True Crime Campfire - Would I Lie To You? The Murder of Leisa Hurst

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

To paraphrase the great American hero George Costanza, “You’ve been living a lie? I’m living, like, 20.” If you’re up to no good in one way or another, there are a lot of ways you can get found out. You might get ratted out, you might unknowingly leave behind evidence of your bad deeds, or you might just get flat-out caught in the act. And if you’ve built multiple lives, multiple relationships, all on their own structures of falsehood, the chances of each of those goes up dramatically. You can only juggle so many chainsaws before one cuts off your damn hand. Join us for a true crime story about a man who built too many counterfeit lives--a man whose lies ensnared not only him, but the women who loved him. Note: Katie had a bad cold this week, so Whitney had to do more talking than usual in this episode. Sources:Investigation Discovery's "Desperate Measures," episode “Blood in Barstow”CBS' "48 Hours Mystery," episode “Body of Lies”https://www.bakersfield.com/news/inmate-sentenced-to-16-more-years-for-soliciting-murders/article_dcb56b98-aa4b-5e82-bcf1-c6c3cbe044c2.htmlhttps://www.vvdailypress.com/story/news/crime/2009/10/09/accused-killer-leads-police-to/37058923007/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. To paraphrase the great American hero, George Costanza, you've been living a lie. I'm living like 20. If you're up to no good in one way or another, there are a lot of. of ways you can get found out. You might get ratted out, you might unknowingly leave behind evidence of your bad deeds, or you might just get flat out caught in the act. And if you've built multiple

lives, multiple relationships, all on their own structures of falsehood, the chances of each of those goes up dramatically. You can only juggle so many chainsaws before one cuts off your damn hand. This is, would I lie to you? The Murder of Lisa Hurst. So, campers, for this one, we're in the desert town of Barstow, California. January 23, 2009. Lynn Hurst answered the phone to a strange call from police. A vehicle registered to him had been found abandoned in a high-crime neighborhood of the city of Hesperia, 40 miles south of Barstow, windows down, and keys in there.

the ignition. Right away, Lynn was worried. The car was registered to him, but it actually belonged to his daughter, Lisa. Had it been stolen? He called up the apartment where Lisa lived with her two young daughters, Ashlyn and Tyler, who were 12 and 9, and his worry quickly turned to fear. The girls were home alone. Their mom hadn't come home last night. Some evenings, Lisa took graduate classes down at Victor Valley College, close to Hesperia. As soon as she got out of class, she'd call the girls and tell them she was on her way home. But last night, she'd just sent a text, saying she was going out with some friends and that Ashlyn and Tyler should take their showers and put themselves to bed. She'd be home late. This would have been a red flag to Lisa's parents, who knew

she was too responsible to leave her kids to fend for themselves all night, but the girls were just 12 and 9 years old. They took the text at its word and started getting ready for bed. When Ashland couldn't find the hairdryer, she texted her mom again, asking where it was. She didn't want to call and interrupt Lisa's fun night out. The reply she got felt weird to her. I'll show you when I get home. Now, why would her mom not just tell her where it was? I mean, a hairdriers, the kind of thing that's quite a bit less useful

the longer you have to wait for it. The girls went to bed, but 12-year-old Ashland was worried enough that she woke up around 4 a.m. and went to check that her mom had come home to bed. She hadn't. Lisa's bed was neatly made and empty. Her girls hadn't actually seen. seen Lisa since the previous morning when she dropped them off at school. They'd been picked up

from school afterward by their mom's boyfriend, Jamie Chiopolis, who'd told them their mom was at her class. That wasn't unusual. Jamie had taken them home and made them dinner and then left. After speaking to his grandkids, Lynn Hurst called the police and reported Lisa missing. No one investigator spoke to had a bad word to say about Lisa. She was a bright, gregarious woman with a megawatt smile, and it seemed like everybody who knew or liked her. But where in the heck was she? Lisa Hurst was born in 1978 in Newport Beach and lived almost her whole life in Southern California. She was a lot of fun, adventurous and outdoorsy. As she got into her teens, Lisa started getting a lot of attention from boys because she was movie star gorgeous, as you will see when we post pictures.

But her main high school squeeze was a kid named Jesse. A teenager's are about 80% hormones. and impulses, which can sometimes overload sensible stuff like, you know, taking the three seconds it takes to unwrap a condom, and when she was 18, Lisa got pregnant. Little Ashland came into the world, and not long after that, Lisa and Jesse broke up, as high school sweethearts tend to do. Before long, Lisa got together with another guy, Rubin de Leon, a long-haul truck driver, and they were serious, staying together for five years and having a little girl together, Tyler. Everybody thought Lisa and Rubin were going to make it.

They were just waiting for the wedding, including Lisa, who'd already bought a wedding dress. We don't know why that relationship flamed out, but we know that the breakup had Lisa cutting her wedding dress to shreds with a pair of scissors, so it must have sucked. She took it hard, and by 2005, she was 28 and a single mom again, with two young girls to take care of. So Lisa set about building a future for herself, and the next year she, she was, she enrolled at Barstow Community College with the goal of becoming an elementary school teacher. She'd never had much trouble finding romantic partners and soon got together with a

fellow student by the name of Jamie Chiopoulos. He was six years older than Lisa, an army major who'd served in Iraq and Afghanistan, winning honors for bravery, and was back in California after being wounded in combat. He had a picture on his wall of his Army Ranger company. The Army was paying for his college, and his Army benefits paid for a nice house in the golf course community of Silver Lakes. Jamie was charming and attentive and great with Lisa's kids. He told them he wanted them to think of him as a cool uncle and was always bringing him gifts and making him feel special. He seemed like a sweet, stable guy and Lisa fell head over heels for him. Her parents liked Jamie too and thought that this finally was somebody

who would take care of their girl. Lisa's dad Lynn was a Vietnam vet and he and Jamie bonded over combat stories. Lisa kind of felt like she'd struck gold with Jamie. He was just what she'd been looking for, a partner for her and a potential dad for her girls. But right as she started to think their relationship might go further than just dating, Jamie came clean about something that could turn the whole thing upside down. His combat injuries weren't the only health problem Jamie had, he told her. He had cancer, and although his recovery was going well, he had occasional relapses. Every other month, he had to fly down for treatment at a VA hospital in Texas. The scheduling made sense. People do usually get chemotherapy in cycles of several weeks, though having to fly to Texas was a little

weird. I would say that's more than a little weird. I mean, I would wonder. One of the biggest and most comprehensive VA hospitals in the country was just like two hours away in L.A. So why are you flying to Texas? But it's not the kind of thing that you really would question. Is it if you were falling for somebody? No, no. Who would lie about that? Lisa wanted to be with him to support him during his treatment, but Jamie wouldn't let her. Huh.

Chemo wasn't fun, and he didn't want her to have to see him go through it. Yeah. Red flag number two. Yeah. Because if there's one thing we've seen in so many, like, cancer faker scam stories, it's that. Yeah. Because if never, yeah. Yeah, they never want, they never want you to go to the appointments with, with them. And, like, people who actually have gone through chemotherapy is like, I'm fucking bored. I want somebody sitting there to entertain me. I want somebody to run and go get me some, something to eat or drink if I need it. Like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe once in a while you might not want somebody there, but never, like you'd never want anybody with you. That's really, that's suss to me for sure.

us. But again, like, who's going to question it? I mean, when somebody tells you they have cancer, you're kind of like, oh, God, whatever you need, right? Yeah, exactly. So a couple of years into their relationship now, years. So they've been together for two years now. A couple of years in, Lisa was ready to get a ring on it. But Jamie wasn't quite there yet. He agreed to the next best thing, though. Lisa and the girls shared a small apartment together while Jamie was rattling around alone in that nice big house of his by the golf course. So in January of 2,000, Lisa asked if she and the girls could move in, and Jamie said, sure. There was no reason not to if he wanted to keep Lisa.

But agreeing to let Lisa move in was a big mistake for Jamie, and given the potential consequences for him, it's kind of hard to figure out why he said yes. Most likely, he was just completely incapable of coming clean and being honest with Lisa, and he didn't want to have to go through the whole stressful process of breaking up with her. Poor guy. See, I know my heart bleeds, right? See, it just so happens that Jamie was already married, and pretty soon his wife was going to be coming back to town.

I can't. I can't with this man. Why? Why? It makes no sense. Why would you do it? No. Just like Lisa, Jamie Chiopoulos' wife was much too good for him.

I know we've seen it a million times already, but it's always infuriating to see these smart, accomplished women fall for these little shit weasels like this. but it happens over and over again. It's just heartbreaking to me. Catherine Taylor was a lieutenant colonel in the Army and the chief nurse of the South Texas VA system. That was where she and Jamie first met when he was recovering from his leg injury, which he'd gotten during training, by the way, not in combat.

And that's fine. I mean, you were still injured in service. It's still perfectly respectable. But Jamie being who he is, he had to make it seem like he'd gotten hurt like zip line in into Saddam's palace with a knife between his teeth. He had a group photo of a bunch of army rangers on the wall in his house,

but he'd never served with any of them, and the faces in the picture were conveniently too tiny to, like, specifically make anybody out. Despite his tall tales to the contrary, Jamie had never actually been in combat at all. And he'd only been married to his wife for a few short months before he started dating Lisa. In fact, it seems like he'd. started screwing around the first time she had to go back to work down in Texas after their wedding.

Oh, and of course, Jamie didn't have cancer. The trips down to Texas weren't to get chemo. They were to visit his wife who was stationed there. It was Catherine, who bought the nice house by the golf course in Silver Lakes, where Jamie would live alone and go to college while Catherine worked on getting a transfer back to California, which I guess can take a while when you're in an important job. Catherine's income paid the bills and supported Jamie's easy-going lifestyle, which mainly revolved around slamming ass from one end of the Mojave desert to the other, which is really kind of hard to imagine when you see him talk, like, really hard to imagine.

So difficult. He's insufferable. I sent Katie a text of him earlier, like a little clip, like, this is Mr. Wonderful. Make it make sense. Especially when you look at, like, Lisa Hurst, like, gorgeous woman. It's just, I don't get it. I'm not body shaming, look shaming anything, but like, no. There's a definite, there's, he's, he's swinging way above his weight class.

That speaks for how, like, talented he was at the game, you know? Manipulation. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's where it's relevant to talk about it because you really have to, like, obviously that magnetism, that narcissist magnetism is a real thing. For sure. Because evidently, Jamie was real good with the ladies. And as we've said many times, charm is a verb.

It's something you do to people, and if you're not greatly troubled by conscience, it's something you can practice and get good at. I'd be willing to bet decent money that meeting women was the main reason Jamie decided to go to college in the first place. His wife's a thousand miles away. He has money in a sweet house, nice car, and he's attending a school that has twice as many women as men. You know, I mean, that's the dream for a horny little stout like Jamie. He got together with Lisa soon after he started classes and she wasn't the only woman he hooked up with early on.

The entire two years he was dating Lisa, he was also seeing a woman named Joyce Franson. Choice, I can't... Oh, my God. Oh, boy. We're not big fans of Joyce, as you will soon see. When they met, Joyce was 22 years old, but still green enough to grow. She was shy and timid,

the type who'd never really had a boyfriend and wasn't used to getting noticed. She was smart, a pharmacy student who was acing all of her tests, and that's something to keep in mind, because when you see her in interviews, she's got this like blank, open mouth kind of, I don't know, like expression on her face and this real monotone voice that makes you think there's not one single thought bouncing around inside of her head. When the Beatles first came to America, a reporter asked Ringo Starr why he always looked sad, and he was like, that's just me face. Yeah. She has resting dumb face is what she has. She has resting dumb face. Absolutely. We're not saying she's dumb. Although, no, she's not. She's book smart. Right. She's book smart for sure. She is other kinds of fucking dumb. But yeah. Yeah. She just has one of those faces that you're like, oh my God, you were not there. It's like the combo of the wide eyes and the open mouth. She has resting vapid face.

Yes, there it is. judging people by their affect, though, can often lead you astray, and Joyce not being an idiot is actually going to be important later on. Joyce being a good student and Jamie, you know, surprise, surprise, not being such a good student, she was assigned to tutor him in chemistry. And insert whatever chemistry-related joke you like in here, because sparks flew between them right away when Jamie started putting the moves on. I think I remember actually taking a high school chemistry class. We did this experiment where you put two different things together and it created this like noxious, yellow, sulfuric rotten egg smell of the cat. That's the chemical reaction

between Jamie. Or like, have you ever seen, have you ever seen like when they light, like, I don't even know what it is. They light something on fire and it turns into like an eldritch like claw rising up from the desk. That's them. Oh, there it is. Yeah, exactly. The Eldridge claw. That's the chemical reaction. They're going to create some. true stinkiness together, as you will soon see. He was 12 years older than Joyce and a well-practiced liar and manipulator

and I'm sure he saw right away that Joyce would be an easy mark. And so she was. Before long Jamie and his tutor were hitting the sheets instead of the books. And shy, timid Joyce, pursued and seduced for the first time in her life, discovered that she was

Randy as hell. She was all in. Her entire world now revolved around Jamie. Which, I'm sure, was exactly what Jamie wanted. His wife, Catherine, was his superior, both literally and in every other possible way. And while it was certainly nice to have her pay in the bills, it's not great for a narcissist ego to be the junior partner in a couple. And as much as he enjoyed playing at being a family man with Lisa, she was no pushover, and she had no trouble asserting her own wants and needs. But with Joyce, he had a naive young lover who thought the sun shined out of his skanky,

ass and would do pretty much anything he wanted. So, Jamie had three relationships he had to keep spinning in the air all the time, like plates. Catherine, down in Texas, was completely oblivious to what her hubs was getting up to back in California. Lisa thought Jamie was all hers, just two single people dating exclusively. Jamie did tell Joyce he was married, but said he was in the process of a slow divorce. But he still had questions to answer about Lisa. Barstow Community College is not that big of a school, and Joyce would often see Jamie and Lisa together on campus. Joyce's infatuation with Jamie came with an inevitable side of spiky jealousy, and she demanded to know what was going on there. And of course, Jamie had a story ready.

Lisa was stalking him, kept following him around campus, always asking him for dates. She just wouldn't leave him alone. The bitch is crazy, baby. It's not my fault. I hate this guy. Now, how much Joyce actually believed this? I guess we'll never know. She stopped asking questions about Lisa, but whether Lisa was a stalker or a romantic rival, Joyce had plenty of reasons to hate her. In early 2009, Jamie's success at juggling these three women would be under serious threat. A date was set for Lisa and her kids to move into his Silver Lake house, January 24th. The girls were thrilled. They loved Jamie, and he had a big house with a pool. I mean,

kid wouldn't want a house with a pool. And Lisa was looking forward to what she'd always wanted, a solid family life with a real partner. God, so sad. Man, that just hit me. Poor Lisa. This was obviously going to be a problem for Jamie. Neighbors tend to notice when, you know, a girlfriend and two boisterous young kids move in next door, and that problem immediately became a crisis. Jamie's wife Catherine was coming back to Barstow just a few days after the 24th. And she was planning on stay in a while. And he knew this all along. I just cannot wrap my head around this in any way, shape, or form.

It makes no sense. It's like we've talked about before. They tell these big splashy lies knowing that it's going to blow up. It's like they're not thinking past the immediate conversation. No, they have no concept of consequence. They are just, they are just truly in the moment, which I fucking wish. I'm constantly worried all the time. What's it like?

Me too. I can't imagine. But you know, it's, you know, I mean, it wouldn't be. be great because it's going to blow, look how it blows up in his face. But yeah, it's, it just floors me because I've never been able to even do that a little bit, much less in a massive way like this. This whole situation was Jamie's own dumbass fault, 100%. He didn't need to do this. Catherine was always going to come home sooner or later. So he could have broken things off with Lisa long before they'd gotten to the point of like planning to move in together. But of course it was too late for that now,

in his mind, they'd been together for two years. If Jamie just, dumped her out of the blue now? She wouldn't just roll over and accept it. She'd call. She'd show up. Catherine would find out. And Catherine, of course, was Jamie's meal ticket. She paid for the house. She paid for the car. She paid all the bills, leaving him free to go to college and inflict his oily presence on women. Of the three women in his life, Catherine was the only one who was indispensable, because he needed debt money. If she found out Jamie had been cheating on her with Lisa, essentially acting as a father to her kids, Catherine would kick his lion ass to the curb

before God got the news. And he knew it. So back to January 22nd, Lisa's kids haven't seen her since the previous morning. Her car has been found abandoned, windows down, and keys in the ignition. Another one of these dips sheds, like, well, somebody will just steal it, right? Sure. Yeah, because that's what always happens. Her dad has just reported her missing.

Lisa's dad, her brother, and Jamie all come to look after the girls with Jamie trying to reassure everybody. We'll find her. She'll be okay, he told the kids. Piece of shit. Over the next couple of days, Lisa's family put up flyers all over the area asking for information. Her older brother, Valdon, went a step further. Taking Jamie with him, he drove over to Hesperia where Lisa's car had been found and went door to door, asking if anybody had seen the car arrive or noticed anything strange. And Valdon turned up some solid evidence right away from an elderly lady who lived right next to where the car had been abandoned. This lady had found a pair of gloves and a hairnet in the street.

She didn't like litter on the street, so she tossed them into a garbage dumpster out back. Walden went back there to look through the dumpster, and there they were, a pair of thick orange gloves and a shower cap. He took a picture with his phone, then put the gloves and the shower cap into a shoebox. Walden called the police to let them know what he'd found and that he'd bring it over to them. then Jamie piped up. He had to go up to Barstow anyway. He'd take the box up to the police department.

Walden wasn't willing at first, but Jamie talked him into it. This way, the police would get the evidence as soon as possible. And sure enough, Jamie dropped off a box with a pair of gloves and a shower cap to the Barstow PD. So helpful, isn't he? So, of course, if they were going to find Lisa, the investigators needed to get a clear picture of what was going on in her life. Her parents told them about her relationship with Jamie, how they seemed like a sweet and loving couple and were both looking forward to moving in together in just a couple days.

Lisa's dad told them he thought Jamie was a great guy, and he'd been happy Lisa had found him. Her mom, Debbie, was a little less sure. She'd liked Jamie a whole lot at first, but as the relationship went on and he kept pulling back from a real commitment, she'd started to think Jamie would hurt Lisa, although she just meant emotionally, another guy leaving Lisa high and dry.

But when detectives went to talk to Jamie Chiopoulos at his home, he painted a very different picture of their relationship. Pretty much the first thing Jamie said to them was, I'm going to lay some Lisa lies on you. Wow. Just digest the stupidity of this strategy as we unload it on you in the next minute or so. She and him were just friends, he told them, and weren't romantically involved at all. They just pretended to be a couple to keep Lisa's parents off. her back. She was by, he told them, and didn't want mom and dad to know she was dating women. Jesus. So this was obviously hard to swallow for the detectives because everyone in Lisa's life

knew she and her girls were about to move in with Jamie. Would he really go that far just so a friend didn't have to come out to her parents? Talking to the detectives, he didn't even seem to like her all that much. Lisa's family, he said, thought she was a loser, a flake, and she'd probably just left town for a while because she was like that, you know, kind of impulsive and a little unstable. God, he's so the quintessential, bitches be crazy, man, type of dickhead. So, you know what's probably not a great way to avoid suspicion when your girlfriend's been missing for two days? Trashing her to the cops, that's what?

Yeah, that's not exactly a 3D chess there, buddy. I know. But they do it all the time. No, it's like, it's like, how many times have we seen it? I think it's like some weird projection, because I think to get to a place where you take someone's life, you have to hate them, right? And so like, oh, sure. They're projecting their own internal hatred toward the police.

So, like, I don't even think it's purposeful. I don't think they're smart enough to, like, be like, if I tell them she was awful, they're going to believe me. No. Right. It's true. She is awful. She is a flick. She's terrible.

Just subconscious leakage, right, of how he feels about her. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, maybe he didn't. hate her, but I think she was in his way, for sure, and he was angry about that and needed her out of the way, absolutely. But, you know, when your description of a person is not going to match what they've heard from anybody else in that person's life, that's a red flag. And you would think he would be smart enough to know that, but no. No. Now, other than Jamie, detectives

hadn't found anybody who had a single bad word to say about this woman. Everybody like Lisa. Jamie did come clean about one thing, though, probably figuring it was going to going to come up in a background check anyway. He was married, happily married, he said, and his wife was coming back to town in a couple of days. So right after Lisa had been expecting to move in with him, his wife was coming back. The detectives had started thinking Jamie was behind Lisa's disappearance as soon as he started badmouth in her, and this timeline only solidified him as suspect number one. They asked if they could look around the house, and Jamie agreed. It was another stupid move. in a trash can in the bedroom one of the detectives noticed a used condom he picked up the trash can and showed it to jamie asking what's this condom jamy shrugged and said it's just a used condom well that answer obviously wasn't going to cut it like thank you captain obvious

he just told him his wife was out of town and that he and lisa never had an intimate relationship oh and i'm happily married right so the detective pressed him and jamie sort of waved at the condom and said well that's joyce romance wow man way to make a girl feel special god sky sucks now this was the first the investigators had heard of any Joyce Jamie owned up that she was a student he'd been dating behind his wife's back

in that happy happy marriage of theirs and that the two of them had sex on the night Lisa went missing and then he clammed up unwilling to tell them any more about Joyce not that he had to detectives found Joyce Franson within the hour and sat her down for a chat.

Sure, she knew Jamie Chiopoulos, she told them, and they dated for a while, but they'd broken up a long time ago. She hadn't even seen him for months. Hadn't gotten their story straight before the first interview there, obviously. Amateur. Yeah. So another thing that's not a good way to avoid suspicion is to lie to the police with the first damn words out of your mouth. Just a little tip.

Detectives told her they'd found a condom in Jamie's trash can that they were pretty sure if they sent it for DNA analysis, it would show a match to Joyce. And that was all it took to crack Joyce Ranson, and she started talking. On the afternoon of January 22nd, Joyce got a call from Jamie Chiopoulos. He sounded panicked, frantic.

There was a car in his driveway he needed to get rid of, he said. It belonged to a buddy of his who couldn't make the payments. This buddy needed to have it stolen, so the insurance company would pay for it. Now, why this was Jamie's problem, to the point where he sounded like, like he was about to have a nervous breakdown. He didn't make that part clear, and Joyce, according to her, didn't ask. He wanted to know if local girl Joyce knew of a high crime area

where they could ditch this mysterious car. She did and drove down to Hesperia, Jamie following in the car. They ditched the car, leaving the windows down and the keys in the ignition, obviously hoping somebody would steal it and maybe torch it if they got really lucky. Joyce insisted she had no idea who the car belonged to. She didn't know Elisa Hurst. Detectives were sure she was holding a hell of a lot back, but what she'd given them was plenty to get a search warrant for Jamie Chiopolis House. There, they found a couple of receipts from Home Depot. One showed the purchase of a shovel, a pickax and rubber gloves. The other was for bleach, chlorox wipes, and an extra large trash can. And I know what you're thinking, campers. Clippy, the murder paper clip strikes again.

You couldn't ask for a more thorough list of crime scene cleanup materials. Like, I always wonder, like, when they're buying the stuff, do they not feel like there's like a neon sign over their head? Because at the very least, you could just buy, like, some gum. You know what I mean? Like throw... Yeah, put something in there that's not suspicious. Throw something from the checkout.

Look, get a candy bar, you know? It's funny because when I was in college, my friends and I had this fun little hobby sometimes where we would go to, like, Walmart at like 3 o'clock. in the morning because it was open 24-7. Oh my God. We would like buy weird combinations of stuff. Not like necessarily murdery stuff, but like sometimes like overtly sexual stuff. Right.

Yeah. Like a turkey baster, a giant sized tub of Vaseline, you know. Yeah. A hamster wheel. We got those when I worked at the grocery store. And then sometimes they would do really funny stuff like donuts, donut holes and glue. That was really funny. Oh, that's hysterical.

I don't think we ever came up with anything quite. that clever. We were just mostly dirty-minded 12-year-olds in college students' bodies. So yeah, you really could not ask for a more obvious list of items on a receipt. Jamie's story was that the shovel and the pickax were

for gardening, and the cleaning supplies were for cleaning up his garage. Now, the garage was definitely clean. The floor was spotless and had clearly been bleached. As for the trash can, Jamie said he was going to fill it up with old clothes and donate them to charity. Now, this was a $40,

trash can, by the way. You want to take some clothes down to Goodwill? Why not just put them in boxes or plastic bags like a normal person? You could give them the 40 bucks that you just saved, you know, if you're in a charitable mood. You don't go buy a $40 trash can. As for yard work, the pool took up most of Jamie's backyard, with the rest just a little bitty square of lawn. Not really much there that would require a pickax. The date on both receipts was January 22nd, the last day anyone had seen Lisa Hurst alive. The police had a pair of rubber gloves already. The pair Lisa's brother Valdon had recovered from a dumpster, along with his shower cap,

then given to Jamie to take to the police. But by now, the police didn't trust Jamie as far as they could toss him. So they asked to take a look at that picture Valdon had snapped of the stuff he found in the dumpster. Thank God he took that picture, right? They wanted to compare it with the stuff Jamie had brought them, which was now sitting in an evidence locker. And surprise, surprise, they were not a match. The gloves Valdon had found were clean, like a brand new pair that had been worn once and then tossed.

The pair Jamie delivered were dirty, either old or kicked around in the dirt to make him look old. The two shower caps were totally different colors. Obviously, our boy Jamie had switched the contents of the box. Wow. Now, why do we think he did that? Well, clearly, the only reason for him to pull the old switcheroo like this was if the actual gloves and shower cap could be linked back to him. By now, the investigators had no doubt whatsoever that Jamie killed Lisa.

What actually happened when Lisa Hurst was murdered is something only Jamie Chiopoulos knows for sure, and he's not likely to ever tell us the truth. But detectives think they have a pretty good idea of what went down. On January 22nd, Lisa went over to Jamie's house and something triggered a confrontation. Maybe Lisa found out about Jamie's wife. Maybe she wanted to know why the house wasn't ready for her and the girls to move in. For whatever reason, there was an argument and Jamie killed Lisa. There's no way to know how, but it was probably bloody, thus the bleach to clean the garage and destroy any DNA evidence.

There was no body, and detectives and prosecutors had an almost entirely circumstantial case against Jamie Chiopoulos. Now, circumstantial doesn't necessarily mean weak. That's a common misconception. you hear people say oh it's just circumstantial evidence they say that a lot about the scott peterson well it's all circumstantial but when there's a mountain of it yeah scott peterson case is a great example of and we're triggered right now we are triggered capital t triggered yeah but um yeah it doesn't mean that it's a weak case because you can have a mountain of circumstantial evidence and even if you just have a little if it's convincing enough it's if it defies common sense to think that

anything else might have caused this stuff to happen in this order, then you've still got really strong evidence. And sometimes I'd prefer a circumstantial case. Yeah, because DNA is fine. But, you know what's circumstantial evidence? If you have the suspect and the victim filmed at the same place that happens to be the scene of the crime, that is circumstantial evidence, right? Absolutely. That is, that is, although that is very convincing circumstantial evidence. Oh, they just happen to be in the same place at the same time it's it's it's plausible that they might not have even met each other but like that's circumstantial right absolutely yeah and even DNA evidence can be fallible i mean i've heard of a case where somebody was exonerated because they're like okay

we found DNA and they ran the DNA and it belonged to somebody at the morgue yeah you know so you could find DNA on a body and it might have come from somebody who had nothing to do with the murder Right. So you can't 100%. And, you know, there's so much controversy about so many different areas of forensics now where things have been debunked. And, you know, I like strong circumstantial evidence personally. And that's what we had here. And on February 13th, 2009, it was time to put the old habeas gravis on Jamie Chiopoulos, liar, cheater, fake war hero, fake cancer survivor, and very likely murderer. Man, he is like, he ticks every box on the shithead bingo. As it happened, they picked him up on the same day he discharged himself from a psych ward at the local VA hospital, where he'd committed himself shortly after police had searched his house. This, detectives thought, was probably just a panicky ploy to try and build an insanity defense down the road. It wasn't for lack of effort that Lisa's body hadn't been found. Again and again, hundreds of volunteers fanned out across the desert,

searching for human remains or signs of freshly dug graves. They didn't find anything. which isn't all that surprising when you consider how big the Mojave Desert is. I mean, it's a wasteland the size of England, stretching into four different states. That is a hell of a lot of space to hide a body in. It was really tough on Lisa's family. They'd come to accept that their girl must be dead, but not knowing where she was, was just eating away at them. Jamie, meanwhile, had made a new friend while he was sitting in jail waiting for trial, his cellmate,

and some of y'all might be feeling a touch of deja vu right about now because we've seen this movie a few times before, including literally last week. One night when they were watching TV together, Jamie leaned over and whispered in his new friend's ear, telling him that he'd murdered a woman and buried her out in the desert. And obviously, that's not the kind of information you share with just anybody, but he really felt a connection with this guy, you know, and knew he could trust him to Katie, why are you rolling your eyes? So cynical. You're right. I'm sorry. Sometimes prison friendships really are magical. Oh, no, wait, shit.

I just checked my notes. Yeah, it turns out his cellmate went straight to the cops and told on it. Okay, yeah, yeah, good. I was worried that my streak of being right all the time was about to be overturned. Yeah, and he agreed to testify against Jamie. So, dang. I really thought that these two crazy kids were going to make it. Oh, well.

Hope springs eternal. Even with this new witness, though, a conviction in Lisa's murder was not exactly a slam dunk because it is really hard to prove a murder without a body. And it's actually happened a lot more in the intervening years since this case. It's become more and more common over the past like 15 years or so. But back in the day, a lot of prosecutors wouldn't even consider it. They wouldn't even consider bringing the case if there was no body. So in October, after talking it over with Lisa's family, prosecutors offered Jamie Chiopoulos a deal,

15 years to life on a charge of second-degree murder, but only if he showed them where Lisa was buried. He agreed to the deal, and within a couple of hours was in the back of a police car, giving directions to drive out into the desert. 30 yards off a dirt road, he said, this is it. Four officers started digging, and they soon found Lisa's body, two decomposed. to determine a cause of death. Jamie's version of what happened is a lie beyond any question, but here it is anyway. On January 22nd, he said he and Lisa were in the pool out back having sex. Lisa, he claimed, enjoyed being choked when they had sex and had briefly passed out.

But then she seemed fine. Jamie went inside to get some drinks, and when he came back out, Lisa was face down in the water. Jamie pulled her out, but she was already dead. There was no reason at all for her. investigators to believe this version of events. They knew by now that if Jamie was breathing, he was lying. It was too much of a coincidence that this accident happened right before Jamie's wife came to town and his whole web of lies fell apart. And nothing he described would need bleach to clean up. Joyce Franzen, meanwhile, had been keeping her mouth shut for months,

but the day after Lisa's body was recovered, she came forward to talk to police. I doubt it was her conscience troubling her. More likely, she thought that if Jamie had told the police where the body was, he was also going to tell him Joyce had been more involved than she'd let on. And she'd have been right about that. Because this man's not going to leave anybody. Like, if he's going down, he's going to take whoever he needs to do with him, right? After Jamie and Joyce had ditched Lisa's car in Hisperia, he told her quite the fancy tale. He had family in the Korean mafia, he said, and they were forcing him to do some of their dirty work. He had to dispose of a package of theirs, or they would murder him.

The package was a sealed 32-gallon trash can, a size you could cram a human body into pretty easily. In fact, I think 100% of people, if you showed them that trash can and told them it was something the mafia wanted you to dispose of for them, everybody on Earth would assume there was a body in there. Now, to be clear, I acknowledge I am not an underworld kingpin, okay, not even in my spare time. But it just doesn't seem smart to me to outsource your body dumping to a random, incompetent, relative, especially under threat of murder. The problem you've already got is getting rid of a body. Now you've just got another body to get rid of, right?

Well, and like... It just doesn't seem like that. The mafia has guys for that. Like, that's... They have guys for that. They have guys for that. Yeah, it's not like, hey, uh, Mario, you got a cousin, we can threaten. Like, that's not how they do it. No. Don't you people watch the Sopranos? Come on. So back when we introduced Joyce Franson, we said it was important to remember that she was actually a smart woman, and this is why.

Because this mafia story was clearly the dumbest shit imaginable, but according to Joyce, she didn't question it. She didn't ask what was in the trash can. She just went along with whatever Jamie said. He asked her if she knew anywhere out in the desert where he could bury this package that was very clearly a human body in a trash can. And Joyce did. Her family owned a wild patch of land out there,

she said, miles away from anything. So helpful. So she's just wanting to help. Bless her. So they drove 20 miles out into the desert east of Barso. Then Jamie took his SUV off the road about 30 yards. He got his shovel and pickaxe and started digging a hole behind the car. He dug for three hours, while Joyce, according to her, just sat in the car and waited.

She still didn't ask what was in the trash can or what the hell was going on in general. She didn't even look when Jamie tipped Lisa's body out of the trash can and into the hole. which just bitch please I'm sorry I just can't with Joyce I don't care how solid gold the D is when the man brings out a duct tape wrapped trash can and asks you to help him dump it in the desert

it's time to shut it down and call the damn police for God's sake I'm sorry but I just have to say you want to slap the shit out of this woman when you watch that interview with her she is so irritating well she's asked

did you think there could be a body in it she's like, I thought of everything. And it's like... I thought of everything. Yeah, that's exactly how she said it. And it's like, you want to throttle her a little bit. You're like, so you were like, cool, let me hop on that dick after you're done dumping that body.

Like, if you thought of everything, then, and it irritated me that the 48 hours reporter didn't press her because what I would have wanted to say is, okay, so you thought of everything was one of those things that it might be a dead body? And did you have a problem with that? And if you didn't have a problem with that, why didn't you have a problem with that? Yeah. You know, like, I want journalists to press people. I don't know why they don't do that.

It's so irritated. I guess they're just afraid the person will walk off. But so then she walks off. And let the door hit him the ass on the way out. Right. And I think that, I think that particular interview was before her trial too. So, like, yeah. Like, okay, she walks off and she looks awful.

She's here to look, she's here to look good. Her lawyer presumably let her do this. Although, I know. Yeah. I don't know why they would because it didn't make her look. look very good. She did not look good. She looked like an asshole. Yeah. So as they drove back into town, Jamie told Joyce that she couldn't tell anyone what they'd just done. If she did, the Korean mafia would kill her and her whole family. Just come on. I have no doubt whatsoever that Joyce

knew this whole mafia story was bullshit. In my opinion, she knew perfectly well who was in that trash can and that Jamie had killed her and she just didn't have any problem with it. Because that means I have him to myself now. Goody-goody. What a prize. She agreed she wouldn't tell anyone, and when they got back to Jamie's house, after burying a woman who was worth 20 of either one of them, they had sex. Because of course they did. Why wouldn't they? What a sexy situation. Then, I guess, pillow talk, Jamie told Joyce that his divorce was going to be finalized real soon. After that, they'd be married and spend the rest of their lives together. Ugh. So what do you think? Was Jamie really ready to ditch his meal ticket wife and set up house with Joyce?

Or was he already thinking that there was plenty of room out in the desert for a Joyce-shaped hole? My money goes on door number two. And if Jamie Chiopoulos hadn't been arrested just a few weeks after Lisa went missing, Joyce could have been in for a lot of trouble. Yep. That's what I think. I think he would have killed her too. 100%.

She was already in a lot of trouble, of course, just not the buried in the desert kind of trouble. In November of 2009, Joyce was arrested and charged with accessory to murder and Grand Theft Auto. Prosecutors were convinced she knew exactly what Jamie had done and willingly and knowingly helped him dispose of Lisa's body. And that was what Jamie said, too. I told Joyce what had happened, he told the detectives, and Joyce said, well, what do you want to do? So we both agreed to bury her body. Joyce said she knew of a place. That's actually the one thing he said that I believe.

I just, I think it rings true. Joyce Franson got a deal for a three-year sentence. And I think she can count herself damn lucky. Ugh. So Jamie and Joyce both went to prison and Jamie went newly single because once his wife Catherine found out what was up, she had their marriage annulled at record speed. Good for her. But we're not quite done with this story yet.

In 2010, Jamie had a long talk with a fellow. inmate, a guy that was about to be released. Jamie was appealing his case and figured that that would go better if some key people were no longer around to testify against him. He wanted his prison buddy to kill the two lead detectives on his case. Oh, and also Joyce Franson. As a safety net, in case he didn't win his appeal, he also wanted Lisa's two young daughters, Ashlyn and Tyler, killed so they couldn't show up to talk at any future parole hearings. We're talking at this point about a and 10-year-old child. So, two cops, a witness, and two little girls.

Even if he could find some psycho willing to do all that with Catherine out of the picture, Jamie didn't have shit to pay with. It seems like he was just asking this guy to commit quintuple murder as a favor, or at least to do it on the cheap. What actually happened was that poor Jamie suffered yet another jailhouse betrayal, with his buddy running straight to the cops to spill the beans. again like my god man even a lab rat knows not to touch the electrical wire twice right why are you dumber than a lab rat so dumb

I just can't believe that shit after it happened to him once he would do it again this time this this time I have a chance this relationship is the magic oh my gosh and the jailhouse snitch was pretty convincing he knew where Joyce Ranson lived, what kind of car she drove. Jamie would eventually plead no contest to a solicitation of murder charge and got an extra 16 years tacked on to come after his existing 15-to-life sentence. Consecutive. So he's more than doubled his prison time.

And if you try to have two cops and two little girls assassinated from behind bars, I'm guessing the parole hearings on that 15-to-life ain't going to go so well. So here we have yet another malignant narcissist leaving a big smoking crater in the lives of the people unfortunate enough to cross his path. Will any fellow narcissistic shitpiles hear this story and learn from it? I'm not holding my breath. But my guess is Ashlyn and Taylor and Jamie's wife, Catherine,

learned a very important lesson, one I'm sure has scarred them horribly and probably made them all damn careful about who they led into their lives. In an episode of 48 hours, Lisa's daughters said they still feel like their mom is with them, looking out for them. I'm sure that's true. They'll both be grown up by now. I hope they've been able to find some peace knowing Jamie won't see daylight again for decades. And I think their mom would be incredibly proud of them. And you probably noticed I was doing a little bit more

talking than usual today. That's because poor Katie is sick as a dog. I'm so sick. I don't if I feel awful. And I couldn't talk for more than like a paragraph without dying of a cough. So Whitney, Whitney took work for the team. She texted me. She was like, I am more snot than woman. Like, all right, I got you. You can just react. So bless her for playing hurt. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Kennedy, Molly, Blair, Dawn, Kate, Steph, and another Blair with an E!

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