School of Humans.
On January seventeenth, twenty twenty three, fifty three year old William Vick was recovering at home in Clarksville, Arkansas. William was in good health. He loved making videos for his YouTube channel. I've been watching them, and obviously William got a lot of joy from making short films with his granddaughter and also riffing on everything from insomnia to pillar reviews, and even interviewing members of law enforcement about infamous Arkansas
murder cases. It seems like William may have been a true crime fan. In these videos, William looks fit, healthy, and younger than his fifty three years. I feel like if I had known him in life, we would have been friends. William had gone in for a ton selectomy operation the week before. Apparently he had been experiencing some complications.
He had texted his daughter Ashley to say that he believed that something inside him was broken and that he was throwing up a large amount of blood in the sink. Ashley was worried. She told her dad this did not seem normal to her. She encouraged him to go see the doctor, but William's wife, Lareinda, had worked as an ear nurse, and Ashley believed that her stepmother was taking care of her father. Lrenda's mother, Martha MacLean, was also around.
She lived in a separate structure on William and Lorenda's property, right behind their house. A lot of what we know is pieced together after the fact from coroner's reports and case notes. We do know that at eleven twenty two, the Johnson County Deputy Coroner, Dave Cogan, arrived at nineteen fifty four County Road responding to an unexpected death. He
spoke to Lorenda. According to the coroner's report, she told the deputy corner that she had been staying in a separate room from her husband because she had been sick recently and was worried about COVID. The deputy coroner noted that William was already in full rigor mortis, meaning that he had been dead and lying on that floor for a long time. William Vick was fifty three years old. He went in for what was supposed to be a routine operation, and a few days later he was dead.
And this was just the beginning of an investigation that involves charges of insurance fraud. Two mysterious deaths and a family torn apart. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.
If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six ' one four or five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four or five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. The crime scene was not investigated by law enforcement, just the corner, and the report reads that the reason for reporting is
natural or sudden death. The coroner's investigator noted that Lorenda had not called nine to one one or the police. Instead, she called the coroner's office directly. Pamela is the corner, Pamela wrote, and I'm quoting the report directly here she meaning Lrenda was an er nurse here in Clarksville at one time, and I believe her to be a nurse
at a facility in Pope or Yale County. Now this fact might mean that she is familiar with us as coroners, but she would also know from working IRIR that our protocol is to call nine to one one or the Sheriff's office or a dispatch. The coroner number is not easily found for the normal citizen, but it is not impossible to get. It is not given out to the public by law enforcement or medical personnel. It would not be the obvious or easiest action to take when you
find your spouse prone on the bedroom floor. It would, however, be something the average citizen might do to avoid having law enforcement in their home. The report indicates that the deputy coroner found Larinda reaching out to the coroner directly a bit odd because Lrenda was a nurse. The report said they felt that her normal reaction should be to call nine one one, even if it was obvious that
her husband was dead. The sheriff's investigators in Johnson County began looking into William Vick's life and asking questions about his relationships, and they were asking about other things, including life insurance policies that William's brother Ted and his daughter Ashley say had been taken out in the year before his death, and the policies totaled eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. William Earl Vick was born on August eighth,
nineteen sixty nine, in Russellville, Arkansas. He had one son, also named William, who will refer to as will and a daughter, Ashley. He also had two step sons who were Larenda's sons from a previous relationship. According to his obituary, Lorenda's sons live in Mississippi, while William's daughter, Ashley lives in Russellville. Will also lives in Arkansas. William was married to Jacinda, Ashley and Will's mother, for eighteen years. They
divorced around two thousand and nine. William met Lareinda in the early part of twenty eleven, and then a few months later they were married. As an adult, William worked several different jobs. According to his brother Ted, William was a personal trainer in Jim's for a while. He also did some work in law enforcement. We talked to Ted on the phone.
So he was the personal trainer for a long time on gyms and stuff like that, and then he was a deputy or the Johnson County Sheriff's Department for a little while, and then he went over to the university in Clarksville. I think he was actually working for an attorney, and they never really said what he did. I think he did like private investigator stuff for him and kind of ran down leads for him and stuff like that.
But he was going back to work for the Jonathan County Sheriff's Department just in about a week a week, you know, after he murdered. He had already put his application in, it was accepted, and he was going to go up and be a bailiff in the courthouse.
Since William married Larinda, both Ted and William's daughter Ashley say that their relationship with William suffered. Four years before William's death, Ted said that he discovered that money was missing from their parents' bank account, an account that Ted claimed William had access to. Ted is very transparent about the fact that, due to this rift over their parents' money and William's alleged access to it, that they had
not spoken in about four years. At the time of William's death, Ted said that he found bank records, records that showed that Lrenda was allegedly using a debit card that was linked to his parents' account. According to Ted, she appeared to be using it to buy gas and clothing. This turned into a family confrontation, but despite this, Ted said that he loved William. We also talked to Ashley, William's daughter, and she said that she was always close to her dad growing up.
He got me how to time my shoes. My parents worked all the time, so they worked opposite shifts a lot.
Of the time.
I think he worked nice when I was learning that stuff, so he taught me that during the day.
William was with Ashley and William Junior's mother for eighteen years, and Ashley said that their divorce was tough and they went through a lot, but that they loved each other and always had love for each other even after they split up. But after Larenda came into the picture, ash said that there was tension between her and her stepmother. Ashley said that Lareinda did not like her. She said that because of that, she saw her father less and.
Less unless she was at work, then he would call me or if he was going to the store for whatever reason. You know, he would talk to me then and we would text back and forth occasionally, of course, but she said I was a full brat, even though my parents did not have money. They are not rich people. But she would tell me that I was a bull brat, I was a bitch, and all kinds of things she would say to my face end behind my back. Most all of it was behind my back, but you know, family member's shock.
During the last year of William's life, Ashley said that they started to get closer again. It seemed like listening to her talk that she finally felt like she had her father back.
We would go to lunch together every week. I don't know, he just got a different job. I guess where he was able to do that. He was coming to rest of Ville once a week where I lived, and so he was able to go to lunch with me every week. But she would always call all we were at lunch together and it was good. I mean, I felt like the last two year of his life as an adult, we were closest and I would go over there. She
worked a lot, she traveled. He's a traveling nurse, so when she was out of town, me and my three kids would go over there a lot and go hiking, and you know, he had some land and a pond that we'd go over there and fish and just just hang out with him generally.
Ashley said that her brother Will was living with Lrenda and their father, but just a few days before her father died, she said Lreinda pressured her father to get Will to move out.
And then she was very adamant about getting him to move out. She wanted him to move out. She was pressuring him, pressuring my dad to kick my brother out, and my brother just finally hadn't said in us, and he just moved out. And my dad after that happened and called me. I never heard of fan cry, and he cried and said how he should not have let Lareinda treat my brother that way.
I'm sorry.
My dad was like such a strong person.
Now I should say that we have contacted Larinda for comment. She said she had no comment, and she referred us
to her lawyer, who we have reached out to. My point is we are only hearing one side of the story here, and it's not abnormal for new wives to have conflicts with children, and even in some cases for adult children to blame their stepmother for conflicts with their father, but Ashley claims that Lorenda has tried to paint a picture of her father William, as being abusive in some way, something that she says is absolutely not true.
My parents had up and downs. But Arenda, he's trying to put this narrative out there now, like my dad was this terrible person. But she hasn't been screaming at the past year and a half. If anything, I saw the emotional abuse from her end because of how she treated me and how he wasn't allowed to talk to me when she was around. What kind of woman doesn't want a man talking to his children. I thinks it's weird to talk to your daughter, that you were too close.
It's true, child.
I feel like I don't know she did. I feel like she was trying to control him and he finally had an as and she isn't that That is my personal opinion.
Ashley said she was surprised when, just a few weeks before her father died, he talked to her about having a life insurance policy. It turned out that he had taken out a policy with Farmers for five hundred thousand dollars and that in the event of his death, Lareinda would receive fifty percent and each of his children would receive twenty five percent. Now we're going to get a lot more into the intricacies of the insurance policies in next week's episode, but for now, I'll say this is
all only one insurance policy. It turns out that there was more than one.
So two weeks before he passed, he was talking to me about it, saying, jokingly saying, he's worth more dead than he is alive because his life insurance policy is so much, and he mentioned it. He was very adamant. You know when that gets half fifty percent, but you and your brother each get twenty five percent. I think the most of my dad ever said on me for a holiday was he bought me tennis shoes.
But William was only fifty three years old and for the most part in great health. Ted brought this up when we talked to him as well. He said that even though he was not involved in his brother's life at the time, when William took out this latest insurance policy, he felt that the amount was excessive given William's job history and earning potential.
My brother had a life insurance policy through the state farm and they couldn't even afford to pay that, And he had had it for five or six years, and they couldn't afford to pay that monthly payment, so they canceled it. And then all of a sudden, you know, a couple of years later, nothing really changes. They didn't come into any money. She still had the same job, he was still doing the same stuff, and then all of a sudden they can afford to post to a million.
William's ton selectomy wasn't an emergency. It was something he had scheduled ahead of time. It was a routine operation, and he was sent home afterwards to recover with a prescription drug called tramadol. Now we don't know exactly when he was prescribed that tramadol. We're assuming he was sent home with it after his operation, but we don't have William's medical records, and we do not have a record
of exactly when he got that prescription. So far, we have also been unable to confirm the name of the doctor who performed the ton selectomy. The coroner's report noted that they were still attempting to get in touch with the surgeon who performed the tonsol ectomy, but we don't know if they did. They were also trying to get
William's medical records. The report noted that they were provided with some records by Laurinda, but that the records they got were several years old and they were trying to get more recent information. Ashley had lunch with William just a day before his operation on Friday, which again was meant to be totally routine. He called her right before he went into surgery on Friday. She never heard her father's voice again.
I was Wednesday, and then Thursday, him and Laurenda went out to eat together for his last meal. He called it before surgery, and then he had surgery on Friday. So that Wednesday, yeah, I mean have passed.
After having the operation on Friday, William was sent home. But then her father texted her and told her that he was throwing up blood. Then he sent Ashley a picture of a sink full of blood. Ashley was concerned about her dad. William had just had tom selectomy surgery, and he sent her a photo in it his sink was full of blood.
I mean, he had sent me a picture of him throwing up blood. In the sink. It was a lot of blood and I was begging him to take you to the hospital. I even reached out to Lorenda and said, don't you know you're a nurse, don't She didn't you need to go to the hospital, And she said, oh, well, you know how stubborn your dad is. He doesn't want to go. And I said, you're a nurse, You're his wife. Forced him to go to the hospital. He should not be puking blood.
Ashley said that she begged Laurinda to take her father to the hospital. The text messages that ashley next exchange with her father haunt her to this day.
I said, don't die on me or I'll be traumatized, and he said, loll okay, I'm well. That was one of her last conversations.
Ashley assumed that her dad was getting better that weekend. Next week, Ashley said she got a call the completely shocked her. Someone told her that her father was dead William and Dad on Tuesday. Ashley didn't find out until Thursday, and she said that that call did not come from Lorenda.
She did not inform me at all. Actually, she did not tell me he passed. I had to find out from somebody else who called me and said, I'm so sorry to hear about your dad, and I said, I've know ide you were talking about. And they were obviously confused, and so I tried to call my dad and of course he didn't answer his phone, and then I called Lorenda and I was like, what's going on? She said, I'm sorry, I just didn't know how to tell you. Yeah, And I was like, what do you mean what You
didn't know how to tell me what? And she was like, he didn't make it. And I was like, what what do you talk about? What do you mean he didn't make it? And then I just hung up on her because I was like, my first instinct was that she did something to him, But then you think, that's crazy. That doesn't happen to me, That doesn't happen to normal people.
I thought, why would that happen? Things like this don't happen in real life.
This is things you see on TV, And then of course I did.
Ashley said that a few days later, she mentioned the life insurance policy, the one that she said her father had been talking to her about. She said that Lorenda told her she hadn't even started thinking about life insurance policies, but Ashley insists that she later found out that that wasn't the case.
She said, well, let's just thought something I'm even thinking about or worrying about, and then come to find out she asked about it the next I mean the next day after him passing, before she even I knew he passed, she was already asking about the life insurance. So that was just something she whied about.
William Vick was cremated, which Ashley said she knew her father wanted. But Ashley said that she was hurt when Lorenda and her children spread her father's ashes without her.
He was only cremated, He never had services. He said that was not something he wanted. I'm sure he would have had a visitation, but she said, you know, it was not something he wanted. He wanted to be cremated, which I didn't know that he didn't want to be cremated. We got his ashes A while later. I said, I'm not ready for that yet, can we can? We just pulled off and she just did.
It with her kids. She and her kids spread his ashes without me or my brothers. So all I have is the little jar, the heart shaped jar. She'd given me, and so I ended up giving my brothers some of those ashes.
I'm sorry she didn't want to wait, he didn't.
She just wanted to get rid of dashes. Yeah, she could, but it was not very long after we got his ashes. But I just wasn't ready to spreads with yours, but she was. They're legally hers.
So Ashley talked about her father's sense of humor. William Vick had a YouTube channel, and in one of those videos, the one I mentioned earlier and actually the last one he posted, he was talking about true crime the Ronald Gene Simmons case. For the thirty fifth anniversary of the murders, William interviewed the lead investigator on the case, named Ray Caldwell. William also made short films about a dystopian future, and in some of his videos he talked about his insomnia
and crack jokes. A lot of his riffs are straight to camera, wearing an Arkansas baseball cap and smiling.
Everybody that's seen his videos and have heard my tackling laugh think we laughed just alike, which is not I'm getting used to laugh that way. I don't know what, I don't know my laugh, but it's just when my laugh really hard at some chef like his funny hyena laugh that he has, but a man who would crack each other up.
At first, Ashley said she was somewhat numb after her father passed away, but it wasn't long before she began to notice things that she believed did not add up. One of the things that bothered her the most was realizing that Lorenda had not called nine one one, but instead called the coroner directly.
She was like, well, I'm a nurse. I knew he was dead, okay, but you were a nurse and you didn't take up to the hospital when he was kicking blood. But you're a nurse enough to know that he was dead. I mean, in my panic, if even if I was a nurse and my bouse was dead on the ground, my first thought would be nine to one one, not let me google the coroner and call them directly.
Then there was the fact that her father's body was already in full rigor mortis. Lorenda said she had not come in to check on William in over ten hours. Ashley wondered why, if he was sick, if he had been coughing up blood, why Lorenda would not take him to the hospital. Lorenda told the coroners investigator that William had high cholesterol and may have heart disease, but according to the medical examiner's report, there was no sign of
heart disease. The coroner also noted there was no blood on William's bedroom floor, which they looked for because he had been vomiting blood days earlier. When they began a toxicology screen, they did find traces of drugs in William's system. Post mortan blood testing showed positive for tramadol, the prescription medicine, but also for lethal levels of lurazapam and massive quantities of morphine and codeine. The cause of death was listed
as combined mixed prescription and illicit drug toxicity. William Vick was not suicidal. He was in good spirits. He was happy about life, and other than a routine operation, he really had absolutely nothing physically wrong with him. William's family did not believe that he had died of some sort of accident. They believed that someone killed him, and it seems like they were right because on jam Anyuary twenty third, twenty twenty three, six days after William was found dead
on the bedroom floor police found a murder confession. Someone claimed that they tampered with William's medication and injected him with another drug. But the confession didn't come from Mirenda. It was written by her mother, Martha MacLean, who everyone believed was incredibly frail, and he was living in a separate structure on their property. Officers had been doing a welfare check on Martha when they found her struggling to breathe with morphine and la razepan bottles scattered around her.
She had a handwritten note next to the bed.
I want to bust this for my dad. Obviously who would have But it takes a lot out of me.
I have.
I get panic attacks. I just know I I just get panic attacks. Sometimes I random and then sometimes you know it's fard. Some days I'm okay. Like some days I can talk about it and just find like it's not me, like it's not my life. I can detach from it, associate from it. Yet another time, Sorry can't because it is my last.
I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts and Miranda Hawkins. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. Noah Camera mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and
Else Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Pott. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five That six seven eight seven four four six one four five
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