True Crime with Kimbyr - Snake Breeder Murder: Ben Renick Part 2

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

In this episode, Kimbyrleigha dives into the mysterious and chilling case of Ben Renick, a successful 29-year-old snake breeder found dead in his reptile facility. Initially suspected to be an animal-related accident, the truth was far more sinister. Ben’s wife, Linley Renck, becomes a key suspect as investigators unravel a web of deception, financial struggles, and secret affairs. With shocking confessions and detailed testimonies, the episode uncovers the dark motives behind Ben’s murder. Tune in to hear how love, betrayal, and greed led to a coldblooded killing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And this woman looked completely lost. Fowles told her to lean on her friends and family during this challenging time she was going to be facing. Then he asked her if you could collect fingerprints, DNA, and do a gunshot residue test. Linley was fully cooperative, and he asked her if she knew anyone who would be upset with Ben to the point that they would kill him.

And she said no. But then Fals asked if there were any family issues. And Linley kind of laughed uncomfortably. comfortably? And she's like, between Sam and Ben? Yeah, this was news devoused. He hadn't heard Sam's comments at the crime scene. And Linley told him that Sam and Ben had gone into an argument about the 72-acre property where they lived. She explained that Ben had inherited Frank's property and Sam had inherited Frank's money. But Sam was the jealous type. The property was worth a lot more. And the big farmhouse was so old, it was now falling apart. It needed $50,000.

in renovations that Sam did not have the money for. So Sam was going to have to leave his home. Instead of leaving, he came to Ben and he asked if he could just have half of the land. And Ben was like, no, I'm not just going to give you half of the property. So Ben was in the process of selling off his assets. He wasn't going to give up land for free. But he had a plan. He was going to sell the property.

But Sam was mad. That was their mother's land. So he asked Ben if he could pay him for the entire property to keep it in the the family. But Ben knew Sam didn't have that kind of money, so they kept fighting. They could not come to an agreement. At one point, it was a very contentious. Linley said she tried to smooth things over, so she sent Sam a text telling him how much that hurt Ben. She and Ben get a text from Sam's wife that basically just said F you. So things were not good. Lindley said Sam and Ben never got along as adults. Sam was overly dramatic in your face, and she called his personality

depressing. Whatever she had seen between the two of them, it wasn't good, and Corporal Fouse had plans to ask Sam all about this. Lillenly went home to her kids, and now it was early in the morning on the 9th. Next was Sam's interview. He wasn't told that Lindley had given him a pretty bad review. They started by asking him about his day. Sam said he got to work, he picked up his two kids from school, and he returned to the big farmhouse where he lived with his wife. He was meeting with a potential babysitter when Linley called him. Then Corporal Fowse asked if Linley would be capable of murder. And Sam was like, no, we love Linley. When they asked if Ben had anyone else in his life that might be capable, Sam couldn't believe that anyone would kill his brother. Ben was such a nice,

genuine guy. Sam thought there is no way the person who shot him knew him personally. Then Sam talked about his relationship with his brother. He said he loved him, but that they did. did not always get along. He held some resentment over Ben's career because all he could talk about was his reptiles and he was pretty arrogant. He liked to brag that he was at the top of his field, had all this money. Sam hated to talk about money because he was struggling financially. He didn't like to hear his brother bragging all the time. And Ben didn't really to go out or drink or hang out so he wasn't very fun in Sam's opinion. But this didn't seem like the whole story. It seemed like Sam was jealous, like Linley said, but Sam adamantly refused that he would ever kill his brother.

He had another theory. Sam told Faust the story of their father, Frank, and him committing fraud. He said Frank's decisions caused a lot of people to hit rock bottom. They were angry. Sam and Ben had never had issues with Frank's old employees or investors, but there was a chance that someone wanted revenge. They knew how successful Ben was, and maybe they resented that. Ben's reptile business was so successful that this could have been a robbery gone wrong. Plus, Sam told Faust that rennic reptiles had been robbed before. A few years before this, someone had broken in and stolen $6,000 from the office, but Ben just brushed it off. He could sell a couple of snakes and make that money back in no time. When Corporal Fowles asked who owned the land, Sam confirmed

Linley's story that he got the money and Ben got the land. Sam was considering leaving the big farmhouse. He was spending more than he was making and he couldn't afford $50,000 in repairs. But Sam said that him and Ben came up with a plan, a verbal compromise. Their parents had told Ben and Sam verbally that the will was a bunch of legal jargon. And in the ideal scenario, they would split the land evenly. So Ben and Sam came up with an outline of which half of the land was whose. Sam said they had never gone into a heated argument and he never demanded half of the property. But Sam does sound bitter. He constantly denied, though, that he had anything to do with this tragedy.

It was so early in the morning at this point, he was exhausted. He offered whatever he could do to help the investigation. When they asked for his fingerprints, his DNA, gunshot residue test, he agreed to everything. He even gave his cell phone to them, full access to all of his apps, his Facebook. But they noticed Sam was sweating through his shirt halfway through the interview and he took it off. And then he offered it to the police, but why would he be sweating through his shirt? Or did he have something to hide? Was he just nervous? Was this just a lot for someone to take? But Sam did offer to take a polygraph. He promised to make himself available for whatever the detectives needed.

It didn't seem likely that he would be so open if he were the killer, but honestly, you just never know. After Sam's interview, Corporal Faust went back to the snake facility to get a bunch of pictures of the entire crime scene. David was finally there and he gave Faust somewhat of a tour. He helped him look through all the snake pens to see if anything was missing. he explained Ben's career and how important Ben was to the reptile community. David also told the story again about how Ben was going to sell his entire ball python collection to Robin Lennar. When Corporal Faust asked how much the collection was worth, he was thinking maybe, I don't know, four or 500,000 at most, but David's like, no, the ball pythons were worth over a million dollars.

And some of these snakes were worth a lot on their own. So based on the number of bullets and shell casings that were collected, Ben had sustained five gunshots. It's not quite overkill, but a calculated, cold-blooded murder. What would be the motive? It seemed clear someone had to have wanted Ben's money. But when police went through the office and all the snake drawers, there was nothing missing.

Investigators couldn't find any DNA or foreign fingerprints on the scene apart from people who lived and worked there like Ben and Linley. They also thought it was unlikely someone had come back to take revenge for Frank's actions five years before that, And it was even less likely that this was a robbery. It was more likely that Ben knew this person, and they had a grudge of some kind against him. Maybe it was someone in competition with him. So by the morning, the gunshot residue results

came back for both Sam and Linley, and they were both negative. But that didn't mean they were exonerated. Gunshot residue can be removed by washing and scrubbing the body. So either of them could have potentially done it and then taken a shower. Sam had a clear motive. He didn't want his family's land to be sold, and he had a rough alibi.

It wasn't exactly solid, and Lily's alibi seemed more solid. But spouses are always suspects because of how close they are to the victim. When Faust interviewed people in the community, a few were very straightforward and said, Sam did it. Others insisted that the brothers were very close, since they lived right near each other and they'd always been together and lived on that property. Others knew that the brothers had very different personalities. And the day after Ben's murder, Sam decided to hang up a sign on the road leading up to his house that said, I'm drunk and I'm armed.

Well then, enough said, right, but armed. That meant Sam had a gun. Some people took this as a threat. I like to play devil's advocate. Sam was still processing Ben's death. He didn't want company. Maybe he had no clue that he was even a suspect at this point. He could have thought he was just being questioned as a witness.

But in the next couple weeks, he worked through the anger, the guilt, the resentment, and that came with grief. After that, he had nothing but good things to say about his brother. Well, that's convenient now that he's gone. But Corporal Faust talked to Ben's neighbors, Michael Scarlett and Babette Tucker. And Bobbett had known the Renix since before Ben was even born. And she said, she did not think Sam or Linley could even hurt a fly. Michael Scarlett lived half a mile away, and he told Thalse that on the afternoon of June 8th,

he heard a woman screaming. Now, after everything was said and done and everyone knew what was happening, Fowles figured that this was Linley finding Ben's body. He interviewed Ben and Linley's babysitter Catherine, who had been taking care of the children every week for years. She had received a text on night saying Linley was running late and that her services wouldn't be needed that night. So this was all a dead end.

Faust kept his options open. He hadn't talked to Robin, the hockey player yet, but if he ran out of ideas, that option was still in his back pocket. Meanwhile, Linley was struggling. The week after Ben died, she actually moved into her father's home in Columbia, Missouri, with the kids, where she was trying to rebuild their life piece by piece. David was also grieving his friend's death, and he agreed to stay in the area and take care of all of Ben's snakes for free. The entire reptile community was shaken up. And Ben's friend, Dave Kaufman, started planning a fundraiser for Ben's family. This fundraiser was held on Wednesday, June 14th.

There was a huge online auction of all of Ben's snakes. The bidding price of a small ball python started at $5, and people paid up to $6,000 for the snakes. They were able to raise over $40,000 for Linley and the kids in Ben's name. Ben's funeral ceremony was held a week after that. When Sam arrived, Linley wasn't there yet. And that's when he was told, He could not go inside the funeral home until Linley arrived.

And that was weird to him. Sam wanted to see his brother's cremated remains, but Linley did not want anyone alone with Ben's ashes. It's understandable, I think. Like, you're worried, you're scared. This is something so tragic. But some people wondered why. Did she think that Sam was the killer and she was being protective?

Maybe she hadn't forgotten Sam's comments at the crime scene. Or maybe she just didn't like him. But at the end of the end of the same, the ceremony, the family let balloons fly into the air, and that's when Maddie, little Maddie, broke down in tears. He was screaming. He was saying, why, mommy, why? And Ben's daughter, Emma, she didn't know what was happening. These poor kids were traumatized. They did not know who would do this to their daddy and why. Ben's autopsy results had revealed that he had been shot eight times. Once again, one bullet had missed his body and hit the snake pen. The other eight entrance wounds

were in the back, the neck, and the shoulder area. He had been shot five times in quick succession in the back, meaning he probably didn't know what was happening to him, and he fell to the floor before he could process the pain. One of these bullets was lodged in his right shoulder area. Another one had gone through his right elbow and didn't exit but created an exit wound on the outside, and then the perpetrator approached him

and fired one shot through the back of his head. and one shot through the left side of his jaw. And that went out through the right. And these shots hit the floor, creating those divvits. But the bullets stayed inside his skin, which was why investigators had not been able to find them in their initial investigation. The divot near his hand was still a bit of a mystery, though,

probably made by a shell hitting the ground. Since there was no gunshot residue on his body from these two entrance wounds, these two shots had to have been fired at least, 18 to 20 inches above Ben's body. I'm not great with math or distances, but I wasn't sure what 18 to 20 inches above the ground would have meant.

You'd have to account for how long the muzzle of this gun was, how long the person's arm was, plus how the gun was pointed. And it's common sense that usually when you shoot a gun, your arm is fully extended, but it doesn't have to be. So all I'm trying to get to is they were trying to figure out how far the person was, how tall the person was, how tall the person was, but it was really hard to determine someone's height according to the way a bullet struck someone.

But trajectory can be figured out. I'm sure you've seen Dexter before, but it's the same concept. They put those pieces of red string out, they calculate the distance, where the bullet came from, and sometimes exactly where the muzzle was and exactly how far away. So I actually very curious pulled out my measuring tape. I'm pretty short, I'm under five feet tall. And I determined that someone about five foot holding a gun towards the ground would be at 20 inches or so away from the ground.

But if there were a person there, they would maybe have been 15 inches away. So it's more than likely that the person who aimed these two bullets was much taller. I know it's not going to make sense to you, but just trust me on this one. The last shot Ben sustained was a contact wound. Someone had actually placed the muzzle directly against Ben's temple and fired, creating a lot of pressure that caused significant injury to his brain and brainstem. It was an injury that nobody could have survived. And that last shot had caused divisible wounds, like blowing out part of his skull.

I hate to say it that way. But this is why his brother thought it was actually squeezed. And this was causing a lot of significant bruising to his face as well. Officers had not been able to find all eight shell casings, meaning that someone had tried to pick up some of the casings, but they weren't able to find a few, including one that was under Ben's underarm. They were able to retrieve four intact bullets and one shattered bullet from Ben's body. As for the puncture wounds on his arm, they appear to have been a snake bite at first,

and a random drop of blood away from the crime scene seemed to be related, but it turns out they weren't. They don't know how they got there. The Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop F and the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department continued to work on this case, as well as the St. Louis Dispatch. which had more officers available. They looked further into Ben's finances because when it came to money, they had to figure out who was going to benefit

financially from his death the most. Ben did not have a will, and it wasn't clear who would inherit all of his assets. Since his father, Frank, had passed away. He left the land and assets in a trust fund with a trustee. If Ben died without selling the assets, they would be passed on to the next generation of Rennick's, which were Ben's children.

children. Ben's life insurance package, a whopping one million through Minnesota Life, wasn't clear whether there was a trust fund or not. Detectives were very confused. And it turns out Linley was also confused. When police called Minnesota Life, they found out that Linley had also called, that's normal for a beneficiary. They have a duty to figure out all of the funeral and other expenses related to the death. And Linley was gathering the same information, whether the one million was part of a trust going to the kids, who were the secondary beneficiaries. And I'm sure you know that a beneficiary is the person next in line to receive the money. If it wasn't a trust fund and Linley was the primary beneficiary,

she wanted to understand the process for being able to access these funds. She asked the company if she could be appointed what's called the next friend of Maddie and Emma so that she would have some control over where the money went. I know that this could come off as shady, but police knew, She was a business owner. She had to pay for funeral and business expenses, and she was having a rough time. She wasn't answering phone calls from people in New Florence and spending most of the time with her dad and the kids. Well, Bette, the neighbor described Linley's behavior as fading away, and nobody could blame her.

But we always have to look at things in all different ways. Was it shady? She had called the insurance company the day after Ben passed away. That could seem pretty fast. but this was also an unexpected death. There's a lot to do in a short amount of time. Even if the money was hers to claim, she wouldn't get all of it until she was cleared of suspicion.

That's just the standard procedure when you're dealing with a murder. So Corporal Faust needed to know more. He called her in for another interview. On June 19th, 11 days after Ben was killed, Linley sat down again with Corporal Faust. First, he asked for permission to download the contents of Linley's phone, and she agreed.

Unfortunately, this download didn't work. So apparently some phones just, they don't download well. So Fowles had to look through everything manually. He looked at her call log, her Facebook messenger, and texts from the day of June 8th. And he found a bunch of messages between Ben and Lindley. Totally normal. They were a married couple. They discussed their day.

Ben asked Lindley if she was mad at him because her texts were shorter than usual. She said at 1049 and 1240.4. that she had a massive headache. But back at 11 o'clock between those two texts, he had sent Linley some financial details because he talked with his financial advisor. And he complained about the deal with that guy, Robin. At 227, Linley actually sent Ben some risque nude photos.

Ben was appreciative. They talked about her headache again. And if she needed him to pick up the kids, and she said yes. So he agreed. But while all this was happening, Linley was also texting a person by the name of Michael H in her phone. She told Michael over text.

She was exhausted. And that's when he offered something that the detectives did not expect. Drugs. But not Tylenol or Advil. No. He offered her some meth. Then they had no less than six calls over the course of the day, all about two or three minutes long.

So, of course, Faust asked Linley. Who's Michael H? And she said, oh, that's Michael Humphrey. His mom used to come in for regular massages. And then Fowles asked why they had called five times and were texting on the day of June 8th, but hadn't texted her since. So Linley clarified her story. She said, Michael had reached out for a massage, but he was having car trouble, and she wanted to make sure he could still come into his appointment. But she wasn't going to mention the meth. Maybe it wasn't as important as who Michael was. But then Corporal Faust asked about the spa. How was business? And Lily admitted that she was having a little trouble making ends meet, but it was nothing that

her and her manager Ashley couldn't handle. Faust then asked her about her relationship with Ben. He wanted to know if she had been unfaithful, if she had been talking or having a relationship with someone else at the time of Ben's death. And surprisingly, I was watching this interview. I was even like, what, are you serious? She said yes. She was honest, I'll give her that. But she said she'd been hooking up with a man named Eric Breamer, and he worked for a local radio station doing some marketing and advertising for the spa.

And he and Lin Lee, they started seeing each other about once a month to go over the performance of her campaigns. And over time, they started seeing each other. And this led to them having sex on a regular basis. They were hooking up maybe once or twice a month in her massage rooms. And Ben had even met Eric a few times, but he had no idea that she was having an affair. And I hate to just be like this, but it blows my mind because I'm like, she has everything. Not my business. However, Lindley insisted the affair was purely physical.

And she said, if you ask Eric, he would agree. It was just sex. It was nothing more. So Fowles left the interview with some new leads, Eric Bremer, who may have a motive because of the affair. And then this guy, Michael Humphrey, who had got. gotten a massage on June 8th and asked Linley if she wanted drugs. And then Ashley Shaw, who was the manager of Essential Spa, she would definitely have more information about the financial situation.

And it was easy to track down Eric. He said that Linley was one of the nicest people he had ever met. Eric was also married, but he was looking for an escape in an unhealthy relationship according to him. So that's why he had an affair. He said that Lindley and him started hooking up and they still were. But of course, after what happened to Ben, Lillenly was so upset that she grew very distant.

He did say he was not planning on ending the affair, but he knew nothing about Ben's murder. And after a full investigation, Eric was ruled out as a suspect. However, it was much harder to track down Michael Humphrey. They tried to track him down based on a previous address, but he no longer lived there. And on July 17th, they found him and looked through his phone. There was nothing out of the ordinary with his messages to Linley,

on June 8th. But he did have a new message from her. It was a thumbs up emoji from June 19. That was the day that police had interviewed Linley about her affair with Eric. Was this a coincidence or something else? After the thumbs up, Michael texts back asking how Linley was doing because he hadn't heard from her in a while. Linley said the thumbs up emoji was a mistake. So there's that. She said Emma was playing with her phone. She accidentally sent him that message. But considering they hadn't talked to each other in two weeks. It was interesting how her baby, her little girl, was able to send that message.

Because if you know iPhones or you know phones at all, it's not like Linley's messages to Michael would have been pinned at the top. If you've been messaging other people, especially if two weeks has gone by, her convo would have been way down at the bottom. But that wasn't enough evidence to mean that Michael was involved in anything either.

So the investigators went to talk to Ashley. This was Linley's best friend and manager of the spa as well as the rest of the spa employees, including a woman named Rachel Hunt. Now, Rachel didn't know anything about the murder. Ashley also denied knowing anything, but she was Linley's closest friend. Ashley told Faust, I'm sure you know that Linley was having an affair. A couple affairs. And Faust nodded and he was playing along. He wanted to know more because he didn't know there were more than one. Ashley said that Linley had actually gone on dating apps, since that summer.

And she had met a guy named Brandon Blackwell recently, like in the last month or two before Ben passed away. And last Ashley knew, Brandon and Linley were still seeing each other. They were together. So, of course, Corval Fowlst had been keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity on the snake farm. He had the perfect spy in the form of David. David had only seen Linley twice.

And one of the times, she was with another guy. And Linley introduced this guy. as Brandon, who she called an old friend, which he's not. He's from a dating app. But David didn't know, so he thought the guy was nice, and that was that. But David did notice they seemed closer than friends. You can just tell, especially because they seemed like

they could not take their eyes off one another. So Corporal Faust already knew about Brandon from David. But now he had Brandon's last name and more of the story. So he tracked down Brandon Blackwell in the mid-August of 2017, and this man was, was head over heel for Linley. But it's sad that Ben had this going on behind his back while he was alive.

And during this interview, Brandon denied being involved in Ben's murder. He said that Linley was not either. She had nothing to do with it. So now the police have nothing. Even if they gotten fingerprints and DNA from everyone, it would have been no use. What they really needed was someone to confess

that they knew something about this crime, something that other people didn't know. And it was a waiting game. Sure, there were a lot of things wrong with lying to your partner, seeing other people behind their back, but they needed more. David, who had stayed and worked with the snakes, was there for over a year. This guy was a really good friend. He was cleaning out the snake pens, and one day, he found another shell casing. So he sent it to the police who sent it to the crime lab, but it didn't lead to anything.

They already had the shell casings. So now they turned back to the finances. And you may be wondering, what was happening? with Ascentia Spa. While the police had gotten a warrant to look through the contents of Ben's phone, and what they found were conversations about Linley's finances.

She had every financial problem you can name. Linley had message Ben asking for money to cover several different lawsuits. So when she said it was manageable, I don't know what she was talking about. She was being sued by Capital One. She hadn't paid a couple contractors. It was like a total of maybe $10,000.

and she also wasn't able to pay her rent. Linley had been losing money for a long time, but she did not tell Ben. And in May, he found out, and he was upset, rightfully so. It seemed Linley was good at hiding things. Her affairs, her money problems, could she be hiding something else?

Ben said in a series of texts, quote, We are already paying $4,000 a month to keep your doors open. It's basically already covering your rent and loan. I mean, literally, it would cost us more money for you to close and the lawyers to come after us for all those things. We own almost $200,000 in debt on the spa. I'm really not sure what to do about it.

I honestly don't know. Even if I file bankruptcy, the bank could put liens against us personally. End quote. After Ben's dad's business had imploded years before, it made sense that Ben would be upset. But now I wonder, was Ben selling his assets

so that he could help his wife get out of, of all this debt. Ben then sent a text the day of his murder and it said no more lying, no more keeping things from me, no more not paying people and thinking it's okay to pay later. This text was on his phone, but when Faust had looked through Linley's phone on June 19th, he didn't see that text, which meant she had erased it. What was she hiding? And if Ben was accusing her of lying, did he know that she was also being unfaithful? That now seems kind of sketchy. But then again, sometimes in some cases, I've seen people who delete anything negative, anything they were texting or anything like that between someone who just died because they don't

want to remember the bad times, only the good times. So who knows? But they also do this sometimes because they don't want to give authorities the impression that there were any issues between them. But investigators thought Lindley's financial problems gave her a motive for murder, but there was not enough evidence to arrest her. In the meantime, she was still trying to to get herself out of debt. Linley was not able to sign up as what I told you was called next a friend to her kids. So she was not able to claim the life insurance.

In August after Ben's murder, Linley made the executive decision to sell her spa. She didn't own Ben's assets, but suddenly the Renick family property was being sold on the market. It didn't matter whether she got the life insurance money or not. The 72 acres of land were worth over 800,000. $1,000. Sam, who was still a suspect at the time, was at his house when someone came knocking

on his door and said that he had 30 days to leave his own home. That was his property. Sam thought back to his mom's dying wish, that are grandkids who live on land, and now Sam had 30 days to move his stuff into a storage unit and find somewhere else to live with his wife. He also had to find a place to move all of Ben things. Why? And this made him feel so betrayed by Lindley. Sam did not understand why she was selling the property that he was living on. And that just blows my mind because it's it's family. I mean, I understand wife is family too. But on top of the $800,000, Linley had gotten that $40,000, remember from the reptile community, the fundraiser. And now she got to sell all of Ben's snakes. She got into a legal situation with Robin, the man who was supposed to owe Ben

a million dollars for the ball pythons. Well, because the snake farm was part of the trust going to the kids, this became very legally confusing. No one was sure whether Linley could even sell the snakes to Robin anymore. So all of this had to be put on hold during the investigation. And because of that, I know you're not going to believe this, but Robin's hockey fan base, they started breaking into the building and taking snakes since Robin had paid that $200,000 installment plan to Ben and Robin hadn't received all of the ball pythons. So he figured he was entitled to them. It was just absolute chaos because of the break-ins, the snakes got around the facility, they started breeding in different bins. It was a mess. Linley all of a sudden wanted to get

rid of the snakes, and she did this behind David's back. She actually contacted one of her friends that she had met in the reptile world, a woman named Megan, and she offered to sell Megan, the anaconda. Well, Megan was better friends with David. So, she called David. She said, Linley is trying to sell me the snakes. And David was shocked. He said, pretend to go through with the deal and see what happens. And Megan was just stringing Linley along and then she backed out. And that's when Linley got really upset with David for interrupting the deal. And she even sent him a text threatening legal action. But if you ask Linley and her dad about all this and corporal files did, he questioned her and visited her regularly. She denied that she had a role in selling Ben's

assets. She didn't have control over the trust, which means she didn't have control over the snakes or the property. The person in charge of selling the farm was a trustee, a legal representative assigned to her children as their, quote, next friend. So that's who was doing all this. Lillenly wanted to move forward, and that meant stepping back and letting hard financial decisions be made by a state representative, even if it made her look bad. So there was more to it. She wasn't actually in charge of doing that. Four months later, after Ben's murder in August, Corporal Fels was doing a little research on Michael Humphrey. Did you remember his name? He found out that Michael was actually Linley's ex-boyfriend, which was interesting. Was there still something between them that would maybe give him a motive?

It still bothered Faust that Linley had been texting Michael on the 8th and then on the 19th of June. So he looked further into Michael's life. Michael had worked a lot of odd jobs, including selling some stereo equipment and painkillers. And he and Lindley were together in 2010 before they had broken up. Then Michael went to jail for drug possession charges. He'd been using and selling painkillers and meth and had a history of harming animals, specifically torturing cats. And he'd gotten out of jail in mid-May just weeks before Ben was killed. So why had Linley gotten in contact with him again? I think she initially said his mom was coming in for a massage she never said it was her ex. Well, Phel sat down with Lindley in another interview. And I know,

This has been a lot of interviews, but little progress. But this time, she took a polygraph test. The usual questions, did you shoot Ben? Do you feel guilty about his death? She answered no, no, no. At the end, he asked lonely how she thought she did on the polygraph, and she said, I think I did well. The truth is, she thought wrong.

Her polygraph was a complete failure. According to the results, which I mentioned in every video, are not conclusive anyway because the polygraphs are not reliable, but it said she had been deceptive again and again. And when they told Linley, she just burst into tears and she said, she doesn't know why she failed, but she did not kill her husband. And the officers told Linley,

the circumstantial evidence against her was mind-boggling. And she stood up and she said, I have to go pick up my kids and they let her go. You know, a polygraph test is not concrete evidence, and no witnesses had confirmed that she left Ascentra Spa on the 8th. At any other time, I'm not sure what other circumstantial evidence they had, maybe besides her financial problems and her cheating and her text messages.

But her phone records showed that she was at the spa the entire time Ben would have been home and been killed. Even if she was the primary suspect, the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office had no proof to convict her. In the meanwhile, Lindley actually made an announcement in December on Facebook. She and her boyfriend Brandon were expecting a baby. People were shocked by Beth who lived next door. She loved Linley.

She loved talking to her regularly even after Ben's death. But there was just something suspicious about her. So she contacted the police and reported that Linley was moving on a little too fast in her opinion. But the police already knew all about Brandon. This was exactly what she did with Ben. So it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise. She met Ben not too long afterwards. She got pregnant.

It doesn't mean anything sinister. Besides, they were having an affair. And at this point, she's single, considering her husband is deceased. Even though it looks bad, doing this soon afterward, people grieve in a number of ways, right? Linley had her baby, and the police continued to look through all the messages between Linley and Ben and Michael. But the case went cold for two and half years.

Corporal Fowse then had a family emergency, and he was no longer able to work on this case. So it was taken over by state trooper Nathaniel Schaefer, and he didn't have much experience with murder investigations. So Trooper Schaefer looked through all the evidence, and based on Linley's poor performance on the polygraph, actually, he focused on her and ruled Sam out as a suspect. In his point of view, it seemed pretty obvious that Linley had been accusing Sam of getting in fights with Ben over the land. and then sold the land. Why would Linley accuse Sam unless she was trying to redirect the investigation and shift the blame from herself to someone else?

This is what his theory was. He felt like she was the common denominator in everything and she had a lot to gain from Ben's death, way more than Sam did. The reptile community continued to speculate about what happened to Ben. Was his wife involved? Had she hired a hitman?

Was it revenge? A failed robbery could be anything. And Sam, he still didn't think Linley had anything to do with this. He called the Highway Patrol every other week for updates, but there never was any. Sam was scared that even though he didn't live on the 72-acre property anymore, that whoever hurt Ben could still be out there and they could hurt him. Or worse, they could hurt the kids. He thought it was weird that Linley didn't want to bring the kids over to hang out with

their family or their cousins anymore. He didn't understand why she didn't like him. and he still had not gotten access to his brother's ashes. So Trooper Schaefer told Sam that Linley was actually their number one suspect. And Sam was like up in arms. He's like, no, I disagree. We might not get along, but she is harmless. And you've seen her picture.

I've been putting it up on the screen, but I have to say, everything that glitters is not gold. Even with happy posts about having a baby, Lindley's new relationship was not going well. And Linley's dad, Lyndon, noticed. Brandon, he had a temper. He was a big guy. And once he even threatened to kick Linley's dad's ass.

So they started becoming scared of Brandon. And Linley reported him because he had gotten physical with her. And he was arrested. But released because there wasn't enough evidence to hold him. So then Linley hired an attorney and she filed an order of protection against Brandon, saying that he was a thought. threat to her, her children, and her family.

Brandon violated the order 12 times. This man texted her over 150 times a day and stalked her wherever she went. One time, his mother even called Linley and warned her to leave her house because Brandon was on his way there. Brandon actually told his mother, he was on the way to Linley's to go sleep in her driveway. I mean, this guy was controlling. He was manipulative. He wanted to ruin her life.

If he couldn't have her, nobody could. So finally, he went to jail for felony stalking and for violating the protection order. But then, in January of 2020, police got a call from a man named Mr. Blackwell. This was Brandon's dad. And he said Brandon wanted to talk to him about Ben Rennox murder.