True Crime Campfire - When Nerds Attack: Influencer - The Murder of Susan Bailey, Pt 1

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Adolescence is a pretty wild ride. On the one hand, we’re starting to move past childhood, where make-believe takes up a ton of our time. But we’re still far enough out from adulthood that we can still get pretty wrapped up in fantasy. And when you combine a child’s ability to blur the line between real and make-believe with a young adult’s hormonal grumpiness and frantic desire for independence, you can end up with a recipe for nastiness. Sources:Let's Kill Mom by Donna FielderInvestigation Discovery special "Let's Kill Mom"https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/affidavits_4_teens_planned_to_kill_n_texas_mom/1838185/https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/crime-history/lets-kill-mom-behind-the-disturbing-susan-bailey-murderFollow 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. Adolescence is a pretty wild ride. On the one hand, we're starting to move past childhood where make-believe takes up a ton of our time. But we're still far enough out for from adulthood that we can still get pretty wrapped up in fantasy. And when you combine a child's ability to blur the line between real and make-believe

with a young adult's hormonal grumpiness and frantic desire for independence, you can end up with a recipe for nastiness. This is our latest when nerds attack. Influencer, the murder of Susan Bailey. So, campers, for this one, we're in Roanoke, Texas. Thursday, September 25th, 2008. Single mom, Susan Bailey, finished up at her second job at bed, bath, and beyond around 11.30 p.m. On the way home, she called her two teenage kids, Jennifer and David, but they didn't answer.

This was weird. Weird enough that a tiny bit of worry started nibbling at the back of Susan's mind. But mostly she was just pissed. Both Jennifer and David had been acting like little shits all week. Before she left for work earlier that day, she told them she expected them to be awake when she got home. They needed to have a serious talk, TM. She'd bought them both cell phones about a month earlier,

and they'd run up a $1,700 bill already. Oh, my gosh. In the first month. So she was planning on taking the phones away, and she wanted to be sure they understood why. She got home to a dark, messy house. Jennifer, the 17-year-old, was supposed to do the cleaning, and lately she'd just flat out refused. It was just the latest move in the exhausting chess game the two of them had been playing for years.

Susan was a single mom. The kid's dad, Richard, had left the family years ago. He was busy vigorously pursuing his career as a professional loser, and he did pretty much zero to help support his kids. So Susan had to work two jobs, plus take on sewing projects just to keep them all housed and fed. She was doing her best, and she didn't have much of a choice but to rely on her daughter to help out. So, from a young age, Jennifer had had a lot on her plate. She was basically a second mom to her younger brother David, and she had to take on a lot of household chores. She resented her mom for that, and she made no secret of it.

God, kid, your mom's bust in her ass trying to keep you in nice clothes, saving up to buy you a car so you can drive yourself to college next year and you can't do the damn dishes. Lech! Also, you want to be mad at somebody? how about your deadbeat dad, you know? But for some reason, Jennifer didn't see it that way. Everything was mom's fault because I guess she was the one there. Yeah, that happens so much with, like, single parents. Yeah.

Or they blame the present parent because they're the one that they can take out their frustration on. But it's just, you want to scream. I want to shake them. Yep. So as Susan Bailey stood in the foyer of her darkened house, listening to the quiet, she was probably feeling tired. frustrated, annoyed, maybe a little bit worried about why our kids hadn't waited up for her as they'd said they would, but I think it's safe to say she wasn't afraid for her life. Not yet.

The next day, Susan Bailey didn't report to work. Her boss at Bed Bath and Beyond called the house several times without any luck. Then he tried Susan Bailey's emergency contact, her mother, Kate Morton, who lived in Minnesota. Kate said she hadn't spoken to her daughter in a couple days, but she knew she'd never just not show up to work without calling. Susan was a responsible person, so much so that when Kate had visited a few months earlier, Susan hadn't even taken time off work. She said she just couldn't afford to,

not with Jennifer needing a car for college next year. So Kate called her daughter's house and cell phone. No answer. Now she was worried. She played jurisdiction roulette for a few minutes to reach the right police department, and once she found it, she requested a wellness check. So a little later that afternoon,

three officers headed over to Susan Bailey's house. They found the porch light on, the blinds drawn, and the house dark. Nobody answered their knock, but there was no, like, obvious sign of anything wrong. No reason to force entry. No, like, bloody meat cleaver stuck into the front door or anything like that, which I guess is what it would take. So they figured maybe Susan took the kids on an impromptu trip or something. After all, their car was gone, and so was the family dog. Yeah, you know those single moms with two jobs.

Always take in surprise vacations and not telling anyone. Because they have so much free time on their hands, definitely. The police may have acted differently if they'd known that earlier in the week, officers from another jurisdiction had been at the Bailey House on a different kind of Aaron. But we'll get to that in a bit. As they pulled away from the house, satisfied that there was no immediate need for action, they had no way of knowing that they were leaving the scene of one of the bloodiest,

most bizarre murders in recent history. But let's put a pin in that for now and get some background on Susan and her kids. So we mentioned that the kid's dad, Richard, wasn't in the picture at the time this happened. Reading about Susan's life before Richard is interesting. It's almost like she purposefully set out to find her exact opposite. Susan was independent and driven, the kind of person who always had a plan, a go-getter. She grew up in Minnesota, but eventually got sick of the first. freezing-ass winters and moved to California with a friend.

Good choice. She loved it out there. The sun and the beach and the whole laid-back California vibe. She got a job at a clothing store, and soon she had a devoted following of regular customers. Susan was a superb personal shopper. She knew all her clients' budgets, what colors and styles they liked, their kids' names, people adored her.

And then she met Richard Bailey. They hit it off pretty hard and fast. He was in the Air Force. Susan liked that. But her family pretty much hated the guy on site. He seemed flaky and unfriendly. Of course, to be fair, Midwestern friendly is totally different than Western friendly. I'm from out west, and when I moved to the Midwest, it was a huge culture shock.

You go from people being polite to complete strangers offering you the shirt off their back because you said you were a bit chilly. It's weird. Yeah, it's the same way in the South, too, for sure. Definitely. So, anyway, Susan's mom and dad didn't like Richard, and they hoped he'd be a fling. He was Susan's first serious relationship, after all. But no such luck. In March of 1988, she called her mom with joyous news that she and Richard had eloped.

Oh, great. Because of his position in the Air Force, Richard and Susan moved around. a lot, and before long, Susan was miserable. She'd barely get her feet under her, starting a new job and making friends when they'd have to move again. She hated it. Yeah, I would too. This went on until Richard left the service in 1990,

and from then on, he just couldn't seem to hold down a steady job, not for long anyway. He was in the Coast Guard for a while, he drove a truck, but nothing stuck. Even after they had Jennifer and then David four years later, Richard either couldn't or wouldn't find a consistent way to support them. So Susan stepped up. She became the breadwinner. She was making pretty good money managing a J. Jacobs clothing store, and as she worked more and more, her family saw less and less of her. By the early 2000s, they were living in Roanoke, Texas, and Susan was working her ass off as regional manager for a bunch of J. Jacob's stores.

Still wasn't enough to pay the bills, though, with Richard only working sporadically. Susan wanted her kids to have nice clothes, a house in a safe neighborhood, presents for Christmas, and birthdays. So she got a second job, started taking in sewing projects for extra cash, and started selling Mary Kay makeup. Anybody else, I don't know, feel like smacking Richard upside the head right about now? Oh yes. Yeah, me too. How this woman ever found time to sleep or eat or do literally anything other than work, I can't imagine. But when she was home with the kids, she tried to find ways to make it special.

She read the Harry Potter books with Jennifer and David, took him to the movies, just little stuff like that. And there's no doubt this woman loved her kids. Her and Richard's marriage, on the other hand, was really starting to hit the skids. They were fighting a lot, and Susan was starting to look forward to her business trips just because they gave her an excuse to get away from him for a few days.

Ugh. Not a good sign, right? And unsurprisingly, the toxic atmosphere between them soon started to affect the kids, because how could it not? It's always going to, right? So Jennifer started stealing, small stuff from her friend's houses. Now this is according to her friend's mom anyway, that whenever Jennifer would come over,

she'd notice little things missing afterward. She'd confront Jennifer, and usually she'd apologize and give back whatever she stole, but sometimes she'd just be defiant and deny that she'd take anything. I didn't do it. It got so bad that eventually the friend's mom just didn't let Jennifer come over anymore. And she didn't tell Susan, which I think is kind of astonishing. she didn't want to embarrass her, which I get. But for God's sake, like, if your kid was stealing, like, almost every time she went over to

her friend's house, wouldn't she want to know? I would. Yes. For sure. Like, embarrass me, please. Because if my kid is doing that, then she needs some help. In this case, replace kids with cats. You'd want to know if those little shits were out stealing lunch meat from the neighbors, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I guess I would. Although I, that's just funny. But, yeah. you'd be like not my little princes and princesses I think honestly I would be pleased

because then they might get Instagram famous and finally start pulling their dead weight around here you know like that thief cat that steals from the neighbors all the time that's famous on Instagram like come on but we don't let ours go outside so the most they can do is steal our stuff which they do a lot prolifically

they're all little thieves as for little David around age five he started chronically wetting the bed. His room just reeked of pee all the time. He got into fights at school, and when he got older, he started cutting himself. Some of his teachers became concerned that he may have been sexually abused.

There was an investigation into this at some stage, but we don't know if anything came of it, if it was true, if there was ever a suspect named. All we know is that his teachers were concerned about some of his behavior, and there was some degree of investigation. And David's behavior was definitely, Definitely concerning.

So content warning for this next part, for some upsetting animal stuff, skip ahead about 30 seconds or so if you don't want to hear it, and we do not blame you. At one point, the Bailey's cat went missing, and the rumor around the neighborhood was that David had taken the poor baby to a nearby park and killed him. It's just, I hate so much. Poor, poor sweet baby. And buckle up for this next one, because it is beyond the flip and beyond. I don't even know how to tell you this.

It's just so weird. when David was 13, a neighbor called the cops who arrived to find David buck naked in the backyard masturbating in time with the sprinkler. Like, excuse me? How do you even do that? How do you do it? Why would you do it?

What kind of sprinkler are we talking about? Like, is it one of those ones that goes all crazy? You know, like, is it one that goes, chit, chit, chit, chit, chit, chit, chit. I was saying, yeah, one of those. I'm just trying to figure this. I'm trying to get the logistics. I have so many questions, and I want none of them answered, as usual.

Yeah, it's such a weird, like, why would you, the neighbor, like, reported this with, like, glee. And I'm just like, that, that raises more questions than you answered, sir. Yeah. Bless his heart. He was clearly a very troubled kid. Yeah. There was some worrying stuff going on. with this kid.

Yeah. And from the sources we saw, the main one of which was Donna Fielder's Let's Kill Mom, it doesn't seem like Susan and Richard ever got him any counseling or psychiatric treatment or anything like that. Unfortunately. Yeah. Susan was worried about him, but she was overwhelmed with work, busting her ass to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

The detective who came to investigate the possibility of sexual abuse with David said Susan struck him as a good, hardworking mom who was doing her best. And Richard, I know, this will shock you, but he didn't exactly take the bull up by the horns and step up and get his kids some help. Get out. There's a story that I think illustrates what Richard was like as a dad, at least according to the sources we found. One night, while Susan was out of town on business, David went the bed. He was seven or eight at the time. Jennifer was a tween. And rather than clean it up himself, you know, like a parent would do, Richard woke Jennifer up and told her to do it. What the fuck? Well, Katie, I mean, peepee. Ew. Who wants to deal

with that? Probably not a 12-year-old girl, I bet. No kidding. And I'm sure this was the kind of thing that started a whole lot of resentment smoldering inside Miss Jennifer. While her mom was out working, Jennifer was expected to handle the chores at home. God forbid dad should do it or anything. And that's something you sign up for when you have a kid. You're going to have to take care of some gross situations. No kidding, yeah. She also resented that her parents wouldn't let her and David use the internet or phone if they weren't home,

and that they weren't allowed to leave the house while Susan was working. Some of this is just typical teenage stuff, of course. We're not suggesting that Jennifer was Cinderella or anything, but she probably had a little more on her shoulders than most kids might at her age. Yeah, she basically felt like she was David's mom, and she hated it. And that would have been a shitty position for a tween slash teen girl, even if David had been an easy kid, and he was not an easy kid. In fact, as he got older, his behavior just got more and more erratic, as I think the sprinkler story makes pretty clear. Definitely. In 2006, the shit finally hit the fan with Susan and Richard's marriage.

One night, they got into such a rip-roaring, screaming fight that Jennifer ended up calling the cops. And the reason they were fighting? Susan had won a cruise for being one of the top lean Bryant managers in the country, and she was thrilled. She'd been working so hard, and she desperately needed to get away. She wanted to just take a bunch of books or magazines lounged by the pool, maybe have a spa day. And God knows she deserved it. But oh no, this would not do for Richard. He wanted to go too.

Damn the cost and damn the logistics of finding somebody to stay at the house with the kids. If Susan was going to get a treat, he felt he should get one too. I want to go on the cruise too. It's not fair. can you don't tell we're not fans of Richard? Probably not too subtle about that. This ginormous fight was one of the last nails in the coffin of the Bailey's marriage. They split up pretty soon after that.

And in a classic Richard move, that's where we are on this podcast, by the way. It's a classic Richard move. He didn't show up for any of the court appearances to do with a divorce. So Susan ended up getting a default judgment. Yeah, I mean, big whoop. You know, it's not like she was going to get loads of alimony and child support. now. In fact, with Richard out of the picture, Susan had to work even harder. She took on more sewing projects, got multiple part-time jobs to supplement her income. Let me be clear, this woman had a full-time

gig as manager for Lane Bryant. She had a modest house, two kids, she wasn't trying to live extravagantly, she was just trying to live in the middle of a recession, and this is what she had to do. She already had a full-time job, and it wasn't nearly enough. Just unbelievable. We have just got to fix ourselves as a country. That's insane. Yeah, she was bootstrapping as hard as one can bootstrap and she was barely keeping it together. Yeah, it's some bullshit. So anywho, by this time Jennifer was in high school. Most people remember her as a normal, quote-unquote, kind of soft-spoken kid. Seemed happy enough, dressed nicely, did her schoolwork. She had friends, you know. Didn't exactly fit in with any of the clicks, but she had her little circle of buds. She

was planning on going to college. You know, Mom Susan was saving up to buy her a car. And then in her senior year, Jennifer met Paul Henson Jr. Did you all hear that sad trombone noise in the distance there when I said that? Whomp, wom, wom, wom. She was almost out. Senior in high school. Almost out. And she had to go and meet the specimen. Paul Henson Jr. Oh, campers. So, Paul was a junior, a year younger than Jennifer, but he had mystique. Cast your minds, if you will, back to a previous nerds attack, the one about Prince of Dorkness, Rod Farrell. Imagine him, but like, with a Greg Brady perm, a little less creativity and less of an obsession with bloodletting.

He was tall and gangly, wore a lot of black, shocking, I know, and he had what author Donna Fisher describes as, quote, blank dark eyes like staring out a window on a black starless night. Nice turn of phrase, Donna. Very evocative. For me, they're more like an old-timey TV screen that's on the fritz, so mostly what you get is just blank screen, but if you kind of joggle it a little bit, you'll occasionally get a brief of static, and then it's just back to blank. I would like to revise something you just said. Okay, please.

He was only a little less obsessed with bloodletting. He was still pretty into it. Yeah, okay, you're right. So the main difference is the perm, I guess. He's just Rod with a perm. Yeah. That is my sleep paralysis demon right there. Rod Farrell with a perm.

Blah-la-la. I'm not going to sleep tonight. So Paul was part of the emo crowd, kids who were into emo, aka emotional music. That's all it really is, a music genre that's all about. emotional expression I don't really get it myself like isn't all music about that kind of you know I don't know it was sort of after my time but I mean emo kids are harmless all floppy hair and skinny jeans and sad songs not however if you listen to author Donna Fisher the author of let's kill mom which was our main source for this case according to Donna emo is basically a death cult

every one of these cases like somebody's got to be hand wringing over the kids and whatever they're into. Listening to emo is as bad as dealing meth. And this just drives Katie bananas and I can practically just feel her over there, just getting ready to explode. So I'm just going to step back for a second and let her have at it. It's all right, KT. Tell her. Oh my God. She goes. Yeah. This book pissed me off so bad. Yes, I know because you texted me eight quadrillion times about it. I was part of the emo crowd, okay? We were just a bunch of music nerds. Let me, okay, let me read you this ridiculous quote from Donna Fisher's book.

She says emo kids, quote, are rumored to be into activities like bloodletting, experimentation with same-sex intimate relationships, depression, and suicide. Wow, there's a lot to unpack there. Uh, yeah. So, first of all, maybe the kids were LGBT before listening to Dashboard Confessional, Donna. And real nice equating same-sex intimate relationships with bloodletting. I know. What the fuck are you talking about? Like, what?

Emo was mostly about competing to see who knew the most about different obscure bands and going to live shows. all we wanted to do was hang around the mall, go to record stores, and buy band t-shirts at Hot Topic specifically. We weren't cutting each other. That was the gaw kids, some of them anyway. All right, but you did say Paul was into bloodletting. Okay. Okay.

You just said it. I know. But it had nothing to do with emo. Okay. Donna also went on to describe my chemical romance and fallout boy as emo bands, which is offensive for reasons I won't get into right now. I love both bands. I will not stand for them being called emo. If you want to hear emo, listen to Promise Ring, Under oath, armor for sleep from first to last, or funeral for a friend, and get out of my face. And by the

way, true emoes know that I'm going to get three messages minimum telling me why the bands I just mentioned aren't actually emo. Wow. Okay, feel better? Get that? all out of your system? I guess. Okay, good. So Paul was emo is the thing. And you can't blame that for any of what we're about to tell you. Our boy was a bit of an odd duck.

We already told you he's basically a less creative Rod Farrell, right? And we ain't kidding. Paul told his friends he was the reincarnation of a royal executioner from the 1800s. And he really wanted to be a vampire. So I'm not saying that Paul and Rod would have had a dance battle for control of the Hardees, but I'm also not not saying that. Rod has forfeited the right to patronize Hardies, Katie. You know this.

If y'all don't know what we're referring to, by the way, do yourself a solid and go listen to when nerds attack Prince of Dorkness Rod Farrell. It is a banana pants case, and I think one of our best episodes ever. It's hilarious and awful. Anywho, Paul also told his friends that he had an alternate personality. He called it Talos, who's actually a figure in Greek mythology. He was a bronze automaton that protected the city of Crete from invaders. Pretty cool, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Paul's Talos, not so much. Yeah. Paul's Talos was angry and violent. Paul once told a friend, If I let him out, Talos is going to kill somebody. Great.

Good to know. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. And by the way, disclaimer about dissociative identity disorder, which is the mental illness that causes people to develop alter personalities like Paul was claiming here, typically people who have that disorder but haven't been diagnosed don't even know their altars exist. And they don't remember anything when the other altars are in control. Yeah, it seems to me like Talas was basically just a way for Paul to act like an asshole and then just blame it on somebody else. Yeah, and typically people that suffer from dissociative identity disorder don't hurt anybody. Of course, right. Absolutely.

It's a disorder that comes out of like very deep trauma as a child that they have to develop altars to protect themselves. It's not to protect themselves, not to lash out at other people. Yeah, M. Night Shyamon's movie Split is not a documentary. No, no, no, no. No, and as always, we always like to remind everybody that people with mental illness are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators because I just don't think that gets said enough. No, not enough at all. And he obviously liked anything that added to his mystique. A dark, alternative personality definitely helped accomplish that.

He also had a bizarre habit of suddenly just chanting gibberish, as though he were channeling some ancient dead language. Oh my God, this kid must have been a flipping delight to his teacher. I was just exhausted thinking about it. to teach high school way back in the day. Right. It's just exhausting, just thinking about dealing with this kid. And we haven't even gotten to the best slash worst part yet,

which is that he always wore a vial of blood around his neck. Whose blood? Who the hell knows? It was probably red Kool-Aid, actually, okay? But he told everybody it was blood. Fucking weirdo. Most of Paul's friends figured all this nonsense was his way of getting a little something, something from the ladies.

Mm-hmm. And in violation of all natural laws and everything that is right and holy on earth, it fucking worked. It always does. It's so frustrating. Oh, my God. The girls loved them some Paul. I don't know why campers. I don't understand it. It hurts me deeply.

Same. But it's true. maybe they thought they could fix him maybe teenagers just can't be trusted to have any damn common sense i don't know but whatever the reason paul henson junior was swimming in it gross and when he met jennifer bailey it was all over they got on like a house on fire they both loved to read and jennifer liked to write too She wrote I feel bad making fun of children Except I don't at all

She's almost 18 have at her She wrote plays for the two of them to act out And they spent hours on them That's It reminds me of Mark Twitchell You know the Dexter killer And his Star Wars fan fiction Like

I think of all of the things they did this is the funniest. There's stuff coming up that I think Donna Fisher clutched her pearls at. But, like... Oh, yes. I have nothing against theater kids. I think... Oh, hell, no, I was one.

This is not a theater kid thing. No, I don't think they were even in the drama club. No, this was just all, like, behind closed doors. That's weird. It's probably terrible. Were they filming it? I have, like, I have questions. God only knows.

But on top of that, they were both in the anime club as well. They like the same music, and of course, they liked Dungeons and Dragons. Because it needed but that. God, it's so depressing, isn't it? One of these days, maybe we can have a nerds attack episode where the good name of Dungeons and Dragons founder Gary Gygax, RIP, is not dragged through the damn mud. I swear to God, campers, not all role players are assholes. I can personally attest to this. Yes.

They also liked the fantasy game Magic the Gathering, which Donna Fisher, once again, tragically misunderstands and somehow makes it sound scary. This is the funniest part to me is that she freaks out over Magic the Gathering, because back when I, in my day, when I was in the Miscotonic student union at my university, you know, which was the role playing club, the D&D

geeks would make fun of the Magic Geeks. Yeah. Now that changed. It became way more like cool and mainstream, but like back in the early days of Magic the Gathering, I'm just saying. It's an age-old rivalry between the two. Exactly. It's like Westside story. You know, it's a

card game. Yeah. A card game. And in the book, she wrote, and I quote, it seems to be a combination of mysticism, role-playing, and a card game. Those who played were planeswalkers and traveled between universes. Donna. Girl. Sweetie Pie. Honey bunches. It's literally just Pokemon. But with goblins and shit. Please, calm down. Yes, please. Unhook your fingers from your pearls.

It's going to be okay. Put down the pearls, Donna. Oh, Jesus. I don't understand why every true crime book needs to make nerd shit sound ominous. I know. It's annoying. This story is scary enough

without making every subculture sound like it needs its own dairy unit. Around this time, Jennifer started telling friends that she was practicing Wicca, the main tenet of which is, and it harm none, do as thou wilt. She's about to screw the pooch hard on the first part of that, but she gets the second part down pretty well.

Unsurprisingly, Jennifer's mom, Susan, wasn't a big fan of Paul. She thought he was weird, too, accurate, and she hoped the novelty would wear off soon and Jennifer would find somebody else. But she didn't. And before long, they were fighting over it.

And I got to say, if I were Susan Bailey, I also would think he was weird because he was fucking weird. Yeah. He's wearing a vile of blood around his neck. And I'm a cool, I would be a cool mom, okay? Because, like, you know, you know me. I'm, like, super cool. But I have to say, if my daughter was trying to date Paul Henson, Jr.,

it wouldn't be because I thought he was Satanist or scary. Or he'd be like, he's a fucking geek. Like, you do better than this. Not a good kind of geek. This guy is a sad sack with a vial of Kool-Aid around his neck. Oh, my God. Go find somebody cooler. Yeah.

Anyway, it would hurt me deeply. Oye. So, enter a girl named Merrily. Now, this isn't her real name, which frustrates the crap out of me. This is the pseudonym that Donna Fisher gave her in the book. Because she was never charged as an adult in the case, we couldn't find any court records that gave her real name, which we hate. We hate using pseudonyms. Oh, it drives us crazy.

But anyway, we have to call her Merrily because we don't know a real name. She was 14. She was from a wealthy family and totally enthralled with Paul. So all I can say is it must have been slim pickings at that high school. Good God. Was it, was she in Pauled? Yes. She was impalled.

Yish. So anyway, Paul took a liking to Merrily too, much to her mom's dismay. Marily ate up all his bullish about past lives and multiple personalities and vampire aristocrats and whatnot. She just thought he was fascinating, and because she was warm for his form, she was desperately jealous of Jennifer. Now, Paul, ever the philanthropist, had the logical solution to this little love triangle. There was no need for these two lovely ladies to fight over him. He was two people, after all, Paul, and Talas. And as it happened, conveniently enough, while Paul was in love with Jennifer,

Talas had a major thing for Merrily. Didn't that just work out perfect? So Paul slash Talos was just loving all the lovely ladies. Q saxophone solo. I swear to God we're not making this up. And of course both girls bought this two-bit horse ducky just hook, line, and sinker. They were

just fine with it. Bless their hearts. So Paul would sleep with Jennifer as Paul and with Marily as Talos. And apparently one time, Paul shifted into the Talos personality while he was with Jennifer, which was a big deal because it meant Talas was cheating on Merrily. So, you know, the arrangement was not without its pitfalls.

But for the most part, it's sort of worked mostly. Jennifer and Marily ended up getting close, too. And before long, Jennifer and Paul decided that they'd been together in multiple past lives. I mean, of course. You know, I would have thought that went without saying. And soon, they realized that guess what? Merrily had been there, too. A three-way love story for the ages.

It's cozy, isn't it? Just cozy. This has got to be the weirdest way I've ever seen a dude scam his way into two girlfriends. Just take notes, play is. So it was 2008 by now, and Jennifer graduated high school in May. She was still 17 for now, but she couldn't wait to move out. She was planning on going to school at the Art Institute of Dallas in the fall. She was all for it.

But despite having this to look forward to, things were getting tenser and tenser between Jennifer and her mom. At one point, Jennifer and Paul got caught red-handed. fooling around in Jennifer's bedroom. Susan was obviously not happy about that. And Jennifer was just flat out refusing to do her chores. Or she'd just lie and say she'd done them when she obviously hadn't. And if you tried to clean up yourself, she'd throw a fit, which I don't understand. I said I vacuumed.

Okay, well, you clearly didn't. So I'm going to do it. And then Jennifer would have a meltdown. It was ridiculous. Susan told a friend that she didn't know what to do about this kid anymore. She ruined everything she could possibly ruin with her histrionic behavior. And, of course, they were fighting more and more about the boyfriend, Paul. And then, in September, Paul's dad, Paul Henson, Sr., reported that his son had run away.

Now, those two had a stormy relationship. They'd fight to the point of physical confrontation like a lot. So Paul Sr. told police he suspected his son with his girlfriend, Jennifer Bailey. At the same time, Marley White's mom reported her as a runaway as well. She called Susan to see if Marily was there with Jennifer, but Susan said no. But here's the thing. Susan was working all the time. Busting her ass, trying to afford that car for Jennifer to take to Dallas with her for college and to make sure she had a nice wardrobe for freshman year and all that and tuition.

So the kids had the run of the house most of the time. So in fact, both Marley and Paul had gone straight to Jennifer's house. When Susan was home, Jennifer just hit him in the closet or under the bed. Younger brother David knew they were there, of course, but he didn't tell Susan, because, you know, snitches get stitches and all that. So she's got two foreign kids in her house, and she doesn't know it. That's so scary. Yeah, it really is kind of creepy. So in addition to the tensions about Paul and the chronically messy house, Susan was also fighting with Jennifer about the car situation.

She couldn't afford to buy Jennifer a car in time for her to start college in the fall. The plan was for her to keep living at home for a while, at least, so Susan was she was. Susan asked her to just take the train back and forth in the meantime while she worked on saving the rest of the money. Jennifer was pissed. She didn't want to ride the train. She wanted her mom to drive her back and forth to Dallas instead. With all that free time, she was selfishly currently using for sleep, I guess. Oh, my Lord.

It was completely ridiculous. There was no way Susan could do that. but our Jennifer didn't like to be told no. She fumed about it. Yeah, she's fuming about the fact that it's taken her mom a few months extra to save money to buy her a car so she can go to college. Also, on her mom's dime. God, this kid sucks. So we've got three very pissed off, angst-ridden teenagers here.

Paul's fighting with his dad to the point of coming to blows. Mary Lee, the youngest of the three, is chafing against her mom's attempts to keep her home and focused on school instead of out having threesomes with her reincarnated vampire friends. That bitch. And Jennifer, I think there were a lot of things going on in her head. She had angst about her dad, noping out of her life, for one thing. Sure. There were times when they didn't even know where father of the year Richard was living.

She didn't know if he was going to show up to her high school graduation until the day it happened, because he didn't bother to let her know. Yeah, and a lot of times, and this is totally unfair, but like we said earlier, when they have a lot of anger about a divorce, kids will just tend to blame the parent who sticks around, which is weird, but true, you know, Richard took off, and he left Susan there to pick up the pieces and worked twice as hard to support the kids, but somehow in Jennifer's mind, Susan became the enemy. Yeah, I think that was definitely part of the equation here. At the end of the day, I think she just hated her mom. maybe they hadn't had a chance to bond the right way because Susan was so busy trying to keep them all float most of her life Susan tried she loved Jennifer and David with all her heart but Jennifer blamed her for everything wrong in her life and worst of all Susan had forbidden Paul from coming over

she had no idea the little bastard was already there hiding under Jennifer's bed anytime she was home like a little gremlin right most of their fights lately were about him. And when Susan would get really mad, she'd threatened to send Jennifer to live with her grandma in Minnesota. Minnesota. Minnesota.

Yeah. Minnesota. Oh, crap. Oh, no. No art. We love you. Minnesota. We love you, Minnesota. We're kidding. No Art Institute of Dallas. No car, no Paul, no Merrily, no nothing. Just grandma and snow and whatever.

else you got in Minnesota? Polar bears? I don't know. Yeah, probably. It's probably polar bears and like Garrison Keeler. In salads that bear no resemblance to actual salads. This is an aside, but Minnesotans make salads that are just abominations before God, mostly containing cool whip, canned fruit, and just so much jello. Have you all ever had a snicker salad or an Ambrosia salad? Look them up if you haven't. Okay, I haven't, but if we're going to ridicule people for making a salad out of a Snickers bar, I'm going to have to jump off that train because that just sounds delicious to me and the cool whip too. I'm all about it. It's fantastic. I just don't consider it to be a salad because it's... Well, okay, fair enough. You know what, though? There is, there are

apples in it. So, well, see, there you go. That's a salad. It's a fruit salad. It's a fruit salad. There you go, with Snickers bars in it. It's not to like. Minnesota was the last straw for Jennifer. Now, in reality, Susan would almost certainly not have followed through on the threat. And even if she had, Jennifer was 17. Worst case scenario, she'd just have to stay there until she turned 18. Like, big fucking deal, right? Right.

But, of course, when you're a teenager and your whole world has become about your boyfriend and your best friend and this super romanticized fantasy about the life you feel destined to live together, something like that, feels like the end of the world. So the Minnesota threat may have been the catalyst for what happened next, which was that between having metaphysical threesomes and playing Magic the Gathering and acting out Jennifer's badly written plays, the Three Musketeers started hatching a plan. Yeah, they had decided that in order to make sure they'd be together forever,

this life and the next one via reincarnation, of course, they had to stick close together. They couldn't do that with asshole parents breathing down their necks all the time expecting them to do chores and homework and crap like that. The solution was simple, they decided. They'd just kill their parents. Susan first, since she was the most urgent threat. Then Paul's dad and Mary Lee's mom.

So, we're going to hurt you. We're going to leave it there for part one, campers. This one's a little too big for one episode. You know we'll have part two for you next week, though, and shit is going to get even weirder. So much weird. 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 newest patrons. Thank you so much to Rob, Brittany,

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