True Crime Campfire - Wicked: The Murder of Martre Coles

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Nineteen year old Martre Coles was an aspiring artist with dreams of designing video games and making a life with his girlfriend Ashlynn. He'd had a rough few years since the sudden death of his mom, but things started looking up in the spring of 2017, when he found out he'd been accepted to a prestigious art and design program at Florida's Full Sail University. Martre was ready to leave home and take off full speed in the direction of his dreams. But then, on the day he was scheduled to leave, he disappeared without a trace. As the investigation unfolded, it became increasingly clear that someone had been luring Martre into a trap. Secrets were about to come to light that would stun everyone who knew and loved Martre, and reveal one of the strangest, most elaborate murder plots the state of Virginia had ever seen. Sources:Investigation Discovery's "Killer Motive," Episode "The Art of Death"Investigation Discovery's "Deadly Women," Episode "Dangerous Liaisons"https://roanoke.com/13-year-old-witness-testifies-in-case-where-victim-was-suffocated-and-stuffed-in-rubber/article_6e3ac164-5356-553e-87dd-8cbfeadaeae0.htmlhttps://www.oxygen.com/killer-motive/crime-news/denise-gay-kills-and-dump-body-of-boyfriends-son-martre-colesFollow 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. Millions of years ago, some plants developed a bizarre but useful adaptation. Instead of getting all their nutrients from the soil, these beautiful plants became carnivorous, trapping, unsuspecting insects, and digesting them whole. We can see a similar adaptation in the anglerfish, which uses a pretty photoluminescent lure

to attract prey. Like moths to a flame, we tend to be drawn toward things that look appealing, and when our eyes are on the lure, we don't notice the teeth hidden just out of view. Predators count on this. They know just what to say. to draw us in. We may think we're chasing a dream, but end up inside a living nightmare. This is Wicked, the murder of Martre Coles. So, campers, for this one, we're in Richmond, Virginia, the morning of March 12, 2017.

Cole popped her head into her guest bedroom to wake up her younger brother, 19-year-old Martre Coles, who was staying over with her. Martre had a big day ahead of him, and he'd asked her to be sure to get him up before she left her work in the morning. Martre, or Trey, as Michelle and their sister Marquisha liked to call him, was scheduled to take a bus to Florida later that day to visit Full Sail University, where he'd just been accepted to study art and design. They'd scheduled him a campus tour, and an orientation day where he'd get to show off his

portfolio and meet the other students who'd be starting with him. the fall. On her way to work that morning, Michelle dropped Trey off at home, their dad's house, so he could finish packing and getting everything ready for his trip. He was excited. Art school had been his dream for years now. Across town, Mar Trey's girlfriend, Ashland, was excited for him, too. They'd met in art class a year or so earlier, and they'd been inseparable ever since. He was my person, Ashland told reporter Troy Roberts, and I was his. And Ashland wanted big things for him. They were young, but they were already thinking about making a future together. And in the meantime, Ashland wanted Martre to chase after his dreams.

As she went about her day, she kept an ear out for her phone. She knew Martre would call her before he left for the bus station, so she could wish him luck and say goodbye. Normally, they texted and talked all day every day, but she knew he was busy today. He had to pack, and full sale had asked him to make a paper-miche mask of his face as part of an icebreaker-type activity they were going to do at orientation. He had to do that today, too.

So she didn't worry when she hadn't heard from him by lunchtime or so. But as the day wore on and still no call or text from Martre, Ashland started to get a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. She called Michelle, and then Marquisha, but neither of them had heard from him either, not since that morning anyway. And as it got closer to Trey's departure time and still no call, his sister started worrying too. So they headed over to their dad's house. Their dad, Maurice, wasn't home.

but his girlfriend Denise was. Denise told them Martre had left earlier and hadn't come back yet. She wasn't really worried, but Michelle's stomach was starting to turn. She thought back to a conversation she'd had with Trey that morning before she dropped him off home. I'm so over it, he told her. I miss her. I wish I could be with her again.

Her was their mother, Corinna. She'd passed away in 2013 of complications from hip surgery, and Martre was still grieving hard. They'd been so close. best buds, and she died on the day he graduated from high school, which just, I can't even imagine. And here you've got a day that's supposed to be so happy and optimistic, and this poor kid lost his mom. Everybody who was close to Martrei knew how hard it had hit him, and that he had moments when he'd just kind of shut down and sink into sadness. Michelle knew he was taking

medication for depression. He'd talked before about suicide. Now she wondered if the conversation they'd had earlier this morning was Trey's way of letting her know he was planning to take his own life. Go be with his mom. Trying not to panic, she and Marquisha set out to contact all his friends and look in at all his usual hangouts, but a couple hours into that, there was still no sign of Maratray. Michelle and Marquisha wanted to sound the alarms right then and there, so it was frustrating to them that their dad, Maurice, and his girlfriend, Denise, didn't seem too concerned. Their attitude was more like, eh, he probably just went ahead. and took the bus down there, and he's busy doing his own thing. Leave the kid alone.

Maurice had kind of a troubled relationship with all his kids since their mom died, primarily because his way of dealing with his wife's death was to move on to a new relationship. Like, almost immediately. He'd worked with Denise Gay for a few years, and they'd always been friendly. When Corinna died, Denise stepped in as kind of a shoulder to cry on, and things moved quickly from there. Very quickly. Within a month, maybe a little less, Denise and her nine-year-old daughter, Elena, were moving in with Maurice. I mean, look, I'm not going to judge anybody for seeking out comfort when they're grieving, and everybody grieves differently, and, you know, there's no magical right amount of time to wait before you move on to a new relationship.

But that said, I can see why his daughters would hate it. I mean, of course they did. You know, that's their mom. And they just felt it was inappropriate. More than anything else, I think they felt like Maurice was putting more time and energy into this new relationship than he was putting into his relationships with them. They told the ID show Killer Motive that they all felt kind of abandoned by their dad. Yep, just when Martre needed him most, Maurice kind of checked out. There was a lot of tension between them after that. Now, you'd think Martre would resent Denise for all this. A lot of teenage boys would.

But actually, by all accounts, he got along really well with her. She was nice to him. She did things for him, and she supported his artwork. Ashland got the impression that Denise was filling some of the void Trey's mom's death had left in his life. He was glad to have a mother figure around. Denise's daughter, Elena, on the other hand, hated Martre's guts. Pretty much from minute one. She did not want to have to share her mom.

And she took it out on her new stepbrother. there, any chance she got. We're not talking about your average step-s sibling rivalry here. This wasn't an occasional prank like putting clean wrap across the toilet seat in Martre's bathroom or hot sauce on his toothbrush. Okay. Okay, those are really specific. Remind me sometime to ask your brother about, you know, what it was like growing up with you.

I would never lay a hand on my little brother. How dare. Elena wasn't just being kind of brady to Mar-Trey. She hated him, harassed him every chance she got. One time, she full on stabbed him in the shoulder with a pair of scissors. And the only reason she didn't stab him in the chest is that he managed to put his arms up and block her. It could have been a lot worse. Yeah, my brother and I got into some pretty gnarly fights when we were kids, but stabbing was not on the table.

Like, never would have even occurred to either one of us to pick up an actual weapon. I mean, that's pretty scary. Yeah, but much to Martre's frustration, whenever Elena would act out like this, Denise would almost always make up some kind of excuse or cover story to keep her from getting in trouble with Maurice. Nobody even told him about the scissarstabbing. And when Elena would do something to Martre, Denise would say, come on, she didn't mean it. Let's let this be our little secret. Okay, listen. Adults should never ask kids to keep secrets for them. Surprises are okay. There's a, there's a, expiration date on a surprise. Like, don't tell dad what we got him for his birthday. But secrets, not so much. That's just creepy and inappropriate. Yeah, I think so too. Martre went along with

this weird coat of silence, though, for a few reasons, I think. For one thing, his relationship with Maurice had gone so far downhill by this point that they were really more like housemates than father and son. And also, he liked stepmom Denise, and he wanted to keep peace in the house. Elena was just a kid, after all, and Martre probably figured she was just going through a phase. His sisters felt differently, though. They worried about Tray, didn't feel like he was really safe living there. It was one of the reasons why Michelle always made sure he felt welcome to stay over at her place, where there were no ragey, stabby nine-year-olds with a grudge.

Yeah, and he spent a lot of time with his girlfriend Ashland, too, but there was still a lot of tension in the house. And in the spring of 2017, Martre spotted a light at the end of the tunnel. Denise had been encouraging him to apply to college to study art and design. Yeah, he was really talented. They show some of his work on that ID show Killer Motive, and it's impressive. He had a real passion for portraiture and character design, and his big dream was to design video games. Yeah, I think he would have been amazing at that.

He has this really colorful, cartoony style with some elements of realism. that reminds me of actually Hirohiko Araki, the illustrator behind Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Yeah, I don't know that artist, but he definitely had his own signature style, and it would have been perfect for video game design. So he and Denise sat down one night and looked at different art programs online, and the one that really caught his eye was full sale university in Florida. All their degree programs are in the arts and entertainment, so it's a perfect place for somebody like Martre. So he was beyond excited when he got an email for. from him, letting him know he'd been accepted and inviting him to come down to Florida and

March for the Orientation, campus tour, and some financial counseling to talk about the chance for some scholarship money. What could be better, right? So by March 12th, Martre was all set to get on that bus and take the first step toward the future he'd been dreaming about. So where the heck was he? Why wasn't he answering his phone? While Michelle and Marquisha frantically searched around town, Martre's girlfriend, Ashland, decided to do a little bit of detective work of her own. She and Martre shared an email account, which that's how you know they're a couple, right? My husband and I don't even share an email account. But they did, and so she logged in and started scanning through the emails to try and find a clue to what the heck might be going on.

She started with the emails from Full Sail University, since that's where he was supposed to be headed. And when she opened the most recent one, something immediately caught her eye. The email address from Sheila Crenshaw, the student liaison who had reached out to invite him to campus, was Crenshaw Sheila at gmail.com. Huh. Now, Ashlyn knew that university emails always have EDU addresses, not Gmail accounts, so that was weird. Ashland told Martre's sisters, and their immediate reaction was to call full-sale

university, see if Martre had been in touch with them. And y'all, you're going to need to buckle up for this, because it didn't take them long to find out that not only was the university not expecting Martre to come for a campus tour that weekend, but they had no record of him ever having applied there at all. They'd never heard of him. Not only that, but Sheila Crenshaw, the administrator who'd been emailing cheerfully back and forth with Martre for weeks now, didn't exist. It was all a lie. So either this was some kind of bizarre hoax that Martre was pulling on all of them, which didn't seem likely given how excited he'd been about going to art school, or somebody had been

trying to lure him away from home with a lie. And they'd known enough about Martre to dangle exactly the right kind of bait art school. Anybody else getting seriously creeped out right about now? Because, oh my God. Yeah. So in a near

panic, Michelle and Marquisha went to the police station to file a missing person's report. I think when people are in a situation like this, what they expect is that they're going to file that report and the cavalry is going to show up. It's going to be all news crews and flyers and detectives. swarming all over the place, looking for their loved one. But as y'all true crime fans know,

more often than not, when the missing person is an adult, especially an adult man, what you're likely to get instead is something like, eh, he's a grown man, he can go missing if he wants. Call us if you find, like, a giant pool of blood or something. It's incredibly frustrating. In Martre's case, the detective took the report and asked a few questions, but there definitely didn't seem to be any sense of urgency about finding Mar-Trey, which is really kind of a astonishing given the fake emails to me. I mean, that's creepy as hell. What possible innocent explanation could there be for that? Dude gets a bunch of emails from a non-existent person, luring him to take a bus to Florida, and then on the very day he's supposed to do that, he goes

missing. I mean, come on, you know? Did they want a trail of human body parts that led to a signed confession from the kidnapper? I'm not actually sure what more they could have been given in this case that would warrant a sense of urgency. They had clear proof that someone was trying to lure Martre away from home, and they just thought, huh, weird. Anyway, we literally could not care less if we tried. Have you tried that? Just not caring?

Have you tried just not worrying about your missing brother? Yeah, it's probably fine. He's 19. He would never leave anyone behind, but he's an adult. For the record, and I told my mom this today, as I was prepared, preparing for the show. If I go missing, this is my recorded statement that I would just not disappear. I just wouldn't. I have shit to do. I have a podcast. My dog needs me to clean out his ears and open his food container. He doesn't have thumbs. The cat would be fine, probably.

But no, Simon would just end up eating fin full. Right? I'm not going to go missing. Yeah. I mean, it's, no, me neither, for the record. Yeah, I'm not going to go missing either. You know, I think part of the problem in this case was that dad, Maurice, and stepmom, Denise, didn't seem worried, and, you know, they're the parents. Maurice was just so casual about the whole thing. Like, I don't know where he is. I'm sure he'll turn up, which is really weird and annoying. And Denise was the same way. I mean, at one point when Michelle and Marquisha were over at the house trying to figure out what was going on, Denise was like joking around with them, trying to put that paper mache mask of Martre's face on them and kind of horsing around.

and it really pissed the sisters off and kind of left them feeling unsettled too because it really wasn't like Denise to joke around with them. They disliked each other from the start. And there was something about that mask, which was a blank white version of their brother's face that made them feel queasy. So they filed the missing persons

and that was pretty much it. They didn't hear back from the police and before long, days turned into weeks with no word from Martre. Michelle and Marquisha felt like they were in some sort of sick limbo where they were the only people in their family making sense. Ashlyn was lost too, missing her person. They just kept texting his phone over and over, begging him to get in touch with somebody, anybody,

and let them know he was okay. But all they got back was silence. Michelle later told Troy Roberts that this was the hardest time for her. She'd lay awake at night wondering if Martre was cold, if he was hungry, if he was stuck somewhere and couldn't call for help. And this is the hell people go through when somebody they love is missing. It's the not knowing that kills you. And then, on April 2nd, three weeks after March Ray went missing,

a guy named Larry was out for a walk on his lunch break. And as he walked through a wooded area near an industrial park, he noticed a gray plastic tub, like one of those big rubber-made totes people to use to store stuff. There was a sneaker sticking out of it. And Larry thought, huh, maybe somebody threw out some clothes and shoes. He was curious, so he went over to check it out, and when he moved to the lid aside, his heart dropped.

Inside the tote was the body of a young black man, hands bound behind his back. Larry's first thought, he told reporter Troy Roberts, was, this is somebody's child. He called the police. Whoever put this young man in the tote had to fold him up tight to do it, like an accordion. There was no sign of physical trauma to the body, no blood, no defensive wounds. The body had no identifying marks, no tattoos and no ID, nothing to identify him. But when they entered his physical description into the computer system,

it immediately brought up the missing person's report for 19-year-old, Martre Cole's, filed several weeks before. And when they brought up his driver's license photo, they were sure. This was definitely Martre. His body had been dumped just five miles away from his home. The medical examiner found several things that had contributed to Martre's death. The cause of death was suffocation, and a talk screen showed high levels of two strong sedatives, Trazidone and GHB. GHB is such an effective sedative that it's sometimes used as a date-rape drug.

Yeah, and at high enough doses, both of those drugs can cause respiratory depression. They'd be especially dangerous used together. The detectives were just about to head out to the Coles House to notify the family when something stopped them in their tracks. They got a call from a sergeant who worked the third shift. There's something you ought to take a look at, he said. Two nights earlier, on March 31st, two of his officers had responded to a burglar alarm at the home of Maurice Coles and his girlfriend Denise. When they knocked on the door, they were greeted by Denise, her 22-year-old daughter, Latoya, and Elena, now 12 years old. Latoya and Denise told them not to worry about the alarm.

Elena had set it off on purpose, they said, and she was most definitely going to be in trouble for it. As one of the officers stood that on the front porch talking to Denise and Latoya, little Elena motioned to his partner. The officer's body cam captured their conversation. In a hushed, urgent kind of tone, Elena says, Can I speak to you? Sure, the cop says. You're not going to run, are you? See, they knew Elena from a previous call

when she'd run away from home after getting in trouble for something or other. Elena said she wasn't going to run and the officer led her out into the yard away from Denise and Latoya. And as soon as they were out of her mom's earshot, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, Elena said, I saw my mom kill my stepbrother. Uh, you did what now?

As the officer listened in disbelief, she launched into her story. She said that a couple of weeks earlier she was hanging out in her bedroom when she heard some commotion, what sounded like a scream and some struggling. It sounded like it was coming from her stepbrother Martre's bedroom, so she went out into the hallway, and through a crack in Martre's door, she saw a bizarre scene unfolding. Martre was lying on the floor, kicking and struggling as Latoya sat on his legs to hold him down, and Elena's mom, Denise, straddled his torso and pushed down as hard as she could on his chest. Martre had something white covering his face, Elena said, but she could hear his

muffled voice shouting, get off me, get off me. Oh my God, I just got a shiver thinking about that. Oh, that poor kid. So anyway, at that point, Denise had apparently looked up to see Elena watching them, which is also an incredibly creepy image. And she yelled at her to get back to her room and stay there. She said, nothing's happening. Go to your room. So Elena went. But a little while later, she heard what sounded like a dragging noise up in the attic and then more commotion on the main floor. She peaked out her door again to see her sister Latoya dragging a gray plastic tub

across the floor. It looked heavy, like really heavy. Her mom had helped Latoya load the tub into the car and they'd driven off. And she didn't see Martray again after that. So obviously, this is why Elena set off the burglar alarm to get the police to the house so she could talk to them.

I guess in her 12-year-old mind that was the best way to do it. I think it was pretty damn clever if you asked me. So the officer motioned his partner over so Elena could tell him the same story she just told him and you can tell from the body cam footage that they have no idea what to do with this weirdness. They knew Elena had behavioral problems,

emotional problems that she'd clashed pretty epically with her parents in the past and the story was so completely out of left field that they were skeptical. One of the officers actually says to her, you know it's against the law to lie to police, right? Are you sure you're not just mad at your parents here? And Elena said, no, she was telling the truth.

Now, there are a lot of things that these officers could have done here that they didn't. For example, they could have, I don't know, check to see if anybody had filed a missing person's report about Martre, for example. But they didn't do that. What they did do was file a report about the incident and go about their business. I don't know, making sure they got to the Krispy Kreme before. I guess. I'm sorry. That was mean. I realized, but just, oh, like, if you're yelling at your phone right now, I don't blame you. It's bananas. You know, good job, guys. Way to play. Yeah, let's leave an obviously troubled kid with a history of behavioral problems in a home with a woman

that she said killed someone. That sounds great. Good, good, good work, officers. I actually consulted with a friend of the show on this case that works as a case manager for kids just like Elena. And she mentioned that the police should have, at the very least, set her up with a child advocate to determine the severity of her home situation, not, you know, filing the report into nowhere and fucking off to Duncan. Yeah, it's completely bananas. But anyway, moving on. So Elena's story matched up with just about everything they knew about Martre's murder so far. I mean, she even got the color of the tote right, you know, a light gray toot and the cause of death. And if their sergeant hadn't just happened to remember the report, a few days later when Martre's body turned up,

the detectives now assigned to his murder would never have heard about it. Fortunately, though, he did remember, and now the detectives had a little ace in the hole to work with. So they decided to withhold the death notification for the time being. They didn't know who all in the family might be involved in Martre's murder, if, in fact, Elena's story was true. and they didn't want anybody tipping off anybody else, either by accident or on purpose, which I completely understand. In particular, they were suspicious that Martre's dad, Maurice, might be involved too. He just seemed way too casual about his son's disappearance.

They'd already gotten the impression from Martre's sisters that his relationship with Maurice was strained, so they could kind of see where that could have led to something like this, but why would Denise and Latoya be involved? I mean, Martre thought of Denise like a second mom, and by all, counts, she was good to him. They got along great. And nobody ever suggested that there was any bad blood between him and stepsis Latoya. So this whole thing was just weird as hell. But they decided to run a background check on Denise just to see if there were any red flags in her past. And who boy, did they ever find a whole buffet? More red flags than a communist parade.

Denise had a rap sheet full of big, juicy felonies. Bad checks, computer fraud, forgeries, and more. Fraud was apparently her medium of choice, and she'd served time for it in more than one state. Yeah, so stepmom might not be as sweet as she seems. The investigators couldn't tell the family yet about Martre's body being found, but they did ask his sisters to come in and follow up on the missing persons report on April 3rd. They asked them the standard questions. What was he wearing the last time you saw him? Who is he with? Who's the last person he spoke to as far as you know, you know, the kind of conversation they probably should have had the day they reported him missing.

And the sisters gave him an earful about Martre's home life, in particular that he was miserable putting up with 12-year-old Elena's harassment all the time. The girl would do stuff like poor bleach all over the floor in his room and throw knives at him. He'd had enough. He was eager to get the hell out of there. As for Denise, well, Martre may have appreciated having a mother figure around the house, but in Michelle and Marquisha's eyes, Denise was more like the wicked stepmother in Cinderella.

She was the unquestioned authority in that house, and she did not suffer insubordination from anybody. Michelle had never trusted her. She told investigation discovery that she knew she was evil the moment she laid eyes on her. Yeah, some people have really good radar. Before they wrapped up the interview, the detectives asked Michelle and Marquisha if they'd mind giving a DNA sample. Marquisha later said that she knew right then and there that her brother was dead. She didn't ask if they'd found his body. She just couldn't bring herself to do it, but she knew. Oh, man, that's so sad.

So the next step for the detectives was to get a search warrant for the Coles' house, and when they got there to serve it, Denise's 22-year-old daughter Latoya was the only one home. They had a brief kind of stilted conversation with her, you know, ma'am, we have a warrant to search this house, and then Latoya hustled herself out to her car and took off. On a hunch, the investigators sent an officer to follow her, at a discreet distance, obviously, and wouldn't you know at campers, Miss Latoya led them directly to the spot where Martre's body had been found a few days earlier. She didn't get out and walk over to the exact spot where the container had been found. It was more like she was observing the general area.

Yeah, she was trying to see if there was any crime scene tape or any sort of police presence there. Yeah, exactly, which smooth, Latoya. Yeah, way to keep it together, girl. She was not using her noodle, was she? Not at all. So, fortunately for the cops, Latoya wasn't actually parked where she could see the body dump site. She was just kind of in the same area, but she would have had to get out of the car to actually see the gray container, which meant, of course, that she could. didn't be sure whether Martre's body had been found.

This gave the investigators an idea, and I think it's a damn good one. One of the detectives had a trail cam on his property, you know, the kind you use to keep an eye on wildlife. Yeah, I love it when one of those trail cam videos goes viral for catching something bizarre, like a random naked guy just walking through the woods or some dude dressed up like Chewbacca. That one's my favorite. Kudos to that guy. Or, you know, just a couple of raccoons doing it, that kind of stuff. I'm sorry, I'm easily amused.

So, anywho, the police had a feeling that now that they'd served that search warrant at the Coles' house, whoever is responsible for hiding Martre's body might decide they'd better move it before the heat around the case got any hotter. Yeah, or at least go check to see if the container was still there, because remember, the detectives hadn't made the discovery of Martre's body public yet. They were sitting on that information to give themselves an edge. So they took that detective's trail cam, and they took that detective's trail cam, set it up near where Martre's body had been found. They arranged it so the camera would pick up the spot where the body was dumped and a nice clear view of the road nearby. You know, I always

thought that whole thing about the killer always returns to the crime scene was like overblown. Like I feel like it happens a little less often than Sherlock Holmes would have us think. But in this case, Sherlock would have clicked his heels. You might be surprised actually. People go back and move bodies a lot, as bizarre as that seems. I actually just saw an old dateline about a case where a guy killed his wife, and then 20 years later, the cold case cops reopened her case, so he flew back to the state where they used to live all the way across the country, went to Walmart, bought a bunch of rubber totes and cleaning products, and a hacksaw.

Oh, my God. And, yeah, dug up his wife's body and moved it. Two decades after the fact. And the delightful thing about that, of course, was that that was what got him caught. irony i love it when they play themselves don't you twats i think he broke i'm sorry i'm trying to count over here i think he broke three basic murder rules one never assume that you're not being watched two don't leave the state that you're currently in three don't go to fucking walmart to buy a body disposal kit.

Jesus Christ. Where they tend to have very clear surveillance cameras. And also he left a flippin receipt like in his car and they found me. And it was like murder kit 101, or body disposal kit 101. It was so obvious. You know, I do think that was the first thing I ever learned about true crime when I was younger. Like, the killer always goes back to the scene of the crime unless Stapler and Benson were expecting it. And then it's just a red herring.

Right, obviously. So anyway, for a few days, no joy. Nothing on the trail cam but the occasional squirrel. But then, four days after they executed that search warrant at the Coles Place, here comes somebody walking toward the dump site. You couldn't see the person's face because they were wearing a hoodie, but they were carrying something that looked a lot like a shovel and beeline in right for the spot where Martre's body had been found.

The figure looked around for a minute, and then when they didn't find the container, headed back the way they came. The detectives couldn't be sure who they were looking at, but they did immediately recognize the vehicle parked on the road. It was Maurice Coles' SUV. But when they looked into it, they realized Maurice was at work at the time in question. There was video surveillance to prove it. And when they dug into it even more,

they realized he was also at work during the time Martre was murdered. So the investigators pinged Denise's cell phone for the morning after Martre went missing and found that her phone had traveled pretty much a direct route from the Coles' house to the place where his body was found. And when they checked the records for the day of the trail cam footage, what do you know? Denise's phone again.

So our hooded figure with the shovel was none other than stepmom Denise. The forensic computer folks were wrapping up their search of the family computers around this time, too, and they hit pay dirt on Denise's. Not only did she have access to the sedative trazodone, but in the days leading up to Martre's murder, she'd searched for stuff like something that works like chloroform, and how long it takes to suffocate someone with duct tape. And creepiest of all, though I'm sure this won't surprise any of y'all at this point,

they found that all those emails from the fictional Sheila Crenshaw at Full Sail University, welcoming Martre to the school and inviting him for a visit the weekend he went missing, those had all originated on Denise's computer. So all that time, as Martre emailed back and forth with his dream school, he had no idea that the person writing back to him was as close as the next room over. The emails were nothing more than part of Denise's murder plot. It's a convenient cover story from Martre's sudden absence from home. Which is just bone-chilling.

Ugh. It was time, finally, to tell Maritre's family that his body had been found, and to put the habeas gravis on Denise and Latoya. Unsurprisingly, Denise denied every. in her interrogation. She had no idea what happened to Martre. Of course she hadn't harmed him. But after more conversations with various members of the Coles family, the prosecutors were starting to form a theory of why Denise had wanted Martre dead. According to Michelle and Marquisha, when Denise moved in with Maurice, one of the first things she did was eradicate any trace

of Corinna, Maurice's late wife. Pictures came down, her name wasn't mentioned. At first she could sort of frame it as a way of helping Maurice through his grief and depression, you know, out of sight, out of mind. But as Maurice began to move on and heal over the years and come out of that depression, Denise started to worry that maybe he didn't need her as much anymore. She may have been able to get rid of all the pictures of Corinna, but there was still a living, breathing reminder living right there in the house. Martre, the baby of the family, who'd been so close with his mom, looked a lot like her too. The prosecutors believe that seeing Martre around the house every day just got to be too much for Denise. She started to see him as competition for Marisa's

attention and love. So she hatched this elaborate plan, got Martray all excited about going off to college, and on the morning of March 12th, she offered to help him make that paper mache mask for orientation. She put the tracadone and GHB in a drink most likely and offered it to him before they sat down to cover Tray's face in paper mache. Y'all remember how Michelle said the mask gave her the creeps when Denise tried to put it on her on the afternoon of the 12th when they came over looking for Martre. Well, later, she realized why. There were no holes to breathe through. Yeah, and remember what Alina told the cops who responded to the burglar alarm? She said there was something white over Martre's face as her mom and sister were smothering him.

Did Denise assume he would fall unconscious from the drugs and just smother under the mask? Yeah, I think that's actually very possible, especially since she was looking for ways to smother somebody with duct tape on the internet. When it's dry, paper mache could probably smother somebody just as easily. But at some point she must have realized it wasn't working, or at least not working fast enough. So she and Latoya just went ahead and smothered him. I think Denise probably held the mask over his face while she and Latoya sat on him to keep him still. And the combination of that, plus the mask blocking his nose and mouth, was enough to kill him. It must have just been a horrible way to die. I mean, the fear and the awful betrayal.

by somebody that he'd come to love. Just, oh, God. Denise and her daughter Latoya went on trial first for felony murder and conspiracy to commit murder. But the jury could only agree on the conspiracy charges, which carried a 10-year sentence for each defendant.

They hung on the murder charge, which meant the prosecution had the chance to try them again. And by the time the second trial rolled around, they'd gained an unexpected ally. Martre's dad, Maurice, had stayed quiet during the first trial. They'd found him uncooperative, almost hostile.

He just couldn't let himself believe Denise was guilty, I think. It was just too painful for him to admit that he had brought these women into his family, and they'd taken his youngest child's life. Yeah, but between the first trial and the second, all that changed. Maurice was going through some

of Denise's stuff one afternoon when he discovered a cell phone in one of her purses, a phone that had never been admitted into evidence. Somehow, the police had missed it when they searched the house. And when he saw what was on that phone, denial flew right out the window. Right around the time when the police served that search warrant on the house,

Denise had been messaging Latoya about going back to the dump site and moving Martre's body. On the day she wanted to do it, Latoya couldn't help. She was down in South Carolina. And she was worried her mom wouldn't be able to lift the container by herself. But Denise told her not to worry. She could handle it. Later on the same day, that a hooded figure showed up on the trail cam, Denise messaged Latoya, quote, didn't see it.

Because, of course, the body was gone by then. Man, that must have been a moment of sheer panic. Can you imagine? Mm-hmm. Just to be a fly on that trail cam. There was also a flurry of incriminating web searches on the phone. How to hide a body, what Lyme does to a body, and on and on, Maurice couldn't lie to himself anymore,

and he wanted to make sure the prosecutors had everything they needed to get this bitch. Later, Maurice remembered a conversation he'd had with Martre months before his murder. Martre wanted to apply to art school, he said, but he didn't know how to get started. Denise had jumped right in on that conversation, said, Oh, I can help with that. And from then on, Denise took charge of Martre's college search. Soon after that, the email started arriving from Full Sail University.

Maurice said he hadn't really worried about Martre's disappearance until he missed his mom's birthday. He still celebrated that, and according to Maurice, quote, if he would have run off with a cult, he wouldn't miss his mother's birthday. I don't know where he thought he was up till then, but I guess he just figured, you know, teenagers will sometimes do inexplicable things and hoped he'd turn up soon.

Anyway, this new evidence was just what the doctor ordered. Denise and Latoya were both found guilty of first-degree murder. Denise got a life sentence tacked on to her 10 years for conspiracy, and Latoya got an extra 20. As for Elena, her reward for telling the truth and testifying in court against her mom and sister was to be left without any immediate family to look after her.

She was obviously a troubled kid, and how could she not be, living with Denise? At one point, during her testimony, she said she wasn't sad that Martre was dead and she didn't miss him. Somebody, please, get this girl some therapy. Please. Yeah, amen to that.

I hope she's doing okay by now. Her mom's defense, by the way, tried to pin the blame on her. Pointed to the scissor-stabbing incident, and the volatile relationship she had with Martre. But guess what? She wasn't the one moving bodies around and looking up ways to get rid of a body.

So shut up. And by the way, it's super gross to try to blame a murder on your kid. Didn't anybody ever teach you that? Fuck is wrong with you. She's fucking 12. Shut up, Denise. Yeah.

Yeah, it's disgusting. And it's not the first time we've seen it. Remember the murder of Tammy Rhea? Yeah. So they do this. Ugh. This is one of the most elaborate murder plots I think I've ever seen

and one of the weirdest most senseless motives, too. If she just genuinely helped him apply to college, he would have probably been out of the house soon anyway. Which makes me think there's got to be something else going on. It's got to be about more than that. I think for all her attempts to seem like a loving mother figure and, you know, nice stepmom, she's just plain hated, Martray,

just because he'd been close to his mom and because she could see Corinna's face and his. So I don't think just getting him out of the house was the objective. I don't think that was enough for her. I think she wanted him wiped off the face of the earth. And it's a damn shame because there are a few things in the story that really hint to me about what a sweet kid, Martrei was. First of all, the fact that he accepted Denise as his stepmom so soon after his mom's death. I mean, dude wanted his dad to have somebody, and he wasn't going to hold it against Denise that she wasn't his mom.

And that takes a level of maturity that I don't think many teenagers have. I wouldn't have at that age. And also the fact that he was willing to keep Elena's bad behavior on the QT where a lot of kids would just run immediately and tell dad so it seems like Martre was the kind of person who tried to understand where other people were coming from that's empathy which of course is the main thing

Denise was incapable of doing I think he was a kind soul with a lot of artistic talent to boot and the world is a worst place without him he had a great smile too we'll post pictures on our social so you can see as his sisters would later tell the show killer motive he did not deserve what happened to him and we hope denise and letoya have a good long time to think about that before they ever have a chance to see daylight again so that was a wild one right campers you know we'll have another one for you next week but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire

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