School of Humans.
On January seventeenth, twenty twenty three, at eleven twenty two pm, the Johnson County Deputy Coroner arrived at nineteen fifty four County Road in Clarksville, Arkansas, and found the body of fifty three year old William Vick. Both of William's children, his daughter Ashley and his son will said that their dad had been in very good general health, but they had noticed that William had been choking on his food
over the last year of his life. It was an issue that had been getting worse and worse, and this apparently led to him going in for a routine ton selectomy a week before his death. Tonsils surgery often happens in children. Sometimes it's an emergency, but it can also be an elective surgery for adults. It's sometimes recommended if a person's tonsils are enlarged, or if there are airway obstructions, or if the patient is experiencing frequent throat infections or
chronic sore throat, and in some other situations. But after William was sent home to recover from his operation, he began to experience some strange complications. Ashley got a text from her father that was concerning. Her dad was texting her to say that he was throwing up blood. Then he texted her a picture of a sink full of blood. Ashley told us that she reached out to her stepmother, Laurinda,
who had worked as an ear nurse. She said that she asked Laurinda to take her father to the hospital, but that Lorenda told her that William was stubborn and that there was no need for alarm. Later on social media, Lorenda posted that this was what she believed at the time, and that as a nurse, she knew that rest was the best medicine for patients in William's condition, but William didn't get better. A few days after that text message, William Vick was dead and his death was not an accident.
The cause of death on William's autopsy was listed as a combined mixed prescription and illicit drug toxicity, basically a drug overdose. The manner of death was homicide. William's family was suspicious of Larenda, but the confession came from someone else. It was from Lrenda's mother, Martha MacLean. Martha was seventy
two years old, apparently terminally ill with throw cancer. And lived in a separate structure on William and Lrenda's property, and she had written a letter confessing to the murder. So why would Lrenda's mother want to hurt William? And with her supposedly being frail and ill, would she even be physically capable of something like that. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helling 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 on six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, Or you can send us a message on Instagram at
Helen gonepot This is Helen Gone Murder Line. According to the medical examiner's report, there was no sign of heart disease or any other obvious health concern that could have caused William's death. The coroner also noted there was no blood on the bedroom floor, which they had looked for because he had been vomiting up blood days earlier. They were looking for whatever could have caused his death, and after William's body was sent in for an autopsy and
the toxicology report came back, they found it. Post mortem blood testing showed positive for tramadol, the prescription medication, but also lethal levels of laurazapam and massive quantities of morphine and codine. William's body was cremated and Lorenda and her sons read his ashes without William's daughter, Ashley and his son will will had been living with William and Lorenda. He had just moved out few days before his father's death.
Both Ashley and will were left struggling to comprehend exactly what happened to their father and how he deteriorated so quickly. Then, on January twenty third, twenty twenty three, six days after William was found dead on the bedroom floor, their worlds got completely rocked again when they found out that Lorenda's mother, Martha MacLean, had apparently confessed to their father's murder. I need to back up for a minute, because there's kind of a strange series of events that led to this.
We said last week that officers rushed to the home where William and Larnda lived. As I said, Martha lived in a separate structure on the property behind their house. William's family members said William and Martha had apparently never really gotten along, but they weren't sure why William built Martha's house behind where he and Lrenda lived, But apparently there was always tension between William and Martha. A police officer was doing a wellness check on Martha when they
found her. She was in distress us She was struggling to breathe, with morphine and lauriazapam bottle scattered around her, and with a handwritten note next to the bed. But the strange series of events actually started earlier than that. What happened first was that earlier that same day, on January twenty third, Lrenda and a friend of hers named Linda went into the prosecuting attorney's office in Clarksville. They said they had been trying to contact Martha and that
she wasn't answering. According to the charging documents, Special Agent Matthew Foster from the Arkansas State police was called in. This was apparently happening while the police officer was performing that welfare check on Martha. He went into her residence and found Martha unconscious, holding a pen in one hand, and apparently trying to write a note. According to the report, Linda Lorenda's friend quote provided a note that stated that
Martha killed William Vick end quote. Agent Foster also wrote in his report that he spoke to Lareenda on that same day and that she she told him that her mother, Martha, had told Lorinda that she killed William by putting morphine and other drugs inside his liquid medicine. The officer's report read quote, she was unconscious and was struggling to breathe. Next to her was morphine and loizapam bottle. Her hand was holding a pen and a note was being written.
The note stated that she didn't want to hurt anymore. End quote. After that, Martha was rushed to the hospital and then special Agent Foster executed a search warrant on that property. That's when he found another handwritten note. This
note talked about how Martha had killed William. The note stated that Martha had tampered with William's medication, that she put morphine, louriza, PAM and other drugs inside of William's liquid medicine, and that after William took the medicine and while her daughter Lrenda wasn't home, Martha said she went
inside William's residence and injected him with suxi methonium. The note stated that Martha had been planning this for a long time and that she originally planned to use a gun, but that another family member had taken her gun away from her. How did Martha get this drug? Because sex and methonium is a paralytic drug. It's a drug that's normally used for intubation, so when you're in the hospital having a procedure and they need to make sure that you don't choke on the tubes when they're put down
your throat. It's not a drug that would ever normally be administered in a non medical setting because it paralyzes your muscles and unless you are getting air from another source,
you literally will not be able to breathe. Now, it should be noted here that even though the confession letter claimed that Martha had injected William with this drug, according to the autopsy report, they did not find a measurable trace of sex and methonium, though the report did indicate that it would have passed from William's system in a short period of time. Even if she did give him an injection, it would have been very difficult to come
because so much time had passed. So police were trying to understand more about William's relationships with his wife, Larinda and also with his mother in law Martha. As we said last week, William was married to his first wife, Jesinda for eighteen years. They had two children, Will and Ashley. They split up in two thousand and nine, and then in early twenty eleven, William met Larinda. William's son Will said that his father and Laurinda had met on a
dating site. Now Ted and Ashley said that they believed Larinda had been pressuring William to get will to move out, but will said that the weeks before his father passed away were for him fairly normal. He admitted he never had a particularly close relationship with Larnda, but he said that he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary in those weeks. He did say he had seen Larinda's temper flare on numerous occasions, since he was young.
Okay, what caused you to move about?
But I was only there for the holidays. I stayed there a little bit longer, but he was about to have surgery, and I decided to come back come a week before him had surgery.
Okay, so Larinda didn't kick you out. You decided to leave on your own.
Yeah, Okay.
Did you feel like Lrenda put any distance between you and your dad or did you feel like she encouraged the relationship between you and him, or.
Or which she just kind of dad drul She sort of had a mean personality. Wouldn't say she was like abusive or anything when I would say that she was just kind of a mean person generally. But I don't think she's put any distance between us. I don't think it was really possible distance between me and my father, but from her perspectively.
Will talked about what he described as Lorenda anger.
I'll give you a story. Whenever I was younger, So me and Lorenda's Unjagger, So Jagger's my stepbrother. So me and Jagger when we were playing, I guess things got a little rough between us. I think I hit him or something, and then I realized I was probably get in trouble for us. So I ran into my room and lost it, but Lorenda got in and pushed me to the then like hit my stomach exactly where Jagger where I hit Jagger, which I think was probably not something adult to due to a kid. I mean there
were other times where she was just very unsociable. I mean she didn't do that when I got older, obviously. Yeah, she would get really mad sometimes it was really randomly.
Will also said that about a year before his father's death, something disturbing happened. He said that his father had said to will that he believed Lorenda inchecked him with something when he was sick, but William said he wasn't sure what it was.
He doesn't know what it was because he was like thick and delirious at the time, but he wasn't even really sure. Yeah, if it happened, thought he was pretty sure it happened. So when he told me the story about her possibly injecting him with something, he told me that he's tied in a weird service as it was probably with Linda.
Will said at the time his father was very sick, so he thought he might have possibly been delirious. Afterwards, will said his father didn't mention it again.
At first. He wasn't even sure himself did it really happened. He wasn't assure himself. You don't want to believe someone would do something like that, especially someone you're married with, and they put a bed list every night. He said that he was and he can get injected twice that night. Letter claim that my dad was having an allergic reaction to something, even though I've never noticed that that allergies to anything, and that she was giving him inject him
with some sort of allergy list. I don't even know what. He didn't get in much detail.
Then Tom went by and things to go back to normal. Will said that his father was in good health, but like his sister Ashley, he mentioned that William would choke when he was eating.
Sometimes when he was eat it would choke him. It was chosing tome. He wouldn't be able to eat it, but he looked like basically peeked the food back up so they couldn't breathe, and it just got work and was over that year.
Will lived with Lrenda and his father for most of the year. In twenty twenty two, he then left for a period of time, but he said that he came back for the Thanksgiving in Christmas holidays that year. He was still staying there into January of twenty twenty three. Will said that he left William and Larenda's home for good just a week before his father died. He said that he was shocked when he learned that his father passed away. His mother, Jacinda, had gotten the call from
Will's sister, Ashley. Ashley told us last week that even though her parents had their issues over the years, and that breaking up their marriage was difficult, that they were married for a long time, they had children in history and still had a lot of love for each other.
I love my mom. I live living in Missouri at the time. And my mom comes home and I go to Greeter and she's just like prus has passed me. She's crying, and she goes into the room that her and my stepfather there, and they come back out called me into the living room, and that's where she breaks the news to me. Disn't got breaks the moves that
my father had passed away that night. He was sick before and he was like spitting out blood and stuff, and I had tried to convince him I love with my sister that he needed to go to the hospital because he just had a surgery. And then immediately after the surgery, him being a very stubborn person, he decided to do a bunch of yard works, which was not a good idea.
You have done that, but a couple of days after he kept sitting up blood and stuff, and that's not good. That's not you know, it's not supposed to be doing that. So we try to convince them to go to the hospital, but Lorenda convinced him not to go, even though her being a nurse, she should have known better.
And I told him directly in text and on a phone call that man, it's like she's trying to kill you. Like she's trying to kill you right now, stop listening to her, stopping stubborn, go go to the hospital. But he didn't, and he ended up dead.
Even though will said he is suspicious of Lorenda, will did have quite a bit to say about the relationship between Martha and William. He said Martha hated his father.
There were plenty of interactions where you could just tell Martha, you're not like my dad, and my dad felt equally the same towards her.
Do you say in your opinion that it is talk that Martha's.
Did they have killed your fathers and not alone. I'm not saying that she was a part of it Bomtal, but she didn't wall unless she worked do it.
What was her gerald stay of health at the time that you went.
When she was an old woman and she had been smoking since forever, I suppose apparently she had a broke cancer as well, which I didn't even fell about.
So why would Martha Lrenda's mother want to hurt William? Larenda and William married on December third, twenty eleven, after dating for just a few months. Lrenda's children lived in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and Lareinda was an only child, so at her home it was just her, William and Martha. Will William's son said he observed that Martha was not in good health, but what exactly was Martha's medical condition? Martha had told family members that she went in for testing.
Was she actually terminally ill? She seemed to have told some people that she was, but she also apparently told some family members that the doctors weren't able to finish the test because she had blood in her throat. The family had a talk with the prosecutor, Jeff Phillips, in which he indicated that he believed Lrenda played a role in William's death, but he said he planned to only
charge Martha with murder. According to the family, this was because the prosecutor apparently believed that if he charged Martha before she died, Lrenda would be under suspicion as well, and that that would kind of hang over her and possibly affect Larenda's ability to collect on life insurance. Remember we said last week that before he died, William had two life insurance policies out on him for a total of eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and his family
was asking questions about those policies. During the talk that Ted and Ashley and some other family members had with the prosecutor, Ted said that Jeff Phillips, the prosecutor, had referred to Lrenda as the black widow. Let's take a closer look at this confession letter, because if Martha's story is true, that she was the one who murdered William and that she acted alone, how did she get access
to William's medicines in the first place. Lrenda told investigators after she got home while William was recovering, she tried to give William his steroids and that he refused to take them. After that, Larenda claimed she gave William's drugs to her mother. Then Martha claimed in her confession that, unbeknownst to Larnda or anyone else, she swapped William's steroid medication out with morphine, and that she administered that morphine in order to kill William. We're also unclear, by the way,
exactly where the morphine came from. As we said last week, we don't have access to William's prescriptions. But even if he wasn't prescribed these drugs rugs, they may have been drugs that were kept in the home. The issue is also complicated because Martha was supposedly terminally ill. Apparently she was on hospice care, so the drugs could have been drugs she was prescribed. We just don't know. And there's still the question of motive again, why would Martha want
to hurt William. William's family believes that Lrenda may have convinced Martha that William was abusive. We talked about that last week that Ashley said her father had zero history of being physically or emotionally abusive, But she said that Lrenda, in her opinion, was creating a narrative where her father was being described as abusive. Now again, I have to say, Lorenda has not been arrested or charged in connection with William's death. She's declined to comment and referred all calls
to her attorney. Her mother, Martha, is the one who confessed to William's murder, So in their discussions with the prosecutor, William's family claimed that they discussed that scenario if it was Martha, What if Lorenda had played a role. What if Lrenda, for example, convinced her mother that she was in some type of imminent danger from William. Would that be enough to convince Martha to kill Could Martha, who was very ill and only had a little bit of
time left, have taken the fall for her daughter. That was another possibility they say they discussed. William's family said they also discussed with the prosecutor the issue of having two suspects. That's a scenario in complication We've talked about many times in reporting this podcast, But they say the prosecutor assured them that filing charges against one suspect would not hinder their office's ability to file charges against someone else at a later date. I want to go back
to Martha's confession letter for a minute. Martha confessed to doctoring William's pills, but that confession letter also stated that she gave William an injection. So if the injection was fatal, how likely a scenario was it that William would have allowed Lorenda's mother and not Lorenda, the one with the nursing license, to administer him an injection. Remember, everyone said they didn't like each other. Why in this scenario would William allow Lorenda's mother to come in with a syringe
of something and inject him. How likely is that scenario? Also, if Martha was terminally ill and frail, could Martha even make it upstairs by herself? William's bedroom was upstairs. It turns out that how frail Martha was kind of depends on who you ask. Remember, William's family claimed that Martha was infirmed that she needed assistance getting around, and she
apparently claimed to be terminally ill with throat cancer. But according to Jeff Phillips, the prosecutor, the coroner's investigators told him they witnessed Martha walk upstairs twice while they were there. Another issue that came up was when the prosecutor claimed there was a problem with jurisdiction. The jurisdiction for the case turns out to be a little bit complicated because William lived in Johnson County and that's where his body
was found. But Jeff Phillips stated that because William had once worked as a sheriff's deputy for Johnson County, even though it was years earlier, that if Johnson County handled the case there would be a conflict of interest. Because of that, the case was turned over to the Arkansas State Police. That's another thing that William's family has questions about. While all this was going on, Martha was recovering, she
was getting ready to get discharged from the hospital. The prosecutor was getting ready to file capital murder charges against Martha MacLean. But the prosecutor had an issue because, apparently, according to William's family, the county doesn't have hospice care in jail, so they had to find a responsible party to take care of Martha once she was released from
the hospital. Lorenda was her only child, so even though murder charges were being filed against Martha and she was at that time a prime suspect and William's murder, she was sent home to recover, which meant that she was sent home to Lrenda's care. Just a few hours later, Martha McLean died of a drug overdose. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murderline 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 camer 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 were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. 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 eight seven four four six one four five that six seven eight seven four four six one four five
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