True Crime Campfire - When Jocks Attack: Power Corrupts - A Bizarre Story of Murder for Hire

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

George Bernard Shaw once said that it’s not really power that corrupts people. It’s the other way around. Well, he said it fancier than that, but that was the gist. We all want power, to some degree. Physical strength, sexual prowess, political sway. Most of us don’t let it control our lives, eat away at our humanity to the point where it’s all we care about. But for some of us, power is kinda like steroids. It makes us big and strong, but it’s addictive and the side effects can be murder. Sources:Scoundrels to the Hoosegow by Morley Swingle, chapter "Millionaire Murderer"https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/court-of-appeals/1994/17970-1.htmlInvestigation Discovery's "Killer Bods," episode "Fit for Murder"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://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/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. George Bernard Shaw once said that it's not really power that corrupts people. It's the other way around. Well, he said it fancier than that, but that was the gist. want power to some degree. Physical strength, sexual prowess, political sway. Most of us don't let it control our lives, eat away at our humanity to the point where it's all we care about. But for some

of us, power is kind of like steroids. It makes us big and strong, but it's addictive and the side effects can be murder. This is our first when jocks attack. Power corrupts, a story of murder for higher. So campers, we're in Missouri for this one, 1980s. The Golden Age of Leg warmers, headbands, sweatsuits, and jazzercise. And, of course, bodybuilding. Bodybuilding gyms were popping up everywhere in the 80s like mushrooms after a rain. Everywhere you look, there were herds of big bronze dudes and muscle shirts bragging about how much they could deadlift. And appropriately enough, it was the little town of Herculaneum that spawned the biggest and bronzed of them all, Timothy Todd. Growing up, Tim was pretty much the platonic ideal of the golden boy.

He was popular, gregarious, a star on the football field, a teen movie heartthrop, basically, except in real life. He was voted most handsome in the yearbook one year. it was a charmed life, except for one terrible tragedy. Tim's dad died suddenly of a heart attack one afternoon. They'd been having a push-up contest earlier that day, and Tim blamed himself for challenging him to it. And that guilt, plus the trauma of losing his dad so young, gave teenage Tim a grim determination.

He was going to make himself invincible. Health and fitness and eventually bodybuilding became an obsession for Tim Todd. He was naturally a big guy, six-foot-s, seven, but once he started really working out, he got huge. By college, he was 240 pounds of solid muscle. Dude was a wall. The Hercules of Herculaneum. Yeah, it's appropriate, isn't it?

Mm-hmm. After college, Tim joined the police force in a little town called Festus, not far from where he grew up. By now, he was 21, and everybody immediately took notice of this humongous, movie-star-gorgeous new cop. The other cops liked it when Tim showed up. Fights tended to disperse, suspects tended to get a little bit less combative because, you know, nobody wanted to tangle with the Incredible Hulk and who can blame him. One of the people who took special notice of Tim was the Jefferson County Police Chief, a guy called Bill Pagano. Like Tim, Bill Pagano was a larger-than-life character. Not so much physically.

I mean, where Tim Todd was a modern-day Adonis, Bill was middle-aged, kind of out of shape, losing his hair. but despite all that, he made sure he made an impression on everybody around him. He wore expensive tailored suits, fancy shoes, silk ties. He drove luxury cars, smoked pricey cigars, ate at the best restaurants, which I don't know what that would be in Festus like Olive Garden, I guess. I'm just kidding. I'm sure they had nice restaurants. Anywho, my point is Bill Pagano had style, and he had presents. And as odd a couple as they may have looked on paper, he and Tim Todd were drawn to

each other right away. I mean, for Chief Pagano, here was a young, ambitious, photogenic cop he could show off to make his department look good. And for Tim, well, Bill was everything he wanted to be when he grew up. Rich, respected, influential. Plus, Bill fit nicely into the dad-shaped void his father's death had left in his life. He and his new boss bonded quickly, with Bill taking Tim on as his new protege. Pagano had become chief of police in Jefferson County when he was only 27 years old, so the youngest in the county's history. And since then, he'd used his charm and savvy

to build a web of influence around town. People liked him, and they were a little intimidated by him, too. He talked fast, carried big rolls of cash, tipped lavishly, ragged about the power he had around town. He could lose his temper pretty splashily sometimes, too. But for the most part, people really respected him, and he reveled in it. As prosecutor Morley Swingle told Investigation Discovery,

he was the boss hog of Jefferson County. Okay, settle down there, Mayor McCheese. You're the police chief of bum fuck nowhere, you know? Not one of the flippant Kennedys. Relax. It's like Moby Dick in a puddle, this guy. Yeah, and he was always looking for a new angle, a new way to increase his reach, and his bank account. So about five years into Tim Todd's career as a Festus cop, Bill Pagano, decided to spread his wings even further.

He got wind of a golden opportunity to get into private security work, use his law enforcement knowledge and contacts to make some real money. And of course, who better to help him get his new venture off the ground than his little buddy? Or not so little buddy, Tim Todd. His enormous little buddy. Yeah, they're like, it's like Master Blaster from Mad Max into the Thunderdome. That's what I picture these two dudes being, or I guess a crang from teenage mutant ninja turtles to go off a more contemporary reference. But I digress.

Bill started a security company called Scientific Security Incorporation, SSI, and appointed Tim his chief of operations. By the tail end of the 80s, Bill and Tim were basically family. Bill thought of Tim as a son, and Tim saw him as a surrogate dad. They were best buds, mentor and mentee, business partners, about as tangled up in each other's lives as you could ever want to be. By 1988, Tim was 31 years old, in superb physical shape, and pretty much on top of the world. He had a lucrative new career.

He was besties with one of the most influential guys in town. Money was starting to roll in. And then, it got even better. A local gym announced it was going out of business, and Tim decided to fulfill a lifelong dream. He bought the gym and opened the Mid-America Health and Racquetball Club, his very own fitness center. This place was huge, located in the busy mall, and because Tim was such a behemoth himself, he was basically a walking advertisement for the gym. It took off right out of the gate, became a social center as well as a place to work out. and now Tim had two lucrative jobs.

And then one afternoon, a beautiful young aerobics instructor strolled into Mid-America Health and Racquetball to ask about a job. And Tim was immediately smitten. Her name was Stephanie. She was gorgeous, high-energy, and a magnet for clients who signed up for her classes in droves. And she was every bit as smitten with Tim as he was with her. There was just one teen-see problem. She was still in her teens.

Uh, yeah, we couldn't find out for sure if she was 17 or 18 when the relationship started, but, I mean, either way. Blech, he's 31. Yeah, not great. Oh, wait, did I say there was just one problem? I'm sorry, I meant to say two. Two problems. Tim's new love interest also just happened to be boss man Bill Pagano's daughter.

Oh, wow. Holy shit. Yep. Yep. Yep. That is a bombshell, isn't it? And, you know, I feel like I'm forgetting something. Oh, you know what? There was actually just one more little problem. Nothing major, just, you know. Tim Todd was married with two kids. But other than those three things, perfect match. Okay, well, we'll get to that in a minute, but what did McCheese think about his protege dating his teenage daughter? You know, that's probably the weirdest part of this whole thing. Weirdest and grossest. Bill was down. He was totally fine with it. His attitude was, well, it's legal.

Okay, I'm not sure that's the ideal standard, but fine. Yeah, legal doesn't always mean... Right. New. And I guess since he already thought of Tim Todd as a son, he figured future son-in-law wasn't too big of a leap. His only demand was that Stephanie finish her education before they did anything permanent. After she had her diploma, they could go nuts. Get married, have kids, whatever, with Big Daddy's blessing.

Yeah, never mind about the wife and kids Tim already had, I guess. Just a mere trifle, a detail. So what about this wife and kids? Well, Tim met his wife Patty in high school, so they were high school sweeties. They went to the prom together. In fact, the same year Tim was voted most handsome in the yearbook, Patty was voted the prettiest. They had their picture taken together, and in the picture, Patty was already a few months pregnant with their son. So right out of high school, despite being terrified kids themselves, Tim and Patty got married and started their family.

In a few years after they had their little boy, a little girl came along. And as Tim began his rise from Festus Patrol cop to C.O. of Bill Pagano's security firm and owner of his very own gym, Patty stayed home and took care of the kids. I'm sure it got a little lonely for her sometimes, sitting at home while Tim was out slaying the dragon or whatever, but she was a great mom, and she loved Tim to bits. By 1988, anybody on the outside looking in at the Todd family would probably think, American Dream, achieved. Look at this gorgeous family. They must be walking on Sunday. sunshine. But, of course, we know better, because we know about Stephanie Pagano. And so, by the way, did most of Jefferson County. Tim wasn't exactly subtle about his feelings for the boss's daughter. He mooned over her like a lovesick teenager, writing her sappy notes and buying her gifts. He and Stephanie

not only saw each other at the gym where Stephanie was teaching aerobics classes, but she also helped out at her daddy's security company. So she saw him there, too. And people, Bill Pagano included, which just blows my flip in mind, we're always walking in on them. Flirting and canoodling. Stephanie'd be sitting on Tim's desk playing with his tie, you know, ugh. So this was

the worst kept non-secret in the history of Festus. People knew they just didn't mention it. Well, not to Tim's face anyway. I'm sure they were burning up the phone lines behind closed doors because small town people are the biggest gossips on the planet, obviously.

Mm-hmm. so of course it didn't take long for the news to reach patty bless her she confronted tim and surprisingly he copped to it right out of the gate and of course as anybody would be patty was livid so much so that she called a family meeting and made tim confess the affair to his kids which just ugh i don't know if i'd have done that but you know she was just so caught up in her rage and hurt that i'm sure she wasn't thinking clearly and at any rate the kids already knew as Tim's poor son, a teenager by now, had gone to visit his dad at work after school one day and just walked right in on Tim and Stephanie. Not like in full flagrante or anything, but it was

bad enough. Like not, let's say, behaving in a manner appropriate to the workplace. So it was obvious to Tim's son that there were some icky shenanigans going on. He told Tim, you're an asshole, dad. Yep. Poor kid. I just, can you imagine how it would feel to like catch your dad having an affair. Bad enough, but with a girl not much older than your sister. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Not great. But after that initial blow up with Patty and the kids, Tim seemed to be full of remorse, and he promised Patty he'd cut things off with Stephanie. And based on the sources we found, it seems like he did sometimes. The next couple years were on again, off again, on again off again, with Tim yo-yoing back and forth between Stephanie and Patty.

He and Patty would separate for a little while. He'd swear on his six-pack abs that he'd never touch Stephanie again, and Patty'd take him back, and then lo and behold, she'd catch him seeing Boss Hog's daughter again, and rinse, repeat, over and over. Tim and Patty's daughter, Angie, told Investigation Discovery he wasn't very good at hiding things. Yeah, apparently not. Of course, it's also possible he just didn't respect his wife enough to try. And meanwhile, Stephanie was in the full throes of teenage love slash lust slash infatuation with Tim, and she wasn't shy about it. Despite the inconvenient existence of Tim's wife and children, Stephanie kept the pressure on for Tim to commit to her and her alone. Tim would be at the gym, and the phone in the office would just ring and ring and ring to the point where everybody wanted to rip their own ears off.

And everybody knew who it was. Stephanie looking for Tim Yeah, teenagers in love can get a little bit intense Perhaps y'all have noticed Yeah, our moderate podcast empire is built on a foundation of teen angst The pressure wasn't just coming from Stephanie Big Daddy Bill was already telling people that Tim Todd was going to be a son-in-law someday soon He was eager to welcome Golden Boy into the family

Messy campers, very messy. Yeah, as a general rule, I wouldn't advise any of this. Cheating on your spouse, sleeping with your boss's kid, just all of that seems like a situation fraught with the potential to leave a big smoking crater in the place where your life used to be. But of course, you know, I'm not your mom. Not your mom.

All this went on for a couple years with the tension ratcheting up on all sides. and then, in the spring of 1990, Patty once again discovered that Tim had been lying to her. He was seeing Stephanie Pagano again, despite swearing up one side and down the other that he wasn't. And Patty flipped her absolute shit, as many of us would. She and Tim had a nasty fight, probably the worst they'd ever had. It felt like things were coming to a head in their marriage this time. Patty had had enough. As he always had before, Tim fell on his sword and promised Patty the moon and stars with all the fix-ins.

He'd never see Stephanie again. He was so sorry. He loved her and the kids. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was going to end the affair once and for all. And he was going to end it. Just not in the way Patty thought. There was a much darker plan brewing. And, you know, as an aside, just a bit of relationship advice, if your significant other has cheated once and promised they'd stop and then didn't, there's a good chance that when you catch them the second time and they start making all the same promises, they're begging holds a little less weight. Just cut your losses. Look up the sunk cost fallacy, scroll throughchumplady.com, and download Tinder. It's going to be okay. I promise you deserve better.

Now, campers, as part of his regular everyday business practices at SSI, Bill Pagano had gotten into the habit of recording all his conversations at work, because what could possibly go wrong when you're recording everything in person and over the phone. That's never gotten anyone into trouble, ever. No sitting presidents have ever gotten into trouble by recording themselves. And, like, it was to the point where Bill didn't even have to think about it anymore. It was just an autopilot thing to start that voice-activated recorder in the morning. And in the spring of 1990, Bill's recorder began capturing some very sinister conversations. Here are just a few excerpts. And Whitney, would you be Bill Pagano and I'll be Tim Todd?

Sure. What about the kids? How do you think they're going to handle it? It's going to be really hard on them. I mean, there's no way around that. It's going to be really hard. And it's going to be hard for me because I know they're going to be hurting, and that's going to hurt me really bad.

If they ever find out, though, that you're the one that caused their mom to get put to sleep, how are you going to handle that? How would they ever find that out? I'm trying to think of all possible contingencies. Once it happens, you can't talk in your sleep. I mean, you can't. It's got to stay in here. I know that

This campers was what was on Tim Todd's mind as his marriage was unraveling and his teenage girlfriend was turning up the pressure and her dad, his boss, was telling everybody he was about to have a brand new son-in-law. He wanted his wife dead and he'd turned to his mentor slash surrogate father for help. Two former cops plotting murder over coffee

ironing out the details just as they'd done with hundreds of business deals over the years. From the recordings, it seems obvious that Bill Pagana wasn't thrilled about the whole thing. At one point, he says, I've told you before. I don't like this, but I'll do it for you.

I love you like a son. You know that. But he pressed him, said, you don't see any other way out of it, though. Man, once we commit, you know there ain't no turning back. Tim said there was no other way. Tim had a life insurance.

policy on Patty for $100,000 that had a double indemnity clause, meaning if she died by accident, the policy would pay double. 200K was a lot of scratch in 1990. At one point on the recordings, they're talking about the insurance policy and Bill says, look, if this is about the $200,000, I'll give you the $200,000. Like basically, dude, you don't have to do this. Like I have money I can give you, which damn, must be nice, right? Just incidentally, if anybody wants to offer For me $200,000 not to murder somebody, you just go right ahead. Our email is in the show notes. Let's talk.

Let's open the negotiations. Right. But Tim just sounded frustrated. He said, no, no, this wasn't just about money. 200 grand wouldn't solve the whole thing. He had his kids to think about and how nerve-wracking it would be for them to go through a divorce. Bill just didn't understand how all twisted up they would be. Okay.

As twisted up as you'd get if you got pulled out a class and told your mother's just been killed? Wow. The logic there is just astonishing. But this conversation is significant to me because it's, number one, it shows a purely narcissistic mindset, like just absolute self-absorption. And number two, it shows, I think, Tim's apparent determination to get this thing done. He was not going to be talked out of it. It's creepy stuff. I mean, in offering him that money, Bill essentially offered him an easy way out. It's like they were trudging around, lost inside a pitch black cave and Bill suddenly said hey look I found a set of stairs going up and Tim just said nah thanks I'm a pass and just kept plodding on through the dark must have been something in that

cave he wanted real real bad mm-hmm so at some point Tim convinced Bill that there was going to be no change in his mind and from there on the talk turned to murder methodology had Patty ever talked about suicide Bill wanted to know yeah actually Tim said she told him once that she thought about how she might do it. She said she'd probably either take an overdose of pills or cut her wrists. Bill said, okay, so she told you that. She probably told somebody else. Pills or sliced wrist. Yeah, that makes sense. And his tone of voice was that of a guy just kind of casually taking notes for a business presentation. Like, yeah, yeah, good info. Good info. So, okay, did she take any medication on the regular, like sedatives or anything like that? Oh, and didn't she have a history of blacking out?

She did there for a while, Tim said. And Bill said, history can repeat itself. God, what a couple of creeps. Another time they speculated about a fall down the stairs. Tim described the steps that went from the first floor of his house down to the basement. And Bill said, is it steep enough and the steps hard enough that if somebody would fall, they'd break their neck? Tim said, he wasn't sure. It was possible.

But, of course, possible isn't good enough. in a murder for hire, you don't want possible. So they kept on brainstorming these two former law enforcement officers about all the ways they could end Patty's life. The worst one by far, and brace yourself for this campers because it is fucking awful, involved the tanning beds at Tim's gym. Patty liked to go tanning there after hours. Bill and Tim thought this could present a perfect opportunity

for staging a little double indemnity qualifying accident. Maybe they could rig the tanning beds so Patty would be trapped in there and just cooked to death. Oh, my God. Jesus Jones. I think that's one of the worst things I've ever heard. Like in 20 years of true crime obsession, that is at the top of the list. Just, ugh.

But, of course, the final decision on how to murder Patty would be the hitman's, whoever that turned out to be. And it was Bill's job to find him. He stressed to Tim that it was important to be really damn sure he wanted to do this before making contact with the guy. He said, these people, they're not like the people you're used to dealing with. Tim said, I bet. He was ready. He said, set it up.

And it didn't take Bill long. Never did with guys like Bill. Pretty soon he let Tim know he'd found a guy. He was going to need a few things to get the ball rolling. A current picture of Patty. A date when they wanted the hit to go down. Tim said he didn't want his kids anywhere near the actual murder when it happened, so he thought the weekend of March 30th would be the perfect time.

He was taking the kids with him to a bodybuilding competition in Cape Girardo, and Patty wasn't going. So Tim would have a flawless alibi, and the kids would be out of harm's way. The hitman also needed a down payment, Bill said. $5,000. Bill would meet with the guy to hand it off. Safest way was to keep Tim away from the guy completely, no contact at all, and no way to connect the two of them after.

Patty's murder. And on that next Saturday, Tim Todd waltzed into his bank and withdrew $5,000 in cash. The bank teller remembered it later because it was such a big withdrawal. And as Patty Todd went about her daily life, taking care of her kids in her home, she had no inkling of the darkness that was closing in around her. March 26, 1990, a 9-1-1 call came into the Jefferson County dispatch. We need some help up here, the caller said. We've just had shots fired. The dispatcher asked if she needed to send her. an ambulance. No, no ambulance, said the caller. I don't think it's going to do any good.

Police arrived a few minutes later and cautiously approached the open garage door of the house. A body lay crumpled in a pool of blood on the floor, a horrific shotgun wound to the face. A handgun lay near the body and a couple of shotgun shells. As they began to get their bearings, the officers at the scene quickly realized where they were. They knew this house. It was Bill Pagano's. their former chief of police. And there was Bill, pacing around outside the garage, totally distraught. He came up with a gun, Bill said, tears streaming down his face.

I had to shoot his ass. Wait a second, he came up with a gun? Who the hell is he? Well, despite all that talk about Hitman, about down payments and staged suicides and falls down the stairs, the body now lying on the floor of Bill Pagano's garage was not that of Patty Todd. It was her husband, Tim.

Bill Pagano's longtime best friend and right-hand man was dead at his surrogate father's hand. And Bill seemed inconsolable about it. His former employees mixed him a drink and sat him down at the dining room table to get a statement. Not typical police procedure, I wouldn't think, but this was their former chief of police.

Good old favoritism. Yep, that old. brotherhood. The whole vibe in the room was sympathetic and understanding. Self-defense. Had to be. Bill launched into his story. He said Tim had been spiraling down mentally for a while now. He'd approached him weeks ago and asked him to help him find a hit man, to murder his wife. Bill said he'd been secretly recording their conversations about the murder plot. His plan was to play along until he had ironclad evidence that Tim was serious about the hit. In a few days of ago, Tim had handed it to him.

$5,000 cash, the down payment for Patty Todd's murder. Bill said he'd told his old colleague, Sheriff Buckburger. Which sounds like either a discount burger chain in Texas or the name of a food fetish porn star. I'm not sure which. Do not make me reopen the kinkshaming corner, Whitney. So Bill had run his plan past Buck Burger a few days earlier. He wanted to confront Tim with the secret recording.

tell him he needed to get some help, arrest him himself, and bring him in for involuntary commitment to a mental health facility. According to Bill, Sheriff Berger thought this was a solid plan. Bill wasn't chief of police anymore, but he had been deputized, so he still had the power to arrest him. So Bill decided to go ahead with it, and on March 26th, he paged him and asked him to come over to his place. Tim thought he was going to hand over a recent picture of Patty for the hitman. They went out to the garage to talk with Bill standing at the front of the car and Tim standing in the back. Before Tim could hand over the picture of Patty, Bill pulled the 12-gauge shotgun on him and told him he was under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder. Tim did not take it well.

According to Bill, he threw his head back and let out, quote, a demonic scream, an animal scream of betrayal and rage that would make the hairs on the back of your neck standing. up. Bill said he knew Tim was carrying a handgun, and as Tim screamed at him, he remembered something else. That Tim had been using steroids to bulk up, and Bill knew those could fuck with people's moods, make them prone to rages and violence. So when Tim made a move like he was reaching for his gun, Bill shot him. Tim dove back behind the trunk of the car, and Bill was afraid he was about to come up shooting. So he shot him again. And at that point, Tim went down. but it was self-defense.

He didn't have a choice, Bill said. He'd loved that boy like a son. This was just tearing him up inside. Now, of course, people are allowed to kill in self-defense. If you reasonably believe your life is in danger, a deadly force is legal. What the investigators had to figure out here was whether Bill Pagano had really believed he was in danger

when he shot Tim Todd, or if there was something else going on. Something more sinister. By the way, it's worth noting that we probably wouldn't be sitting here talking about this right now if it hadn't been for the courage of one detective at the scene that day who put his ass on the line to cut through the good old boy network bullshit that made Bill's former colleagues fix him a mixed drink and pat his hand instead of subjecting them to a real interrogation. This detective, Wally Gansman, saw some things

at the scene that made his spidey senses twitch and he insisted that they approached this case exactly as they would any other suspicious death no matter who was involved. Yes. The first and most glaring thing that didn't support Bill Pagano's story was the fact that he'd shot Tim twice, once in the front of the head, once in the back. And shooting somebody in the back of the head doesn't exactly scream self-defense. Kind of suggests you shot somebody who was trying to run away from you. And Bill admitted he never actually saw a gun in Tim's hand. He said he was just afraid he was going to come up shooting and he had to act fast.

And of course, the investigators did find a handgun lying on the floor near Tim's body. body. But here was the odd thing about that. When they searched Tim's car a little later that day, which was parked out in the driveway, they found another gun, one issued to Tim by the security company. Hmm. Made him wonder if maybe Bill planted that other gun near Tim's body to make it look like his life was in danger. Then there was the fact that after secretly recording all those hitman conversations for weeks, Bill Pagano hadn't brought his tape recorder with him today. If it had gone the way he said he wanted it to, this encounter would have been the culmination of his whole plan, to bring Tim in and get him some mental health treatment. Now, why wouldn't he want to record the arrest?

Seemed like a weird time to suddenly stop recording everything. And interestingly, when the investigators checked, they found that Bill hadn't applied for an arrest warrant, hadn't done any paperwork or taken any steps to arrest him or get the ball rolling on an involuntary commitment. When they talked to Sheriff Berger, he said, yeah, Bill had. had told him about the hitman recordings and his idea about arresting Tim and having him committed, but the sheriff said he sure as hell hadn't okayed Bill arresting the guy himself. The plot thickened. And then detectives found a couple witnesses who had seen Bill and Tim arguing loudly outside Tim's gym the day before. Bill was poking his finger in Tim's chest

and yelling, it has got to stop. Tim was calm, the witnesses said. It was Bill who was all spit-flecked and red in the face. One of them had overheard Tim say, well, Bill, she's a grown woman. Who was a grown woman? Stephanie? Was Bill pissed off at Tim for not leaving Patty for his daughter? Did he want Tim to stop seeing Stephanie? Or, and this was a bit of a bombshell, was he angry because he just found out that Tim, ever the ladies' man, was seeing yet another girlfriend, a woman named Katie Leary. In fact, Tim was scheduled to go hang out with Katie on the very afternoon Bill shot him.

and it gets better or worse depending on your perspective bill had a life insurance policy on tim todd they'd taken it out through the security firm a kind of policy known as a key man policy the idea is to ensure an employee who's so important to the company that their death would leave them in significant financial hardship as co-o tim fit the bill and if he died 1.5 million, million would go to the company's sole shareholder who was, wait for it,

guess who, Big Daddy Bill Pagano. Well, well, well. Yeah, so self-defense? Nah. After amassing all the evidence, the investigators didn't think so. And the final nail in Bill's coffin

came when the medical examiner did Tim's autopsy, and made a startling discovery. The evidence showed that the shot to the back of Tim's head had come first. The shot to the face was the second. That meant that Tim had been running away from Bill Pagano when he'd fired the first shot, and he'd fired the second one directly into his protege's face as he lay, probably already dying, on the floor. Oh, my God.

They didn't match any part of the story Bill had told them. Boss Hogg was lying through his teeth. He was a cold-blooded killer. I can only imagine how Tim's wife and family felt as this whole story unfolded. Oh, my God. Patty and Tim's son and daughter told investigation discovery that their mother never believed Tim was really plotting to have her killed. Patty said that Tim had come to her months before his murder and said, I don't want to divorce you, but Bill Pagano says that if I don't marry Stephanie, he's going to kill me.

And it's true that Pagano had a formidable reputation around Jefferson County. Yeah, I mean, people liked him, but they were scared of him, too. He had a rep for being pretty ruthless. He'd crush you if you got in his way. This guy wasn't afraid to bend or break rules, call in favors, threatened to ruin your career, whatever he needed to do to get you to do what he wanted. And he had a temper on him. Patty believed that Tim was just playing along with the hitman conversations to buy time,

and eventually they were going to move somewhere out of Bill Pugano's reach. We're going to get to this a little more in a bit, whether we think it's plausible or not, but there's no doubt that Tim's murder devastated Patty and the kids. Tim's son told ID, look, my dad was an imperfect man, but he loved us and we loved him. He says he's still proud to call him dad. Yeah, I can't even imagine how awful this was for them. All three of them.

Absolutely. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. So Bill Pagano was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. His bail was set at $250,000, and he posted it the same day. That had to chap everybody's ass, don't you bet? Oh, it's mind just hearing about it. But special prosecutor Morley Swingle, who has a name like a lawyer in a John Grisham novel, and I cannot get enough of it.

Morley had plenty to work with. And he was not the type of prosecutor. to play favorites just because of who your daddy was or how much money you had in your bank account. So basically, Mayor McCheese's worst nightmare. Precisely. He wasn't sure which of a whole plethora of motives was the main one, but there was no shortage for the jury to choose from. Did Bill kill Tim for the life insurance money? Just straight up greed.

Did he kill him for what he was doing to Stephanie? Did he do it because he felt like Tim had become a loose cannon running around trying to find hit me in and putting the security confirm at risk? Or was it a little bit of all three? Who knew? Any of the options would do for a jury, and as he got ready for trial, Swingle found some red, hot dirt on Bill Pagano.

He already knew about the guy's tendency toward dirty deals and pay-to-play politics, but he didn't know that our guy had been investigated by the FBI 15 years earlier while he was still chief of police. Yeah, so y'all just, as pure bananas. So you know how police departments have confidential

informants, aka CIs, who slipped the cops' info on the slide in exchange for consideration in their own cases, right? These get used a lot in narcotics cases especially. And one time, Bill Pagano found out that one of the Festus PDs CIs had double-crossed them

by outing some of their undercover narcotics officers. Now, obviously, that's some serious shit, because that could easily have gotten the detectives killed. So understandable to be angry, but Bill Pugano's reaction was beyond the flip and beyond. He picked up a knife and just winged it at the informant's face. And this knife barely missed the guy, just went fr in the wall beside his head. And then, as the CI stood there, probably making a wee-wee in his pants, because I sure as hell

would be, Pagano took a few of his officers into the next room and said, I'm quoting from Morley Swingles' book here, details on that in the show notes, we've got to get rid of him. Take him on a one-way ride. And the cops were like, uh-huh. Do you do what now? Pagano said he wanted them to take the dude out to the country somewhere, kick him out of the car, and shoot him dead. And they could say he was trying to escape custody. And there you go. Problem solved, done and dusted. Bada-bing, Bada-a-boo. So one of the officers was like, uh, no. Nope, we're not doing that. First of all, nobody would believe it for a second. And Bill Pagano was like, that's no problem. He went and retrieved his knife

out of the drywall, came back in and made a quick little slash on the officer's forearm. Then he said, there you go. See, he went after you with a knife. You had to shoot him. Holy shit cans. It's like, you know these things go on because, you know, it's like we're not naive. We've heard

of this kind of stuff. But like, what is this a bad 80s movie? Who the fuck does this guy think he is? It's just unbelievable. So, fortunately for the CIA and for humanity in general, because holy shit how awful, the three cops just flat out refused to do it. And Bill Pagano was so pissed off that he fired him. And they went to the FBI, so fuck you. But infuriatingly, no charges were filed against Big Daddy because he just denied the whole thing. He was like, oh, this is just sour

grapes because I fired those three cops because they were terrible, you know, and they had performance issues and now they're just mad. And the prosecutor, I guess because she realized this is Big Daddy Bill Pagano's word against these three officers just decided to drop the whole thing. And of course now, 15 years later, we had a dead man in Bill's garage. I've said it before, and I'm going to say it again, you have got to let these people experience consequences, because otherwise they start to feel invincible and badness results. But, but Whitney, if he faces consequences, what happens when I make a no-no? Am I supposed to face consequences, too?

Because that sounds hard. Yeah, it does sound kind of hard. What if, okay, what if we gave him a two-week vacation with pay, of course? That's pretty tough. Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Judge Jeffreys. Let's not be too tough on the guy. Okay. One week with pay and a raise when he comes back.

He only threatened to kill a guy and then retaliated against the officers who stood up to him. That's minor. Okay, deal. I mean, you know, the powerful people, the rich people, they're the best people in the world. They should get special treatment, right? Bluff. Barf. So, as prosecutor Morley Swingle tells it, the trial was a little bit of a David and Goliis situation. Everybody pretty much expected Bill Pagano to win, especially Bill Pagano.

He was really gross and smug. any time he talked to reporters. I'm super confident, blah, blah, blah. And for the first time in his entire career as a prosecutor, Swingle wondered if he might not get out of this thing alive. One night, he went out to his car to find the gas cap standing open.

Which is scary. And rumor had it, Pagano was trying to intimidate witnesses. And nobody thought it was unrealistic that he might try and put the prosecutor out of commission. So Swingle got himself a couple bodyguards for the duration of the trial, and I do not blame him.

So, anywho, after all that sound and fury and Bill Pagano's attorneys trying to make it sound like anybody who used steroids once was essentially the Incredible Hulk, and it was perfectly reasonable to, like, take him down with a tranquilizer dart on site, Big Daddy was convicted of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in October of 1991 and sentenced to 23 years in prison. And to be quite honest, everybody was kind of surprised. but most of them were happy about it too it seemed like the good old boys had finally lost a round but then the judge decided to step in it let the assholes stay out on bail pending appeal nobody could freaking believe it now by the way the law in Missouri now says

you can't do that anymore if you're convicted of first or second degree murder your ass stays in jail while you work on your appeal but in 1991 that wasn't the case so big dog just waltzed right out of the courtroom that same day, despite having just been convicted of murder. Gross. Well, in fairness to that judge, Bill did treat him to dinner at Olive Garden. They have bottomless breadsticks, Whitney.

The bottomless breadsticks really swung the deal in his favor. And, you know, the Tuscan wedding soup is quality of law, I have to admit. So he was out, and he was out. stayed out for three years, just going about his business, driving around in his fancy cars. Oh, it's so unfair. But finally, in 1994, his appeal failed. And it was time at last to put the final habeas grab-us on him and hauled his ass to prison. So the officers showed up at his house, knocked on the door, let him know it was time to go. And Bill Pagano, who was used to having cops do whatever he told him to do, said, sure, guys, just could I go change clothes first?

Yeah, I can already hear you all groan in. You know what's coming. The officer said, sure, no problem. We'll just wait here. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I'm sure it will surprise almost no one that a couple minutes later, a gunshot rang out from inside Pagano's house. Rather than face his prison sentence, Bill had taken his own life.

A narcissist move we've seen a few times before. haven't we campers? Yep. So this loathsome snotwad never had to serve his time in prison and Tim's kids never got any justice. It sucks. It sucks.

Bill Pagano and the whole structure that supported him is exactly what's wrong with the world. And I wish he'd had to serve every painful nanosecond of that 23 years. Amen. So, okay, we got to talk about Tim, who is undoubtedly a victim in this case, but who is also, as his son pointed out, a very imperfect character. I mean, what do you think, Whitney? Was he planning to have his wife killed, or was he playing along? Yeah, I've thought a lot about this, and I really hate to say it because I know that it would hurt his family, and they have been hurt more than enough already.

but I just don't see any way around it. I just, I don't see why he would have taken that $5,000 out in cash if he wasn't going to go through with the hit. Yeah, that, that detail in particular is really hard to get past. I mean, yeah, maybe he would have pulled out of it at the last minute or just told Patty what was going on and fled or gone to the cops. Sure. But that's being pretty generous with the benefit of the doubt because, like, you know, Jeff, the hitman. man, once he takes the money, contact is cut off. It's going to happen. Yeah, and that's pretty much what Bill told him on one of the recordings. He's like,

you know, once that money changes hands, I think what he said was there ain't no refunds, but the meaning was pretty clear. Like, once you hand over that money, like, it's going to happen. So I agree. And, you know, if you listen to those recordings, it really does sound like Pagano is trying to talk to him out of it, like asking, what about your kids and stuff like that? So if Pagano was somehow setting him up, or like the hit had been Pagano's idea, not Tim's, like, why would he do that? Yeah, I don't think he would. Yeah, my suspicion is that Tim brought up this idea and that this hitman thing was actually the catalyst for Bill deciding to kill him. So I think for Bill, it just presented the perfect opportunity to get rid of Tim, the guy who was breaking his daughter's heart and about to make a fool of him because he'd been going around saying he was going to marry Stephanie.

that he was about to be his son-in-law. Right, and not to mention that $1.5 million life insurance policy, Pagano loved him some money. Yeah, so I think Bill figured I'll tape record these conversations, play along with the hitman plot, get Tim to dig his own grave so there's no chance in hell of him being a sympathetic victim. And then I'll stage a little self-defense scenario. Yep, seems plausible to me.

Yeah, and I really hate it. I hate it for Patty and the kids. I wish I could believe he didn't really want to do it. But for me, it's just too big of a stretch. But I will say this, though, Tim's steroid use was a big issue at Bill's trial. And while I agree with the prosecution that they made too big a deal out of it, like they made it seem like steroids or some kind of like dark magic potion that turns a normal person into Mr. Hyde. But that said, I mean, steroids can alter your thinking.

And they can cause huge mood swings. I mean, they absolutely can't. If you've ever been on steroids, like, not like, you know, anabolic steroids, but if you've ever been on, like, steroids for, like, a lung issue or any other kind of, like, swelling issue, they make, they, I call them the devil's tick-tacks. They make you fucking crazy. I hate, I hate them. I've only, because I have asthma and my lungs are basically paperbags. So I've been on steroids a few times, and they make me a crazy person. I never want to be on them. So, you know, that could have absolutely been a factor.

I mean, he might not have been in the normal frame of mind. And the pressure from Patty and Stephanie and Bill, combined with the effects of the steroids on his brain chemistry, could have led him into doing something he'd never have done otherwise. Yeah, I think that's very possible. So we will at least give him then. Not that that would justify it or make it okay, but it might be a partial explanation.

You know, in a lot of ways, this is a really depressing story. I mean, we've got corruption all over the place, a police chief who's the worst kind of politician, and all kinds of other people, all up and down the food chain, who are every bit as bad. But I see some hope in there, too. I mean, we have Detective Gansman, who refused to sign off on Pagano's half-baked self-defense story and insisted they investigate the case the right way. We've got prosecutor Morley Swingle, who had to take on bodyguards and sent the whole trial. afraid for his safety, but refused to back down. And we've got those three officers who refused to take a CI on a one-way ride at the cost of their jobs, and then went to the FBI on their boss. So it's not all lost, campers. There are always people out there who will stand up to power and do the right thing. Let's try and be one of them. How about?

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 we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so, so much to Nicole, Rob, Brittany, Kayla, Jamie, Margo, and Nate. And y'all, if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more,

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