a reconnaissance mission, which mainly involved him and Lynn Boning in a motel room.

The actual hit wouldn't be attempted till the next year, by which time Todd had decided he needed a third member of his dumbass crew because Dale Gordon was messed up and kind of flaky. So he turned to Norman Daniels. In 1993, Todd had briefly attended Shasta College in Redding, which is where he'd met Norman. Norman had noticed Todd struggling in the computer lab and offered to help. They soon discovered they had the military in common. Todd told Norman he was still in the Marines and was recuperating after breaking both his legs

jumping out of a helicopter on a Black Ops mission in South America. Norman looked like the kind of person at home in a computer lab, a quiet, wide-eyed guy who could almost but not quite grow a mother. In fact, of Todd Garton's three schmucketeers, he'd had the most exciting military experience as an airborne infantryman based in Alaska at a time when that meant you'd be quickly into action if trouble started with the Soviet Union. But all through his life, people had noted how naive and gullible Norman was. He didn't doubt Todd's tall tales for a second. Norman's post-army life hadn't been smooth sailing. By the mid-90s, after a succession of failed

careers and failed relationships, he was working in a gas station in Cottonwood to support himself and his young son. When they reconnected in 1997, Todd offered Norman some extra work for his fencing company, but Norman heard his foot and wasn't able to work much. He was really worried about money when Todd just came right out and said, do you want to be an assassin? I know you need the money. I'm an assassin. Norman, being who he was, believed Todd, but he didn't want any part of that work himself. But Todd worked and worked on him. Norman loved archery, and Todd helped him by an expensive compound bow.

They went out shooting arrows together a lot. Todd was hilariously bad at it. One time, missing the target so badly that he had a pickup truck in the parking lot. That's the kind of thing that might make most of us question whether Todd was really an elite international hitman, but not Norman. Not Norman. Todd went into his well-practiced spiel about what a dirtbag Dean Noyes was, adding a new wrinkle that Dean was embezzling from the hospital where he worked. Norman was desperate for money. Eventually, he said yes. Norman Daniels and Dale Gordon got

along pretty well once Todd introduced them. In fact, if Todd had conveniently disappeared in a puff of smoke, they might have made something of themselves. When he was in the Marines, Dale Gordon had created a role-playing game called World of Chaos, where people had violent car chases and gunfights in the streets, sort of like a tabletop version of Grand Theft Auto. His fellow Marines had loved it, and Dale still harbored some vague hopes of publishing a game. Norman, meanwhile, had created a simple player versus player video game where two people ran around a maze picking up weapons and trying to shoot each other. When they got together, Norman started helping Dale put together a website for World of Chaos so people could play it online. They were both kind of fuck up, so that

probably wasn't going anywhere, but it might have. But Todd wasn't having it. He wanted them out in the woods practicing with real guns to kill Dean Noyes. He also showed them training videos, which were pretty much just any action movie with a sniper in it. Well, I think that's how the military prepares for missions, right? I mean, like a fighter pilot's briefing is just showing him top gun to get him in the mood. Yeah, and Army surgeons warm up by watching a couple episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Sure. Todd also introduced a new character, Natalia, Lynn's on-again, off-again girlfriend in New York,

and I'm 100% sure this was because Natalia is the kind of name that fits in spy stories. Absolutely. Yeah. She was a broker, Todd said, someone who took in contracts for hits and arranged them, and she was the one who'd pay them. She, I know.

He also said she was a former IRA assassin, which is just weak work. It doesn't always have to be about Ireland, Todd. You're dreaming up an assassin called Natalia, and you're not saying she's former KGB? Sloppy, sir. Very sloppy. I know. Natalia, for God's sakes. Writes itself, dude. And with Todd, Lynn, and now Natalia, we're at three former or current assassins who all went to the same small high school in Portland.

What are the odds? It's crazy. And especially all in one very same. specific, like, paramilitary group, like, regional, like, what do you mean? We're not looking at it, too. No. We're thinking about it too hard. I'm sorry.

You're right. They drove north in a truck loaded with guns and knives and zip ties and disguises. Todd dressed them all up in button up shirts, tie, slacks, and wool caps, explaining that this was how people in Oregon dressed. What? What? Lynn had sent him a little box with pictures of Dean as well as keys to their house and cars. The plan

was to kill Dean at the parking garage where he parked for work. He drove a distinctive car, a Pontiac Fiero. So they'd stake out the garage and wait for him. Then just go in and Todd would shoot him to death. They waited and waited, but there was no Fiero. What had happened was

Lynn got cold feet. Not so much that she told Dean what was going on or that he was in danger, but she'd insisted he'd take their Ford Bronco instead of the Fierro. The Bronco wouldn't fit in the parking garage, so she knew he'd have to park somewhere else. When Todd spoke to Lynn, he was furious. She said she didn't know why Dean had taken the Bronco, but regardless, she wanted to call everything off. Todd didn't answer. He had no intention of stopping now. It was time for Plan B. Plan B wasn't much of a plan. After dark, they'd break into the Noia's house using the key Lynn had given them and either abducteen and kill him elsewhere or do it right there at the house. They parked at a strip club a quarter mile from the house and walked down the street in their Oregon disguises, carrying gun cases and wearing earpieces and microphones.

Dale Gordon was acting real nervous and twitchy. Todd quietly told Norman to keep an eye on him. when they got to the house they took their guns out and Todd walked up to the door and some unknown thing freaked Dale out so he rolled under a car parked outside really inconspicuous Todd unlocked the top lock

of going in he said over the radio and put the key into the lock on the door handle but it wouldn't turn he tried for a few seconds then panicked he turned and started running down the street the cops were called he said over the radio We got to go. Abort! Abort! Mission scrubbed!

Just seriously imagine the scene. I cannot. And this dude's rolling under a car. They all sprinted down the street, guns in hand, panting by the time they got to the truck. They tossed the guns in the back, and Todd started driving frantically, turning left where there was no left turn and running over the island in the middle of the road. Black ops. They were driving away from a strip club with a liquor license. Any cop who saw them would definitely pull them over. Even more so when the panicky Todd floored the gas pedal and turned off the headlights.

I just need everyone to realize that these are grown men dressed as hipster blues brothers. A little headset from radios. It's like hipster reservoir dogs, except really, really bad. So bad. After a while, he pulled into someone's driveway and got out to start tossing guns from the back of the truck into the bushes. Then he got a hold of himself and started tossing them right back the other way, back into the truck. Then they drove back to their motel to get what little sleep they could before the long drive back to California. imagine my drive god i wish i bet it was real quiet nobody said a damn word oh man so operation

kill dean was a bust dean noyes had been lucky i guess although i really don't know that he needed luck with this crew no no but yeah i mean he was he was obviously lucky a couple months ago he'd put new locks on the front door but screwed it up. The bottom lock jammed a lot. You could still get in, you just had to know the right way to jiggle it, which of course Todd hadn't. Of course, you don't have to be an elite assassin to figure out another way into a house if the front door doesn't work. In fact, one time when he'd visited Lynn, he'd noticed the French doors were so loosely latched that you could probably force them with a credit card. But Todd Garton, ice cold international man of mystery had panicked

and I'm pretty sure peed himself a little too. The unprecedented obstacle of a locked door. He couldn't have planned for such a contingency as that. Come on. You have to forgive him. Who would have possibly imagined if the door would be locked?

God forbid. Oh my God. Jesus left. I'm crying. Oh, my God. These guys. By the end of the year, Todd was more concerned with killing another spouse, his own. Carol had gotten pregnant. Todd pretended to be happy, but he wasn't. He hated being around small kids and didn't want any of his own.

Of course, he'd never told Carol this or taken any birth control precautions. He told Lynn Noyes the baby wasn't his, that the father could have been any number of men Carol was sleeping with. All lies, of course. And Carol had a healthy life insurance policy, too. If she were dead, Todd would have money and be free to do whatever he wanted, be with whoever he wanted. Not that he felt much restriction there anyway, he and Lynn were meeting regularly for sex. The baby was due to be born in June of 1998.

In April, Todd went to Norman Daniels trailer to have a talk with him. He didn't want Dale Gordon to be any part of this operation. He'd freaked out too much in Portland. Yeah, he'd freaked out too much. It's all Dale's fault. It's all Dale. Norman was in even more dire financial straits by now, and he certainly wasn't any less gullible. Todd told him that the company wanted to hire Norman as a professional assassin.

But first, he'd have to prove himself in a rite of passage by killing someone he knew, up close and personal. Everyone in the company had to go through this. Hmm. Norman was close to rock bottom. He said he was in. Todd told him the leader of the company, Colonel Sean, as in Connery, would be in touch. Then he persuaded Carol that they should both get $125,000 life insurance policies, you know, just in case. To keep Norman in line, Todd recruited Lynn Noyes to be his operator.

He told Lynn that Carol also used to be in the company working in Ireland when she was a teenager, but had fallen out with Colonel Sean. had even shot him in the leg. So now he wanted her dead. Carol, remember, had been working at Arby's when Lynn first met her. I guess that was just a deep cover? Yeah. Because every international assassin organization needs to hire dipshit teenagers. I'm not calling Carol a dipshit.

It's just every teenager's a dipshit. You know what I mean? Right. Todd told Norman to expect a package from Colonel Sean, then went to office max to buy a label maker and a bubble mailer. Mr. Super Secret Agent paid for all of this with a check from his fencing company. The label maker meant he could avoid handwriting anything and would add a nice touch of Mission Impossible style verisimilitude.

He put his package together, then sealed it with red wax, pressing his military diver pin into the wax to make it look impressive. On April 28th, just before midnight, He drove over to Norman's trailer. In the weak light in front of the trailer, his face grim, Todd handed over the package to Norman. On the front were two strips of words, newbie recruit and Patriot Recruiter. Norman knew Todd's company codename was Patriot. He was the newbie recruit. Norman made to open the envelope, but Todd stopped him.

Wait a second, he said. If you open that, you're going to have to do what it tells you in that package, or you'll end up dead. Norman had already made that choice, though. He opened the envelope. Inside were three photographs of Carol Garten. In one, everyone else in that picture had their faces exed out with a green marker, but Carol's head was circled. Todd had already told Norman that his target would be circled like that.

On the back of the photo, there were more strips of letters. If you don't complete this mission, you will be terminated. No way, Norman said. Todd took the photo, looked at it as if surprised, then sighed. Norman complained that he couldn't possibly kill Carol. You've got to do it, Todd told him. There's no way out. He looked at the photo inside again.

Well, at least it isn't me, he said. I hate him so much. Such a believable reaction for a husband of a pregnant wife to say, oh, well, you're just going to have to do. You're going to have to kill my wife. At least it's not me. Fucker. Norman, come on, man. It's just, it's hard to watch.

It's hard to watch. After Todd left, Norman mostly followed his instructions to destroy everything in the package. He tore up the photos and flushed them down the toilet, burn the envelope outside on his grill. But the wax seal had fallen off, and Norman kept it in his nightstand. He didn't doubt all this bizarre company stuff was true, but he knew it would be hard for an outsider to swallow. Life had not taught him to be an optimist, and he was already sure something was going to go wrong. He wanted the seal and its weird imprint as a small scrap of proof of what was going on. Lynn's job was to soothe Norman's doubts and cajole him into actually carrying out the murder,

mostly via email. Lynn still believed this was to be a company hit, but because of the lies Todd told her about Carol and his marriage, she suspected he'd helped arrange it. She didn't care. she'd never liked Carol. Todd told her to be friendly with Norman. If Norman needed a firmer hand, Colonel Sean would get in touch too. Colonel Sean, of course, was Todd, though Lynn had no idea of that. Lynn was certainly friendly. After they were comfortable with each other, Norman invited her with him to Vampire Tavern, an online role-playing game that was really just a glorified AOL chat room.

The goal was to talk someone into letting you feed on them. Seduction, basically, because all this story needed was some flipping 90s fake vampire shit. Good God! We didn't have enough classic true crime campfire tropes already. We got to have freaking vampires in the mix now. The bingo card is full. We're done. Lynn Noyes was up for most things,

and soon their communications were less about secret agent stuff and almost exclusively vampire-themed cybersex between Valkimir, Valkymyr, and Pandora. Now, that's not a typo. Lynn's screen name was Pandora with two O's. Actually, her full name was Pandora 69, because of course it was. Also, Norm, honey, your fantasy alter ego is essentially just Val Kilmer.

Try harder. Norman started falling for Lynn pretty hard. He sent her stories and poems. He called her, my lady. But no matter how he felt about Lynn, she and Colonel Sean were having a hard time prodding Norman to killing Carol. He liked Carol. But the clock was ticking. Todd wanted her dead before she gave birth, figuring that afterwards it would be much harder to convince someone to kill both Carol and a newborn. God, this guy is garbage. So he turned the screws on Norman, passing on a message from Colonel Sean. If you don't do what you're told, you or your son, could end up either hurt or dead. And that did the trick.

To protect his son, Norman would kill Carol. Todd suggested he'd do it that Saturday when Todd and Dale would be out of the house at a local gun show, which also meant it wouldn't be weird for Norman to be wearing his gun on his belt. Everyone went to the gun show, but Carol hadn't been planning to stay. When she was about to leave, Norman asked for a ride back to her house

because he wanted to finish watching whatever awful assassin movie Todd had put on the previous night. They drove back in Carol's white jeep, then sat and watched the movie together. Norman had a blanket across his lap, and underneath it, he had the gun out. He was trying to work himself up to shooting Carol right there in her chair. When she went to lie down in the bedroom, he went to the bathroom to try and psych himself up more, but when he came out, he just called through that he was going to take the tape back to Valley Video. He did that, then headed back to Carol's.

He thought about parking some little way away and approaching the house from the wildland out back, but he knew Carol was a crack shot and thought she might plug him if she saw him creeping up on her like that. So he just parked out front and went in, saying you needed to pee. Carol was still on the bed,

lying on her side as she talked with Norman. He decided to just do it quick and pointed his gun at her head. Carol lifted her hands in front of her face, but the bullet went right through and hit her over her. her left eye. She fell off the bed and tried to crawl under it. Norman shot her twice more in the head and twice in the torso, then once in the leg, and she lay still. Norman holstered the gun,

ditched the jeep some ways away, and started drinking. He wasn't thinking straight. He cleaned his fingerprints off the gun, but then just shoved it under his pillow. He took the empty shell casings out of the cylinder and just tossed them out into the front yard. Over the next day and a half, he got wasted and panicked, kept calling Lynn and Todd and asking for help, for the almighty company to swoop in and evacuate him from this mess. Todd just berated him for leaving evidence at the trailer and demanded Norman go back and clean things up.

Eventually, he did. He expected the police to be waiting for him there. He just didn't care. The detectives picked him up as soon as he got out of his cab. Norman confessed to the killing and eventually came most of the way clean about Todd's involvement with the company. He did this because he thought the safest place for him was in a jail cell. If he was out, the company would probably kill him to clean up the mess. Detectives had him call Todd from jail to ask for help.

Mr. Secret Agent Man apparently didn't know jailhouse calls are recorded because his response put him firmly in the detective sites and made them take Norman's bizarre story a lot more seriously. I'm going to get on the phone to the big boys and see what we can work out for you, Todd said. We'll be there for you, man. We'll try and help you out as much as we can. Remember, Todd was talking to the man who just admitted to murdering his wife. He didn't seem angry about it at all. Yeah, that's a little bit askew. It was enough for a search warrant for Todd's home.

Detectives found his divers pin, still with red wax around the edges, as well as papers for Todd and Carol's new life insurance policies. They were laser-focused on Todd Garten now and went to Carol's memorial service on the lookout for anything suspicious. They certainly got it. Instead of a minister, Todd led the proceedings himself, hammed it up and playing to the crowd and a poor imitation of grief. And he very obviously kept making googly eyes at Lynn Noyes. Oh my God. Everyone who knew Carol well was astonished that Lynn had showed up to the memorial. To Carol, Lynn had always been the other woman.

The two of them hated each other, and now here she was, her gaze never leaving Todd as he performed. Ugh. After the memorial, Todd, Lynn, and a bunch of their friends went to a motel and partied in the pool and hot tub. Lynn was all over Todd in the pool, pressing up against him, sitting between his legs. They shared a room that night, but don't worry. It had two beds, so nothing untoward happened, right? But Lynn had plans for plenty of untoward stuff in the future. She took a half a million life insurance policy on her husband, Dean.

Oh, boy. She had it all worked out. Her and Dean's anniversary was coming up, and Todd, the expert marksman, could shoot Dean as they came out of a fancy restaurant. Lynn was particular about that. She wanted to have one last dinner with her husband, knowing he'd be killed right after. Oh, that's creepy. Then, to allay suspicions, she wanted to allay suspicions, she wanted to.

wanted Todd to shoot her. Just a flesh wound. This plan depended on Todd being the expert marksman he claimed, which he wasn't. He was just as likely to graze Dean and blow Lynn's head off. Todd didn't bite anyway. He told Lynn to be patient. Police took both Todd's and Lynn's computers and technicians retrieved the various messages with each other as well as Norm and Colonel Sean. I just hope whichever poor soul had to wade through all the vampire smut got to go home early. No kidding. In police interviews, Todd denied any involvement in Carol's death or any knowledge of the company. Lynn was more talkative, telling detectives what she knew about the company, but she didn't really crack until about eight hours in. Then she finally admitted that she and Todd had been having

an affair and how Todd had planned to kill her husband, Dean, and then Carol. The insurance money, according to Lynn, was a secondary motive for Todd, just a bonus. He wanted to kill Carol because she was pregnant and he didn't want to have a kid. So she knew. That's what so far. fucked up about this. Fucking Lynn. She co-signed the murder of a pregnant woman. Yep.

Because she didn't like her. Fuck off, Lynn. Fuck you. People in the throes of an affair, trying to kill their spouses, made a lot more sense to detectives than a global assassination consortium. There was no company, of course.

They thought Norman genuinely believed in it, and that Lynn maybe did, but had her doubts and suspected the truth, that it was just Todd using different email addresses. The evidence against Todd was piling up, but investigators wanted a cherry on the Sunday. They wanted his label maker, which they knew he'd bought from Office Max. Lynn told them that Todd had taken it and thrown it into the Sacramento River under the bridge. She took them right to the spot.

That's a big, fast, murky river, but a dive team was able to recover the label maker. Todd had claimed to have never owned one, but investigators had it now, along with Todd's check used to buy it, and Lynn's testimony putting it. in his hands. It was habeas grabus time, about six weeks after Carol's brutal murder. Todd's goose was cooked. In fact, one of the detectives, trying to spur him into a confession, actually said that to him. Your goose is cooked. The jury spent about five hours deliberating Todd's case before coming back with a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death. Norman Daniels took a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. He testified against Todd and was sentenced to 50 years to life.

Lynn Noyes pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and got 25 years, while Dale Gordon, who had nothing to do with Carol's death but had helped in the attempt on Dean Noyes's life, got 10 years. Lynn and Dale are both out now, and I assume they're both still terrible people. It's amazing to me that a story this weird has popped up like several times before on our show in different iterations. Like if you've listened to season one, you'll recognize a lot of Todd in Bill Bradfield from the mainline murder case. If you listen to our episode Killer Club about Costa Fetopoulos, you'll see a lot of him in this one, too. Narcissism is one hell of a drug, and at the end of the day, so is a lack of self-esteem, so profound, that it makes you susceptible to these kind of exciting lies. People want to feel special. Some try to get there by convincing their friends that they're secret agents, and some try to get there by believe in them,

and following along with whatever dark adventure their hero drags them into. What really galls me about this is the victim in all of this was the only one in the whole bunch who seemed to have her head on straight. Carol wanted to have her baby, make music on the side, be a fun and loving friend and mom and wife and daughter. She had no need to big herself up to the people around her. She knew who she was already. And because of the pathetic insecurity of the people around her, she's not here anymore. It just doesn't seem fair to me. 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 coffee minks stacey christin angel wings lizzie and aaron lots of fun names in that one we appreciate y'all to the moon and back and if you're not yet a patron you're missing out patrons of our show

get every episode ad-free at least a day early, sometimes even two, plus tons of extra content like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad 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. For great TCC merch, if you just got to have that bless your heart shirt visit the true crime campfire store at spreadshirt dot com check out our website at true crime campfire pod.com and if you like what we do leave us a nice review won't you it makes our day they went up to this next part just fucking it's so good

it's so good it's just preemptively laughing we should add this as the the uh blooper at the end of the show not the post show i had like a giggle fit about this last night It's so stupid. I was killing this morning trying not to wake my brother up. It's so stupid. It's just, oh, my God. All right.