True Crime Campfire - When Nerds Attack: The Murder of Lieth von Stein, Pt 1

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

Nerds are usually pretty harmless. We know, because we are nerds. More often than not, we’re just smart people who are passionate about our interests. Gaming, or comics, or sci fi, or putting on cool costumes and going to cons. Most of us don’t want any trouble. But once in a while, as we’ve seen on this show once before, you get yourself a bad nerd. Join us for a chilling story of greed, fantasy, and murder. Sources:Blood Games by Jerry BledsoeCruel Doubt by Joe McGinnessFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes 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] 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. Nerds are usually pretty harmless. We know because we are nerds. More often than not, we're just smart people who are passionate about our interests, gaming or comics or sci-fi, or putting on cool costumes and going to cons. Most of us don't want any trouble. But once in a great while, as we've seen on the show once before, you get yourself a bad nerd. This is when nerds attack, the murder of Leith von Steen. So campers, we're in the picturesque little town of Little Washington, North Carolina, July 25, 1988. A nice place, about two hours outside of Raleigh. A pig farmer was driving home from loading some livestock into a truck at about 4 o'clock in the morning.

They do that at night in the summer because it's too hot during the day, and he suddenly came upon a fire by the side of the road. Now, this guy was a volunteer firefighter, and he could tell from the smell that this was a set accelerated fire. He could smell the kerosene, and the whole scene, as you can imagine, gave him an eerie feeling. Just to come up on a fire suddenly like that in the darkness. Creepy. And it had rained that day, and the ground was wet, so he knew there wasn't any real danger of the fire spreading. So he went home and called the police from there.

About 20 minutes later, a call came in to the dispatcher's office, in Little Washington. And the voice on the other end was a woman's, and it was so faint and tiny that the operator could barely hear it. But she heard her say, I need help. So the dispatcher said, I'm sorry, I need you to speak up. And the woman said, my husband and I have been beaten and stabbed. So the dispatcher was instantly on high alert.

Little Washington is one of those places where when shit like this happens, everybody tells dateline, this isn't the kind of place where this happens. which of course is a total myth because murder happens everywhere but people always say that it's not true so lock your dang doors but this was no doubt a place where murder didn't happen very often it's a mostly rural affluent type of a place in little washington it's big news when somebody's car gets broken into and even that doesn't happen a lot so the woman on the line said her name was bonnie von stein she said my daughter's in the next stream and i'm afraid she's been attacked too. I heard a noise and I think she's been attacked. My husband's breathing,

but not very strongly now. And that last line just breaks my heart to think of lying on the floor and listening to the love of your life, like struggling to breathe and not having the strength to go and help him because you've been so badly attacked yourself. Just, ugh, awful. So the dispatcher kept talking to her. She told her, okay, Bonnie, you're doing great. Tell me everything you can. So Bonnie said it was one intruder. She couldn't see his face only his silhouette in the darkness which is such a creepy image but she said he looked big kind of burly like so much so that it looked like he didn't even have a neck she thought he was wearing a ski mask and dark clothing but she couldn't be sure couldn't be sure about race or

anything like that just a silhouette was all she could see she said she'd woken up to her husband screaming and then a whushing sound like a as the attacker brought some kind of weapon down just again and again so this whiff kind of noise and her husband was just screaming and screaming and then Bonnie got hit and she ended up on the floor

and smart girl she tried to play dead and oh my God this is so creepy as she lay there on the floor peering through like a tiny little slit in her eyelids she saw the man walk over to her and she could see him like silhouetted against the little bit of light coming from the window

and he just stood over her for a moment just kind of watching her trying to figure out if she was dead presumably and then he did that creepy like killer head tilt like you see in flipping horror movies just sort of assessing her I know I've got goosebumps thinking about it no thank you and then the whoosh came again and Bonnie blacked out for a while and when she came to she had to sort of push herself little by little across the floor with her heels to get to the side table where the phone was. And she was so weak that she had to grab the cord and pull the phone down onto the floor so she could call 911. Just holy crap. And as she's recounting all this horror to the dispatcher, Bonnie said, God, I hope this is a dream. Oh, no. Oh, God. Bless her heart. And the dispatcher said, look, honey, my husband's a cop. He's on his way. I'm sending everybody to you. You're going to be okay. It's a hard call to listen to, as you guys can imagine. And after a few minutes,

Bonnie heard the police come in the front door and this more than anything else we ever learn about her makes me love Bonnie she said I have cats please tell them not to hurt my cats she was worried about her 13 cats because she rescued cats and it must have been a surreal scene for the cops because in addition to all these little glowing-eyed kitties sort of skittering around and watching them all over the house the von Steins also had a pet rooster

who had somehow gotten into the house and was just wandering around. So you're responding to this, like, terrifying call, and now there's a chicken in play, which just... It must have felt like they were in an episode of Twin Peaks or something. Oh, my God, you're so right. And roosters aren't nice. No, for sure not.

Absolutely. They'll mess you up. They will chase you down to the ends of the earth to try to kill you. Yes, absolutely. And as they started to clear the house, the police found that the back door had been forced. forced open. And all the first responders who were there that night say it was the most traumatizing scene that they'd ever come across in their entire careers. The first officer who

entered the bedroom saw Bonnie's husband Leith in the bed, blood everywhere, and just a horrendous ragged wound in the back of his head. And he also appeared to have stab wounds all over his back and shoulders. The first thought that this officer had, like he'd grown up on a farm, and he thought he looked like a hog laid out on a carving table like for butchering. I mean, it was bad. And this cop's first reaction when he saw the scene was to just shut the door in horror. He was just like, nope. And he just couldn't take it at first. He just shut the door and kind of stood there for a second. And I honestly can't blame him. And I'm not laughing because I think it's funny. I'm laughing because like, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I would too. Horrible. And he just

took kind of a quick second to gather himself and he went back in. And Bonnie, bless her heart, was still on the floor. She said, my husband must be bad. He's bad, isn't he? And the cop just said, just don't look at him, honey, which kind of touches my heart. And Bonnie said, you know, he was trying to help me. Please help him. So let's just all take a moment to shake off just how flippant awful that is. And just from 2020, back to 1988, just bless everybody's heart who was involved, because holy crap. Oh, this one's so rough. And it was clear right away to the officers that Leith was dead, but they didn't tell Bonnie at first. I mean, she was fragile enough already. And as they waited for the ambulance, they went to the bedroom of Bonnie's teenage daughter

from a previous marriage, Angela. Okay. And it was a tense moment because they didn't know what they were going to find in there. But Angela was sleeping peacefully in her bed. She had a big box fan going on her bedside table, and the officers noticed right away that there was a glass of ice water on the table with the ice still in it, like unmelted, which was interesting, right? So of course, you know, they got Angela up and out of bed, and it struck them that she seemed bizarrely calm and nonchalant, almost casual. And she did get a little bit teary-eyed when they told her that Leith was dead and that her mother had been attacked, but other than that, she was just bizarrely calm. Now, it is definitely true that everyone processes trauma differently. Some people are

really good at being calm in a crisis. I'm actually one of those people, so I get this. But nevertheless, if that's going on, they're going to note that. And that's understandable, I think. It's not proof of anything, but they noticed it. And they thought it was odd. Especially given that she's a teenage girl. Right. So right about then, the ambulance showed up to take Bonnie to the hospital, and she was in rough shape. She'd been bludgeoned. She had several different concussions. She'd been stabbed. Her lung was collapsed. So the doctors had to do a lot of work, but she was still alive, which is amazing. At the hospital, though, Bonnie got the awful news that Leith hadn't been so lucky. And bless her heart, she said at least he's not

suffering anymore. I mean, this man had been the love of her life, and now he was gone. And I can't even imagine, y'all. I don't even want to. Just punches you in the gut to think about it. Meanwhile, Angela, whose last name was Pritchard, by the way, called her brother Chris. Chris Pritchard, also Bonnie's kid from a previous marriage. So they had the same dad. They were Leith's stepkids. And so Angela called Chris, who was in his dorm room at NC State University. He was a college student.

He'd only gone to bed about an hour ago because he kept to a college student schedule, right? And naturally, Chris freaked out and started frantically looking for his car keys to drive home, and lo and behold, he couldn't find his car keys. Which is exactly the time when I'd lose my frigging car keys, like during some horrendous emergency, like Murphy's Law and all. So he didn't know what to do, and he's not thinking super clearly, presumably. So he ran out of his dorm room and called the campus police from like one of those call boxes. And when he explained what had happened to his parents, the campus police

actually agreed to drive him the two and a half hours to Little Washington, which was cool of them actually, I think. Yeah, that's really cool. So Chris had been up all night playing cards, so he had fallen asleep in the back seat. Angela hadn't told him much on the phone, but it Detective had spoken to him and told him to come straight to the police station. And when they got there, the first officer to talk to Chris got a bad feeling from him. He said, he looked like someone that was trying to appear grief-stricken. He looked like he was going for an Emmy. Ooh.

Yeah. Bad. He didn't seem eager to talk to the cops that day. He said he wanted to go to the hospital to see his mother, which, yeah, of course. Obviously. He promised that he'd talk to them after. But as it so happened, cops had to track him down later at a friend's house. He seemed nervous as fuck.

He was chain smoking while he spoke to the cops. Of course, this could have had something to do with his parents being attacked. I imagine nobody feels especially safe in a family that's just had two of its members brutalized. I know. I think I'd be scared to death. Like if both of my parents had just been attacked and one of them was dead, like, I think I'd be like, well, does somebody have it in for my family? Are they coming after me now?

Yeah, I'm never sleeping again. Exactly. Chris said that he and his stepdad got along pretty well for the most part. He liked Leith. He was a good guy, a good stepdad. Leith had inherited some money from his parents recently, and the cops had gotten the impression that it was a lot. it was about $2 million in fact

they wanted to know had Chris known about the inheritance Chris admitted he knew but he said he didn't know how much money it was something about Chris had the detectives disliking him immediately they felt immediately suspicious of this kid they couldn't put a finger on why but they didn't like him see I put a lot of weight on that actually and I know some people are going to disagree with me about that

and if you do I'm not mad at you about it but But here's my take. Obviously, you cannot take this as proof of anything. And you have to keep an open mind and not get tunnel vision. And it's definitely true that some investigators are not good at that. And they do get tunnel vision and they develop prejudices against individual people based on gut feeling. But for an experienced detective, that gut feeling, that's not nothing in my opinion. And you know, I'm big on listening to your gut. And I think that's doubly true if you are an experienced homicide detective because I think that they have to know how to read people. So it's not proof of anything, but it's also not nothing. No, and I mean, I tend to agree with you, actually, because there are situations where that gut feeling is 100% wrong. Like, the case of the murder of Peggy Hedrick in Fort Collins, Colorado. Right, right, definitely. It's a good example. The cops had it in for a 15-year-old kid, and it was one detective in particular, and it ended up that the poor kid was innocent.

So, those aren't, those gut feelings aren't 100% accurate, but it can get you on a trail, which I think is valid. Yeah, for sure. So these cops didn't want a pigeonhole, but they wanted to keep Chris in their sights. They decided to take a hard look at this kid, and Angela, too, because of her calm reaction to the attacks. And because she was the only person in the house who had come out unscathed. And, of course, there was that unmelted ice in the glass on her nightstand. Yeah. Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Word spread fast about the attack, of course, and before long, rumors were rampant around town. Leith was having an affair, and this was a jealous husband or spurned lover. Leith found something out at work, and he was killed by the mom. Angela was secretly married, and her husband didn't. it. Wow. Chris and Angela did it for the inheritance money. Chris is in a satanic cult and he killed Leith as an initiation right. It's not, it's never a whodunit without somebody suggesting a satanic cult. It's definitely on the true grand bingo card. Absolutely it is. And it never is. It's never literally

never is. Don't send me an article. Don't send us articles from like some bad source. It's like this the satanic cult did kill babies because they didn't i can promise you they didn't no anyway as you can tell there were a lot of rumors i mean it was a small town yeah and most of them were very very very dumb i think aside from the satanic cult one the mob theory is probably my favorite which is like leith worked for a yarn company for god's sake the man worked for a company called national spinning that made yarn so I guess the yarn mob the yarn dawn had it in for him

like where do people come up with this shit I will never understand like there has to be somebody who initially makes that up or maybe they make some like just theorize and then somebody takes that as fact and it becomes like that game of telephone where it changes a little bit

as it goes person to person but somebody's got to start every one of those dumb ass rumors and the one about Angela being secretly married is just bizarre, too. Like, why we, what? She said in high school, first of all. Secretly married. Anyway, just, God, people are dumb. And if you've ever been on one of those really big true crime, like, Facebook groups

and you've seen any case that's big in the news, just, you know, go trolling through the comments. And you tell me people aren't dumb as bags of hair. Just stuff that's just so far out of left field, like, where in the hell did you come up with that? Yeah, anytime there's a, even if you're not in a true crime group, if you will, see an article from a local news source. Oh, man. The comments on local news websites are just unsolved mystery, especially. Yep. Because then they're like, they didn't look at the great grandfather's side of everyone needs to chill out. And any, literally any family member that talks to the media, literally anyone, like the little sweet grandmother who's like in tears in front of

the cameras, like somebody's going to be convinced she did it. You know, it's just with Zero evidence whatsoever. It's just bizarre. Anyway, people are idiots. Yeah, I do want to think for a moment about the yarn mob because now I'm just picturing a bunch of old grannies with like their like platinum knitting needles. Like Sophia from Golden Girls, she would totally be in the yarn mob. She'd be like, picture it, Sicily, 1937. And she'd have her like flashing deadly knitting needles as she's telling the story about how they, you know,

stuck a knitting needle into something. somebody's brain stem. Yes. That's actually how the main character of a book I'm reading kills people. Wow. All right. Well, I just came up with that right out of my ass. Yeah.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Anyway, back to murder. So a couple days after the murder, the police made a connection between Leith's murder and that weird fire by the side of the road. The one the pig farmer called in on the night of the murder. They drove out to the side of the fire. Luckily, there had been no rain. Unluckily, someone had run a bush hog over it and scattered some evidence.

Damn it. But they were able to still take a look around. And oh my God, it was a gold mine. Whoever had set this thing didn't have the damn sense to stay with it to make sure that everything burned because the cops found a charred hunting knife, big, scary, not one you'd want to end up in your chest. Parts of what looked like a heavy lug wrench. And most interestingly, a scrap of paper, somehow mostly intact. The paper was a hand-drawn map, a map campers of Bonnie and Leith's neighborhood.

Okay, this just, wow. So, first of all, little tip, if you're going to draw a murder map, I mean, don't, because you don't need to be killing anybody. But if you're going to draw a murder map, for the love of God, if you can't succeed in fully burning a piece of damn paper, then that is a pitiful display and you should not be committing murder. You're bad at it. Just admit it. If you cannot succeed in burning a piece of flipping paper, just for God's sake, stay with it at least long enough to make sure that your damn murder map burns up. freaking idiots anyway sorry and also the charred hunting the hunting knife and the lug wrench what did they think was going to happen yeah you don't you're not going to burn a lug wrench it's

metal we're not dealing with bright people no when it comes to murder anyway throw it in a river don't throw it in a river turn yourself in better yet don't commit murder don't commit murder but if you're gonna we're just saying there's no rivers where you people live good lord but Pathetic. Pitiful. So, as you might have guessed, that knife was most likely one of the murder weapons. Just the kind of big, nasty weapon that could have made the awful stab wounds on Leith's body. The medical examiner was getting a good look at the body by now, and it was clear that this poor guy had been viciously attacked. He'd been stabbed 11 to 12 times in the neck, back and shoulders.

And he had been clubbed with what the medical... examiner thought was probably a baseball bat. Oh, man. Two different weapons, two modes of attack. The guy was brutalized. Bless his harm. They tried to talk to Bonnie again, but she was doped up and badly hurt. She just found out that her husband was dead, and she'd have to have some cosmetic surgeries

to repair where someone tried to cut her throat, which wasn't enough to kill her, but it left a gash across her neck. Oh, man, poor Bonnie. They started talking to friends of the family. Leith didn't have any family left, but they talked to his co-workers and to Bonnie's family just trying to get a sense of what was going on in their lives.

Leith and Bonnie were both into computers. One of the saddest things to me about this case is that he didn't live to see the internet. I know, isn't that awful? Oh, man. He would have loved it. He would have loved it. So he worked in IT for this yarn company, National Spinning, as you mentioned. Leith's co-workers said that he was the nicest guy in the world.

He didn't work on sensitive materials, and he didn't fire people, or he wasn't in a position to incite the kind of ire that would make someone want to murder him. Yeah, and nobody seemed to think that, you know, either Bonnie or Leith were having affairs. You know, he was just a nice guy. He was smart. He was kind of wry and sarcastic, but not in a mean way, just in a kind of fun. like making fun of the world around you way i mean i'm like that too he was just a nice person he worked really hard to be a good stepdad to his kids bonnie was a nice lady they seemed to have one of those dream like meant for each other relationships so it just it was why did this happen to these people

and the investigators talked to people about angela's weird apathy on the night of the attack and her friends said okay look she and bonnie are both that way they don't show a lot of strong emotion they equate it with weakness which yikes on that right strong emotion does not equal weakness people cheese and crackers but apparently this is how they were and to angela's friends this was just her it didn't mean anything to them they also got feedback that for the most part leith got along well with both of his stepkids angela and chris both now some friends did mention that they sometimes called him asshole like in the nicest possible way but it was like in kind of a jokey teenage kid kind of way like hey asshole not in a mean way

but sometimes Leith would kind of overstep his boundaries which can happen with step parents there had been a couple of dustups in the not too distant past so one thing when Chris was in high school he got into some trouble because after a football game one time he and his friends got

caught shooting BB guns at people out of a car window which just wow and they'd been smoking weeds they were stoned and like just taking pot shots of people which was obviously not great And then Chris had the nerve to get mouthy about it At the dinner table one night

And Lee just flipped out He got so mad that he Like got up out of his chair And kind of bawled up his fists And for a second it seemed to everybody Like he was going to hit Chris Which he didn't He took a moment

He got control of himself He was fine He didn't hit anybody But after that Bonnie said Look You cannot be the main disciplinarian here Which is good advice A step parent should never be the main disciplinarian

It's not your kids She says I've got to take on that role myself These are my kids and Leith said, you know what, you're right. So crisis averted, but it was an ugly little incident. And most recently, Chris was flunking out of college at NC State. And Bonnie and Leith, of course, we're not happy about it. And Leith had told Chris that, look, you are squandering this opportunity,

and if all you're going to do is skip class, smoke weed all day, play Dungeons and Dragons, we're not going to pay for your college. And we're going to cut you off, and you're going to have to get a job and take care of yourself. So Leith had given him until the next. semester to get his shit together and then it was going to be like time to take stock so there was that but there was no like obvious motive for leith's death yet but of course the detectives were asking themselves what they always do which is who benefits from this guy's death the obvious answer was bonnie she was the one who stood to inherit the two million dollars which that's in 1988 money so that's a significant chunk of change not to mention leith's life insurance and his parents house in winston salem which was a really nice house. That was going to be hers now. But of course, Bonnie had nearly died. I mean, she was still in the hospital. She was going to need more surgery. She easily could have died of her wounds. So here's the thing, campers, you probably know this already, but it's not unheard of

for a killer to injure themselves to try to get away with murder. I'll give you a couple of examples. Green Beret, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald, he stabbed himself in the chest and actually collapsed his own lung to blame the murders of his wife and kids on a Manson family-like band of hippies. We're probably going to cover that case someday. Dumbass. It's a hell of a case. Diane Downs, she shot herself in the arm to pin the murderers of her children on a carjacker. So people do do this, but usually not to the point where they almost die.

It's usually like a huge discrepancy between the victim's injuries and the eventually we know murderers' injuries, right? So it would be like, my husband was, you know, stabbed 150 times, and I have like a scratch across my arm. You know what I mean? It's like that. Yeah. And in Bonnie's case, it was really clear that she had just had the crap beat out of her. And none of those injuries were self-inflicted. Like somebody else did that.

So it's not like they could rule her completely out in terms of having some kind of involvement in Leeds' death, but it seemed really unlikely that anybody would allow themselves to be that badly hurt. Now, on the other hand, if Bonnie had died too, as she almost did, then who would be next in line to inherit all that stuff? Well, of course, it's the kids. I mean, Leith and Bonnie were brutalized, but Angela was totally untouched. And on top of that, Bonnie said she woke up to horrible screams, and Angela's room shared a wall with her and Leiths. I mean, was it at all possible that while Leith was being bludgeon screaming his head off that Anne? Angela was completely oblivious, just in the next room? I mean, she did have that box fan going.

Would it mute that much sound? They didn't know. They had their suspicions, but that was really all they had. And then they found out about something that Chris had said to a neighbor on the day of the murder. This lady had told Chris about Bonnie saying that the killer must have been young and strong, and Chris said, without missing a beat, does that mean it could have been one of my best friends? Wow, man. Way to play it cool there.

I mean, whether you're innocent or guilty, that is a dipshit thing to say when your parents have just been attacked. It's like something you'd hear out of a school scare film, which if you've never seen those, go to YouTube and look them up. After school special, that's what we called them in my day. Yeah, it's like, gee, Willikers, did Steve die because we smoked weed and joined the D&D Club? Of course he did. Come on Chris. Yeah, obviously. And unsurprisingly, upon learning this from the neighbor, the cop's antennae started kind of twitching.

I mean, they already had a bad feeling about Chris. So, right around this time, Bonnie came two in the hospital enough to take an interest and, you know, in what's going on. And she wanted to know, like, what have you found out? And they told her, look, we would love to share information with you. But, you know, the thing is, you and Angela and Chris are all suspects at the moment. And we can't really tell you anything until we can rule you out. So would you three be willing to come in and take a polygraph test? and Bonnie immediately was like absolutely no problem

we'll all come in as soon as possible Then Bonnie talked to a friend of hers who was an attorney And the attorney told her You know here's the thing You and Angela I actually have no issue with taking that polygraph But because Chris wasn't there I'm a little bit less inclined to advise him to do it He sensed that the cops would probably zero in on Chris

Because he wasn't there You know he was like not there that night Like Angela was like in his bedroom or whatever So he told Bonnie, I would discourage Chris from taking the polygraph, which of course did him no favors with the cops. But Bonnie and Angela, they came in, they took their polygraphs. Bonnie passed with flying colors, no problem. Angela's result was a little more interesting. Now, if you know anything about polygraphs, they're scored on a number scale, and there's a threshold where you either pass, it's inconclusive, or you fail. Bonnie scored a plus 12, which is a really solid pass.

Angela scored a plus 5. Now, at the time, there had just been a change in the scoring. So before the change, you'd have needed a plus 6 or above to pass. Now it was a plus 3 or above. So now, Angela just managed to squeak by with that plus 5. Before the change, her score would have been in the inconclusive range, which is, you know, interesting. No. Would you take a polygraph?

Katie, first of all, would you take one if you were innocent? And second, would you take one if you were guilty? I'm curious. Okay. This is complicated. Uh-oh. Because, you know, you're never supposed to talk to the police without a lawyer. Right.

It doesn't matter if you're guilty or innocent. Just get a lawyer. Like, I get that, but imagine that the love of your life has just been murdered. And, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I get that in theory, like, yes, that's true. Yeah, I mean, yes, I would take a poli. Because, well, here's the thing about if you're guilty. Yeah.

And you take a polygraph, you're damned if you do. I would definitely not do it if I was guilty. Hell no. No. You're not going to beat it. If you do take it and you fail it, you just give them more reasons to like, yeah, to like expend every single search warrant. Yeah, it can't be used against you, but man, they're going to zero right in on you. But then again, they're also probably going to do that if you say no.

So you're kind of like you said, damned if you do or damned if you don't. But, I mean, I completely agree that, I mean, first of all, I don't put a ton of stock in polygraphs anyway. I think that they're more trustworthy when they're done right. It's just that so often they're not done right. The protocol is so badly butchered a lot of the time. And even when they are done right, they're still not infallible. That's why they're not admissible in court. And that's the thing to remember is that it can't be used against you either way.

But they do consider it a tool. So, you know, if you say no, first of all, they're going to crawl right up your ass, you know, because you're going to make them suspicious. But if I were innocent and somebody that was close to me was missing or had been murdered or something, the reason why I would go ahead and do it is because I feel like, you know, I want them to rule me out as quickly as possible so that they can stop looking at me and waste in their time and then go on and look for the real killer, the real abductor or whatever. exactly and that actually was the issue with Scott Peterson right like he wouldn't take the lie detector and they were like well you don't have any other suspects right yeah and then he was bitching about how he was the only person they were looking at well man like your behavior is not helping you and that was the least of it I mean it was that plus about a mountain of other things he was doing that made them suspicious rightfully so so meanwhile the cops were processing

the evidence from the fire by the side of the road and you know we've got that charred hunting night that paper with the map of Bonnie and Leeds neighborhood, et cetera. And of course, that always takes time. And Chris, once he was sure that his mom was going to survive, went back to school at NC State. And promptly fell apart, like, hard. One night he took some LSD and wigged out in spectacular fashion. Like, he was running up and down the halls and, like, shrieking and screaming, I'm going to find whoever killed my stepdad and, like, seriously wigging out.

And one of his good friends, a dude named Moog, had to be a guy. to talk him down. And after that, Chris went to see the school psychologist, and this psychologist was disturbed, like to the point where he called Bonnie and said, look, this kid is on the verge of a serious breakdown. He is repressing some strong emotions. I don't know what's going on, but he is holding back some serious shit, and he is not fit to be in school right now. You need to pull him out, which of course was understandable given what had just happened. So Chris dropped out of NC State and moved to Winston-Salem with his mom and sister. Okay, so let's put a pin in all of that for a moment, and we're going to switch gears for a bit

and talk about this dude named Moog. Oh, Moog. Oh, Moog, of course, was the dude who talked Chris down off the ledge at NC State the night he had that bad acid trip. Moog's real name, and brace yourself for this, was James Bartlett Upchurch the 3rd. My goodness. Also known as Bart. Dang.

You know, this kid had more names than Prince. You got to keep them all. And honestly, when you read the book about this case, like some people called him Bart, some people called him James, some people called him Moog. It's just all over the place. Yeah. So Moog, aka Bart, which is what most people called him, came from an old prominent family in Caswell County, North Carolina.

Not too far from where Chris grew up. His parents, Joanne and Jim, were hippie. types. They lived in a big old farmhouse that belonged to Jim's mom. It was kind of off the grid. No electricity, running water, etc. Jim and his brother were hardcore hippie. Bart grew up in this kind of commune-like family compound type of thing. Now, Joanne hated this lifestyle, but Bart's dad and uncle and aunt were all about it. They had these infamous naked parties with a all their hippie friends, where everybody would be outside smoking weed and taking magic mushrooms and wandering through the woods and playing music.

Yeah, that sounds awful. I'd hate that. I'm kidding. Now, that would be a weird-ass environment to grow up in for a kid, I think. Yeah. Yep. And this was Bart's world. Eventually, the farmhouse was restored to have electricity and running water, but for a big

chunk of his childhood, he had to use an outhouse and get water from a well and the whole nine yards. And in the midst of all this, Jim and Joanne's relationship was, let's say, a bit tumultuous. They were always breaking up, getting back together, breaking up, getting back together, having big old bombastic fights. Not a super stable situation for kids to grow up in. Bart was the oldest. He had a couple brothers and a sister, a bunch of cousins, and he was very bright. the kind of kid who walked before he crawled he often did badly at school though just because everything was so easy for him

that he was bored stiff his parents eventually realized what was going on and they worked with the school and he started doing better but if Bart wasn't interested in something he'd stop caring and stop trying you know I hate this as an educator I think really smart people get away with this shit

way too often oh he's bored he's not challenged. Okay, granted. And we do fail gifted kids sometimes. I completely admit that. But if you're going to be a true genius, okay? If you want your kid to really use their potential, it's not just about challenging that you need to teach people that they have to sometimes do things that they're not going to enjoy. Okay. It's not your job as an educator to make everything enjoyable and fun. Because, you know, with genius, it is, what's that famous saying, it's not just inspiration, it's perspiration. And And I think the perspiration part is actually really important. And if education is just all about play and having fun and, oh, I feel challenged or whatever, then, you know, you're not going to learn that sometimes it's just toil. Like, you think cancer researchers are just having a big blast all the time. And, like, I get that you have to be challenged. Yes, you do. But you don't have to enjoy every minute of every day at school, you know, or at work.

And the thing is, we're going to see this problem, I think, play out. big time with not just bar, but all three of the kids at the center of this case, where they're all very smart and really, really unmotivated. And their parents, I don't think, did a very good job of teaching them that, hey, sometimes stuff sucks and you still have to work through it. And you see it over and over again where somebody's slapped with a special sticker. Yeah. And then they start failing later in life because they're, well, I'm special. So I deserve to be treated differently. Absolutely. I know people like that. this 100%. Yep. So Bart was bright, but not particularly self-disciplined. And it probably won't

surprise you to hear that his parents weren't too good at holding him accountable. He basically ran wild. And on top of that, Bart was the kind of kid that kept his emotions very tightly controlled. He would hide his face when he cried or leave the room. He didn't want people to see him cry. Yeah. And one thing that struck me while I was reading, about him is that his primary emotion in life seems to be embarrassment. Like, he'd get arrested and be embarrassed instead of, like, upset or remorse was like, oh, I've been caught again. How embarrassing. You know, like, that would be the least of my concerns, I think, if I was repeatedly getting arrested, but that's Bart.

And it's an important detail about him, I think, because it's all about his own ego. Exactly. I think that's exactly what that is. Bart kept his emotions hidden. For example, the first time his parents separated, it was U-G-G-L-Y, ugly. Jim cheated on Joanne, and Joanne was rightfully pissed. And she was the kind of person where, if you did her dirty, you were dead to her. Joanne could hold a grudge like a mob bus. So the tension was high in the family.

Bart was nine the first time this happened, and then it happened again when he was 13. And despite all this family turmoil and Jim moving out of the house for a while. He showed zero emotion. He considered it as nothing more than a mild inconvenience when he looked back on it later. Like, yeah, I remember my mom crying a lot, I think. I just didn't like having to go back and forth between their two houses. He didn't seem to feel any of the normal turmoil of a child watching his family going through all this. He was just kind of like, meh. With other kids, Bart was bossy. He liked. He liked, making up games, and he always made up the rules.

It was Bart's way or no way. He was an older sibling, so that may have been it. I'm an older sibling, and for some of us, that sticks with us our entire lives. And we have to be strict with ourselves about it. I'm sure my brother's listening, like, you need to stop. As he got older, junior high and high school, Bart started to realize that he was weird. Him and me both. Me too.

You know, he was basically your standard issue geek into science fiction and fantasy. And in high school, Bart decided that if he was weird, he was going to write ahead and be weird. He was going to own it. He was going to cultivate it. He manifested that in several different ways. Maybe his hair or clothes, maybe his interests, maybe things he said. Yeah, and I can relate to that. You know, it's like that show IT crowd, that character Morris Moss, he says,

I like weird. Weird's all I got. You know, you kind of feel like that sometimes when you're a teenager. It's like your identity is, I'm the weird kid. Mm-hmm. And when through his friends in the gifted and talented program at school, Bart discovered Dungeons and Dragons, it blew his freaking mind. Now, you and I have both experienced this moment with tabletop role-playing games. Oh, yes.

He threw himself into it with a passion. This was his thing. for the first time in his life he was fascinated and showing a little bit of emotion about something but of course bart being bart he always had to be the GM or game master never just a player bart had to be in charge always now for you non-nerd campers you can almost equate the game master in dungeons and dragons with like a god because you're the one that makes all the calls you nudge the players along you're the one that kind of makes up the story and decides what happens and everything. And if you don't know what Dungeons and Dragons is, you know, it's basically

just a role-playing game where you tell a story together. You each have your own character. There's this game master that kind of tells you what's happening and then you decide what you do about it. You roll dice to figure out who wins combat and stuff like that. That's basically what D&D is. It's fun. So Bart started playing D&D a lot between junior high and high school and he had just kind of started to get his feet under him in terms of education. And this, of course, derailed the train started affecting his grades because all he wanted to do was play d and d and so he's kind of starting to go off the rails and then his senior year of high school he and his friends went camping

in the early spring where it was still cold out and for some reason they wanted to see if they could endure the cold you know like men or something so they're freezing their balls off and they were trying to drink enough booze to warm themselves up but it wasn't really working and then finally one of them remembers that there are lake houses nearby, which are probably unoccupied because it's still offseason, right? And so one of them says, well, why are we freezing? Let's just break in. And because kids are dumb as bags of hair a lot of the time, they went ahead and broke into somebody's vacation house. And they ate the homeowner's food and turned the electricity on. And Bart later said that he got a huge adrenaline rush out of this, which is very telling

to me, like that seeking out of high risk behaviors and that tendency to be bored. You know, those or things that we can sometimes associate with psychopathic personalities, I would have been petrified. I was way too nervous a kid to have enjoyed any part of this. I would have been like, if we leave, my parents will kill me. But Bart, he loved every minute of it. Yeah, I was the same as you, Whitney. I didn't like being in any trouble. So I had this, I played volleyball, basically, from middle school through college. And I had this coach when I was in high school who I really do think like had something off with her brain. She was an awful person.

I think she was a narcissist. And she didn't get along with this other coach when I was about 16. And she came up with this plan where us as a team as a bonding activity, we're going to teepee this woman's house. Oh, dear. Wait a minute. Your coach wanted to tee pee? My coach.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yes. So, and keep in mind, this woman was probably 45 at the time. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

So we go, we have this team sleepover. We go buy all the toilet paper. She buys all the toilet paper, so that tells you everything you need to know. And my team's all hyped up, and I'm like, hmm, I think I'm going to sit in the car. Yeah. Because I was so, I did not want to get in trouble. I didn't want to be caught. I was so anxious.

I didn't want anything to happen. So I just sat in the car while my dumb-ass teammates went and teepeeed this woman's house. Holy shit. Wow. Okay, that lady should not have been coaching children. So anyway, they partied for a while, broke into the food and the booze. And then they started loading up the car with stuff. Like, they're literally just stealing like TVs and stereos and stuff.

And then they're like drinking and driving around. And one of them says, hey, let's get a computer too. And Bart remembered that one of the teachers at the high school, like to leave his class window kind of a jar so they went to high school Bart breaks in and steals an Apple computer and this was like 80s Apple Computer this was not cheap and of course

they got caught immediately and immediately started rolling over on each other and Bart's family is mortified because you know they're a prominent family but of course Bart was you know a first time offender he was young and also he was middle class and white you know from a prominent family so he got

probation like 150 hours of community service and he had to pay a fine and blah blah blah and this is a pattern in bart's life every time he gets in trouble he slides right out of it which is really unfortunate because with somebody like bart upchurch you have got to make sure they face consequences or they're going to think they can get away with anything and you can see this attitude written all over his face like this kid was always smirking literally in every picture i have seen of him he is smirking like george cluny you know he's always smirking like even when he's playing serious roles he's just a smirker just to the core and so was

Bart. Yeah, he was a smirky little bastard. Have you ever known anyone like that? Oh, yeah, yeah. I was on a hang upside down from a balcony by their feet. Yeah, smirkiness is not a good quality. So that's Bart, and we will get back to Bart in a little bit, but now we're going to talk about another classmate, guy named Neil Henderson. Now, when Neil moved to Caswell County with his mom and his sister at age 8, he made a splash. His mom was escaping an abusive situation. He He remembers his parents fighting in front of him a lot, and the separation being really hard on him because he loved his dad. And the reason why he made a splash in Caswell County is because Neil is what I would call terrifyingly smart. His IQ is 180, which is bonkers.

Like, genius starts at 135. So that's like Einstein, like NASA scientists, like you could cure cancer with that kind of IQ. And in kindergarten, his teacher told his mom that he should be in at least the third. grade. And this is in kindergarten. He didn't have to pay attention in school at all and he would get perfect grades. In elementary school, he took eighth grade classes in the morning. And the only reason they sent him back was so that he could socialize with kids his own age. So of course, this meant that he was kind of a novelty to the older kids. And, you know, they thought he was cool and he was like that character, Little Man Tate, you know, that little prodigy character from

that Jody Foster movie. So, you know, everybody kind of loved him. He was a novelty. And Neil went to high school with Bart so that's where the two of them met they were in the gifted and talented program and he had this really passionate teacher named weldon slayton and the kids in his class were called slayton's kids it was a whole thing and slayton had taught a lot of smart kids over the years but he was in awe of neal's brain and they had almost kind of like a father-son relationship and to this day neal still looks up to weldon slayton and seems to want to please him and not disappoint him and everything. So when he got to high school, Neil got into Dungeons of Dragons, and that was one of the things that bonded him with Bart, like really, really got into it. And pretty quickly, just like Bart,

he started to slip in terms of his studies. He started obsessing about the game so much that he basically just stopped trying entirely. But despite that, because he was so smart, he still got accepted to this really prestigious school for science and math in his sophomore year. And initially he did well there. He got a girlfriend. He fell into a good group of Dungeons of Dragons friends. He's kind of a big teddy bear of a guy, charming. But academically, he blew it big time. So badly,

in fact, that he didn't get invited back to this fancy school for his junior year. And this is really irritating to me. All the dudes involved in this story, Neil, Bart, Chris, they all had great raw material. They all had smart parents who loved them. They had mentors that cared about them.

They had educational opportunities that people all over the world would kill for. Parents pay in for their tuition and stuff, but they're just massively unmotivated, which is just annoying as hell. It's like you people could have done something. You could have cured cancer, for God's sake. They could be out there right now curing coronavirus, right? But no, no. Instead, we're just going to want to smoke weed and play Dungeons and Dragons all the time.

It's like that irritating sort of rich kid syndrome. I mean, although they weren't all from wealthy families, but it's like that affluenza defense. I was just not really, I wasn't challenged, and I was in. adults too much and oh god they were they were affluent in their their educational opportunities absolutely and in their support from their families and everything and neal acknowledges this he says he knows he lacks self-discipline and i don't know if this was the result of the fact that he was a prodigy like if you never have to try at anything maybe you just never acquire trying skills you know and i think he was failed by being in a small town with teachers who probably weren't equipped to handle him so you know

it's not all his fault, but he didn't really mind going back to public school after he got kicked out of the school of science and math. You know, because there he was a big fish in a small pond. Like, they actually called him the great Neil Henderson. Like, who gets a nickname like that, you know? So he had fun there. He created his own games.

He played the tuba. He started dating this girl named Kenyatta Upchurch, who was actually Bart's cousin. And despite the fact that Kenyatta described him as looking like the Pillsbury doughboy, walking like a turtle, and being a total slob with a bedroom that looked like a tsunami hit it. She fell so hard for him. She loved this kid. Oh my God, Kenyatta was obsessed with Neil. And bless her heart, she very soon learned that there were

some serious pitfalls to that. For example, Neil's mom hated her and hated that he would sneak her into his bedroom to spend the night and she would like yell at Kenyatta. His friends kind of for some reason weren't nice to her. They would bully her when she went to see him in the middle of Dungeons and Dragons. And Neil would never defend her. And he cheated on her and stuff. Like, he was not good to her at all. All right. It's time for relationship advice. Oh, yay.

You knew it was coming. Campers, if your significant other's friends all hate you, it's because your significant other is bad-mouthing you to their friends. Oh, for sure. Yeah. It's either that or the actual words, but I'm giving you the Benny of the doubt. And speaking from experience, it's your significant other. really is, yeah. I've had friends that would constantly complain about their, like, boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever or their partners. And, like, it doesn't matter if the significant other

is the worst. If you're constantly hearing, uh, he, she, they don't listen to me. He, she, they don't treat me with respect. Like, yeah, we don't fucking like you. Get away. Yeah, exactly, because they're just hearing the bad side. And I think that's very much true of Neil that he was just, you know, really awful to Kenyatta. And she just adored him. It really sucks. And when she caught him cheating, he'd say, well it's just sex why are you so unenlightened which just oh my that right there just makes me want to put them through the wood chipper shove that right up your ass you manipulate of little shit ugh okay take a breath so we're gonna leave it there for part one campers and we're gonna get more into neal in part two but because we release both parts of an episode on the same day feel

free to move right along to part two now if you want or you can save it for later whatever mose your lawn but for now lock your doors light your lights wash your hands and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. You can follow us on Twitter at T.C. Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.