True Crime Campfire - Your Sin Will Find You: The Murder of Sue McFarland

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

It’s hard to convict someone of murder without a body. Even if it’s plain to everyone with a lick of common sense that the victim is dead and this is the guy who killed her, a prosecutor is wary of going to trial without being able to say with absolute certainty, this person is dead, and we know because we have her body. This week’s story is about a killer whose crime was apparent almost immediately, but who dragged on the crumbling pretense of a normal life for long weeks afterwards, until the horrific results of his actions were uncovered. Want to join us for grown-up summer camp? Katie and Whitney will be performing live along with the podcasts Scared to Death and Astonishing Legends at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026, Sept. 10-13. For tickets and more info, go to https://badmagicproductions.com AND...Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027, from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas. Sources: Diane Fanning, Gone Forever https://inmate.tdcj.texas.gov/InmateSearch/reviewDetail.action?sid=07021839&tdcj=01218516&fullName=MCFARLAND%2CRICHARD+MARVIN 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/TrueCrimeCampfire https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/ Facebook: True Crime Campfire Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire Email: [e-mail] MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. It's hard to convict someone of murder without a body. Even if it's plain to everyone with a lick of common sense that the victim is dead and this is the guy who killed her, a prosecutor is wary of going to trial without being able to say with absolutely, certainty, this person is dead and we know because we have her body.

This week's story is about a killer whose crime was apparent almost immediately, but who dragged on the crumbling pretense of a normal life for long weeks afterwards until the horrific results of his actions were uncovered. This is Your Sin Will Find You, the murder of Sue McFarland. So, campers, we're starting this one close to the end of the story. January 14, 2003, just outside of San Antonio, Texas, in amongst the scrubby fields and woods of southeast Bear County. Two detectives drove onto an abandoned farm on South WW White Road.

Back in November, a local had seen a Chevy Suburban stopped outside this property, a vehicle that matched one used in the case the detectives were investigating. That same week, the man had seen smoke rising from the property. He'd assumed somebody was burning trash. Sue McFarland had been missing for 50 days. The detectives didn't have any illusions about what that meant for the case. They were almost certainly looking for a body.

The farmhouse had been carelessly abandoned. There was still furniture in there and the owner hadn't bothered to empty the fridge before leaving. The power was out, though, so everything in there was rotten. Dust was on every surface and it was clear that nothing had been disturbed. They went outside and split up. Boyd wedding of the Terrell Hills PD

walked in a zigzag through the field. There was a Chevy Camero that had been stolen just before Christmas. That would turn out to have nothing to do with Sue McFarlane's disappearance. The thief had just chosen an unlucky place to statch the car. Further on was a barn,

one of those big old creaky ones that looks like it's been on the verge of falling apart for decades, and you just know that the inside is full of spider, and ghosts. Sharp agricultural tools hung from the rafters, but before wedding could step in, he heard his partner calling for him.

Texas ranger Sean Palmer had cautiously approached one of the outbuildings. There were soft sounds coming from inside. That turned out to be a litter of little black puppies. Their mom was probably from the neighborhood 500 yards down the road. Beside the outbuilding was the bed from an old Dotson pickup that had been converted into a trailer.

As he got closer, Palmer recognized a couple of smells familiar to most experienced homicide investigators, burnt and decaying flesh. He shouted for Boyd Wedding and took a look in the trailer. There was rubble in there and on top the burned remains of electronic equipment. Underneath them, cracked and browned but unmistakable were a human ribcage, arm, and skull. They called the district attorney and once other officers arrived to secure the scene, headed back into San Antonio proper. They started following Sue's husband Richard as he drove to pick up his oldest son and his Windstar minivan. They were waiting for the all-clear, to be told that the McFarlane's three kids were safe and secure. When that notice came, Palmer pulled in front of Richard

and slammed on the brakes. Richard leaned on his horn, but stopped when the two detectives hurried out of their car with weapons drawn, one on each side of the minivan. Ranger Palmer told Richard to get out of the vehicle. Richard unlocked the door, but stayed where he was. Palmer opened the door and pulled Richard out and cuffed him. He was arrested on charges of evidence tampering and car theft. A murder charge would have to wait for the medical examiner to study the burned body they'd found, but the detectives had no doubts about what the results of that exam would show. Richard McFarland had murdered his wife. Susan Smith was born in 1956, a late arrest. A late arrest of a rival with three siblings at least a decade older than her. Her dad worked for the FBI,

first as a transcriber and then as an agent, which meant the family moved around a lot. But by the time Sue was born, they'd settled down in St. Louis. Because it was practically illegal in the 50s and 60s for boys to have any role whatsoever in child care, Sue's main babysitter was her sister Ann, 13 years older than Sue, rather than either of her brothers, of course, because their testicles would drop off if they changed a diaper. This caused some tension. Like, oh, you're going out on a date? Why don't you take your baby sister along?

But Sue and Anne would become close, with Anne taking her to spend weekends in her college dorm, which I'm sure made all Sue's little friends jealous. The age difference between Sue and her siblings would provide her with two of her best friends. One was her niece, Kirsten, who was just five years younger than Sue, and the other was a little weirder. When Sue was 12, her older brother Pete married a girl named Debbie. Eight years later, they were divorced, and Sue and Debbie became buds. Young Sue was kind of a live wire, an active kid who was always doing something.

She swam and played tennis and tore through every paperback book she could get her hands on. She also had a rebellious streak, skipping school and coming up with elaborate cover stories to get away with it. And she got two piercings in each ear, which was apparently a wild and crazy thing. to do in mid-70s, Missouri. Oh, settle down there, Kim Kardashian. She went to college for an accounting degree, which surprised a lot of people who didn't know her well, but Sue's fun-loving ways combined with a disciplined and driven personality. She graduated cum laude, and soon her career took her south to Texas to work for a company

that in the 1980s had a spotless reputation. Enron. Oh, God. I know. I hadn't heard that name. a while. In 1987, she moved back to St. Louis to work for Southwestern Bell. Her career was on an upward slope, but Sue had dreams of being happily married with kids,

and now she was 30 and starting to doubt whether she'd ever meet the right guy. And then, the next year, at a party, she met a successful stockbroker named Richard McFarland. Rick. Or as I like to call him, ick. There's a lot of dicks on our show, aren't there? Isn't there? I feel like every other episode we're talking about a Richard. Yeah, I know. It's like one of those names, you know.

God help you. Rick was not, in fact, a successful stockbroker. He was a weirdo with delusions of grandeur and mountains of debt. But Sue wouldn't find out about that until after they were married. Richard McFarland was born in 1956, and although they never crossed paths when they were kids, he grew up just a few blocks from Sue. Glimpses of his childhood suggest a kind of golden, all-American mid-century upbringing, boy scouts, building a pinewood derby car with his dad, school sports.

But in reality, Richard's dad was remote and never satisfied with Richard's achievements. His mom, Mona, was the biggest influence on Richard's life, a rigid, kind of Lulu religious fundamentalist and all-around nasty, nasty piece of work. Oh, yeah, y'all going to hate Miss Mona. In his youth, Richard almost certainly suffered from what at the time would have been called hyperkinetic disorder, what we'd call ADHD today. But his parents don't seem like the type of people who considered mental health to, you know, exist. So he was never diagnosed. He had trouble concentrating and had to really knuckle down to graduate from college with a B average in business administration.

He got a job with a brokerage company and did okay. Just okay, though. He looked like he was doing better than okay. Drove a BMW, lived in a nice old carriage house in a good part of town, a classic mid-80s yuppie from head to toe. But a lot of that image was built from borrowed money. Rick's brain was not doing great. He hid it most of the time, but he was developing an intense, obsessive streak.

He went out for a couple of dates with one woman, but she started to feel creeped out by him and shut things down, and he wouldn't stop calling her. just again and again and again no matter how much she asked him to stop. Then one night she caught him hiding in the bushes outside, spying on her. Yikes. Sue and Rick hit it off when they met at that party in 1988, although her friends had a hard time figuring out why.

He seemed like a nice enough guy, but where Sue was bright and funny, Rick came across as humorless and socially inept. More than one person in Sue's life thought she was trying to fit someone unsuitable into her dream of having a family. The only one who had doubts in the other direction was Rick's mama, Mona, who thought Sue was a party girl that wasn't good enough for her son.

But then, a woman good enough for Richard was a creature that didn't exist in Mona's mind. What was most infuriating about all this was that Rick would never stand up for Sue when his mom was bad-mouthing her. Oh my God. Yikes. Yeah. Shut it down.

Like, you're never, just, if the mom, that's the case in your relationship, I'm sorry, I'm just going to say, just shut it down. Just shut it down. Yeah. Yeah, she married a mama's boy. Yeah, which is, I mean, love your mom. Absolutely. But when you're going to take mommy's side over your wife every single time, no. Nope, nope, nope, no, huge red flag. And he would always take his parents' side about everything. A bright, flaming red flag fluttered skyward just days before their wedding in 1989 when Rick told Sue he'd switched jobs to work for another brokerage firm. Three weeks ago. Dude, y'all are just about to get married. You cannot be keeping big changes in your life close to your chest like

that. And after the wedding, Sue got another shock when she found out about Rick's big pile of debt, which would take them years to pay off. A few months after the wedding, Sue was promoted to billing management in the Yellow Pages Division of Southwestern Bell. The Yellow Pages were everywhere in the 80s and 90s and brought in a ton of advertising money. She was very good at her job and well thought of by people both under and over her. Rick, meanwhile, half-assed his stockbroker job at his new firm and left after six months. He got a job with a realtor working on investments, which also lasted six months before he moved on to insurance sales, a job he managed to keep for one whole year.

In March of 1991, their first son was born. Because of the way this story played out, the names of their kids haven't been made public, so we're just going to use the alias as Diane Fanning used in her book Gone Forever, which was our main source for this case. And she calls this first boy William. William brought a lot of joy into Sue and Rick's lives and meant that Rick's mom, Mona, could add Sue's inadequacies as a mother to the list of things she complained about. So, you know, everybody's happy.

Mona's big complaint was that Sue kept on working even though she was a mother now, which was rich. Rick had kept his original stockbroker job for years before meeting Sue, and it was only when he'd gotten hitched to a high-earning woman that he'd let his career slide down toward unemployment. Maybe Sue could quit working if Rick decided to not be such a leech, but it didn't look like that would be happening anytime soon. Mona. After being out of work for 15 months, it took both help and pressure from Sue for Rick to find a new job in telemarketing sales for the Yellow Pages in September of 1992. Rick's determination to make a career in sales was bizarre. He was not good with people at all. And when he got worked up, he'd often stutter and jumble up his words, which is not his fault, obviously.

There's nothing wrong with that. But you'd think he'd want to be in a job that didn't require, like schmoozing skills. He didn't make new friends either and obviously thought he was too good for his new job. Get this? He worked in a cubicle, but whenever his boss was out, he'd move all his stuff into the conference room and set up in there like it was his private office. He'd meet clients in there and sometimes invited friends over so he could pretend like he

was in charge of the whole place. Oh my God. That is the dwebiest thing I've ever heard in my life. I think I just cringed myself into oblivion. Sorry, it's been nice knowing, y'all. It's so cringy. And the thing about conference rooms is that they're obviously conference rooms. Like, that is not your office or everyone knows.

I know. Like, honey, nobody was falling for that. Like, people probably just thought it was, ugh, you know. Roll their eyes behind your back. Good Lord. In July of 1993, less than a year after he'd been hired, Rick was fired by Southwestern Bell. He said the timing was deliberate because it came just before Rick would have been eligible to file a union grievance. Sue was furious and called her sister Ann, who was an attorney, to see what they could do.

Anne suggested Sue do a little digging before starting anything, which, you know, smart move. Rick's bosses knew Sue was an executive at the firm. They weren't likely to fire him without a good reason. It turned out that Rick was so terrible to work with that two of his colleagues had requested moves to us. other departments to get away from him. And two others said that they would quit if Rick kept working there. Oh my God. So basically, his supervisor had to can Rick to have a functioning department. Wow.

When she told him, Rick was so angry that the supervisor had someone escort her to and from her car for months afterward. Yeah, and that's interesting to me. Because a lot of the time when you hear about like workplace violence, people will say they never saw it coming. This lady, she knew in her gut there was something wrong about this guy. And, I mean, obviously she was right. That established the pattern for the next five years or so.

Rick would get a sales job. He was completely unsuited for and either quit or be fired with months of unemployment in between. Sue, meanwhile, kept getting promoted. In 1998, they had two more kids, James and Timmy, and Sue was thinking about moving. Southwestern Bell was merging with Pacific Bell, which might mean she got transferred to San Francisco, where it would be hard to maintain their comfortable suburban lifestyle on one income. So she looked into getting a new position at Southwestern's headquarters in San Antonio. She had friends who lived there, she had enjoyed her previous time in Texas, and she and Rick visited and loved the place. They visited in spring when the city was just

pleasantly warm, not in summer when it's a baking oven with temperatures frequently over 100 degrees, but I guess you get used to that. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We are here to support your business through every stage of growth, from your first pitch to your first acquisition. Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. Ah, where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to

be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at walla.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Sue got a position as a market revenue analyst working on budget preparation and Rick got a job with San Antonio Transportation, selling ad spaces on buses. He wouldn't keep it long. They got a house in the Tony suburb of Torell Hills, a yuppie haven of country clubs, boutiques, and fancy grocery stores. Rick started making friends in the neighborhood right away. I'm just kidding. He almost got punched in the throat on like practically day one.

The house behind the McFarlane's place was owned by the Miller family, and on the weekend that Sue and Rick moved in, the Millers had been away on a trip to Lake LBJ. When they got back home, Steve Miller could tell something was done. different in his backyard, but it took him a minute to notice a stump where a hackberry tree had been. He thought maybe the power company had cut it down because it was interfering with the lines, but he called them and they said no. He saw Rick and Baby Timmy in the neighboring yard and went out back to introduce himself over the fence. And after they'd chatted for a bit, he said, Rick, did you see our tree? It was here on Friday. Rick just shrugged. Did you see it walk off? Steve joked.

No, Rick said, deadly serious. Did you see anyone come into my yard and cut down my tree? No, Rick said. Rick, did you cut down my tree? Yes. Why, Rick? The tree was dropping too many leaves in my yard. Jesus Christ, what a loser.

And I just wish this guy sued him because tree law would be a fantastic addition to this episode. Tree law is intense. It's intense. Look into it sometime. You can pay through the nose if you mess with somebody else's trees. And I cannot overstate just how green and leafy this neighborhood was. It was the major thing that made it a nice place to live. Rick's own backyard had trees in it.

Leaves were going to be a part of life. This was completely nuts. Steve made some not-so-s subtle comments about how things might be different in Missouri, but in Texas, if you go wandering onto a stranger's property, you're not guaranteed to get out alive. I'll make it up to you, Rick said. I'll design a website for you. Steve did not need a website, but a couple of weeks later, Rick got back in touch.

I'm almost finished with the website design. It'll cost you $2,500. Funny, funny joke there, Rick. Steve told him to shove his website right up his ass, and that was largely how to Rickles fit in with his new neighbors. Everyone liked Sue. Everyone thought Rick was weird and off-putting. And surprise, surprise, his job with San Antonio Transport didn't last long. He kept bugging one business, which kept turning him down. Then the guy Rick had been dealing with got a call from Rick's boss, thanking him for the big contract he'd just signed. He said, I didn't sign a contract with anybody.

If you have a contract with my signature on it, it's a forgery. What did he think was going to happen here? The company would get an invoice and be like, oh, better pay this. I know. I am so confused by this. And it's not even almost the weirdest thing in this story, but it's so weird. So Rick, of course, was fired, and that was it for any type of outside employment. Rick's time would be occupied with caring for the boys and various self-employment schemes, both of which he was incompetent at.

The boys behaved themselves when Sue was around, but ran wild when it was just Rick. His parenting mostly vacillated between ignoring them and screaming at them at the top of his lungs, which was fun for everyone in the neighborhood. The older boys had some behavioral issues. William was on Prozac and Welbutrin, and both he and James, the middle son, were on Adderall. Rick, without consulting anyone, was constantly and unpredictably taking them off their meds and then putting them back on them. He took some of their Adderall himself

and gave some to little Timmy if he decided he was acting out too much. Timmy was not prescribed this. Unbelievable. Rick continued to establish his reputation as the neighborhood weirdo. One of their neighbors had a cat who had a litter of kittens

and all the local kids went to look at them. William had been wanting a kitten for a while and brought Rick over to look at them. With the out asking his neighbor Susan, Rick told William he could have a white kitten with a double stripe down its back. When can we take the kitten home? he asked Susan. The kittens are already taken, she said. When Rick didn't get his way, he often just froze and stared, like his brain was short-circuiting, and he did that now. For the next three nights, he came over and said, when can we take the kitten home? And just froze and stared when Susan told him they were already taken.

error, error does not compute. Can you match how fucking weird and creepy that would be? I'm just so scared. The fact that he did it three times, like, I'd call the cops after the first. Like, get away from me. I already told you. Eventually, the neighbor said, what part of no, don't you understand, Rick? He got mad and said, well, then you're going to have to be the one that tells William to his face.

And he marched off and brought William to the. the front door where Susan told him his chosen kitten was going back to New York with her sister. William burst into tears because his dad had been telling him all week that he'd be getting the kitten the next day. So that was one more neighbor who wanted nothing to do with Rick McFarland. And in case you were worried, William did soon get a kitten, a little tortie girl called Anastasia. Oh. Sue was promoted again and possibly not coincidentally, Rick joined the promise keepers, an evangelical group for Christian men that promoted traditional values, including that men should be the head of the household. Yeah. Well, I think step one in that, Rick, is keeping a job for more than six months. Yeah, all these, all these dudes that want a trad wife, don't want to be a trad husbands, you know?

They're always like, no, you have to have a job and do all the chores and do all the childbearing and pay all the bills. How about we just don't do that? Because both sides of that suck. Yeah. Yeah. They sucked. People were just exhausted and died young and just no. But Rick had more immediate concerns than employment.

Like, for example, his no obsession with Pokemon cards. Now, we're not going to shame someone for being into Pokemon cards in his 40s. I love Pokemon cards, right? I'm playing Pokemon Fire Red right now. Pursue whatever interests make you happen. be. What is unforgivable, though, is to buttonhole someone and yap to them about your niche interests, even when they show zero interest, which Rick often did about Pokemon for hours. And he was a close talk or two. He'd be right up in your face, and I don't think he was the kind of

person who could say squirtle without at least a little spit flying out. Sue first started seriously talking about divorce in 2000. when she found out that Rick had kept a cell phone from a former job and racked up thousands of dollars in calls that they, and by they, I mean Sue, was going to have to pay back. I'm going to divorce him, she told her sister, Anne. I swear I'll divorce him. And Rick wasn't giving her much reason to change her mind. She found out about him stopping and restarting the kids' beds, which was even more infuriating because playing pharmacist was Mama Mona's idea. Of course. He would sometimes just forget to pick the kids. up after school, meaning Sue would get calls at work to go get them. And Rick developed what I think we can fairly call a shopping addiction. He'd be out late at night, often at Target or Walmart.

He didn't get things he liked or wanted or needed. He got anything he thought was a good deal or that came with a nice rebate, often in multiples. Like he bought multiple sets of dishes and flatware, but they already had nice dishes and flatware, much nicer than the Walmart stuff. I think in Rick's mind he was going to flip all this stuff and somehow make a profit, which was obviously nonsense. Everyone else can shop at Target and Walmart too, honey. And he never bothered trying anyway. He returned the stuff when he remembered to, usually after the purchase had already accumulated interest on his credit card. Sue found some correspondence he had with Office Depot where they told him he'd returned enough stuff that he could buy two $250 Palm Pilots.

In Rick's brain, this somehow translated as getting a really good deal on Palm Pilots rather than overpaying for them enormously. The game begins in three, two, one. Ready or not too, here I come. Only in theaters March 20th. After surviving one deadly game, Grace and her sister Faith must now face off against four rival families in a fresh round of blood in games filled with more action, scares, laughs, and combustions. Starring Samara Weaving,

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and then forgot about them. Four-year-old Timmy in particular often wandered off and got lost in the cavernous stores, or occasionally just wandered off and walked around outside. Rick insisted this wasn't his fault because he'd put William in charge of

keeping an eye on Timmy. William, remember, was nine years old and had ADHD. And on top of screaming at them a lot, Rick was physically abusive to the boys. When he thought William hadn't been paying close enough attention during a tennis lesson, he made the poor kids stand still while Rick whacked tennis balls at him as hard as he could. William's swim coach noticed round bruises on his face, and after she asked him what happened, she called CPS.

CPS was overworked, but there's still no excuse for what they did, which was absolutely nothing. It wasn't until after Sue was dead and the children were living in squalor that CPS would interview the boys and get an idea of how Rick treated them. Great job, guys. I hate this so bad. I am, like, I'm speechless. It's awful. That's horrible. If they misbehaved, Rick would put them together on the trampoline in the backyard to get a little pounding, which meant they had to bounce and body slam onto each other.

He had five gradated levels of. punishment. Level one was a slap, and level five was beating them on the back side with a stick, something he'd only started after a Bible class hammered home the line about Spare the Rod spoiled the child. Young Timmy said Rick would grab his shoulders and squeeze them as hard as he could. My dad pinches my bones into crumbs, he said. Bless his little heart. Poor baby. I hate this guy, Katie. I hate him. James idolized his dad. and said he never punished them without good cause.

His main worry was that William and Timmy might lie and get his dad into trouble. Oh, bless them all so much. Sue and Rick's relationship continued to deteriorate. In fact, the only thing keeping Sue from moving forward with a divorce was her hectic work schedule. She flat out told a friend, there's too much going on for me to try and file for divorce right now, because she's doing everything herself. It wasn't a secret that things were moving in this direction, though.

Half the neighborhood heard them have a loud argument on the front porch with Sue saying, I want a divorce. I'm sick of getting my ass up at 5 a.m. every day and you not doing anything. Rick utterly refused to consider a divorce. He claimed this was on religious grounds, but I think it's more likely he just found the idea humiliating. In early November of 2002, Sue started meeting with a divorce attorney. The attorney asked her to fill out some questionnaires and complete a list of property and assets, which Sue did on her private computer at home, where she also kept her journal.

She didn't know that Rick had set it up so he could access files on her computer from his own. Forensic analysis would later show that on November 12th, Rick downloaded all the files pertaining to any divorce, as well as her journal. Sue had been talking about divorce for a while, but now Rick knew she was taking concrete steps towards it and that she was going to pull the trigger soon.

On November 25th, Sue took a minute. talked to a bunch of friends and family from her office at work. She called her niece Kirsten and told her that her attorney would be serving divorce papers in one week. I've finally done it, she said, because my friends have been telling me how strange she is. Kirsten asked her if she was sure she was safe there, which tells you something about what she thought of Rick. Sue said, Rick might hurt me, but he would never hurt the kids, which was not at all reassuring and unfortunately, prescient. Sue stopped off at a grocery store on the way home and picked up dinner.

The family ate and the boys did their homework, just a normal evening. They put the boys to bed and later Sue went into the master bathroom to take off her makeup and brush her teeth. We'll probably never know exactly what happened next, but the evidence gives us the outline. Rick beat his wife over the head with a blunt object, spattering her blood all over the room. Despite his efforts to clean up, traces of Sue's blood would be found in a wicker waistbass on the label of some shower drill, on the closet door, and on the frame of the door to the bedroom. Sue fought back hard enough to draw blood and rip a chunk out of one of Rick's fingers, but it's tough to win any struggle that begins with you being hit on the head with something heavy.

Just yards away from where his children slept, Rick McFarland beat their mother to death. Most likely, he then moved her body onto a love seat in the bedroom. It was missing after that in the truck bed that held Sue's burned remains. also held some furniture springs. A nearby Texaco station had had an old Chevy suburban on their lot that they were selling. Rick had taken it for a test drive several times, and a few days previously he'd stolen it. The carpet in Rick's Windstar minivan would go missing too, suggesting he'd used it to transport Sue's body to wherever he'd stashed the stolen suburban.

Sue had definitely been in the suburban. Both her blood and strands of her hair were found on the floor mats. He left the body in there for now and went home. At around 2 a.m., neighbors saw him with a shop vac, cleaning up the inside of the wind star. Sometime in the next couple of days, he drove the stolen suburban out to the abandoned farm and burned her body. He drove the car back and hid it close to home.

His neighbors across the street were selling their home and had already moved out, so Rick broke in, opened the garage from the inside, and stashed the suburban there. Sue had a lot of friends, and the people she worked with liked her. It didn't take long for everyone to start getting worried. Rick played it being worried, too. He called Sue's work supposedly to check if anyone had seen her there.

The co-worker he spoke with said she hadn't seen Sue that day, but she thought someone else in the office said they had. Rick couldn't help but giggle over the phone, as he said. Oh, someone saw her? Ugh, God, he's so freaking creepy. And just stupid. That's a stupid thing to do. Yeah. Oh, my God, so stupid. Giggled. Sue's Ford Explorer wasn't in the driveway. Rick started dropping hints that she might have run away to Amarillo with another man. One night after anyone had seen her last, a police officer spotted the car sitting in an empty lot on lazy lane.

He thought there were probably a couple of teens inside, having a little special time, but his high beams didn't startle anyone into action. He got out and discovered the explorer was empty, and the hood was cold. And the door was open. He reached in and took out the keys. When he called the plates into dispatcher, she called Sue and Rick's house and told Rick, a car registered to him had been found on Lazy Lane. Rick acted all baffled. Like, oh, Lazy Lane, where's that, Amarillo? Lazy Lane wasn't even a half mile from the house he'd lived in for years. Of course he knew where it was. God, he's so dumb. It just makes it worse when they're this dumb, I think. Like, it's just even worse. Like, this moron took this woman's precious life. I just cannot.

Ugh. The officer asked if Rick wanted to come and collect the car. It was maybe a five-minute walk away, or he could drop the keys off at Rick's house if that was easier. No, no, don't do that, Rick insisted. Instead, he'd come down to the police station the next day to collect the keys. I'm guessing he wasn't confident he'd done a good enough job cleaning up Sue's blood and didn't want a cop anywhere near it.

Around 6 p.m., Rick went down to the police station to file a missing person's report. He was wearing white canvas gloves that looked brand new. He spoke to Corporal Homer Homer Delgado, who was suspicious of Rick right away. Rick first told him that Sue had gone down to Amarillo on Monday. Then later, he said Sue had told him on Monday that she'd be going to Amarillo later in the week. He hadn't seen her since Monday evening when he said she'd gone out to deliver gifts to some friends and had never come home. Despite not hearing from her for three, nights, he apparently had made no effort to find Sue. Sometime later, after Rick had left, Delgado called and said he'd like to visit. Rick said he

didn't want any police around upsetting the children, but he would come down to the police station again the next day. He didn't ask any questions at all about his wife. So he was basically checking all the suspicious character boxes for any curious police officer. Terrell Hills is not a big town and Delgado was friends with one of Rick's neighbors, Charlene. He called her up and said, do you have time to gossip? That's the best call ever to get, right? Like, hell, yes, pull up a chair. When he said he wanted to talk about Rick McFarland, Charlene said, oh, him. She was not a fan. When Delgado said Sue was missing, Charlene asked where the boys were. With Rick, Delgado said. Something's wrong. Charlene said.

she would never have gone without the boys. Another officer went to have a look at the explorer. He noticed a spot of red between the seats and called to have it impounded. Rick went down to the police station and said, could this have been a carjacking? The officer patiently explained to him that carjackers don't usually leave vehicles a couple blocks from where their victims live with the key still in them. And because everyone in the Terrell Hills PD was already deeply suspicious of Rick, he added,

if this was a carjacking, whoever did it was stupid and careless. Roast him, I love it. Rick noticeably bristled at that, but he didn't say anything. There were all of 13 officers in the Terrell Hills PD, and they didn't have a crime lab or any of the other necessities for what was looking like a complicated homicide investigation. so they called the Texas Rangers in for help. I mean, they also got some help from Rick's incompetence.

Across the street was the empty house put up for sale by Rick's former neighbor, but people selling houses still come around a check on them, and when the neighbor next visited, she discovered a blue and gray Chevy suburban parked in her garage with the window rolled down. Also in her garage were three gasoline canisters, two bottles of insecticide, two bags of charcoal, a roll of paper towels, and a bottle of all-purpose cleaner.

In the car was a clear plastic folder that held a AAA card and a credit card, both with Rick's name. Smooth move, loser. It's crucial to bring your AAA card when you steal a car, just in case you break down. There is literally no part of this man I understand. No part, like no action he took, do I understand in this light? If this was like the plot of a law and order episode,

I'd be like, come on. This man doesn't exist. Like nobody's that bad at it, right? Yeah. Lord, have mercy. So the neighbor called the cops who were already canvassing the neighborhood. Under the car, police found weeds and mud. Detailed forensic analysis would later connect some of that vegetation to the abandoned farm where Sue's body was burned.

Texas rangers Sean Palmer arrived and knocked on Rick's door. Rick let him and Terrell Hill's. investigator Boyd Wedding in and let them look through the house. Rick was much too confident in his cleaning abilities. Like most things, he's way too confident for his abilities. They spotted blood evidence in the bathroom at a glance, but kept quiet about it for now. Palmer noticed abrasions on the knuckles of Rick's left hand, as well as a little chunk missing from the end of his right pinky. He also saw some scratches on Rick's neck. Rick said he'd cut his finger on a saw. The scratches came when he'd run into a thorn tree while jogging. The scrapes on

his knuckle came from a separate jogging incident when he'd fallen, all in the same week. What a horrible week for him, I guess. I know, super klutzy. He said he went jogging twice a week. No one in the neighborhood had ever seen him out running. And you know they'd know because they'd be like, oh shit, here comes Rick. Yeah, absolutely. People forget other people exist, I think. Like when they're doing stuff like this. They just forget that other people exist and talk to each other and will talk to the police. It's so common

and it just puzzles me. Like you've got to think outside your own personal space a little bit if you're going to try and get away with a murder. Yeah, that's stupid. Obviously, the investigators were sure Rick had killed Sue, but they had no idea where

her body was and it can be very hard to make a murder charge stick without a body. So they put Rick under surveillance and undertook an extensive search for Sue's body that wouldn't turn up anything at all. Rick, meanwhile, went to the Texaco station where he'd gotten this suburban, which he'd first test-driven and then stolen. The owner of the place was Richard Clemer, who recognized Rick. I was sorry to hear about your wife, he said.

Thank you, Rick said. Have you talked to the police? Clemer said, no, he had not. I want to talk to you before you talked to the police. I want to get our story straight. I did not steal the suburban. I took it so my wife could check it out. I took it on Saturday after I'd seen you.

I want you to tell the police that you gave me the keys. Oh, my God. Again, like, this is, like, if you wrote this in a script, I'd say you need to edit it. You need to cut this out. Because, you know, I want to get our story straight as a phrase that's liable to set alarm bells off, even if you hear it from a friend. Rick and Clemer had met, like, one time before this. But it wasn't. But it wasn't like Rick was asking him for a favor with nothing in return, right?

If we keep our story straight, everything will be okay, Rick said. I'll buy a steak when this is all over. Oh, okay. So the risk of jail time as an accessory or a nice, juicy steak. It's a tough decision. It's a tough decision. It's funny he didn't offer him anything of actual value. He's like, this man works at a gas station.

It's clear he's never had a stake before. God, couldn't offer him like a holographic Charzard or something? Come on. I know, right? You know, like I said, it's a tough decision. But Richard Clemer was at the Terrell Hills PD within minutes of Rick leaving and signed an agreement that they could record his calls with Rick. He called him later that evening.

They didn't get anything hugely incriminating, but Rick contradicted himself multiple times about when or even by whom the keys were picked up. When the truth was that Rick had just stolen them. Way to hold it together, man. Jesus Jones. And also, by the way, remember, Sue's dad was an FBI agent. Like, that's another thing that we have to remember. Yeah. Like, her dad was an FBI agent.

I just cannot with this guy. It's almost like he couldn't understand that he was lying to the suburban owner too. Like he couldn't, like, he's so used to gaslighting people that he was like, his default is just gaslighting the suburban owner. Because like, it's clear that he was like, hey man, I stole the SUV. You know I stole the SUV. But like, let's make an agreement here. But instead he was just like, can't let him know I'm lying. It's just bizarre.

Despite the fact that he'd been their primary caregiver, Rick more or less gave up on looking after the boys. The house was filthy. They lived on junk food, and he left them home alone more often than not. Then he'd go to the neighbors and demand they help him with child care. Some did just because they felt sorry for the boys, but most people wanted nothing at all to do with Rick, which made him furious. I'm sorry, do these people owe you anything, Rick? Have you done anything for them except make everybody nervous for the past five years? Good Lord. Sue's disappearance was big news in San Antonio, and that was ultimately what put the kibosh on Rick McFarland. Gil Medellin lived in southeast Bear County, and when the police showed pictures of the Chevy Suburban on the news, he recognized it as a vehicle he'd seen on the road by the abandoned farmhouse.

He told his stepson, who called the police, and that brings us right back around to where we started this story, with the detective discovering Sue's burned remains and Rick being arrested. At the scene, under a tent to shield them from news helicopters, crime scene texts carefully removed the obvious human remains from the trailer bed and placed them on a white sheet, then went through the trailer again looking for bone fragments. At the medical examiner's office, a forensic dentist compared Sue's records to x-rays of the remains. They were a match. To the surprise of no one, the remains were confirmed to be those of Sue McFarland. there was a hole in the skull, a fracture, and other fractures in the ribs and spine, all of which had happened while Sue was alive. Her cause of death was listed as homicide,

and Rick, in jail, was charged with murder. Rick's parents came down to help him in his time of troubles. They also went to Sue's memorial service, although Lord knows why. Sue's sister Anne overheard Mona McFarlane say, Susan didn't have an ounce of mothering instinct dinner. She was an evil woman. She told multiple people, Rick has many, many, many reasons for what he did. Oh, uh-huh. Just like Jesus would do, right? Ms. Religious? This woman is, eh. And she says all this shit at Sue's memorial service, where people are grieving for, like, I don't know how somebody didn't throttle her, I swear to God. Like, I go to jail, man. I just, hell no. And surprise, surprise, Rick did not do well behind bars.

The other inmates were either creeped out by him or wanted to punch him in the mouth. His first two cellmates asked to be moved before there was trouble. An anonymous note addressed to the unit officer was slid into the outgoing mail. It read, you better get the in cell 13. McFarland moved before it's too late, because we're going to take care of it ourselves. This man narrowly escaped getting his shit. it rocked in there. Somehow though, he managed to avoid getting shived and his trial was moved to Austin due to the intense media reporting in San Antonio. But in the end, there would be no trial.

In early 2004, just as jury selection was about to begin, Rick accepted a plea deal. He would plead guilty and receive a 40-year sentence, which he could not appeal. He'd be eligible for parole in 20 years. In fact, he had his first parole review last year in 2025, and he was denied for two reasons. The first was that his crime was sufficiently brutal, as to suggest he'd still be a danger, if released, and the second was that, quote, the record indicates that the offender has an unsatisfactory institutional adjustment. Translation, he's having a horrible time in prison, and long may it continue. As for Sue's boys, they were shuttled through the foster care system before being adopted under new names to shield them from the press. Three more lives ripped to pieces by the weakness and insecurities of Rick McFarland.

Idiot, child abuser, and murderer. Now, before we go, don't forget about our two amazing live shows coming up. First, we've got summer camp, September 10th through 13th, an amazing four-day festival hosted by Dan and Lindsay Cummins of Time Suck and Scared to Death, two amazing podcasts. We'll be performing live alongside them and the podcast astonishing legends in addition to a roster of awesome stand-up comedians and local bands. Go to Bad Magic Productions.com for more info and to buy tickets. Then we've got our True Crime Cruise, Crime Wave 2.0, February 8th through 12th, 2027. If you want to come on vacation with us and some of the biggest true crime and paranormal

podcasts in the world, like case file, true crime garage, and scared to death, here's what you got to do. Tickets are on sale now and they are going fast. So if you want to go, make sure you get over to crimewave at sea.com slash campfire and book your cabin ASAP. You'll get $100 off plus a private meet and greet with us during which we will sit around and probably drink a little drinky drink and talk about true crime. The great thing is, you can pay all at once or set up a payment plan and pay it off over time. So get on it, y'all. That is crimewave.c.com slash campfire. 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 Patreon supporters. Thank you so much. to Julie, Edy, a dingo ate my banana, Rachel and Opel, one of my favorite gemstones. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free,

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